On the Meaning of Life

“Nothing like cooking on a freshly cleaned stove to make you contemplate the futility of all human endeavors.” Some of you may recognize this as a Facebook status I posted a while ago. It was a joke. But it was also deadly serious.

I could blame it on the lockdown. Not seeing anyone in person has this way of making relationships less satisfying. Or maybe I just have too much time to myself to think.

On a pretty regular basis lately, I’ve been feeling like everything is pointless. I cook. I eat. I run out of food and need to cook again. I clean. Dirt piles up. I exercise. It makes no discernible difference in my health, unless I do it again and again and again. In the short term, the exercise might even make me sore. And in the long term, I’m still going to die.

Yes, but what about those things that only need to be done once? My knitting and writing, for example. Each of these produces a thing that wasn’t there before. But does the world really need another baby blanket? And my dissertation … will be read by exactly four people in the form I’m working on right now. If I’m lucky, I’ll publish it after significant revisions. Maybe someone will read it in that form, too. Maybe someone will be convinced to look at the Bible closer to the way I do. I think that will be a good thing? But my confidence in my ability to come to the truth right now is very low.

And then there are relationships. Normally, I tell myself that if I can make life better for one other person, then my life counts. But is that happening? “Making life better” is a vague goal, and it’s harder to convince myself I’m reaching it when I can’t see people in person. My presence in a room feels significant in a way that silently lurking on a zoom call isn’t. Talking on a zoom call feels more like a contribution, but sometimes I don’t have anything to say. And in the long term, other people are going to die, too.

Fun is … fun. But it doesn’t really matter if I have fun. Work is always there afterward. And does anyone other than me care if I enjoy myself? Maybe because they’re kind, but not because it actually helps them in any way.

But writing this has been somewhat artificial. I was feeling life’s pointlessness at the beginning, but as I wrote, I kept thinking about other things. Things that go beyond the futility I was describing. Like how making something that wasn’t there before is me exercising the image of God. Like how other people are made in the image of God, and that’s why improving their lives is a good thing. Like how even though we’re all gonna die, that’s not the end of the story.

I guess what I’m writing is a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes. There is nothing new under the sun, including this blog post. Ecclesiastes talks about life under the sun, in a world without God. It concludes that everything is meaningless. But then, the implication is, we must turn our eyes to something greater than the sun. We live under heaven, under God, and that is what makes this life significant. We do good things, even if we’re just going to have to do them again, because he made us to do them. Our relationships matter because people are walking pictures of God, and they’re going to exist forever. What we create is valuable not because the world desperately needs another baby blanket or even another dissertation, but because by making, we are acting out the image of our Maker, and that brings Him pleasure(!). Even fun matters as we enjoy the good world He made or good things made by his “sub-creators” (a term I shamelessly borrow from Tolkien).

In some ways, it’s good for us to “contemplate the futility of all human endeavors.” We tend to make the good things in life more than they are, as though we can make our own meaning. But that’s impossible, for meaning has to connect to something outside of us to count as meaning. We need to be humbled, to recognize that what we work for and worry about isn’t as big as it seems.

And yet, right now, we also need to be elevated. We need to look up and see beyond the sun to the heaven that makes our lives matter. We need this both for our own sanity and because it helps us focus on what truly matters. Yes, fun is valuable if received as a gift and rejoiced in, but using it to numb ourselves to pain is a misuse of it. The same goes for work, and relationships and everything else. We must relate them to the Creator for only in Him do they find their meaning.

The Darkness Before Easter Dawn

In the hours before dawn, the women rose, gathered their spices and went to anoint Jesus’body. He was their friend, their teacher, and in one case, their son. The one person who knew their hearts completely and loved them still. The person who had given them hope that God had seen the misery of His people and was going to help them. The person who had healed sickness and cast out demons and even raised the dead. But now he was the one who was dead.

They had watched him take every agonizing step up Golgotha. They had seen the pain on his face and seen those long nails sticking out of his wrists. They had stared, unable to tear their eyes away but wishing they could. They had wept and wondered why God would allow this injustice and why the best man they had ever known would have to suffer so, and why they would have to lose him.

But by Sunday morning, their tears were spent. They must have found some way to numb the sorrow, to block it up in the bottoms of their hearts and roll a stone over the entrance. They busied themselves with preparing to anoint the body and with worrying about the stone at the entrance to the tomb, because the alternative was just too painful.

We, too, feel pain that is the same in kind if not in degree. We lose those we love. We watch friends get hurt. We see the injustice of the world and mourn for victims of senseless violence. We feel hope, only to have it crushed. Some of us wonder if there is anything left to live for.

But power is at work in the hour before Easter dawn. Even as the women trudge along the dark, stony path to the tomb, angels descend, and the stone is rolled away. Air fills the lungs collapsed by crucifixion, the hands pierced by nails move, His eyes open, and the soul of the man who spoke and laughed and cried and loved returns to His body. He is risen.

And those three words breathe life into souls that were nearly destroyed by sorrow. The injustice is righted, the loss is restored, the pain is healed. Hope is not only rekindled, but it blazes forth as brightly as the sun that now rises above the eastern horizon. He is alive, not only in our hearts but in reality. And because He lives, we also will live.

It’s now the day after Easter. The songs are sung, the decorations are coming down, and the chocolate is, or soon will be, consumed. It’s Monday, and people are going back into the drudgery of work. Life presses in with its various problems: sick children, quarrels with loved ones, disasters on the news, and pain hidden in our hearts.

But the Resurrection is not just a story. It is a historical event in which the raw, physical reality of death was reversed. Jesus had – and still has – a body just like yours but now transformed. He experienced all the struggles of your life and more. But He has overcome all that evil, and someday, He will return to destroy evil forever.

Friends, Christ is risen today and every other day. Remember that next time you feel the darkness pressing in on you. Jesus is alive.

A Meditation on Isaiah 35

One night when I was in the depths of depression, I was getting ready for bed. Out of force of habit, I sat down to read a psalm. But in my tiredness, I missed Psalms and ended up reading through all of Isaiah 35 before I noticed my “mistake.”

Here’s what I read:

1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;

the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus;

2 it shall blossom abundantly

and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,

the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.

They shall see the glory of the Lord,

the majesty of our God.

3 Strengthen the weak hands,

and make firm the feeble knees.

4 Say to those who have an anxious heart,

“Be strong; fear not!

Behold, your God

will come with vengeance,

with the recompense of God.

He will come and save you.”

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

For waters break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

7 the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water;

in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down,

the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

8 And a highway shall be there,

and it shall be called the Way of Holiness;

the unclean shall not pass over it.

It shall belong to those who walk on the way;

even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.

9 No lion shall be there,

nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;

they shall not be found there,

but the redeemed shall walk there.

10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

they shall obtain gladness and joy,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

I believe that God directed me to the “wrong” passage that day because this was exactly what my hurting soul needed. I needed to read this promise of renewal for the deserts – the empty, lonely, broken places of the world – because my heart felt like a desert. I needed to hear that no matter how hopeless I felt, I wasn’t really without hope because God had promised to make things right.

Verse 10 in particular stood out to me with its promise that “sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” I believe the complete fulfillment of these verses will come when Christ returns. But until then, God’s promise that better things are coming can give us hope and comfort.

But is that all our faith offers? Is it merely a piece of positive thinking or an “opiate of the masses”? Not according to Isaiah.

Verses 5 and 6 speak of healing for the blind, the deaf, the lame and the mute. Just as God gives us emotional comfort, He offers healing. We see that in the pages of the Bible, and I believe that God continues to work miracles today. Yet once again we will need to wait until Christ returns for all disease to completely disappear.

OK, so Christianity offers emotional and physical healing – for us. But is it just a personal thing that only touches its followers? Again, the answer is “no.”

The whole point of this passage is that the physical world will be healed. Verses 1, 2, 6 and 7 speak of desert being turned into lush, fertile land. In a sense, this is undoing the effects that sin had on all of nature. Part of God’s curse after the first sin was that the land would be unfruitful, producing thorns and thistles instead of good crops. But here we see the curse undone. Even the harshest, least hospitable lands are transformed into lush valleys. The whole earth becomes a fruitful, safe and holy place.

How does all this happen? The passage doesn’t explicitly say, but verse 8 points to the answer. It refers to the “Way of Holiness” in which the redeemed walk. Verse 10 indicates that it leads back to Jerusalem, the city of God. In the Bible, Jerusalem is seen as the place of God’s presence, and we know from the New Testament that the way back into God’s presence is Jesus. He is the One through whom our hearts, our bodies and all of creation will be healed. When we believe and obey Him, we walk in the way of holiness.

We all face moments when we feel dry and empty. We sometimes fall and wander away from the way of holiness. But we must “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not!’” That means picking ourselves up when we fall, but it also means building others up when they are weak. We must remember, as it says in verse 4, that God will come and save us. We can be strong and work to restore the things that are broken in human lives and the outside world only when we place our hope in the One who has the power to accomplish this seemingly impossible mission.

The Sun in the Night

Those who like me grew up going to church are aware that Christians like to draw a distinction between joy and happiness. The idea is that happiness is based on circumstances, but joy is not. We like to quote 1Thessalonians 5:16-18: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

And that’s all well and good, but for someone who struggles with depression, it can be confusing. The Bible says we should be joyful in all circumstances. Depression is a circumstance. Therefore we should be joyful when we’re depressed. What?

This seems impossible, so I started examining each step of the argument. I don’t want to deny the truth of Scripture (by saying we don’t have to be joyful always). Arguing that depression is a sin (not a “circumstance”) also doesn’t make sense to me (for reasons I can explain if people are interested). So, paradoxical as it sounds, there must be a way to find joy in depression.

I’ve come to a tentative solution: joy in the midst of depression looks less like happiness and more like hope. I think the details are better explained in poetry than in prose.

The Sun in the Night

Joy is the sun that fills my world with light,

That paints the flowers with their rainbow hue,

That crowns the dancing waves with diamonds bright

And shimmers out from every drop of dew.

But sorrow strikes – I spin into the dark.

Night rises up to steal the sunlight’s throne.

A hungry void devours every spark.

Night hisses, “Light is dead. You are alone.”

Yet though the sun is hidden from my gaze,

It does not for that reason cease to be.

I see it in the moon’s reflected rays

And grasp at hope’s unfelt reality.

Joy’s gravity holds me within my way,

Saves me from slipping out into despair.

It guards me till I spin back into day

And dawn paints roses in the morning air.

To My Fallen Comrade

Hearing the tragic news about the death of Matthew Warren, Rick Warren’s son, stirred up deep feelings in me. I realized that we had much in common – so much so that but for God’s mercy his story could have been mine. We were fairly close in age, both Christians raised in Christian homes with parents who do some kind of ministry (my father has even worked with Rick Warren on a project), and we both struggled with mental illness for years. But I pulled out of it (more or less), while Matthew never did. This is a terrible time for the Warren family, and although I know nothing I say can heal this grief, I am offering my prayers to the One who can. I dedicate this poem to Matthew Warren and hope it will bring some kind of catharsis and/or comfort to those who are grieving.

To My Fallen Comrade

It was a weary, lonely fight we fought

Standing side by side, yet miles and miles apart

Upon the blackened landscape of our thoughts.

With all our strength we strove each morning,

Wrestling our weary bodies from the beds

Where we had fought, bled, wept

For sleep that fled.

With every breath we breathed we choked

Upon the black and burning smoke that cloaked

Our every move, obscuring sight,

With darkness deafening our ears

To words of hope.

We struggled through the days, weeks, months and years,

Begging our Lord for peace that did not come,

Striking at shadows, never knowing

Where to swing to smite the beast

That battered, bruised and broke our hearts until they hurt to beat

And every breath burned.

How did I escape that battelefield

To find this sweet oasis where the air

Is clear and light can fill my eyes?

But you, my brother both in faith and battle blood,

Are fallen, and my heart is filled with tears.

I long to tear into that demon in the dark

That stole you from this world

With so much joy untasted,

With so much good undone,

But there is nothing I can do.

So rest, my brother, in the sleep that once fled

Until the day when agony and death will lie dead

And we will dance where once the darkness reigned

And weep no more.