THIS is not an article for the
pessimist as much as it’s for the realist. Life is one long series of losses,
and until we come to grips with that truth we’ll never make sense of the true
Christian life, which is itself a caricature of loss — where loss of self is
gain in Christ.
True loss is finally gain,
Because through loss we know,
Though there is incredible pain,
Through it we may inevitably grow.
As we bring our children up in this
world — a world promising so much yet delivering so comparatively little — we
do really well if we can morph their pessimism or their optimism into a
rational realism. This life will not deliver on the promises it tends to make,
through the media and popular life. A rational realism will tend to help our
young not expect too much of this world.
Most twenty-somethings these days
are landing on a dustily barren airstrip far from the promised JFK’s and
Heathrow’s that exist on the cusp of a dizzy grandeur of cosmopolitan fantasy.
They’ve arrived to an adulthood
that is starkly real, perhaps worse than their darker memories of how they
experienced adulthood through their parents. For some, maybe many, though
probably not most, adulthood is something that is to be actively avoided. This
world is all too real, thank you very much!
Twenty or thirty years ago, or
maybe even just ten, it was probably when we entered our 30s that we began to
think these things: life is just one long series of losses. Gains come too, but
it’s in life’s losses that our attention is grabbed.
The truth is life has always been
full of losses. It just seems as though these losses gut us these days, and
there’s probably a number of factors at play. We live in an unreal social media
world where reality is distorted. Whatever is the flavour of the day goes
‘viral’ and all our attention is absorbed by whatever direction the world is
satisfied to direct us.
We have come to think unrealistically.
Of course sense would tell us that life is replete with loss; that grieving losses
well is as important a competency in the suite of life skills as any is.
But our very post Christendom
postmodern lives have lost sight of the fact that life hasn’t changed. Our expectations of life have. Little
wonder the world craves the prosperity gospel which doesn’t reflect the real
gospel at all. The only ‘gospel’ we can believe in, or convince people of, is
the gospel that makes sense to our sense for ‘do good and good will be done to
you’. We cannot seem to reconcile that the ‘good’ we do isn’t necessarily
returned to us.
We cannot stand to think that a
life full of losses is what life’s about.
We don’t deserve that! I’m sorry,
really very sorry, (and I speak to myself just as much as anyone) but that’s
life.
Where the real gospel comes in is
it’s the only way to ‘succeed’ in life — to accept it with the grace only God
can give — and to grow to accept grief honestly and courageously; that’s
healing.
Life is crammed with experiences to
be had of impending loss. This world is as it is. It cannot protect us from
losses. But with God we can learn to grieve our losses well. And, I’d suggest,
only with God is that possible.
Loss is a nightmare of human proportions,
Reality meeting the state of denial…
“Won’t ever
happen to me!”
Well, my friend,
That’s how life is,
And, unfortunately, loss will make us
Interminably see.
Loss is real, it’s categorically
all too real.
Only when we’ve lost can we
appreciate what, from the beginning, we’ve gained. God has granted us life! And though life seems to promise
so much yet deliver so little we ought to be grateful; God has the final word.
© 2015 Steve Wickham.
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