Of Depresshilaration, Impossibility and Christ

Here’s the Chapel talk that I did at St Alban’s this morning. I read the boys an essay – a hypothetical entry into the annual Bishop Bousfield Open Essay Competition that they are all writing this week. They have a range of topics to choose from; the topic I chose was a quote by Joseph Campbell: ‘We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.’

Of Depresshilaration, Impossibility and Christ

Depresshilaration is a neologism – a brand new word. I know this, because I just made it up, for the purposes of this essay. Depresshiliration is a paradoxical merging of depression and exhilaration. I find it cruelly, painfully, intoxicatingly, excitingly depresshilirating, for example, to think that at this very moment – this exact second – all over this picturesque, polluted blue-green planet of ours, the following events are probably occurring:

550 boys are sitting in a chapel in Lynnwood Glen, Pretoria. (This, I suppose, could be either depressing or exhilarating.)

A baby is being born to loving parents.

A woman is being raped.

Silent, majestic forests are noiselessly exhaling oxygen.

Tons of toxic waste are being dumped in the sea.

Paper is being recycled.

A child is dying of starvation in India.

Two people are falling in love over lattes at a street café in Italy.

Someone is tossing, sleepless and restless and lonely.

Someone is dreaming, breathing deep and drowsy like waves against a holiday shore.

Someone just lost his job.

Someone just got his first real gig.

Someone is receiving life-shatteringly bad news.

Someone just found fifty bucks in her jeans pocket.

It’s hard for me, sometimes, to put these realities together. It’s harder still to contemplate the fact that God sees all these things, all the time. He sees the beauty and the goodness, and he takes his glory. He sees the tragedy and the pain, and he does nothing.

Or so it seems?

I serve a big, big God. His bigness brings perspective, and I know that the moment I forget his enormity – his vast holiness, great power, immense wisdom and unfathomable love – I lose hope. But still, why does he not simply press control-alt-delete and reboot the whole sorry mess that we’ve made of life on Earth? The Bible tells us, after all, that with God, all things are possible, even the impossible things. If his words can throw galaxies across a universe and hold planets in their orbits; if he can see atoms and quarks and pre-schoolers and other very small things, and count them and know them by name; if he can read the hearts of every person on every continent; if he could sacrifice his only Son to save the creatures that cursed him – then surely, surely, he is big enough to cure the world of sorrow?

Of course, he is. And the fact that he doesn’t always fix things – immediately, and in the way we think he should – means that he must have a very, very good reason. Sometimes we can see the reason. Sometimes we can’t. I suppose that’s what faith is. And if we have faith, things get a lot less depressing, and much more exhilarating. Here’s what God promises in his Word:

He came to bring life, and that in abundance. He is a shelter for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. He has overcome the world. He is a sun and shield; he gives grace and glory. He will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly (footnote: he decides what is good for us; and we might not necessarily like it – like Brussels sprouts). Those who trust in him will not be shaken. He does not abandon those who search for him. He is patient, inviting all people to turn to him. He forgives and he restores. He cares for the helpless, and does not ignore the cries of those who suffer. All of history will be summed up in Christ. He executes judgement from his throne, whether in this life, or the next, and the wicked will not go unpunished. He reigns forever, and he will make all things new.

Another particularly exhilarating thought is that God chooses to work through his people – in the place and the second of time in which they find themselves. Pathetic, selfish beings that we are, he drenches us in grace, and then uses us to spread that grace – lovingly, contagiously – into the lives around us. The impossible begins to happen, and bits of sorrow go out of the world. My friend Shane Kidwell shared the following poem with me a couple of years ago: 

I love the word impossible.

It’s like joy after sorrow.

People being friends after being enemies.

Rainbows after drenching rain.

A wound healed.

Sunsets on quiet evenings after

                Hot, noisy days.

Paralysed, injured limbs learning to grow

                Strong and useful again.

Forgiveness after wrong.

Truth after fog.

New love-made babies.

Birds learning to fly and own the sky.

Bitterness turned to mellowness.

Fresh, genuine hope… once abandoned.

People finding each other at right moments,

                In unexpected, obscure places…

                For God-ordained reasons.

I love that word impossible because my God

Believes in adventure

                And extraordinary mountains, and he dares

To be alive in a world crawling with terrible situations.

He promises to be bigger than any impossibility

                Because he is love…

                And love always finds a way through,

                In time.

Love isn’t scared.

It builds bridges instead of walls.

It never gives up.

It always hangs on.

It waits with stubborn, strong hope.

                Sometimes even years.

Love makes God alive in far more than human souls.

                Like sun and clear sky and drooping branches

                And dark birds and colour and design and music…

                And the sound of water on a shore,

Impossible means that I,

An ordinary person

Can be something special and significant

In an enormous, hurting world.

I can be love where I live,

And that is Christ…

Mythologist and philosopher Joseph Campbell once said, ‘We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.’ I live in joy, because I cannot cure the world of sorrows – but I know Someone who can.

Scripture references:

Isaiah 6, 1 John 1, Psalm 9, Psalm 23, Psalm 84, Psalm 125, John 3, James 1, John 10, John 16, Revelation 21, 2 Peter 3, Colossians 1, Romans 16, to list a few.