Living in the Seam

“Our country is in big trouble. I don’t know how we will get out of this mess.” So my friend said to me.  He was referring to the latest “crisis of confidence”, namely the Internal Revenue Service tagging of certain groups for extra scrutiny.  He said that he was at first inclined to ignore it, but then he thought, “Well, if you give the government unchecked power, that is how Hitler got his start, right?”  Oh my.  Trying to talk my friend “off the ledge”,  I offered, “you know, we have survived times like this before.  We survived Watergate, so we certainly will survive ‘IRS-gate.’”  He asked, “Did we survive it? What about all of this hate and anger and lack of trust among our government officials and people around this country?” So I offered up a brief history of how President Ford offered up forgiveness, and then the country elected President Carter, who was incapable of any serious ruffling of feathers. And then we had everyone’s favorite grandfather, President Reagan, followed by everyone’s iconic “bad uncle”, President Clinton, with the two Bushes fitting in there somewhere. So, I offered, “we will survive this time too.”  The genius of our nation is that it can survive bad government and bad people.

My friend used that comment as a segue into some observations about how difficult life is in general, which led into a discussion about some details in his personal relationships, about children and grandchildren, all of which raised doubts in his mind about how stable life really is anymore. Yet his situation gave him, he said, an understanding about how tough life had become for the “least among us.”  If the “working poor” could see a way through to the future, certainly he, comfortable financially and vocationally, should find a way to see a brighter future.  I suggested that our ability to have hope for this life is all a matter of perspective: do we have a long enough view, a view that includes this life and a life that never ends? He replied that he didn’t think he had that kind of faith.  He really wanted to know that “it”, this life, his life, his child’s life, his grandchildren’s life, that these lives would be all right.  And that is the problem, or the opportunity, don’t you think? This is where faith meets life: my child is suffering;  my grandchild seems so lost;  I don’t see any hope for our country. Which means, really, I am afraid; I don’t see any way out for my family, my employment, my country.  But some people see with a longer view, people of faith who can see by the gift of the Spirit that what is and what is to be are not the same.  This is the hope that faith produces,  and this is what we rehearse when we meet God together in worship.  I told me friend of some people who worship with us who face seemingly overwhelming odds, and despite this life, or maybe because of the overwhelming odds that this life offers them, they come to worship desperately wanting someone to tell them they are loved, that Someone is really in control, despite all appearances to the contrary.

Have you ever seen clothes that are a bit too tight, or are a bit too worn? Inspect the seam and you see that with one wrong move the seam could tear wide open.  But, if the thread is strong enough it won’t finally give way;  it will instead hold the two sides of strained cloth together, despite the stress.  That is the work of the Spirit today.  The Spirit overcomes the crisis of confidence in the future of our nation, of our families, of our own lives.  The Spirit holds this life and the life to come together, sometimes seemingly on the thinnest of threads. But the thread of hope will not break.  Cannot break.