Sometimes the more that we seek truth in today’s world, the more we can become overwhelmed by what we learn. Seeking truth can heighten our anxiety, but as Rev. Pritcher points out, it can also offer consolation. We always have reason to hope.
A few years ago, my mother took her first flight on an airplane and she was pretty excited. She planned ahead and was ready. When the day arrived, she got to the gate on time and embarked. Found her seat. Fastened her seatbelt, and settled down with a magazine.
She had been seated for a few minutes when a man stopped at her aisle, looked around at the seat numbers, and sat down right next to her. He was such a nice looking young man. Friendly and approachable. He politely introduced himself—Jim—and asked how she was doing. Then he too settled down and fastened his seatbelt.
He had been seated for about five or ten minutes, when he began to get a little jittery. He couldn’t seem to sit still. Eventually, he sheepishly commented “I guess you noticed I’m a little nervous, and you might have wondered why.”
Well…yes, I had, my mother replied.
You see, I’m a pilot, he said. I fly these very planes every day for this airline. This is actually my regular route. As he talked he continued to squirm. “And I’m OK as long as I’m in the cockpit. It’s just that when I’m a passenger I can’t stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong during the flight.”
All the things that could go wrong during the flight. That got her attention.
Then he began to list all the possible problems that could crop up for them. At the take-off. At the landing. Turbulence. Wind shear. He knew them all, and he described them, in excruciating detail, to my mother. It was more than she wanted to know.
The rush of information that we get in our lessons today can be equally unsettling—for the ancient readers and us. But they also seem to help ready us for the volatile season of Advent.
Take Malachi, for instance. He speaks of the moral and religious abuses of worshipers and priests. Of the arrogant and the evildoers. He warns that one day they’ll be consumed by fire and reduced to no more than stubble and ashes. Yikes.
Yet, even as Malachi darkly describes the end-times, he seems more interested in the blessing of the righteous than in the casting down of the wicked.
In the Gospel, Christ also describes the end of the world. There will be false prophets (sound familiar?), wars, famine, persecution, the destruction of Jerusalem. That had to be frightening to hear.
But Christ is mostly concerned here with changing our way of being in this world. Something along the line of the Beatitudes that we read a couple weeks ago at the Feast of All Saints. Jesus is thinking about mercy, about a deep desire for righteousness, about purity of heart. These are changes that we are meant to welcome and aim for right now. They would certainly make a difference in our life and how we live with those around us.
Today, Christ urges us to fear not—to be prepared and steadfast and to press onward. The growth which comes from trials is costly but it will be valuable. It will show us what we are made of. It will confirm to us whose we are.
The young pilot, Jim, who sat with my mother on her first flight never really settled down. He was just too nervous. But something unexpected happened as the flight progressed and I think it took them both by surprise. Because even as he fretted, and in between countless new and ominous warnings, he also explained to her other things that she could expect.
Like how she could look for and recognize some of the important fundamental principles of aerodynamics in action. Things like airflow and wing design and acceleration and deceleration. She listened carefully with interest, and she tracked it closely in the sights, sounds, and movements of the plane.
It turns out that those words were very comforting to both of them. Gradually, my mother came to understand that as possible as it was for something to go wrong, it was far more likely that they would be just fine.
We are experiencing anxious times these days, aren’t we? More than ever—in our communities and in our nation. We are every bit as on-edge as that young dead-heading pilot. We are daily bombarded with too much information; too many facts that don’t add up. Not being in the cockpit, we feel viscerally the dis-ease that comes with the prospect that way too much can and might go wrong. So we must do our bit from the cabin.
In days such as these, I find a bit of solace in Jim and mother’s nervous but determined negotiation of their flight. Unsettled as they were, they paid attention. They looked for what was real in the midst of all the rattling and bumping. They elected to accept and lean into what was verifiably true. And they did it together.
They showed me at least one way to gingerly tiptoe through these worrisome times.
We can all recall powerful life experiences. When things could have failed but they didn’t. When we could have stopped, but we stood. And the effort made us stronger.
We change as Christ leads us to change. We become part of this new way of being in the world that he came to show us. We reflect the hope that he offered to a skittish world.
As we prepare for the season of Advent, keep close the words of Teresa of Avila:
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee:
All things pass,
God never changes.
Patience attains
All that it strives for…
He who has God
finds he lacks for nothing;
God alone suffices.
(Photo credit: Nesnin Shamsheer)
