Fog Ahead
It’s been two years since the world began shutting down where I live in Saskatoon. My Facebook and google photo memories have been popping up these past few weeks with the events that I still remember as the last time I did this or that.
I see the memory of my gratitude for my birthday gathering and I can’t help but think “ahh, the last party we threw.”
A photo of our house full of people crammed in cheek to jowl for my husband’s house show, and I sigh and think “that was the last time we had a house full of people, will we ever do that again?”
As the world shut down, the future that had been clear now lay in a fog of mystery. If we had been able to see what would really unfold over the last twenty-four months, I don’t think we would have believed it.
The fog of mystery was especially thick in March of 2020, but if we are honest, the mystery of the future often envelopes our lives. Just not for the whole world at the same time. When a loved one dies. When a diagnosis comes (or remains elusive). When relationships are wounded. When a new challenge seems insurmountable.
Fog lies ahead.
I’ve been reflecting recently on how the mysteries of Christ’s life form us for moments such as these.
When I first studied theology, I think I was approaching it more like mathematics than art. I assumed that once I learned the technical names and learned the formulas (three persons – one God; fully God – fully man) then it would all make sense. Even as my world was expanding and my love for theology and the church was growing, my certainty was unravelling. God was much bigger than I ever knew and I didn’t know the right answers at all.
Even more importantly in this period of my life, I was learning to pray. I was encountering the person of God, as full of mystery and complexity as any individual we encounter in our physical life. God isn’t a mathematical formula, and I am grateful.
In contrast to the certainty of mathematics, the art of the Christian faith emerges not because a life of faith allows us to see the world through relativism, but because art has a way of changing, or deepening, as you spend time with the same piece. A painting moves you in ways you can’t put into words each time you see it. A piece of music meets you in the emotion of the moment, even when you have heard it a thousand times before. There always seems to be more of God to encounter each time we bring more of ourselves to the relationship.
Even more mysterious to me is that God has a habit of speaking words of comfort and challenge at just the right time in quiet moments of prayer or through the words of the community. Mercy and correction so often hold a mysterious tension in my encounters with Christ.
So, as I journey through Lent this year and draw near to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, the mystery deepens. The glory of Christ crucified and raised on the third day is inexplicable, and I am grateful for that. I think that if I could easily explain the mysteries of God, then I wouldn’t be nearly as eager to bring before God the fog of my own emotions and situations. My capacity for uncertainty is stretched in parallel to the deepening love and complexity of God that I continue to discover. I find that there is always more of God to explore.
I am grateful for these complexities because while an initial encounter with God offers joy and clarity and freedom, the longer trajectory of the Christian life doesn’t remove all barriers and smooth every bump in the road. Instead, Jesus prepared us to expect the hard choices and the unknowns.
Take up your cross and follow me.
When I think of the mysterious, fog-filled moments of my journey, I have an emotional response of loneliness, like my world has closed in around me. Yet the reality of fog is that it obscures the presence of what is really around. Fog limits our ability to see with our eyes the presence of both obstacles and safety that are nearby. If I apply that to my spiritual experiences of fog, I need to remind myself that my community is near, that God is near. I wait for those moments when a friendly hand appears mysteriously through the fog, reminding me that I am not walking alone.