Sometimes you feel as if the moments you invest heart and soul into are but fading blips in a world where sonar is all but forgotten. I know nothing about sonar or the present day satellites that shift information from the ground to the sky into a cockpit of a jet flying mach 3, but I do know something about what makes up time and that the rapid singular events of our lives need context lest they fly off into the stars. Because, space is a cold, dark and lonely place for a life to end up. I just started into this book called The Historian’s Craft and have already been blown away. The author describes the ‘thrill of learning singular things,’ as a venture that has poetic qualities. There are events, happening, singular moments-in the words of one poet-that mark a way through history that tells the story not only of your life but our life together as people with God in the practice of lived experience. Marc Bloch, the author and Frenchman who was tortured during The War, says:
Experience has surely taught us that it is impossible to decide in advance whether even the most abstract speculations may not eventually prove extraordinarily helpful in practice.
What a hopeful statement for someone who wants to make this life count but more over wants to live the kind of life that just keeps going being able to see fruits from fallen ventures anew. I think to myself at times-that day that ‘odd’ thing happened or that painful experience will not only be made right, but will fit. Perhaps those painful experiences, as ill intended or seasoned with hell as they were, will be for another a source of healing and surprising redemption. It is a hopeful statement too because my wandering mind interests itself in all sorted of oddity. But if history is our story and practical is possible in most things then these burning interests will not be wasted… or or they will just burn up. I use fire as a cleansing metaphor like the apostle Paul does in 1 Corinthians 3 because I think I am more aware these days that certain things were not intended to last because the were nit together by hatred or worst. They don’t lead anywhere-their mark is unclear but unfortunately often unforgettable.
But the markings of our lives, those moments odd and momentous, are a ‘cry that initiates history’, that invites God to intersect and provide context and narrative to our storyline that was his to begin with.
