When I first moved to this house nearly six years ago, I was grieving a great loss. Sometimes death seeps in through the cracks of our house like a vapor, other times death batters the door down and rushes in. At best, death comes as a humbled servant to those who wait in the hope Christ won for us; they are able to see it as a vital sign, the last phase of a process that began beneath the waters of baptism.  

Along the way, many instances of death cling to us. We smell it in the air and see it in our cities, not to mention the shadowed corners of our own hearts where we’ve protected death’s offspring. It can be hard to trust ourselves to a life that is so unfamiliar. The promises offered to the sorrowing and repentant heart may seem vague and immaterial to us. I can understand that. I know what I know; the ways of coping, the old ways and habits of getting along in this world on this world’s terms.   

In that first year of moving to this house, I was encouraged to get into some practices that would be life-giving. Get outside, plant something, tend to something. So, I went to the hardware store and bought a little raised-bed kit, some tomato plants, and some soil. I grew a few tomatoes. I also bought a couple of blueberry bushes and planted those at the back of the yard by the cedar fence. In a time when things in me were overwhelmed with loss, it was a great kindness to see green things signaling the persistence of life. I saw tiny pale blossoms balloon out and redden on the vine and blueberries round and ripen. I was in a time of withering, and these plants pushed their daylit prophecies up through the dark soil of my season of sorrow. They spoke of impossible fruit, unimaginable color, sweetness, and the yet-unseen but surely approaching relief of new vitality.  

It’s worth looking for those signs. In such a sad and disparaging world hope may feel dishonest, but I don’t think gratitude is misplaced. If anything, the hopes we have in God’s future redemption do work their way backward into the present, and we participate in that coming fruit even now. One of the ways we do that, I think, is to participate in the discipline of gratitude – to look for, in the midst of death, things that are somehow signaling life’s goodness and durability.  

Surely not everything in my life is like I wish it was, and God is not asking anyone to pretend. I don’t know that anyone has ever been more realistic and honest about the misery in the world than Jesus. His disciples were shocked by the cross and the deliberate steps Jesus took toward it, but Jesus wasn’t. He never pretended the pain away. Never denied it. He took it seriously, facing with clear, sober eyes. 

At the same time, Chesterton says that, “it is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.” And we’ll feel a little better if we can manage to laugh at ourselves – that will test whether our religion of self-seriousness should stand or fall. Each person is worth taking seriously, like Lewis says, “you’ve never met a mere mortal.” And we all ought to allow the gospel to make fools of us so we can let ourselves go. If we can let ourselves go then we may learn to allow ourselves to be received by the one who let himself be made fool of for our sake. Jesus became the butt of the joke on the cross, but the paradox is that he made a sort of holy punchline out of death’s most serious claims. The serious strongarm of death was disarmed by the lightness of his rising on resurrection day.  

Both are true – the seriousness and the laughter – but only one is everlasting. 

And so I planted blueberries and tomatoes to set before myself a sign of remembrance. “See, I am doing something new, even now it is springing up – do you not perceive it?” You are where you are, yet the Kingdom of Jesus is always cropping up here.  

Then, just a few mornings ago, I watched birds swinging down and landing on my blueberry bush. Our neighbor had given us a child’s BB gun some time ago as a joke, and I decided to fire off some warning shots to scare away the winged blueberry thieves. Sadly, I accidentally hit a bluebird and wounded it badly enough that I had to go ahead and kill it. The rest of the day, I couldn’t get it off my mind. That little death became a tiny rock that rolled down a cliff and knocked other bigger rocks loose until I felt shaken, anxious and sad from the landslide. 

I hadn’t realized how broken my heart really was. I journaled at the coffee shop that afternoon and made a list of the pieces of sad news I’d heard in the just the last week. On top of current national woes, five or six significant personal losses piled up. I hadn’t put the evidence together till I wrote it out that afternoon. Jesus assures us there will be no shortage of griefs in this world to thrash our little life-raft around on the violent waters. That’s reality. And Hebrews says we have been given a hope that anchors us even so.  

The temptation for me is to quit looking for God’s presence here. Enough bad news and we’re swept away. If you have been swept away by bad news lately, if you’ve stopped by this little corner for a breather, let me tell you this: It is true that a people without vision will perish, but we are not a people without vision; we are men and women blind from birth, whose eyes have been supernaturally opened to a “joy beyond the walls of the world”. The joy that has entered our world will one day fill it; Jesus has gladdened us with the light of his face. And our blindness, which seems at times to beset us again, is not a curse, but an opportunity for Jesus to sign his signature through us. The tired world would otherwise fall under a powerful sleeping spell as the veil of human cruelty seems to drape like an oily shadow over everything, but the Shepherd who walks along the road through this shadowed “Valley of Vision” guides us and lends his radiance to our eyes. 

He leads us toward a vision beyond our vision, a hope whose song breaks the cacophony of despair  – not by shouting louder, but by quietly bearing up beneath it. The One who has taken hold of us, whether black or white, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, incorporates us into himself, making us members of his own living body.  

All that to say, we have nothing to win in this world, and nothing to lose; we have options to build our lives upon besides defensiveness and fear. Our reasons for rejoicing and giving thanks regardless of the circumstances, in spite of the headlines, are not due to blindness, but vision. We have been given eyes to see beauty that would otherwise be hidden, the Spirit of Christ in us cultivating a mind to apprehend Christ’s presence in the most unlikely places. We can give thanks and rejoice because the signs of the times mean that God is speaking a word of light into a world that would otherwise be happy to sleep in the choke-hold of darkness. The unease of the world may be a kind of strange proof of God’s unwillingness to leave it alone.  

Meanwhile, sayings like “sorrow may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning” or “his love endures forever” may seem like tasteless jokes from the mouth of someone who’s not taking reality seriously. But the opposite is true. These are the sayings of men and women of transcendent vision. Many of them martyrs who pressed into the hurts of the world holding out hope like stars, poignant against the darkness. Holy Fools who, by faith, saw the impossible calm on the face of their Lord. So, this is the joke – while the storm-soaked disciples flail and scream, Jesus sleeps in the stern of the sinking boat, perhaps dreaming peacefully of walking on water and of those who should rise from its dark depths to walk at his side. 

Closing Prayer 

Lord Jesus, you wept and hoped, admired lilies and confronted the cruel, you prayed in solitude and welcomed confused crowds, you sowed and sorrowed, you planted and went hungry, you walked on in a foolish world with what seems to us a fool’s hope. You faced those who hated you with merciful love. You allowed those who ignored you to ignore you. But to those who did not harden their hearts, but trusted, you folded into your tender embrace. 

You saw glory where we saw only death, you envisioned an everlasting kingdom of righteousness where we perceived only darkness and despair. 

Holy Father, the lamps of our bodies have been extinguished by evil; Holy Spirit, candle in us, that in your light we may again see light and be renewed with a vision of the Joy Our Lord has set before us. Then may we be strengthened to persevere on the path of faithfulness through this world that you, Christ, have marked out and that leads us together with all the faithful in your holiness to your gladdening face.  In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.