Despair Redeemed By Hope

"Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs
mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to
find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency
that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without
problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair."

I made it through chapter two this morning, although I will probably linger in it for a week or so.

I am so encouraged by reminders like Merton's that the system we live in is foreign to God's way. We're on a journey through an unseen world that is consumer driven, results oriented, merciless, and vain. The beauty that surrounds us is skewed by the lens of this system, and we're so immersed - I'm so immersed - in the system that we can't see the beauty without a system failure.

Then we're in dangerous territory. Then the earth shifts, and the ground we've been standing on reveals whether it is solid. We experience that loss of footing, and are forced to decide whether to push in toward God as we've never known him, or to watch the god of our false securities whither away, taking our faith with it.

It's a choice. It's a scary choice, made with little data, in the dark. We are faced with our frailty in the midst of the world that demands strength. We look for support in the traditional venues and find in the end that we are truly alone, with only one hope. And we choose Him, or we choose the ignorant security of the dark.

"A life without problems" is the standard of our culture. We all know it isn't attainable, but we strive for it as if we were never going to die. The expectation haunts us, hovers over us, looks over our shoulder like a cruel teacher. We know better, but it creeps into our relationships, our work ethic, and our theology like an adder. We fail or struggle, and that spectre is there. But at that moment, we're on the brink of the realization of God's glory, peeking through the crack in the lie of the unattainable.

Someday I'll be with my Savior in an eternal world where despair and pain are no longer present or needed. I've never heard a preacher say, until this morning, that there is hope in a life that verges on despair. Merton reminds us that pain and despair are redeemed as a lamp to see God through the fog. Death is swallowed up in victory. I like Merton.