Piercing the Void

"When we say that a friend 'helped' us, two meanings are possible. In the case where our need was for something practical, we have in mind material assistance, but when nothing can be done along those lines - when the beloved are lost to death - we mean something different. The friend has 'done' nothing to prevent the unwanted outcome, or to change it, yet we value them and are glad of them, because we know perfectly well we would not have gotten through the ordeal without them. It was their presence which made the difference". Based on Robert Farrar Capon's insight in his book, the Third Peacock.

Ours is an age of pretense.
We have made huge strides in what might be termed the 'mechanics' of things - technology at every corner, 24/7 global coverage of all that's new - and yet, with all our verbose success and secular swagger, we have lost ourselves when it comes to becoming whole in respects to identity and value.

Ours is the day of loneliness, of alienation, of lack of genuine worth and purpose, because if you tell people long enough and hard enough that there isn't anything but the 'mechanics' - the random knocking together of stuff that just happens to express itself in, oh, forming a universe - then everything is, in truth, pretty pointless.

We all know that life isn't really about that.
The Biblical record is astonishingly short on the details of the 'how'; it seeks to underline the point that the real causes for what binds the elements and produces the miracle of life are deeply mysterious. It's interesting that no matter how hard we try to explore those depths, what we so often find is not a solution, but further questions. 

The meaning we actually gain about existence begins and ends elsewhere.
When I lost my wife to cancer some years ago, what made it bearable was the care and comfort of friends, both kin and those who decided to draw close and be there, whatever it cost. The value of such warmth amidst darkness cannot be measured, and I know that I was able to not just survive but engage with life again because that love was there.

It's by love that we become people fully alive, because truly giving yourself to another, however deep the cost that may be involved, brings out the true value of our time here - in giving, we so often discover something deeper about the wonder and the marvel of this gift of life.

Our capacity to share in this way expresses something vital about what we're meant to be - cherished people who truly belong to each other through a bond that no hardship, not even death, can end, because we truly value each other deeply - beyond our own desires or needs.

That's the centre point of Christianity, diametrically opposed to the folly of selfishness. It informs us that the real treasures of this world revolve around a love that gives itself fully and wholly to the rescue and redemption of what had been swallowed in the darkness of pride and vanity, what had become so lost that it could not see how empty its existence was.

The world we inhabit will no doubt keep on getting 'smarter' in its manipulation of things, but it will also continue to become more evil as people themselves progressively become just another 'thing' to manipulate.
The answer was given to us 2,000 years ago on a hill outside an ancient city wall, and at the empty grave a few days later.

Make time, dear friend, to consider these things, that genuine love may make you whole.