when something happens

“When something happens, it happens first, and you see it afterwards. It happens of itself, and you have nothing to do with it. It proves a dreadful thing — that there are other things besides oneself.” –G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

I try, intermittently, to live as if I am the only thing. It’s my natural bent, and it’s only by the constant happening of various somethings that I’m persuaded in other directions. I’ve been fairly thoroughly convinced of there being other things and other Persons, and yet, and yet, I continue frustrated because of my inclination for being the only one.

When I want to run, He takes me by the shoulders and forces me into a chair. When I want to sit, I find Him snatching my hand, forcing me to run. I ask to know, and He gives me endless days of ignorance. I don’t want to be bothered with knowing, and He holds my eyes open so that I’ll see and understand.

Gerard Manley Hopkins asks of God, “Wert thou mine enemy, O thou my friend / How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost / Defeat, thwart me?”

Sometimes, I want to ask the same thing. All around me creation screams that He is good, and yet I argue: this is not the goodness I expected. This is the goodness which makes my life more difficult, not simpler. This is the goodness which comprises something larger than I can see: I want to see it all. This is the goodness which includes other things and persons besides me, and sometimes seems to be more good to those others: I want to be first and central.

First-ness, centrality, belong to Him only, to Him who is before all things and in whom all things hold together. He defeats, thwarts me, and yet no purpose of His can be thwarted.

His purposes happen first, and I see them after. They happen of themselves, and I would have nothing to do with them, except that grace allows me a place in the purposes. When I, at enmity with Him, am defeated, He lifts me up and calls me friend. He takes my life from me, but hides it in Christ, where it is safer than I can ever keep it. In place of my small here-and-now, which He has required of me, He gives me immeasurable forever, eternal life.

This is first dreadful, and then it is wonderful. When I stop flailing against the constraining love of my Savior, stop screaming about my preferences and plans, I can hear the voice of grace, and “grace,” as Marilynne Robinson asserts, “has a grand laughter in it.”

Laughter, yes, at the absurdity of my warring, but also laughter at the good things stored up for me. He dries my tears, and, in the midst of a golden summer day, I also laugh.

©2013 by Stacy Nott