Month: May 2018

To gain a further understanding of the meditation that follows, a reading of the suggested scriptures will be most helpful. The Editorial Notes at the end of the post may also prove to be beneficial.
Suggested Scripture Readings: 2 Corinthians 4:7 – 18;
Matthew 4: 18 – 22.

There is something about Percy Bysshe Shelly’s “Ode To The West Wind” that captures the human phenomenon of loneliness. Like the West Wind, in Shelly’s poem, which arrives with a little advanced warning and immediately starts its destructive transformation of summer’s stunning creations, so also, does loneliness transform the landscape of a person’s dream life.

“O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,” (1)

How difficult it is to look at what was once a prime source of delight, and see in its place a gaunt emptiness. What does one do when the familiar is gone, and the present and the future tumble into the void of what used to be? I don’t know of anything that can limit the ascension of the soul like the experience of loneliness.
Literature is abundant in the moving incidents of loneliness it provides. Ernest Hemmingway’s ” Old Man And The Sea” is one engaging example.” It is a superbly told, tragic story of an old Cuban fisherman, Santiago, in the Gulf stream, and the giant Marlin he kills and loses. The old man becomes the pathetic victim of a community’s superstition when for eighty-four days he returns to shore empty-handed He is deemed to be jinxed. There is a young lad who is the beloved companion of the fisherman, and who is, because of this judgment disallowed to continue as the old man’s fishing partner. The appearance of the old man, all alone, navigating his boat through the grey mist of the early dawn, is heart-wrenching. His same pathetic saga drags on, one dreary day after another. And then one afternoon, while he was further from port than ever, Fortuna, the Greek goddess of fortune and the personification of luck, smiled upon him. He hooked the coveted, but elusive prize Marlin. It might have been an occasion for a community celebration if only, some others from the community were on site with their helping hands! But the old man was alone, all alone! One tired old man, doing battle with a monster of the sea. With his hands bruised and bleeding the exhausted fisherman wins the final battle. Lashing the marlin to the gunwales of his boat he begins the slow trek homeward. His hard-won victory is; however, a tragedy camouflaged in the garb of success. In an instant, a school of ferocious sharks rise from the depth of the sea and begin their unrelenting attack upon the old man’s treasure. In spite of his valiant effort to fight one more exhausting battle, the old man suffers a crushing defeat. The skeleton of his prize still lashed to his boat; he docks the craft. With leaden steps, the old man staggers up the hill, his bruised and bleeding hands clinging to the wooden oars. Alone! Still all alone, he reaches his little shack, enters and closes the door behind him.
“ the boy came to the old man’s shack as he had come
each morning. The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then
he saw the old man’s hands, and
he started to cry. He went out very quietly to go to
bring him some coffee and all the way down
the road he was crying.” (2)
There is loneliness, stark and unyielding, in spite of a human effort to conquer it.
I summon you now to another story with some similar features, yet, it provides for an entirely different outcome.
The story unfolds in the New Testament as a part of the narrative of Jesus ‘ calling His first disciples. “Jesus saw two brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee, their father, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him” ( Matt 421 – 22)
The picture of Zebedee sitting in the company of his two fishing companions, and more striking, his sons, mending nets he most likely will never use again, is the first ingredient in a developing heartache! As a Newfoundlander who lived by the sea, I have felt, again and again, the depth that such incidents can fathom in a man’s soul. The sons of Zebedee hold the old man’s life in their hands, to a far higher degree than they ever realized. In the village by the sea, Zebedee might well qualify to be the most favored fisherman around. To have two sons to carry on the business, and not only so, but their willingness to give their father a meaningful role to play, in the work he loves, speak eloquently to human effort to stay the onslaught of loneliness. Then, as swift as the onrush of the autumn west wind, the old man’s dreams are in abeyance.
It is a natural phenomenon for which each must endeavor to understand and prepare. It is natural for the day to arrive when the children will ‘flee the nest “, nor is it anyone’s fault that one day you may find yourself sitting alone on the shore. But, here is where the story becomes fundamentally different and engagingly beautiful in contrast to what has gone before. It is a person’s spiritual prowess that conquers all loneliness and equips the soul with eagles wings to soar.

St. Paul with profound insight addresses this essential issue. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” ( 2 Corinthians 4: 16 – 18)
From his seat in the boat alongside his sons that day Zebedee looked up, and he saw two things that would disarm loneliness forever. In the first instance, he saw the face of Jesus! It is true, that to see what Zebedee sees with the natural eye, we must look with eyes of faith. Be assured that Jesus did not see only the possibilities within the lives of his two sons without empathizing with, and taking steps to address Zebedee’s critical need to deal with his loneliness. It is utterly unthinkable that Jesus would call James and John, and commission them to respond to the physical demands of the waiting crowds while leaving Zebedee, their father, to fight loneliness, entirely on his own!

” I’ve wrestled on towards heaven,
‘Gainst storm and wind and tide;
Now, like a weary traveler
That leaneth on his guide,
Amid the shades of evening,
While sinks life’s lingering sand,
I hail the glory dawning
From Emmanuel’s Land.” (3)

But there is one thing more that becomes a most effective antidote for Zebedee’s loneliness, and, please God it will be ours too. To comprehend, in some small way at least, the scope of Christ’s mission to affect the entire world. It is to rid the world as a whole of its crippling loneliness and to make it common knowledge that no one is ever left alone. Zebedee watches three men heading out together towards the sunrise, and two of them are his sons.

All that remains for us is just the quiet whisper of the sea breeze, and an old man sitting alone in his boat, but in that man’s soul, there is the sound of a thousand silver trumpets and a choir singing: Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth! And He shall reign forever and forever! Amen.

PRAYER TO FOLLOW THIS MEDITATION

O Spirit of Gentleness, Who tends to the falling sparrow in its flight,
Look upon me when I crave the wings of an eagle to lift me above my loneliness and pain. But I do not ask to escape from the milieu of loneliness and depression if my brothers and sisters feel left to fight their way through it alone. Better it will be if I find myself trusting solely in the strength of Your Spirit so that You and I will work together to banish from this world everything that perpetuates loneliness and heartache. It is not wings I need if I use them to fly away from earth’s shadows. It is arms, Your loving arms, that will hold me firmly when the fearful winds of change sweep away everything that reminds me of You. That way I will provide one more foothold here on earth for You to conquer the loneliness that spreads here like a destructive west wind in autumn. I pray that more people will seek the fortress of Your protecting arms so that in time the whole round earth will rejoice in the togetherness known in Eden, where You walked with your Children and provided constant companionship with them. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we make this prayer. Amen

 

Hymn: Jesus, You Have Come To The Lakeshore

https://youtu.be/ovSgc-iLTCo

 

EDITORIAL NOTES

Here and throughout the text of this meditation, the quotations from the Holy Bible are from the New International Translation, Unless otherwise noted in the text.

1. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ode To The West Wind
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west- wind.

2.Ernest Hemmingway.The Old Man and the Sea
https://www.amazon.ca/Old-Man-Sea-Ernest-
Hemingway/dp/0684830493
3. Samuel Rutherford. The Sands of Time are Sinking. https://hymnary.org/text/the_sands_of_time_are_sinking
4. Photo: Leading Tickles, Newfoundland.
” No More Sea”

 

I suggest that you read both Scripture readings in their entirety.
Job 23:3 If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling!
Luke 24: 13 – 34 The Walk To Emmaus. I am reading from The New Living Translation.

Finally! Someone has gained the courage to verbalize the question that has taken many sincere seekers hostage for generations. How can I find the God of whom some so eloquently speak? A haunting silence pervades the soul’s abode of many who search one chamber after another, seeking some encounter with the eternal! But the silence falls like a ghostly mantle, and sorrowfully the verdict repeats itself: No, He is Not here”!

Be comforted! The query and the search are much older than you are and even predates Job, who expresses the burning thirst of the text with its unspoken intent, ” If only I knew where to find Him,” then might I come to believe.

The British Poet Walter de la Mere creates a haunting image in his poem ” The Listeners.” A lone horseman arrives at a cottage deep in the forest. He dismounts and immediately knocks, with some urgency, upon the moonlit door. Once, twice, and three times he knocks, each knock more insistent than the one before. He calls out into the echoing silence: “Is there anybody there?” But the only sound in the deathly silence is that of his chomping horse. The horseman turns to leave, and looking one last time towards the eerie dwelling; he calls out, “Tell them I came, I kept my word, but no one answered.” (2)
We never learn what urgent mission brings the horseman hither, whether to announce some fortune or offer reparation for some misdeed long passed.

There are many whose search to find God is starkly reminiscent of this. “I came, I knocked, but no one answered!” Silently retreating into the silence, they wait for another occasion to present itself. However, the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Emmaus Road disciples provides another poignant fact for consideration.
Cleopas and his wife are returning home to Emmaus, having the images of the horrific crucifixion of Jesus seared into their minds forever. Those two know well the scriptures that inform them of the very things they now experience. It is Sunday morning, and Jerusalem is awakening to the rumours they also hear, that the tomb in the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea is empty, that Jesus has conquered death! They are equally aware of the prophetic pronouncement that on the third day, their Lord and friend would ‘rise from the dead.’ Still, it is with leaden steps and sombre minds that they turn aside from the sound of ” God’s Knocking” upon their grief-filled hearts. Here is the essential fact concerning this occasion: “God comes, He knocks; He keeps His Word, but no one answers.”
One may well rejoice in the full knowledge of Scriptures and be able to recite by rote, high-sounding Creeds and Dogma, and still be deaf to the sound of ” God’s Knocking.”

It is always ” The Presence” that results in certainty. Job, the author of our text, moves from musing about where one might find God to finally admitting, ” I had only heard about You (God) before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” ( Job 42: 5-6) Likewise, It is “The Presence of Jesus” in the home of the Emmaus Road disciples that changes the lives of the two disciples forever. Their feet become equipped with wings as they rush to tell the waiting world,” The Lord Is Risen, He Is Risen Indeed!”

I have always experienced some reluctance to engage in recalling personal experiences to illustrate this truth. I fear that the I’s may come too close together and distract from the ONE who has made all things possible for me. But then, I have nothing else that is authentically mine to offer other than what God has given to me. So, I apologize to any who conclude that what I now relate is altogether too personal.
My dad was lost at sea when I was just ten days old. At the age of thirty-five, my mom became the sole caregiver for her family of seven children. I well remember a day while I was still learning to read. I was thumbing my way through an old Bible, which was a family heirloom. The pages fell open to a marked place. Carefully I opened a neatly folded piece of paper, and I read:
” From The British Foreign Secretary Of War.
    To: Mrs. Sarah J. Curtis.
“This document is to confirm that your late husband George A. Curtis, died when his ship, traveling in a convoy in the North Atlantic, came under attack. There are no known survivors”…
I could read no further, but my young eyes fell upon the words where the Bible lay open:
In hushed silence, I begin to read:
“You are My Son; Today I have become your Father!”
PSALM 2: 7.

I can never describe the intense ecstasy of that moment. I could not understand what it all meant, of course, but I knew as I read that somehow this was the most significant happening in my life.

A lifetime is almost complete now, And I will never forget the day He came; He knocked, and when I answered, He was there, and He comes still and will continue to do so to the end of my journey.

A Prayer to Follow This Meditation
Bless, O Lord, all those who earnestly want to find You but can’t seem to do so.
– They feel a stirring within themselves when You paint the evening sky with crimson glory;
– They feel a throbbing in their veins that matches the heaving of the tide against the headlands;
– They whisper Your Name as they feel the tender embrace of the beloved who unfolds the mysteries of human love;
– When they hold in their arms that little bit of two selves and You, they feel they will now be Yours forever!
But, Father, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘Holding Ground’ to secure their anchors and thereby to prevent them from drifting.
Show to all such, O Father; there is but one thing needful. We must all learn to willingly accept the Captain’s offer to fashion our destiny while knowing; He will provide the stronghold for all our noble promises and best intentions. To answer when He calls, that alone is our task!  Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, this prayer we make. Amen

 

EDITORIAL NOTES
1. The quotations from the Holy Bible are from the New Living Translation Unless otherwise noted in the text.

2. The Listeners. Walter de la Mare. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-listeners

3. The photo ” Cast Your Nets”  Is a reference to the words of Jesus to His disappointed friends who ‘sought but could not find.’   John 21:6.

This Photo is of Leading Tickles, Newfoundland.