A reflection for Sunday February 23rd, 2023: 'How fragile we are!'
“If we have built on the fragile cornerstones of human (hope), wisdom, pride, (strength) and conditional love, things may look good for a while, but a weak foundation causes collapse when storms hit (as, inevitably) they will…” (Charles Stanley)
It seemed inconceivable to my adoring (trusting) young mind that he would ever lose. He was my hero, my idol. I followed him with the zeal of a fanatic; his bronzed image adorned a boy’s bedroom wall. Magazines, clippings, scrapbooks filled the shelves. I hung on his every word and could recall his record and his sayings, gleefully, with a scholar’s ease. If anyone thought he wasn’t simply the best I would gladly refute their argument with the zeal of an evangelist.
During the late nights when I should have been sleeping I would bend near to my dad’s world-band radio and listen eagerly for the reports from New York or Kinshasa or Manilla or London. When he was victorious so was I; when he predicted the round in which he would vanquish his opponent, I would luxuriate for days in the great afterglow of his success. I remember, more than 40 years ago how I played truant from school and took a train into central London to see him outside a radio station where he was signing his latest book. When my parents argued long into the night I would bury myself deep in the adolescent world of my creating. When on those rare occasions he did lose a fight, I would be bereft, disbelieving and depressed – sometimes for weeks.
The great man retired and, sadly, one day I grew up. I watched him from afar, after the days of his youthful pomp.
1“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble. 2 They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure. (Job 14)
6A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?” “All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. 7 The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. (Isaiah 40)
The great athlete with the silver tongue and the lightning fists would become a shaking and shambling wreck – a mere mortal, defeated by time. The bloom withered and died. Even the “Greatest” was subject to life’s sad and inevitable truths. How fragile we are! We lose those we love. We suffer. We stand by helpless as people continue to hurt and abuse one another; we cannot find the answers to the hard questions of human life, like why wasn’t I born in Turkey or Syria. How fragile our understanding!
6 “Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be. 7 “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. (Psalm 39)
Because there is something that lasts – that never dies! HOPE…
The story of Job paints a painful picture of the Lord permitting his servant Job to suffer great loss and hardship. He will watch his loved ones die in a way which to most would seem deeply unfair. He will watch his wife become bitter and depressed. His friends will tell Job he is in such a mess because he has sinned in some terrible ways. That was not true, we find, at the end of the story. Though removed from every familiar comfort and weakened by indescribable loss, the man refuses to let go of God or turn away:
20At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”
But, come what may, the man will trust and believe God.
22 In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. (Job 1)
We believe that God came to earth as a man – Jesus Christ. He would have been an ordinary-looking man. He chose to come and find out for himself what it was to be a fragile human being. He came for the greatest and the least. We find God in the fragile and in the broken. We find God in Christ nailed upon a cross – the most vulnerable and fragile place imaginable! But the place (also) of power, and love and hope and peace… Paradoxically, something so good would come from such violence!
Jesus Christ chose to live and die as humans do. But the difference is that death could not hold him. The grave could not contain him. Long before Christ went to the cross or rose from the grave…Thousands of years ago, Job – living in a primitive society – he knew this; in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, he hoped against hope – he knew God and never gave up on God, knowing one day he would be vindicated. He never cursed God. He worshipped and lived for God, no matter what…
My relatives have gone away; my closest friends have forgotten me. 15 My guests and my female servants count me a foreigner; they look on me as on a stranger.
16 I summon my servant, but he does not answer, though I beg him with my own mouth.
17 My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family.
18 Even the little boys scorn me; when I appear, they ridicule me.
19 All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me.
20 I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth.
21 “Have pity on me, my friends; have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.
22 Why do you pursue me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
23 “Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll,24 that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!
25 I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
Here is the Christian HOPE – that thing that never dies, the thing that strengthens the most fragile soul…Here is LOVE of GOD, deep as the ocean… As great Muhammad Ali was – God is greater still!! (MFR)