DOES GOD TAKE BACK GIFTS?
In today’s gospel, Jesus approached two of his disciples. He was right in front of their faces. And being His disciples, they knew what he looked like. But “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him” despite Jesus’ prediction and their friends’ first hand accounts.(1) These disciples don’t allow themselves to believe and rejoice in the Resurrection. They had just lost Jesus, and they were avoiding further disappointment.
Joy is the most vulnerable of emotions. The greater the joy we allow ourselves to feel, the more disappointment and pain that awaits us when that joy is lost.(2) Have you ever loved something so much, and then lost it? Maybe it was a beloved pet? Friend or family member? A meaningful experience that you hoped would never end?
Two years ago my former boyfriend and I fell in love. He was starting graduate school out-of-state, and we intentionally invested in our long-distance relationship. Prayer repeatedly showed me that this was a great gift to be cherished. I dared to hope that after 20 years of awkward dating and broken hearts, that I had found my lifelong significant other. After final exams, he called. In a five minute phone conversation, the relationship was over. I felt shocked, hurt, used, and betrayed. Why did God give so generous a gift, only to take it back? Fast forward to this current pandemic, and similar emotions return. I sense acutely how everything, no matter how beautiful or significant, is a loan--temporary.
So why does God take His gifts back?
Henri Nouwen offers, “I believe deeply that all the good things our world has to offer are yours to enjoy. But you can enjoy them truly only when you can acknowledge them as affirmations of the truth that you are the Beloved of God... that truth will also allow you to let go of what distracts you, confuses you, and puts in jeopardy the life of the Spirit within you.”(3)
But what about the Resurrection? What makes the Resurrection a gift for-keeps?
We don’t own the Resurrection. We surrender to it, and let the Resurrection hold and transform us. Like how you can’t put the ocean into a thimble, but you can drop the thimble into the ocean. And we are the thimble.(4) Or how a grain of wheat must fall and die to produce fruit.(5)
Jesus,
Each breath I take is one last breath to breathe life
I melt like a candle.
I fleetingly pass away.
Very soon now, I won’t be here.
But WHO I am,
in the fleetingness of time,
is eternally subsisting in your love.
May I realize the deathless beauty in the fleetingness of things.
May I be grounded in it.
May I live by it.
May I share it with others day by day (6)
References
Luke 24:16
Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
James Finley, “Sink Into the Taproot of your Heart”, Turning to the Mystics
John 12:24
Paraphrased. James Finley, “Bonus: Deathless Beauty in the Fleetingness of Time”, Turning to the Mystics