Tags
arrival, death of Jesus, ending, faith, giving up control, heart of God, hope, journey, resurrection, suffering, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trust
I’m the kind of person who could never leave a story in the middle. It always amazed me that people could get up in the middle of a movie on television and say, “I’m going to bed” or – even more seriously – walk out of a movie theater when they have paid for what they’re leaving! I always wanted to know the way things would turn out. As I write this today I realize, however, that this is not as important to me as in the past. I wonder what that means. Am I more interested in the journey than in the arrival? Do I have more trust that everything will be resolved in situations? It’s such a new thought that I don’t have the answer but I have a suspicion that it has at least something to do with giving up control. When I think liturgically about the next few weeks, I realize that we already know “the rest of the story” of the sufferings and death of Jesus, i.e. the Resurrection. What must it have been like for the companions of Jesus? We only know a few of those stories and no matter what the struggles were almost all get resolved in the end when they see him again. Every year I ask myself where I would have been during all those events: hiding my identity as Peter did? helping to carrying the cross or stepping up to wipe the face of Jesus along the way? staying at the tomb with Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”? It’s impossible to know the answer. Maybe a better question for today is this: how strong are my faith and hope in God as I face the events of my own life without knowing what will happen in the end? I now recognize it’s that ability to let go into the heart of God that will determine the answer.
