Sleep in Heavenly Peace

I’m feeling really tired today. Part of it is having teens. But you can tell, can’t you, when a tiredness comes over you that’s deeper than just sleep deprivation? I was at the church all day today pretty much by myself. The weather is terrible… cold, wet and foggy so I understand no one moving about. I had a lot of time to be by myself and think.

Lisa (my wife) and I were talking just this morning about the brokenness of the world. We were trying to describe it. You could say that everything is shot through with sin. Even when we think we are doing the right, the noble, the good, the true, I believe that running deep and often secretively beneath the surface is our self-centeredness and sin. But that really doesn’t say it. That’s not all if it. It’s not only morbid, but unfair. It has something to do with fallenness. That’s not even a real word but it says it for me. Our deepest and essential identity is that we were created good. Our secondary and, shall I say, derived identity is fallen. Our church community is filled with people who are in pain, broken and wounded and suffering, struggling morally with very serious issues. Everything is soaked in this sense of brokenness. It is a reality we all live in.

Some go one way and start speaking and acting and preaching very triumphalistically. That’s just utter baloney. I won’t even address that here. My tendency is to go the other way. Lisa said that it is important not to become Eeyores about it all. And THAT, my friends, is the struggle. This is why I don’t run away. I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to surrender. I don’t want to commit vocational and social and spiritual suicide. I think there is hope. I think there is a deep and residing promise of freedom being held out for all of us. And this is probably the only reason, in spite of my exhaustion, that I don’t allow myself to fall into a deep and everlasting stupor.