There's Still Time to be Surprised

Still the Seasons Change.

I was walking along the bike path near my house one fall evening. The sun was setting quickly, as it tends to do during autumns in Springfield, Oregon. The leaves crunched under my feet, the crisp air chilled my face, and I was walking with all the brooding of a Green Day music video. I needed the air, I needed the outside. I had spent so much of that week feeling trapped inside my emotions that I needed to feel like I could get somewhere, anywhere. So, I walked playing the last couple days over in my head. Days filled with some of the worst depression I felt in years.

I remembered how the night before, I left my house in a state of rage and fear after a small argument with Kelsey. Talk about making a mountain out of a moll-hill. I contemplated the ways in which joy and peace felt inaccessible to me, and wondered in my soul: “How long, O Lord?” This pattern was getting too familiar. How long would depression follow me? How long was I expected to put up with this? I wondered if I could continue to do my job. I don’t know any pastors who were fighting depression. I wondered if I was a burden to my wife, who has had to deal with my bouts of sadness as long as we have been married. I wondered why, in that moment, it felt like God would just let anything happen.

I approached a bench on the path, and sat on it. I tried talking down my emotions. “You’re going to be okay. Your brain just isn’t producing the serotonin it needs to calm your amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for fear and anger). Your new medicine will help you. You won’t feel this way forever.” Sometimes understanding why you feel as terrible as you do is all you need to feel a little better. This was not one of those times. So, I remembered what a few of the guys from my small group always tell me when I feel like I’m drowning, “Invite God into your process. Get new input.”

I bow my head and repeat over and over the ancient prayer from our Eastern brothers and sisters: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Tears fill my eyes as my consciousness enters into the Presence. I don’t feel joy, I don’t feel the depression lifted, but I feel an internal warmth. Spirit is with me, even in my sorrow. Not taking me out of my pain, but getting me through it. I look up and see a tree in front of a brilliant purple and pink sunset.

About half the leaves had fallen from of this tree, leaving the remaining half dry and withered. They too will soon fall. I see the tree and think of how just a few months ago it was full, bright, and green. This tree looked how I felt. But then another thought occurred to me… in time, Spring will come. This tree will be restored to its glory and beauty. Soon, the tree will be dead, but not long after it will be resurrected. The seasons change.

The depression is here for now, but it won’t be here forever. It seems as if depression will always come, but it always manages to go, too. And like it or not, that’s the cycle. That’s the divine system. Some people may experience one season longer than the others, but in this life, we all enter into some sort of death, and we all receive resurrection.

In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples they are intimately connected to him, like branches to a vine, but he also said they needed to be pruned. Pruning means cutting, reshaping, and removing what diminishes vitality. When we look at a Vineyard after it’s been pruned we can hardly believe it will ever bear fruit. Yet, when the harvest comes, we realize that all that pruning allowed the vines to concentrate their energy and produce more grapes. I don’t think God causes my depression. I don’t think God dreamed of me having a wounded brain. I sincerely believe that is a result of the curse on creation until Jesus comes back to right all wrongs. But, the redemptive purposes of my Creator see to it that while I’m in the shadowlands he prunes me.

So, I take a deep breath. I dry my eyes. I look at the tree, and rather than seeing a dying plant, I behold a thing of beauty. It is withering, yet still the seasons change. This allows me to see myself as a thing of beauty. My depression is a liar, always telling me things will never change, but Spirit continues to whisper mercy to my soul. She guides me, heals me, and prunes me. Spirit tells me “This is not the end, and there’s still time to be surprised.”

A Glimmer in the Dust

What Is Beauty Pointing Us To?

  Beauty can save the world, I’m convinced of it. No one who finds beauty in things commits suicide or takes a life. The need to destroy only comes when we lose sight of the glory all around us. The opposite is also true: the need to create and protect only comes when we find something truly wonderful. Beauty has a way of captivating the heart, and it echoes of something deeper in the fabric of the universe. To stop and marvel at something truly beautiful is almost to get a glimpse at something truly eternal. The splendor of eternity is all around us. We experience beauty in relationships, beauty in a job well done, beauty in a sunset, beauty in the forest, beauty in a person, beauty in the ocean, beauty in architecture, art, and music… To behold beauty is to behold the things in our world that glimmer with the majesty of the Creator.

  Beauty serves as a prophet that points us to that which makes things beautiful… and it is all around us all the time. So, why don’t we always see it? Why are we sometimes totally oblivious to the glory all around us? I think it's because we lose sight of the meaning behind the beauty. We stop finding things beautiful when we turn good things into ultimate things. A relationship full of authenticity and vulnerability is a beautiful thing, until the relationship is poached as a resource to make you feel alive. Working hard is a beautiful thing, until it becomes the source of your identity. Art is beautiful until it becomes escapism. When we use things of beauty to satisfy our souls they become restraining. The relationship feels like bondage. The job feels like a slave master. The art becomes a gimmick.

  In the movie The Tree of Life, Brad Pitt plays a father driven by his fear of failure. He views himself as a wasted talent, believing he could have been a renowned musician had he just lived up to his potential. Now he lives to move up in the world. His success in his career establishes his sense of purpose… until the company he works for has to make budget cuts, and he is presented with two options: A job no one wants, or no job at all. This humbles him. For the first time he cannot convince his soul that talent and accomplishments are all he needs for satisfaction. Because once those things are gone, what is there left for him to cling to? The rough-around-the-edges character has a moment of clarity. He says in the narration: 

"I wanted to be loved because I was great. A Big Man. But I'm nothing. Look at the glory all around us, the trees and the birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all and didn't notice the glory." 

What was there left for him to cling to when all that establishes his sense of self is stripped away? Beauty. Why? Because, the things we find beautiful speak to something beyond themselves. Beautiful things testify about a Great Something, but they not the Thing itself. As C.S. Lewis puts it in his essay, “The Weight of Glory,”

  “These things are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing themselves they turn into dumb idols breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echoes of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

  I don’t believe God creates bad things, all things created by God are blessed and good. So, when we come across anything bad, it is really the distortion of something sacred. Beauty can be desecrated. We lose sight of the beauty in a thing when we worship the thing itself.

  Idols are unforgiving monsters. They promise you a world of meaning but they never deliver. Worshiping an idol is like drinking soda while running on a hot summer day… you keep drinking it, and it never quenches your thirst, and if you drink too much it’ll make you sick. An idol always takes, it never gives. It makes our souls sick, and robs us of our humanity.

  So, how do we retrace beauty when all seems ugly? I'm convinced it starts by back-tracking to when the ugly things you're facing were once beautiful. Whether it's a broken relationship, struggles at work, or addiction to escapism... relationships are good things, working hard is a good thing, art is a good thing! These good things that may have become desecrated can be made holy when we acknowledge them for what they are: Vessels, prophets, diagnosticians… Signs that point to the wonder of infinity.

  Beauty can be found, even if it is a glimmer in the dust. We regain the ability to see the splendor all around when we stop seeing it as the satisfier of our souls, and allow them to point us to it.