The same emotions gripped the people of the Old Testament when the scribe Ezra found the book of the ancient law and stood up before all the people, ‘men, women and children’, and read the book ‘from early morning until noon’. The people were astonished as in the years of exile they had forgotten God’s special choice of them and his love and tenderness towards them and ‘they were all in tears’. But Ezra said to them, ‘go, eat the fat, drink the sweet wine and send a portion to the man who has nothing.’ (Neh 8:2-10).
The media gives us many stories of life handed back to people who thought they had lost it. Last week a ten-year-old boy in Ireland, who had collapsed on the football field and was diagnosed with a hole in the heart, left the operating theatre with his health fully restored. And in Zimbabwe a girl in Wedza, who had lamented her future in tears because she could see no way of finding the fees for form five, suddenly found someone who could pay.
The joy of recovery! But how can we as individuals recover from the wounds we experience in ourselves? How do we dispose ourselves for the healing that we both want and resist? We resist because change is painful and we can feel more secure the way we are, even if deep down we are restless. Magda Hollander-Lafon, a survivor of the concentration camps, wrote, ‘I couldn’t appeal to the best in anyone without freeing myself from my own wounds, fears and abuse. Only then can I welcome the other person where they are.’ I cannot approach another person in freedom and hope unless I am able put aside my own defences and prejudices. Freedom is contagious and if I set about the inner work of making myself free I will find happiness and discover that I can help others too to unlock the door that opens the way to freedom for them.
The poet, T.S. Eliot, ponders much on the passage of life: ‘For the pattern is new in every moment / and every moment is a new and shocking / valuation of all we have been.’ And he ends his poem (East Coker), ‘In my end is my beginning.’ In the end I discover myself as I recover the meaning of all that has been. That is a joyful moment.
Post published in: Faith