The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

Lectionary: 204

In the beginning, was the Word,
    and the Word was with God,
    and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. 
All things came to be through him,
    and without him, nothing came to be.

 T wo years ago, as I pondered my life and meaning in retirement, I turned to T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Two years later, I am struck by the fourth and fifth lines of Eliot's poem,

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

Humans know ourselves only by memories of what we have seen, done, enjoyed, suffered, and survived. If we became like God and knew all time as eternally present; that is, if we could not differentiate the past from the present or the future, heaven would be a miasma of undecipherable impressions. Which is more like hell. 

Kurt Vonnegut explored that idea in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The protagonist, an American Veteran of World War II and a former prisoner-of-war, seems to travel willy-nilly back and forth from the present to the past and into the future. He cannot say in which moment of time he is in, nor what he might expect, or has already experienced and may experience again. 

I was a chaplain in the VA when I reread the novel and recognized the experience of PTSD. Many Combat Veterans suffer flashbacks when they re-experience all of the fear and paralyzing dread of a killzone.

I knew one Veteran who happened to see a Vietnamese person in a grocery store in Kentucky. Although he had married, had children, and suffered little distress in all the years since his deployment, he was suddenly paralyzed, his feet immovable and planted to the floor. His mystified wife had to take him by the arm and lead him out of the store and back home. And eventually to the VA where he began to make sense of it all. In that moment, past, present, and future had suddenly collapsed into one moment of dread. 

As another year passes and we enter 2025, the Lord Jesus personally ushers us into the future. He has lived with us and recalls vividly everything that passed from the moment of creation, through his birth in Bethlehem, and crucifixion on Calvary, and his resurrection on Easter. He clearly remembers the suffering and triumph of our martyrs and the courage, wisdom, genius, and generosity of our saints. 

He remembers our sins, misdeeds, and foolishness also; nothing is forgotten. And if we're paralyzed by fear, shame, grief, or regret, the Lord, like my friend's wife, takes us by the hand and leads us into the healing of tomorrow. 

"Do not be afraid!" Jesus says, as he has said so often. "Set out for the deep!" he might add as we probe deep memories for the reassurance that we can face the future. He has never abandoned us, never forgotten us, never reconsidered his choice of us. He has no regrets about our creation or redemption or the promise he has made. 

As Thomas Dorsey wrote at a moment when he was paralyzed with grief over the death of his young wife and unborn child, Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand.