The One About Collisions, Concerts, Joy and Learning to Receive it All

Dear Congregation

“Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?” - Job 2:10 (CSB)

Life is a near constant series of collisions. 
Collisions between beauty and brokenness. Between victory and defeat.
Between dignity and depravity, mercy and malice, joy and jostling, success and suckiness.
Between sin and salvation. 
Between life and death.

As Christians, we have doctrines that help us to frame and understand these collisions. We have a doctrine of God’s goodness, beauty and mercy that helps us to understand that there are things in life that are so good and so beautiful that they can only be ascribed to Him and His work. We also have a doctrine of sin and brokenness which helps us to understand why the world can be so bleak and why people (of which we are a part) can sometimes be so terrible. We have doctrines of how it all resolves which teach us to live in the midst of the ultimate collision of the Kingdom of God now, and the Kingdom of God which is not yet.

While we wait, life can be so brutal.
While we wait, life can be so beautiful.
And the one doesn’t cancel out or nullify the other.

I have been so aware of this over the last couple of weeks. The broader context of my life for the last few years has been one of significant (at least to my thin skinned self) suffering, during which there has been no shortage of the evidence of the brokenness of the world. But then, my last few weeks have been … well … fantastic, or magnificent even. South Africa is doing really well in both the cricket and rugby World Cups. I have seen some of my favorite artists (Pearl Jam, 30 Seconds to Mars, Peter Gabriel, U2) perform some of their best shows. I got to experience the US Grand Prix in Austin with a VIP experience provided by a good friend. My brother (who is also my best friend) was in town with his family for two weeks and it went brilliantly. And then, to top it all off, my mom got to ring the bell which represented the end of her 8 months of cancer treatment, and she is doing great!

Life, at the moment, is full of beauty and rejoicing.

But, here is the thing. Sometimes, as a Christian, I don’t actually know what to do with seasons like this. Instead of just enjoying the moment, I can sully the whole vibe with feelings of sadness rooted in the season’s inevitable ending, or guilt that I shouldn’t get to experience such moments without regret, or an over-realized empathy that reminds me that other people are suffering right now and so my own joy ought to be tempered by that. I felt this right in the middle of the U2 show when my mind went to those in Israel and Gaza living in sadness and fear, and my temptation was to undermine the wonder of my current moment as some sort of honoring of someone else’s moment of deep pain. Like a diminishing of my moment of joy would somehow serve as an homage to someone else’s sadness. 

Here is what I am realizing though. Life is a series of collisions, and we have to learn to rejoice in the good and the bad. God sends seasons of immense joy and beauty, and He sends seasons of trial, struggle and suffering. We must not be a people who can receive the one from God and not the other.

And so, if you - like me, are experiencing some moments of incredible beauty, don’t diminish or cheapen them in any way. Don’t make them seem “less than” in some sort of desire to assuage your own guilt or other’s expectations of what you ought to be experiencing. Rejoice in the beauty! Receive, with gladness, every good gift that comes from the Lord.

If you are in a season of suffering and struggle, don’t diminish or cheapen it in any way. Lament, and then hope in the Lord. Don’t move too quickly to a resolution that can’t hold the complexity or severity of your pain. Sit in it, with the Lord, and keep your hope and your joy anchored to Him.

If you are in a season that is a mixed bag, don’t diminish or cheapen the tension by thinking that it always has to be one or the other. Enjoy the longing and anticipation of the now and not-yet Kingdom, and feel free to laugh at funny memes in the midst of making funeral arrangements, and to cry at the magnificence of October Austin rains while it feels like the rest of the world is on fire.

Life is a near constant series of collisions.
We don’t get to escape it, and we can trust in a God who came to join us in the midst of it.

Press on.

See you Sunday!
Ross