We Must Risk Delight
Each year we stumble into the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Wrestling with the text to hear God's voice in the familiar, and tripping into beauty of being dependent on the Holy Spirit...
In Deuteronomy 8 (where Jesus is quoting from in Matthew 4:1-11), we read about the purpose of another test designed by God, as Israel wanders in the desert: "to find out what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments."
When reading of Jesus' own temptation in the New Testament, how often do we focus on the "means" of the testing in the story? It's easy to get wrapped up in focusing on Satan's role and not what God is up to. How often do we do that in our own every day lives? Instead of depending on God's Word, focusing our eyes on the cross, or the victory found in the empty tomb - we succumb to being dragged down into the muck and the mire.
Perhaps the poet Jack Gilbert says it best in his poem "A Brief for the Defense" -
Sorrow
everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are
not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere
else. With flies in their nostrils.
But
we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise
the mornings before summer dawn would not
be
made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be
fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at
the fountain are laughing together between
the
suffering they have known and the awfulness
in
their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in
the village is very sick. There is laughter
every
day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and
the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If
we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we
lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We
must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but
not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the
stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace
of this world. To make injustice the only
measure
of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If
the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we
should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We
must admit there will be music despite everything.
We
stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored
late at night in the tiny port
looking
over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is
three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To
hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes
slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all
the years of sorrow that are to come.
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