by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words

The highway west of Ft. Worth is crammed with vehicles doing their best to wade through the thick construction. I’m in the passenger seat of the family van, with my buddy driving and his teenage son, Thomas, in the back. There’s a phrase coming to mind just now that Thomas said. He was asking about having some friends over on a certain day next week, but his dad reminded him they had a lot of work to do that day, which meant he was asking to have his friends over on a day when he would be too tired to enjoy them. What Thomas said next stuck with me. He said something like, “My future self is telling me that’s the wrong day to have them over.” 

That was wise, wasn’t it? And isn’t it interesting that you and I are the kind of creature that can, in some sense, imagine forward into the future, read a possible outcome, and make decisions now that will benefit us then? In short, we can make plans. We can pull together what we know from past experience, what we know of how things work, and plot some kind of a course forward that, rather than being random, is wise and thoughtful. We can imagine our way through the ways a certain decision may affect us and the people involved. That’s the kind of thing we are, and that’s the kind of world God has made for us to live in.  

For the most part, this is so obvious we don’t even think that much about it. We just do it, most of the time, on autopilot. Although, the ability to rely on autopilot, of course, didn’t come pre-programmed. It is something we learned from a natural apprenticeship to older humans in our sphere of interaction during the course of our developmental years. Someone taught you not to run with scissors, to butter the bread after it comes out of the toaster, not before, or to plant this seed if you want to wind up with tomatoes. 

Other things we learn the hard way.

Back when I was building Vandalf the White, the sprinter van I converted into a camper, I was doing a lot of woodworking. Sometimes I’d get so into a task, but it was really more than that day could cover. Still, I’d push to wrap it up before the sun went down. I’d get worn out, and when you get worn out you get careless. Careless is not a great thing to be when you’re around power tools. Well, one day, the light had nearly worn down to evening, and I should’ve called it quits. Instead, I heaved one last piece of plywood onto the table saw in order to split it. I got about halfway there and somehow I caught an edge. It was enough to suddenly shove that big plank right back into my stomach and just about knock the wind out of me. I don’t remember whether I wound up on the ground or not, but I threw my hands up and stepped back from the tools. That day was over. I learned the hard way, I was too tired to work anymore. But that was a lesson I carried with me for the rest of the build. I started to pay attention to that invisible threshold that marked the difference between whether it was wise or foolish to proceed. 

This morning I woke up before daylight. Bubba, Thomas, and I were driving up to the church to meet a bunch of other guys to help unload some chairs. Before we left, I was thumbing through the end of 1 Corinthians where Paul talks about whether or not the Resurrection is real. This is a favorite chapter of mine, and I appreciate how honest Paul is about the implications, if Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead. The long and short of it, he says, is that if there’s no life coming after this one, then there’s not much to live for. Eat and drink while you can, then die.  

Now, forgive me, I don’t mean to sound cynical or depressing, but I’ve been around long enough for some of the shine of life to be rubbed off. In the scheme of things, my life has been easier than many, of course, and I have much to be thankful for. But I’m also not under any illusions that life is as it should be. There’s a kind of optimism that is really closer to self-delusion, to denial. Life really is hard. It is an interweaving of wonder and grief, astonishing tenderness, and astonishing sorrow. There are hopes whose ache I thought might be eased with time, that I now begin to suspect can only be borne as gracefully as a broken heart can manage for the time being. 

Nonetheless, I am absolutely convinced that the flesh of reality is sweet and only its tough, thin rind is bitter. The rind will be peeled away one day, and it won’t amount to much compared to what’s left once it’s gone. The center of Reality is inexhaustible Joy and Life.  

Paul assures us, that hard as it may be right now to imagine where this world is going, it is going somewhere very very good. In fact, one example he gives is of a seed and how unlike it is to the thing it produces. Would anyone in the world ever guess that this gigantic oak and that little acorn are related in any way? But the long apprenticeship of life has shown us the bizarre linkage over and over again. I don’t think we’d believe it otherwise. It’s not intuitive. It’s quite a leap, actually. If it weren’t so astoundingly normal, there’s no way I’d buy it. 

Paul says, that’s the situation we’re in. Jesus is the first person to have been resurrected, he’s the pioneer, the firstborn of a new kind of human. They planted his body like a seed, watered by the Holy Spirit, called forth by the Father. So the pattern is set for us by our Master, and the apprentices follow.  

Friends, this life is painful. It is crammed with good and bad — a thousand species of death, alongside a thousand reasons to keep going. The resurrection is not a metaphor, or some sentimental image to paste over life’s ultimate meaninglessness til we finally expire. It is a real, concrete hope. Paul seems to suggest it’s a foundation we can build wisely upon, knowing that no work we do in that direction will be a waste of time. He encourages us to lean into it, as if you could hear a loving voice from the future urging you not to let your hands droop at your sides in sorrow. This is not empty work. Your life is not a waste. Jesus is calling you and me to build forward into something that will never end. 

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