Wholly Weak

This morning I tried to get my arms around all that Holy Week represents.  In many respects I am not ready for Easter.  And even thought this is Good Friday my whole being isn’t fully focused on that reality.  If anything, I sense that I’m occupying the Saturday between.

By most reasonable standards things are going well for me.  I am loved.  The work I do is rewarding.  I have friendships that are meaningful.  My health is good.  Still, there are moments when the press of life feels a tad bit overwhelming.  It’s that place where there is a to do list that looks daunting, critical questions need to be answered, and there’s a sense that I’m disappointing more people than I’m helping.  You can relate.  This is not a space that’s unique to my experience.  But it’s at times like this that I feel “wholly weak”, incapable of pulling my head out of the sand.

This morning I told God all of this.  In measured words we talked about the ‘land in between’ I seem to be occupying.  I yearn for Easter’s resurrection and the almost paralyzing emotion of the Cross but find myself a little stuck in uncertainty and ambiguity.  A.W Tozer prays what is often my reality:

O God, I have tasted Your goodness, and it has both satisfied me and mad me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want You; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Your glory, I pray, that so I may know You indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.

Holy Week, I’m learning, will bring us to a place where we’re forced to come face to face with ‘wholly weakness’.  The events framed by Palm Sunday and Easter force us to face our wishy washy affections, to examine our habits of life and faith,  to deal with conflicting emotions, to delay gratification and to trust God in the midst of the mystery of it all. These are not easy things.  But they are necessary things to wrestle with.  The ‘misty lowland’ ultimately leads us to ‘majestic higher ground’.  That is the both the hope and promise of Resurrection.  Will we trust in that hope and live joyously into the promise?  May it be so.  May it be so.