isaiah 53.

I wanted to share this with you all. It's beautifully poetic. I wish there were a way to record my professor's gentle, thundering voice (yes, that's an intentional oxymoron) reading this aloud. But alas, this must suffice.

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a roof out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grace with the wicked, and with the rich in his death: because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

"Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Isaiah 53

a new day.

Dietrich always has the right words at the right time. (Yes, we're on a first-name basis.)

"When we become a burden to ourselves, when we don't want to keep on going, when we are afraid of the mountain lying in front of us, when guilt feelings weigh heavily on our mind, we we feel we have been lied to and victimized by the world, then we need only one thing - we need a person whom we can fully trust without reservation, a person who understands everything, hears everything, a person who bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, forgives all things. We need a person to whom we can say:

'You are rest, you are gentle peace, you are the longing and the one who stills it.'

"We need a person under whose eyes our suffering disappears and our heart opens up in silent love, a person who gently takes our burden from us and frees us from our fits of rage and from all our fears. In so doing, this person delivers our soul from this world...

"Now the greatest of all miracles is that every individual has and can find this person because this person calls each of us to himself on his own initiative, offers himself, invites us. This person who is our rest, our peace, our refreshment, and our deliverance, is Jesus Christ alone. He alone is truly human. And in this true humanity he is God."

-A Testament to Freedom (235-236)

i don't even know...

I’ve officially survived seven weeks of college. And what an odd seven weeks this has been.

I love college, don’t get me wrong. The hesitance I have is complex.

I’ve felt a weight on me for the past several weeks. And until today, I couldn’t find a way to explain it.

Today, I sat in my Great Texts class discussing Plato’s Republic (Wow. That’s something that should go on “StuffWhitePeopleLike.com”, which, if you have yet to visit, is a genius website), and I discovered the source of my burden.

I’ll explain:

In our discussion, I found myself completely identifying with Socrates’ model of the cave. Rather than trying to describe it myself, I’ll quote his description (as translated by “Stinky” the very affectionate nickname my professor has given a man named Benjamin Jowett; my professor is reading the “far superior” Greek translation, so to him, Jowett’s work does not measure up to the real Greek text):

“Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open toward the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette-players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets…men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone of various materials which appear over the wall…they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.”

So there’s the illustration. What Socrates is describing here is a world in which people do not see actual objects. Rather, they see reflections or shadows of the true forms. They are, as a result, in the dark.

In his discussion, he goes on to add that certain individuals (philosophers) will occasionally leave the cave and travel above, into the light. And in this light, they will see the actual objects, the true forms of which, previously, they had only seen shadows. And after witnessing the truth, these philosophers will descend into the cave. And as they do, they will have trouble adjusting to life there.

For one, they will have trouble communicating to the others what they saw above—for the others will have no way of conceiving the truth they have just witnessed. Secondly, they will be dissatisfied with the world of shadows—for the philosophers have seen the far superior truth.

This aspect is where I draw the parallel to my life.

I have seen.

I have seen a world far different from my own. I have seen a world that doesn’t pretend to have it all together. A world ridden with strife, yet full of smiles. A world ridden with despair, yet blossoming in simplicity. I have seen a world full of need, yet persistent in offering good ol’ hospitality.

And I have descended.

I have returned to my own world. A world fixated on personal success, often missing community. A world striving for simplicity yet complicating matters much more. A world full of individuals, wholly disconnected.

And here is where my problem lies: I am caught between two worlds.

I have seen the light. I have seen the reality of the world. I have seen the obstacles. And yet, I have experienced meaning and true life in serving in and among hopelessness.

And now, I’ve descended into a world, which is my reality but not the reality. A world in which my days are reduced to sleeping, sitting, eating, and essay-writing.

It’s not satisfying.

It’s not fulfilling, especially when my mind is tormented by those images of despair,

when I remember their accents,

when I picture their smiles,

when I can almost hear their laughs,

when I marvel at the eternal purpose behind my work there.

And like the philosophers, I have a desire to show people the reality of “there,” but because they’ve never seen it, they won’t understand it.

My world doesn’t understand the other world. My world pities the other world. My world doesn’t see why I’d want to leave it and go to the other world.

My world doesn’t understand me.

And so that’s my burden: I know there’s something more out there. I know there’s a world of despair yearning for hope. And I want to be a part of that world. I want to make a difference in that world.

But I’m here. Far-removed. Here. Living a comfortable life. Here. Feeling a little guilty. Here. Dissatisfied with the way things are. Here. A bit overwhelmed by the brokenness in this world. Here. Wishing I was there, wishing I could take part in restoring a world that’s in decay, a world that’s craving redemption.

And in the midst of all this, I find brief moments of comfort in the words of Paul:

“If we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.”

I guess there is purpose in this, in me being here. And just as the ones in the cave can’t fathom the truth the philosophers have seen, I can’t see the purpose God has for me in this place. But I must rest in the fact that there is purpose, and there is Someone who can see it.

And so, too, may you be at peace with your circumstance, wherever this life finds you.

All glory to the only wise God.