By Jim Tune
In Tomas Tranströmer”s poem “The Blue House,” the narrator is a man standing in the woods near his house. When he looks at his house from this vantage point, he observes that it”s as if he”d just died and he now “saw the house from a new angle.” It”s a haunting image””that just-dead man among the trees””and it”s an instructive one too.
Sometimes something has to die before we can see from a new angle. This is the posture Tranströmer”s narrator assumes, at once able to see his life for what it”s been while also acknowledging the lives he might have had. Every life, the poet writes, “has a sister vessel,” one that follows “an entirely different route” than the one we ended up taking.
Over the years I have counseled people who are crushed with disillusionment over the life they have, choosing to become embittered or disappointed because the life they wanted, the life they expected, just didn”t happen. It”s not that they were listless or lacking in purpose. It”s as though the ship they boarded got lost at sea, was set adrift, or marooned somewhere.
They see a sister ship and yearn for passage aboard a life they might have had. It happens in the faith journey too. Maybe it”s even happened to you. God was supposed to remember the sacrifices you made, protect your job, bless your marriage, heal your child. . . . You remember when your prayers used to be answered””at least most of the time.
“The world breaks everyone,” Ernest Hemingway wrote, “and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
Sometimes, as Tranströmer mused, things we thought we couldn”t live without need to die before we can see with real perspectives. At some point, possibly in midlife, or sooner if your life was visited by some early calamity, we discover our early faith isn”t enough to sustain us through rough waves of open seas. Sometimes Jesus calms the storm. More often our experience is like Paul”s, “Three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea” (2 Corinthians 11:25).
Adult faith begins with an unwanted death, a stunning loss, a great disappointment. Those who ask in bewilderment, “Why is this happening to me? This is not what I expected!” are finally ready to bury the immature demands of life, and in losing that life for Jesus” sake, find it.
Author: Christian Standard
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Excellent! The moment we figure out that physical blessings are not promised in the New Covenant and stop praying for them is when we become free to accept life as it is and pursue spiritual things and character development.