12/22/12

1) A beautiful winter walk with Sarah Beth and Daniel. 

2) When my Mamma came back from the day at the Hospital with my Grandaddy, she brought an unexpected surprise: a beautiful pillar candle for my study, a case of tea lights and a good supply of candles for the fireplace mantle so that we can light them every night after dinner for reading. What a lovely treat! Oh the joy of simple pleasures...  

My favorite time of day...

3) I've been thinking a lot lately on what it means to pursue a steady peace and joy in the soul. Deeply inspired by the consistency of these qualities in much of the literature I studied this term, I began to notice correlations between these qualities and the intentional order and restraint inherent in many of the authors' life and work. I began to notice that this correlation was also consistent in the lives of friends and mentors whom I respect.

I had always felt rather discouraged by this, shaking my head sadly at my disorganized tendencies and subconsciously chalking up the cyclical unrest which descends on my heart to my easily affected emotional nature. I could not foresee a time in which I could learn to love restraint, voluntarily seek structure and live joyfully within each moment. I reveled - almost to an aching point -  in the literature, music and history which gave glimpses into life lived in such a manner. Yet here, I found myself falling short of realizing the hope in such glimpses by directing my disappointment toward my misfortune of having been born in the modern age or with a passionate nature. But as I've looked back over what was learned this term, I am seeing afresh what I really knew all along. Such peace is never convenient and is rarely the result of circumstances. This contrast struck with especial significance a few days ago as I read the following observations in a brief introduction to 17th century Literature:

"Of course an orderly world can be disrupted, and those who lived in the 17^th-century were familiar with vast disorder. In this era their government was twice overturned, their church fragmented, their society redistributed. Indeed, though they believed in order, they saw very little of it. Perhaps this is why the recurrent movement of 17^th-century literature is a quest for resolution. It is everywhere apparent, whether in Donne and Herbert’s self-wrestlings, Jonson’s neat epigrams, Herrick’s happy abandonment, or Milton’s weighty ponderings. The quest for resolution bred a spirit of high resolve: the writer set pen to paper questioning, and did not stop his hand until he attained some answer or equilibrium.... Common to all these is the searching and arriving, which in our day may signal a strange
glimmer of hope. We have grown callously accustomed to pursuing a never-ending search; the 17^th
century poets may renew our hope for rest." (L. Brigham)

That last line has especially stayed with me as having pinpointed one of the key differences between my default approach to life and that which I am now striving to quietly embrace. "Pursuing a never-ending search" could serve as an accurate label over most of my life thus far. The pursuit had, in itself, become a kind of goal, much like that which C.S. Lewis describes in Surprised By Joy.  I am now discovering that there is a kind of settledness which may be had now - unbound by circumstance. As creatures which still bear vestiges of their unfallen capacity for peace and joy, we are privileged to hold both the ever-present longing for full restoration and a settled contentment now. 

This realization has been steadily growing since early this summer but it has reached a head in the last few days. God-given abundance is all around us - just as real as the loss and grief and struggle visible on every side. To savor what has been given (not in what one could wish for outside of that gift), to take joy in one's work as the prescribed calling of that moment, to rest in the confidence of God's sovereign providence over all...my words fail in describing the relief of such a thought. My "hope for rest" has been renewed, a "spirit of high resolve" has been instilled and I am setting forth: beginning on my knees with the earnest prayer for grace to live in light of how I was created and towards the state to which I will be restored. While I cry, as fervently as ever, "Come, Lord Jesus, Come" I can say for nearly the first time that I take deep joy in the chance to "walk as in His presence" now. This world is fallen, but it is yet a mirror, a glimpse, a taste of the Paradise which our Almighty God created us to tend and enjoy. How can we do otherwise?