Last semester, I attended a lecture on God in which the speaker discussed the Hebrew term 'El Shaddai." She translated it to mean 'that which is more than enough," and emphasized that God is abundance and generosity; God does not merely suffice, but overflows. It was a beautiful and memorable talk, but sometimes I recall it and find it difficult to see how that truth resonates with lived or observed experience.
I know this is simply part of being a human with limited understanding, but sometimes I cannot understand how God can offer so much and yet leave so much unfulfilled:
You believe in a God who protects, and somebody you love gets hurt.
You believe in a God whose Spirit gives fortitude, and you feel yourself getting more and more weary.
You believe in a God who is light of the nations, and you see societies polarize in the darkness of extremism.
You believe in a God who calls, and it seems to you that God won't lift a pinkie finger to help you answer.
Today, a friend from South Carolina called me to chat because her father is dying of cancer and the unfathomable nature of God was getting hard to take. Both my friend and her dad have been hoping that he would make it at least through the summer, since she's planning to enter a religious order and he really wanted to be there to proudly see her take that step. But it doesn't look as though her dad is going to live that long. There's so much grief on so many levels, and so for my friend right now, it's harder than usual to make sense of this world when we believe and know that God is good.
So, what do we do when God doesn't seem to suffice, let alone be 'that which is more than enough'? I really don't know, but tonight a few lines from the Canticle of Zachariah, Luke 1:68-79, struck me as particularly nuanced in their optimism:
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Zachariah was looking forward to the births of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, but I think the words are still relevant to a world which yearns to be more completely and wholly drawn into God. Thus the use of verb tenses is incredibly important for us in this waiting world. The gospel maintains that a dawn exists, but this is a dawn which is yet to be completed in the reigning kingdom; we are still looking forward to the time when it shall break upon us from on high. The gospel deems us the recipients of compassion, but recognizes that we currently "dwell in darkness" and are not fully awake to this compassion though it is genuine and constant. The gospel proclaims an eternal peace, but understands that we are limited,not yet fully experiencing it, and that we must be led toward it. This is a Wisdom which is highly aware of its own illusiveness for us.
I realize that this reading does not directly address that painful and awkward sense that God might not be 'living up' to all that we think he should. Rather, it rephrases the conundrum in terms of our temporal awareness instead of God's reliability, which is probably a good and healthy shift to make. If God is indeed essentially "more than enough," then it is simply the incompleteness inherent in our current lives which leads us to feel that something is not sufficing. Of course we're not content... our souls are meant for that dawn and eternal union with God, so nothing else is ever going to fill that yearning for Wisdom. When we think to ourselves that this life doesn't make sense, we implicitly pay homage to the truth that life should and will be fulfilled in the glory of God. And hopefully, the knowledge of God's compassion for us in our state of limited perception will make our confusions a little more comfortable to move through.
I think I am beginning to get too theoretical, so I had better stop writing and go to bed. Please pray for all those who are experiencing loss or having trouble understanding the patterns of God in life, especially my friend and her father; for although we choose to trust in God's overflowing goodness, it doesn't make the painful things stop hurting.
Since we know that the dawn from on high shall break upon us: May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death. Amen.
~Stephanie Clare
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