Vacation Postlude

We recently returned from vacation. One of the great things we did this year was return to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in Stratford Ontario. Seeing 7 plays in 4 days isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for me it's "rejuvenation therapy by drama."

One of the most interesting plays was Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. The play traces the plight of three sisters who have been uprooted from their lives of culture and prominence in Moscow when their father, a general in the Russian artillery, is transferred out to a small town in the middle of nowhere and subsequently dies. Chekhov is masterful in his study of what happens to people when their deepest hopes and longings go unmet. The constant refrain of the sisters is that all will be put aright when they finally find a way to return to Moscow and their former lives.

The play had a bewitching, soul searching effect on me. It takes very little empathy to realize that "Moscow" in the play represents the deepest longings of the sister's soul--the things that if they were forced to live without would make life unbearable. To be honest, the play threw me into a bit of a funk for the better part of the next day! It really made me ponder the question, "Patric, what is it that your heart most longs, which you secretly fear will never come to pass?"

I'm not sure even now how to answer that question, other than to say deep in my soul there are many, deep, primal unmet desires and more often than not, I simply see Jesus as inadequate to meet them. In the same way that "Moscow" represented much more than a city for the sisters, so too "career," and "relationships," and "money," and "security/control," represent so much more for me. The play, if nothing else, was a stark reminder to me that the in the warp and weave of my life's journey, I long for much that will never be fulfilled, except by Christ. And in the stillness of those moments, all too often my unbelieving heart clutches and panics in the same way my lungs do when I've been underwater for too long.

One of the deep truths of my life is that I'm afraid that even Jesus will never be enough for me. What happens if at the end of my life I look back on all that has been said and done (or left unsaid, and undone) and find that I have never truly been fulfilled, or content, or loved enough to abandon my own selfish agendas and truly love others? What happens if in the midst of suffering and pain, I come to believe that Jesus is no longer willing to be good to me? Some deep part of me is afraid that Jesus--no matter how good, or strong, or loving, or wise--will never be enough to give me the peace I so desperately crave and which I so resolutely refuse to enjoy because it requires that I surrender my will to him entirely.

I do believe that Jesus is my only hope in life and death. (Help my unbelief.) And I do believe that Jesus has secured the Father's unbridled delight for me. (Help my unbelief.) And, as The Three Sisters reminded me, I also believe that there are things other than Jesus which will give me what he will not. (Help my unbelief.)

So in light of all this, what is your heart longing for? What is the thing that you secretly want more than anything else, and that if you do not get it, will make you discontent for the rest of your life? The gospel doesn't just free us once. It frees us every day, because our idols are new every day.