Flimsy Tents

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.  Psalm 126:6-7

Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.  Luke 9:30

Who could have ever guessed it.  Really for long, rather bleak lives with just a few moments of light, Moses and Elijah are pretty close to the top of the list.  Even those victories were pretty dark.  I mean, if you even pause momentarily to imagine exiting Egypt in the middle of the night filled with weeping mothers and dough with no yeast in the kneading troughs wrapped in clothes carried on your shoulders with ahem, 600,000 men besides the women and children, uh, it could not have been much fun in the modern understanding of the word.  And all of our Sunday School hearts beam when the fire shoots down from heaven and swallows up the water-soaked oxen laid on those twelve big rocks.  But Elijah ran in fear for his life, to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said.

These two men put my minor heart wrenches into perspective, as does the brokenness and pain that envelops our little world.  Well, in our minds, our great big expansive world crammed full of historical famine, torn limbs, and second grade teachers who photograph blindfolded students as they eat cookies iced with semen. 

The point of this all is Lewis’ glimpse of joy.  He, wordsmith par excellence, struggled for words, tossing out metaphors haphazardly... Milton’s enormous bliss of Eden and something about the huge regions of Northern sky in Norse legend.  But somehow a childhood glimpse, standing beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day, propelled the search of a lifetime.  And this moment of glorious splendor likewise girded the loins of Peter, James and John.  I imagine that Peter’s garbled tent of worship was at the very least constructed in his heart, and brought comfort in dank prison cells and at the end, as he hung upside down.  To James as the stones hurled.  To John as he wandered a graveled beach in isolation.  And to Jesus himself, as he lay crumpled in a dark garden, whispering, “Not my will.”  The Weight of Glory.

And I pray for Lucas and Nicole as they try to wrap this glorious joy with words for a suffering world very aware of the suffering, not so aware of the joy.  We are but pilgrims passing through.