Family Life

Good news! Today’s work day was just under 12 hours, instead of the 14-16 hours I’d been dreading. It meant that I could come home and eat dinner at a reasonable hour, and tuck the boys into bed. That’s always a highlight. And my cold is no worse than it was yesterday. It’s no better either, but since I expected it to be worse the net result is a happy feeling–despite the croaky voice and snuffly nose. And I spent the day visiting a customer, so I avoided all the nastiness back at the office. So today turned out much better than I’d feared.

In a post about a week ago I quoted a verse from 2 Corinthians about us being clay jars. I felt the verse fit the post, but the verses that followed it were what really caught my attention. I’ve been mulling them over ever since. Here they are:

We are experiencing trouble on every side, but are not crushed;
we are perplexed, but not driven to despair;
we are persecuted, but not abandoned;
we are knocked down, but not destroyed,
always carrying around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our body.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10 (NET)

It’s ironic: right after painting a word picture implying fragile, temporary, of little value, Paul goes on to describe these clay jars as being tough, enduring, of eternal, intrinsic value.

When I was a university student, I was bowed down by the pressure and stress and loneliness, and didn’t fare well from it. Rather than take advantage of the circumstances to build character, to toughen up, I ran away and became bitter. That was a long time ago, another life. Today, looking back, I regret the way I handled things. I could have done better in so many ways. I wish I’d had Paul’s response. Every now and then I wish I could go back and do it all over again, properly this time. That’s not possible, of course.

Except that now I have that opportunity. Different circumstances, different stresses, but the same choice to endure or give up. And in this context endure doesn’t mean grimly gritting my teeth and bearing it (though there may be some of that as well), or blindly plowing ahead. Paul was talking about “the light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ” being allowed to shine out despite his constant trials.

Translated to the present, I have a renewed opportunity to let that light shine out despite my circumstances. Shine out to my family, to my coworkers, to my fellow parishioners. At university I turned away from that light, I shut it out. That action has caused me sadness ever since. This time I want to do better.

But I’m afraid I won’t be as tough as Paul describes himself. I’m afraid that rather than enduring, I’ll break. I’m afraid I won’t have the patience, the faith, or the stamina. I’m afraid that when it comes down to the crunch all I’ll hear is “crunch.” Well, there goes that jar. Time to buy another one.

People are praying (my Mum, my sister), so there’s hope. There’s always hope when people pray. Debbie prays for me every day. Joel (2) often prays for me. He includes “keep Daddy safe driving” in his prayers. Considering I spend a lot of time on the road with never enough sleep, that’s a pretty good prayer.

So there’s my challenge, in a nutshell. As always for a Christian, challenges in the secular world carry over directly into the spiritual world. I’m not too worried about how things will turn out in the physical realm. Qu

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 11:43 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.