Today is a beautiful, sunny, blue day after a week of clouds and rain. I've just gotten home from a weekend full of meeting new people, playing silly games, and worshiping. I've just been invited to a wedding and learned that a friend is thinking about proposing. I'm about to re-pack, fuel up on gas and coffee, and head over to the east side of the state to visit a friend or two for a few days. Looking at it all from a distance, everything is really good.
But, to be perfectly honest, it doesn't feel that way.
I feel really lonely. I don't know why this snuck up on me the way it did. I mean, I have been surrounded by people that I love this last weekend. I was back at camp for spring orientation, and many of my good friends from last year were there again. I had some great conversations with some of them. I ran around a lot and made myself sore, which is strangely and oxymoronically pleasant.
But here I am, moping in front of my computer screen.
I don't know why I fall into these slumps. It happens a lot more often than it should. I have reflected on my surroundings so many times and been astounded by the faithfulness of God in giving me incredible friendships that I never even asked for, and yet I feel like there is no one who really knows me. This is patently untrue, but for some reason I have the hardest time fighting through the sadness, the despair, the apathy that settles in the pit of my stomach.
One of my favorite poets describes despair as a "carrion comfort." That image has stuck with me; despair is not a thing that is alive and well, but a thing that is dead, rotting until it is no more, a thing for vultures to devour. There may be comfort in it, but it isn't a comfort that revives; it's a comfort that consigns itself to death, to sorrow, to endless misery. It assumes that the way things are is the way they will always be.
But they won't. Hopkins, the poet, says that he won't give into despair, and even as he struggles to know what to do instead, he says that he can hope. He knows that his struggles are meant to make the "chaff fly." It is all a part of the process, of being sanctified and purified, and that it will eventually turn back to joy. Even his choice to choose hope instead of despair is a part of it.
1 Peter begins with a reminder of the hope we have, that God, "according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." But what he says next is really interesting: "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith--more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:3-7)
Peter acknowledges that we are going to be grieved. We will have times in our lives where we have difficulties, and it won't always be pleasant. But still, "In this you rejoice," not discounting the various trials, but remembering instead the "living hope" to an unfading inheritance. Though, for whatever reason, I might be battling through a sadness and a loneliness right now, I know that I am looking to "the founder and perfecter of our faith" who has made a way for me to have hope for an eternal inheritance. If, perhaps, I don't feel I belong now, I must remember that I am looking forward to a time where I will belong, where I am a son who has an inheritance for all time.
At times, without the tangible feeling of belonging, that is little comfort. But in my head I know it is the best comfort I can have, that these small trials are only "for a little while," and I have to let my heart follow my head in these times. I think, often, that that is the essence of faith: I trust God, even when my experience and feelings scream in protest. And so I must choose hope instead of the carrion comfort of despair, knowing that it is so my "chaff may fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear."
