Sunday Musings

                             

                               

 9/18/2022

    Dear W.H.R.,

    (Whoever Happens to be Reading)

    Praised be Jesus Christ!

    Hello!...How are you?...It’s been a while…how’s the weather?...and so on and so forth with all of the other pleasantries. 

    Earlier this week, I entertained myself by pondering an odd scenario: what if a bridge was built across the ocean between two countries? (For instance, between the United States and Portugal, or Canada and France). While I know this is extremely impractical and somewhat impossible, it was still interesting to think about. I suppose there is something a little attractive about walking across an ocean into another country. But this isn’t a lesson, so I’m not going to go into all of the reasons why this isn’t possible.

    Imagining the distance, the walk (drive more likely), the dangers…kind of makes me think of the journey from the exterior to the interior. Bear with me; this may be a stretch. 

    Now, I don’t think the bridge between our interior life and our exterior life is nearly as long as one built across the Atlantic or Pacific. In fact, I’m not so sure there should even be “bridges.” Rather, the two should be more like parallel roads that, if paved properly, can be joined into one and carry us on our journey to Heaven, eventually uniting into one road. But for now, the image of a bridge will do, our interior and exterior, of course, being the countries it joins.

    Anyway, with this bridge in mind, why does it seem to be so hard to cross? (If you would like my source for this statement, simply read a few articles of the news, and I’m sure you’ll be able to conclude that one of these countries has been abandoned, resulting in demoralization and giving rise to many evils). We are made up of body and soul, yet it seems these days we are only bodies. There is little union between the two, and we never cross that bridge. 

Well, more so than bridges, I’ve been pondering the emptiness of things. And I’m going to say that things are the waters-the waves that crash against our bridge, hindering us from crossing it from one country to the other. By things, I mean anything pertaining to the exterior, mostly those things from which we draw pleasure and entertainment. 

I could blab on and on about this in explanation, but to keep it short, I’ll limit myself to one example, of which I have some experience with. What is it? Movies. 

Recently, any movie that I’ve watched has left me extremely dissatisfied. Perhaps during the course of the film I was entertained, but by the end, it only became a distraction for me. The stories, the music, the acting; it all grabs you and entices you to feel and sympathize with the characters. Coming to the close, you’ve got to walk back into reality, which now seems boring compared to the fantasy you’ve just left. It then becomes more tempting to watch another movie and get caught up in another world. There’s also, of course, the fact that what we watch affects us (whether we feel it or not). And to be honest, most movies do not exactly portray the proper models that we should wish to be affected by. Instead of modeling authentic masculinity and femininity, the beauty of mother, father, and brotherhood, purity and charity, truth and good morals, most films are filled with poor and twisted representations of these things. The result of this is that we become desensitized to these things in the real world and become more pliable to accepting them as something “we can’t change,” or something that was “just bound to happen.”

Okay, let’s see if I can get to the point and wrap this up…

This and the many other “things” of the world (which I challenge you to discern some of them for yourself), are the waters that flood our bridges, pushing us further back into one country and farther away from the other. The funny thing is that the waves aren’t dependent upon the weather; they’re dependent upon us. We control the waves; or at least, we give ourselves up to them and to defeat. 

We can never be truly satisfied with what the one country has to offer us. There is no peace in that country. Peace is found across the ocean; peace is from Christ, Who dwells within us. Once we find our peace, it becomes a shield against the waves and brings unity between the two countries. 

Lord, we can do nothing without You. Give us Your strength, for we have none of our own. Let us not be ruled by the world, but by You, that we might not be led astray and fall prey to the Tempter. Grant that all will come to know You, the King of our hearts, and come to know the fullness of joy in Your presence. Amen.