“. . .while he may be found.” Psalm 39
Emily Dickinson poetry is often haunting. One of her many poems that
will never leave me is one numbered “LV,” which begins “I know that he
exists/Somewhere, in silence.” Profound
sadness fills that opening line. She knows he is there—she doesn’t doubt his
presence for moment; but He is silent.
He has, she goes on to say, “hid
his rare life/From our gross eyes.” I
think of a million prayers from Dachau and Auschwitz; a young mother mourning
her son, killed on a motorcycle; a grandpa whose grandson was swept away in a
prairie creek, the body never found.
Sometimes it seems that God has
simply left the building.
Then Ms. Emily sports with this
peek-a-boo behavior. “’Tis an instant’s
play,” she says, “a fond ambush,/just to make bliss [ours, of course] earn her
own surprise!” Notice the exclamation
point. God plays with us, and isn’t that
cute, she says, tongue in cheek.
“But should the play/Prove piercing
earnest”—as it has last week in a million places around the world, in a million
grieving families, “Should the glee” from this little game of hide-and-seek God
is so fond of—should that glee “glaze/In death’s stiff stare,/Would not the
fun/Look too expensive?”
What if we call on his name—what if
our souls scream at the shocking death of a thirteen-year-old boy who won’t
need school supplies in another month, who will never kick a soccer ball, or
lean into his mother’s shoulder on the couch before bed—what if God is playing
this silly game at the moment we need him most?
That’s what she asking.
Then—and it happens to many of us—“Would
not the jest/Have crawled too far?”
The awful word here is crawled, because that word suggests a god
who is, at best perhaps, a worm. Or
sickness—this cute little game of his crawls.
I know some believers who can read Dickinson and not feel
what she does. Some sanctified smiles
simply write her off. But Dickinson is
haunting because I think she’s on to something most believers feel during at
least some moments of their lives—and she is
a believer: “I know that he exists,” she
says to start the poem. “I know.”
A line like David’s warning at the end of verse six inflames
Ms. Emily’s anger in “lv.” David has
just laid out the essence of God’s love—his forgiveness. Then he adds this caveat—“while he may be
found.” In the words of the old psalm we
used to sing, “Then let the Godly seek thee in times when thou art near,” especially
then because it seems anyway that he’s not always conveniently located.
The most horrifying suggestion of David’s assertion is that sometimes
he leaves.
If that makes no sense, you’ve begun to understand, I think,
because it would be so humanly satisfying to create a God out of our finest
aspirations, wouldn’t it?
But God is God. We
worship him, not because he is the best of my dreams or imaginings, but because
he is, ultimately, not made of what we are.
He is not the best I can create on this page or pages, he is eternally much,
much more.
His ways—and sometimes his seeming absences—are simply
beyond our ken.
He is God. We’re
not.
Those who worship him, worship him in that fear, that
unfathomable regard, that profoundly mystifying awe--and on our
knees.
1 comment:
Thank you Mr. Schaap for your writings. I just finished reading a chapter in your book "Honest to God." I savor each chapter and don't want the book to end because the writings often revive and awaken my dry bones. I often sit with my cup of coffee looking over the corn fields of Iowa longing for the " loons" and dreams that you spoke of in your writings. Your writings are one of the few Christian authors that I truly feel is not afraid to pose questions that we all think. There is no veil of faith snobbery and you are willing to reveal the true skin that we all hold. I am looking for another book much like your Honest to God book. As an artist my sketchbook is filled with pages inspired by these writings. Thank you so much,
Diana from Sully
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