The character in my story looks for certainty, chiefly the certainty that all will be well. This is what we all want of course but have learnt to ignore the desire to know to a degree since we come to realise as adults that in this world no such certainty is available to us.
People of religious faith often are motivated by the need to see God in the face as it were. We are taught in our faith that even if it was possible for us nevertheless it would not be good for us. Even the God of Jesus Christ is the God who would not show himself to Moses face to face. Nevertheless there are Christians who would want a direct, immediate, unmediated experience of God, God as he really is rather than some representation of him by someone else; by the Church. To have such an experience would be to see absolutely the meaning of things; how all things come together for our good. The question ‘why?’ arrests us at the hardest times, but the vision of God would answer all such questions and supply the reassurance that we are desperate for in the most difficult days of our life. It would be to see beyond death, and to know absolutely that our loved ones who perhaps are dying, or have even died, yet live; we will see that we will live after death and there will be no more doubt, the fear and uncertainty regarding life and death that underlies and seems to burden our whole existence will be banished. We will have peace.
I don’t know why God has made it so that this ‘vision’ is an impossible ambition in this life, but he has. We are can only know God via media, via words, symbols, language, the testimonies of other people and all these being various media of the the witness of the first Christians. None of this is certain, it is a basis for faith. In ordinary times such faith is relatively easy. In times such as we find ourselves in at the moment it becomes much harder. And there are many people who are grieving at this time for whom faith, if they have had any at all, becomes a much more difficult thing to sustain.
There is something necessary about our uncertainty. And what has been taught since the beginnings of the faith, is that a part of that necessity has to do with fostering a sense of dependancy upon God. To have a self contained certainty regarding God and all the most essential things would be to obtain a sense that we no longer need God nor anything else. We are made to live from God as a constant source of life just as we live from food and water. And just as this living from food is no sort of impediment to life but a source of enjoyment, living from God, in full dependancy upon God, so that we go back to him every day, is joy and peace.
There will be times of uncertainty and there is nothing to be gained from underplaying how hard it is to live without the certainty of the love of God when we or those we love are in danger or taken from us. Then there is heart break and devastation and some of us will feel that we are taken to a dark, dark place from which we will never return. That darkness is black as pitch. But men and women have been brought back even from here. It may take time; it does take time, but people who place their broken hearts into the hands of God do come home.
Practically speaking the route would be, as far as any of us are able, through prayer, through reading of scripture, through study of the word. Study of the word is not a popular aspect of all this but for me, through theology and philosophy, it is a matter of getting to know, more and more deeply, someone that I love. And by getting to know more, I love more.
But there are times when the heart no longer has the energy even to pray, at least not in the most formal sense. I remember that Lynn had trouble thinking about prayer in any other way than the most formal way and thought her connection with God must be severed if she can no longer find the will to do that. But it is not so. We remember Augustine’s words: ‘pray as you can, not as you can’t’. This must extend all the way to sighs of the heart, the reflexes of emotional pain. The most authentic prayer is a cry of desperation in the night. We are told that we are heard.To all of you I wish God’s blessing and that we all come through this strange and, for many, this painful and fearful time. Remember that we are made to live from God each day, one day at a time. But you are only called ti remember that as best you can, speak it in you heart, long for God’s pea