A weary wandering toward home

[Jesus said], ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’  (Luke 13:34)

Just one word. That’s all it took to awaken tears of bone-deep longing, as the sun struggled to break through the stone-gray gloom of an unpromising morning.

Little light penetrates these November clouds, come one day early. Nor have I much light of my own to contribute. Another source must be found.

Weariness weighs the heart, worries, yes, for a family member carrying heavier loads that I can imagine … and can do nothing to lift.

But there’s also the weariness of our times, the fear and anger, accusations and recriminations that poison the public square and make a ‘newsie’ like me want to turn it all off—the politicization of … everything, the divisions, the doom-speaking of rival parties and candidates, the word ‘fight’ that appears on the lips of all sides, telling adherents they must fight for their rights, fight for the country, fight for democracy, fight or lose your freedom, your country, your way of life, fight … and we win.

Or do we? Any victory that makes losers only perpetuates love’s destruction.

I am tired of it all, weary of it all, sick to death of the conflict, the lies, half-truths, distortions and divisions, my head sinking into the pillow with a heavy sigh these nights, hoping for rest that refreshes the heart.

Rising, I make coffee and shuffle to my chair, hoping to sink into my soul where love’s flickering flame might revive awareness of who I am and whose I am … and just who it is that holds my times, these times and all time in the palm of an ever-loving hand.

Still, I wonder: Is this feeling desolation or a strange and difficult consolation because it brings me back … and closer … to Jesus who is this love?

If desolation is the darkness of feeling far from the warming rays of divine sunlight, perhaps … this weariness is not desolation at all. Perhaps it is a share in the longing of Jesus, who births tears in my eyes with a single word, ‘gather.’

That part of my heart that beats in time with his longs with him for the pain of our splintered humanity where trust dies beneath the power of invective, yielding a harvest of hate celebrated and magnified by party spirit of all types and paraded for profit across multiple networks.

How often, how long, how much … I have wanted to gather you into a protective love where knowing, breathing, abiding and sharing this love evaporates every us-and-them into we and us.

This is the voice of Jesus in these times, in every time. And the frustrated tears of our longing to be gathered beyond the weary sorrows of our divisions is the holy consolation of knowing his heart within our own, love’s living hope refusing to die, hungry to be gathered home.

And if you’ll pardon me, the sun (truly) just found its way through the gloom to warm my window. As it always will.

David L. Miller