"The Gift of Weariness"--October 21, 2019

The Gift of Weariness--October 21, 2019

"I lift up my eyes to the hills--from where will my help come?

 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.

 He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." [Psalm 121:1-4]

So, there's a story about a former pope that has guided this Lutheran preacher a good bit over the years.  Supposedly, Pope John XXIII would end his day with a prayer that went like this: "I'm going to bed.  It's your church, Lord. Take care of it."

I find myself coming back to that prayer, and to the well-loved words of Psalm 121, too, because they reminder who is the One that is truly tasked with keeping permanent vigil.  And it ain't me.  It's the living God.

Part of seeing God's presence in the ordinary stuff of life means recognizing each of our limits--and that includes me admitting my limits--and seeing that God does not have to stay within the boundaries of "what Steve can accomplish" or "how late Steve can stay up."  I will fail at it.  I will get too tired.  I already do.  But God doesn't.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a window of free time in between a counseling session and an evening Bible study, and I got to play "school" with my six-year-old daughter.  And I noticed that I was fighting sleepiness during our playtime lessons, even to the point of trying to convince my daughter for a bit that it was a kindergarten class she was teaching and that I should get nap time during school, like she had the year before.  I don't want to miss a minute of playing school or being there as my kids grow up, and I don't want to miss out on the opportunities in each day to be a part of the good Kingdom work God has put in front of me.  But then there is this humbling reality come day's end, where the tiredness wins, and I have to remember again, like a former Bishop of Rome once said, it's God's church--I'm going to bed.

Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking that seeing Christ in the ordinary stuff of life is only about what things I do that I can also see God's fingerprints on.  And that may well be true--we may get to glory and see that God was working through all sorts of things that you and I said or did in this life.  But at the same time--and this is the humbling reality--God is not required to stick inside the limits of what I can do, or what I can dream up, or what I can accomplish.  God's hours are longer than mine.  God's energy outlasts mine.  God's vision is wider and deeper and more audacious than mine.  And that means when I come to my limits, God is just getting started, really.

And that realization does something else to my view of the world, too.  It sanctifies the smallness of my life.  It makes my limits, the edges of my ability, into holy places.  Rather than feeling ashamed at how much or how little I can get done in a day, and rather than pretending that I can do it all as though I were God, I can see my tiredness as a point to see God covering the gaps that I cannot cover.  It is now possible to see my own weariness as a gift. And at the point where I am worn out by the day, or come to the end of my abilities, or even reach the close of my own life, I do not have to hide my face with shame, but see there the presence of the God who keeps going where I run out, who keeps on burning bright where my flame has run out of wick and wax.  I don't have to keep watch through the night, and I never did.  God does, and God does a pretty good job of it, it turns out.  

That means I can face this day, and every other one after that, with the ability to own my abilities and my limits at the same time.  I can do what I do, as well as I can, for as long as I can, for as many people as I can.  And then when my candle is fully spent, I can trust that the God whose night-vision was always better than mine anyway will continue to keep vigil while I rest my bones.

Like the preacher-narrator of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead writes to his young son in the novel's closing words, "I'll pray you find a way to be useful.  I'll pray, and then I'll sleep."

May that be enough for us today, knowing that when it is time for us to let go at last and rest, the living God keeps vigil.

Lord God, don't fall asleep on this world.  It's your church, your world, your universe.  Take care of it, beyond my ability to care for it all.