Today I thought both the sermonette and sermon were very excellent, very insightful, and also deserving of a response, or at least a reflection on my part. I do not feel as if the message requires a response–it was the sort of message that hit very close to me, and probably for a lot of other people, and hit a particularly vulnerable area for me personally, one that a response would only exacerbate. The subject of the sermonette, which was also an homage to the speaker’s insightful daughter and also discussed the subject of how certain wisdom and insight can only come from suffering, so that if we seek wisdom and understand a great deal of sorrow will come as part of the process. I happen to agree with this position, not only academically but also from my own experiences, and yet it is not a thought that grants me comfort, at least not yet. I believe it will, though, in its proper time. May that time come soon.

The sermon struck at a more complicated area. The broader scope of the message was to deal with the nearly universal tendency to deflect blame and take credit only for the good parts of life, and to blame others for difficulties and problems and failures. Yet at the same time our problems are our own, and are either designed for us to work through in order to gain some kind of great insight and understanding or wisdom or are the result of our own choices. I know I am a person that makes more than my fair share of blunders in particular areas of life, and I also know that as I am someone with a strong ability to respond, I also have a great deal of responsibility. After all, this blog is a testament not only to my ability to respond, but also my compulsion to respond, to try to gain what understanding I can from life and seek improvements in my character, my circumstances, and my attitude, where that is necessary. Our responsibility begins with our response to life, others will answer for what they have done. We will answer for what we did that we should not have done or that which we did not do that we should have done.

I was a bit ambivalent about the pastor’s use of so much from M. Scott Peck [1], but one quote in particular struck me as painfully relevant. One knows that one is wise by looking forward to problems. After all, if we face problems, and recognize them, it means that we are focused on improvement. In some areas of life, I do look forward to problems. This is especially true when I seek some sort of novel or interesting sort of analysis that helps me at work, or some sort of research problem into history or the Bible. But in areas of my personal life, I don’t tend to have the same sort of enthusiasm about problems. I think, personally, that the biggest reason for this is that I don’t find the solutions to be as enjoyable in my personal life, particularly in problems with communication or intimacy (more usually the lack of both) as they are in the intellectual problems I find much more manageable. In life we are called not only to work in areas of strength, but also weakness. May the effort have its desired reward, and then (if not before) we can celebrate the effort it took to reach where we wanted to be all along. Somehow, I don’t feel like celebrating yet. Counting joy does not mean always feeling it.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/book-review-in-search-of-stones/