Weary. It's an old word, one not used much anymore. But, it seems to me, an appropriate word in the face of our current situation.
Weary is about being tired, but it is more than being tired. It is not body-tired, being physically drained and depleted. Weariness is being spirit-tired. It is being tired in our spirit. It speaks of being worn down emotionally and spiritually. When we are weary, our spirit is weighed down.
Weariness is what we experience as we cope with on-going situations that are life-depleting, life-defeating.
I can see the people of Judah, in exile in Babylon, being weary. (The Exile is the backdrop of many of our Advent readings.) They lived with inescapable grief. Their losses were staggering: their nation - defeated by Babylon; their Temple - the center of their worship - destroyed; their country - removed from the land they believed God had given them; their homes, property, and businesses left behind; their way of life gone, taken from them by foreign invaders. Everything that gave their lives meaning, everything that provided a sense of security, everything around which they had built their lives had been stripped from them. Their situation created a spirit-numbing spiritual crisis. Where was God? Why did God let this happen? Had God forgotten them, turned his back on them, abandoned them? And they lived without hope. With God seemingly out of the picture, they saw no hope of things ever being different. How would they ever escape this God-forsaken place? They themselves were powerless; they had no leaders, no military who would help them escape. Day in, day out - grieving, spiritually disconnected, hopeless, defeated. And weary - weary in the core of their being. Tired to the bone in their spirit.
I see much in our current situation that is life-depleting, life-defeating. The pandemic has stirred a haunting fear in many of us - a fear of catching the COVID virus, a fear of dying from it. The pandemic protocols have robbed us of life as we knew it. We are physically isolated from family and friends who enrich our lives. We long for their hugs and physical touch. I find much in our current political situation to be life-depleting and life-defeating: the rigid polarization in which each side views the other as an enemy that threats their way of life - a president who functions as an authoritarian, playing on the polarization in order to stay in office - the politicizing of the pandemic - the wide-spread refusal to accept the results of a national election - the non-stop accusations of voter fraud without any verifiable proof - the baseless law suits that disregard and threaten our democratic way of life - the blatant efforts to grab and hold onto power - the threats of violence against those who dare to disagree or oppose - the agendas of political parties and their leaders that take priority over the larger good of the nation - the desire to force those agendas and "my way" on everyone else - the role Evangelical and conservative Christians play in these agendas - the resurfacing of white supremacy that looks down on all others as inferior - the hate-fueled attitudes toward immigrants, saying they don't belong here - the inability(or unwillingness) to recognize that the promise of liberty and justice for all is not enjoyed by all - the disregard of science and the truth it offers - the gas-lighting of fake news and conspiracy theories - the fear-based thinking and reacting that keeps us divided - the lack of emotional maturity that is on display. I could go but I grow weary in doing so. I am weary of writing about it.
Weary - tired in my spirit - from coping with an on-going life-depleting, life-defeating situation.
Joy is the theme of this third Sunday of Advent. How do we find joy in the midst of an on-going life-depleting, life-defeating situation? How do we experience joy when we are weary? Is it even possible?
Joy is something we experience in our spirit. It is a freedom and lightness of spirit - the opposite of the heavy, weighed-down spirit of weariness.
Joy is tied to God - to God's goodness, God's faithfulness, God's grace, God's steadfast, unwavering love. The Apostle Paul identified joy as one of the nine traits of the fruit of the Spirit. In other words, joy is something the Spirit produces in us. It is not something we can manufacture. Because joy is a gift of the Spirit, it is not tied to or dependent upon our situation. We can experience joy in the midst of an on-going life-depleting, life-defeating situation. We can experience joy when we are weary. Joy will ease our weariness. It will lighten the heaviness we feel in our spirit.
In the fruit of the Spirit, joy is linked with peace. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace" (Galatians 5:22). Peace deep within frees joy to flow in us.
Anxiety is the opposite of peace. We grow weary when we live out of anxiety and fear. Our anxiety grates on us, wearing us down.
Thus, the path the leads to joy follows the path that leads to peace. The path that leads to peace follows the path of prayer. Through prayer, we place ourselves in a position for the Spirit to work, moving us beyond our anxiety into peace.
We enter this path when we recognize the anxiety that weighs on us, shaping how we look at what is happening. (Our weariness points to the underlying anxiety.) This recognition is a call to prayer. We pray with thanksgiving (as Paul instructed - Philippians 4:6-7), remembering God's goodness, God's faithfulness, God's grace, God's steadfast, unwavering love. Praying shifts our focus from our situation and the anxiety it stirs back to God. Praying puts us back in touch with God's goodness, God's faithfulness, God's grace, God's steadfast, unwavering love. Through that reconnection, the Spirit stirs hope as we again choose to trust God's faithfulness. As we rest in God's faithfulness, the Spirit brings us peace. That peace frees joy to flow from deep within. We experience the joy of the Lord ... and our weariness goes away.
Joy creates an openness to life - a receptivity to all that God and life have to offer ... even those things that seem to us to be life-depleting and life-defeating.
Joy is the theme of this third Sunday of Advent. This theme is a reminder of the Spirit's gift of joy ... a joy that relieves our weariness.
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