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[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
