Monday, March 14, 2022
Mary Watts
Relief
Of all the conditions which may befall us in this human experience, I think relief is one of the most powerful and least recognized. There are a million ways any of us may experience relief. It comes as an often-unexpected side effect of something else happening. We may or may not know that the decisions we make, the actions we take or the words we speak will, in fact, provide any relief from a situation. We merely think, act and speak as best we can, using whatever tact or patience is available to us in trying to resolve the dilemma at hand. The rest, as they say, falls where the chips may.
Think of ways in which you have been relieved, over life or even just recently. Paying off some financial obligation is a relief from that debt. Finally getting the floor mopped can be a great relief. Apologizing to someone for an indiscretion or making amends in your behavior may not be a relief to the offended party, if they so choose, but it can still be a relief to you from that burden of a former poor choice. Covid has been such an ordeal! We all feel relief as restrictions are lifted and we may resume some form of normal life again. As we age it becomes more and more common for one spouse to become care giver for the other spouse. This may start as merely a helping hand and evolve into sole care giving with Herculean requirements. When finally the task becomes too much for one person to handle, we call in others, home health workers, therapists, dialing 911 for help in a night time emergency, and perhaps sometimes placing our beloved partner in a nursing facility. Each person who enters the “bubble” of our home offers some form of relief to the care giver, supporting mentally, emotionally and most assuredly physically the jobs which have become so very large and heavy.
There is even relief to be found in death. In historical novels we read of survivors stumbling around, bloody sword in hand, on a battlefield strewn with the aftermath of some fierce engagement. It is suddenly so quiet, horrible, surreal. The war is lost, yes, but with the end of it so passes away the obligation to go on fighting. Pulsing out of the shock of death is a change in the very air within our space. That change is relief. Sword and shield may be dropped and left behind as we leave the scene just lost. In the days following my husband’s death here was silence and emptiness, but oddly underneath a trickle of relief. There was no more reason to lift or turn or bring medicine to someone who is beyond grasping or needing such administrations. One may return to his or her bed and sleep as long as exhaustion demands. I have said a thousand times that I would have kept George here, alive in any condition, just to have his life force still a part of my world. It’s true, but that decision was not mine to make and there is relief in that knowledge, too.
And here we are, already deep into Lent again. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert. He must have known what was coming. He could not have emerged from such a long skirmish with deprivation and temptation without fully understanding what the end would look like, and yet He did not give in. He took up His ministry and marched headlong toward a fate that had only one possible outcome. I’ve often wondered, “How human was Jesus?” Did He remember and long for the Ivory Palaces of heaven or did His human birth (perhaps temporarily) block out those images? Was He, like us, living one day at a time, hoping for a better outcome, praying for a cure, knowing the end but able to ignore it for any given moment? Did He feel real joy, actual laughter and happiness upon His triumphant entry into Jerusalem? Was that a moment He savored, exchanged a “high five” and shared with His followers? I wonder if He felt, for a while, relief from His Lenten time of temptation.
But the dread, surely, would still have been there in the back of His mind. What relief there must have been for Him when mortal death was finally behind Him! Thirty three years of preparation for a few hours of unimaginable human torture and the job was done. Not, however, before He fell three times carrying His cross to Golgotha. Would we have acted as Simon to step in and give Jesus relief when He was so exhausted? Do we recognize when He repays us in kind every single day of our lives that we are too weak to carry our own crosses? If any of us could know and understand our path so clearly ahead of time, the means of our demise, how would we react? How would we change what we do and say, the attitudes and failings of our decisions, prejudices and emotions?
The end, for all of us, is undeniable. We will pass away. How shall we have measured up to our own personal Lent, our times of worldly tribulation and temptations? We are given glorious days of sunshine and joy, love, family, friends, society, our own private successful entries into Jerusalem. We are also called to share the dark, lonely hours of Gethsemane, praying on our knees on the hard rocky ground, hoping someone is there watching, near to us. Scripture offers an unending waterfall of nurturing stories to show us that what we are living is well within normal human expectation AND YET if we will only accept it, the end result can be so easily assured. Death from this life will not be a black hole and that should be the greatest relief anyone might ever know! Jesus has TOLD us that He is preparing a place for us. We don’t even need to pack a bag! We will go forth in joy and Light, taking nothing with us but Love. The greater question may be what will we leave behind? So many times when someone dies a well-meaning friend will say, “Yes, but she is in a much better place, now.” It’s probably true. The dearly departed are free from disease and pain, relieved of the travails of this world. We, too, are relieved for them but also we are relieved OF them, and there should be no guilt in that. We are relieved of sharing their difficulties and serving their needs, free now to move on to the next task of our walk with God, the next service we may perform in His Name.
Easter is the ultimate relief. It is our annual reminder of hope and redemption on a massive scale. No one can witness the shattering images portrayed by a celebrant priest during the Good Friday service and not feel the same emotions that Mary would have felt at the foot of the cross. But the focus turns quickly from His tragic death. Easter dawns brilliantly, over and over, as the greatest act of relief and love ever bestowed upon mankind. It is more than being relieved of our decision to give up chocolate or wine or other indulgences. It is the gift of salvation, given freely again and again by a loving God, to relieve us from ourselves and the inherited nature of our human condition. Easter is more than bunnies and egg hunts for our grandchildren, rather the chance to pass down to them an understanding of what an amazing gift “relief” really is, and how grateful they should learn to be as life stacks up against them and then someone or something comes along to cut them a break, give them some relief.
Anne suggested that rather than giving up something for Lent we might instead use this Lenten season to TAKE UP something, some new purpose or goal. We are constantly exhorted to give love, and every week SJC does just that in the form of Common Table. Love in a brown bag = relief from hunger. When you next drive to work or the market, try spending your time in the car recalling those things from which you have been relieved, and do so with gratitude. John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you... Here is a slight variation on that theme to consider: “Give relief to one another even as I have relieved you.” Now, how might you use your hands to share the love and relief, such as you have known, extended to someone else?