Living with Limits (and Trust that Gives Thanks)

Each week I write a short article for the James Journal, an e-snapshot of that week's good things at St. James. This is from that. If you want to receive the e-note and don't already, you can sign up here!

Ash Wednesday has a way of throwing us off the deep end of our creatureliness. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Just in case we have found occasion to forget, these words remind us that we are creatures created and sustained by an Other, by God. The wilderness Jesus enters is likewise full of dust, the reminder that we do no make ourselves.

Creatures, of course, have limits. My kids reminded me the other day that I've slept for 14 of my 42 years on this earth. Not because I'm lazy but because I'm a human bound by rhythms of night and day, wakefulness and sleep. I affirm my trust in the God who made me when I nightly enter the surrender of sleep (some days more easily than others, so much left undone!). Likewise, I have known the limits of my creatureliness to save, for example, a loved one dying.

Christians, historically, have been at our best when we embrace our creatureliness. Rather than get hung up on the fact that we have real limits, we show up and keep a faithful presence, hold holy space, even with those we can't save. See, for example, the legacy of St. Jude's children hospitals. St. Jude is the patron saint of "lost causes." Christians do not limit our presence only to those situations we know in advance we can solve. Christians show up in love and not knowing. Which may just be different words for trust.

To be a creature means that, for Christians, grief and gratitude often share the same apartment. To hide from our grief blocks our gratitude. And the fullness of our gratitude will require us to occupy spaces of grief. I think this is because both grief and gratitude are practices that make us more truthful. Maybe more true. In the week ahead, will you join me in nightly praying the prayer of thanksgiving from The Book of Common Prayer? And, if God opens something to you in the praying, would you share what God has shown you with a friend? In this way, we might know together what the old Christmas hymn tells us is true of our Savior, the one who became flesh for our sake: And he feeleth for our sadness, And he shareth in our gladness.

Peace,
Fr. J