October 24th, 2020

Over the last couple of years, I've come to believe that people don't fear difficult times as much as they fear going through difficult times alone. In fact, I wonder more and more if loneliness isn't far more at the roots of something feeling difficult than the circumstances that often get labeled as the difficulty.

When I talk with people who have overcome difficulties, and I ask them how they did it, they will almost always start by naming people. It will be their friends or family or co-workers they acknowledge, not a miracle cure or their own willpower or determination.

On the other hand, when I talk with people who seem to be living under the weight of difficulties, there's a distance in their eyes. There is a longing. And if they talk about their difficulties at all, it's usually not about how deeply they hope they wake up one morning and their circumstances are gone. No, more often than not, they share some sense of wondering about who is going to help them walk through them.

In the spiritual context, grace is this idea that no matter how bad things get or no matter how bad WE get, God's going to keep showing up and offering us assistance. God's going to keep bringing it no matter what.

But outside of the deeply spiritual person - a depth I often struggle to get to - that kind of grace in the human context is hard to grasp without humans showing up and offering one another assistance - no matter what.

I think the greatest tragedy in the many challenges we are facing right now is the perception that the challenges themselves are the tragedy. When in reality, I think the real tragedy is how those challenges drive a wedge deeper and deeper between us.

I'm remembering the hydraulic wood splitter my dad used to rent when I was a kid to help us split up large logs before winter. That gas powered wedge would move forcefully down a rail, ever so slowly, until it made contact with the log. As the hydraulics drove the wedge deeper into the log, you could here the crackling sound as it began to split. And then - a final pop - as the log divided and fell into two pieces on the ground.

I fear one day I'll hear the sound of that pop in the world.

In his book Together, Vivek Murthy says:

"Right now, the world is locked in a struggle between love and fear. Fear manifests as anger, insecurity, and loneliness. Fear eats away at our society, leaving all of us less whole. Love shows up as kindness, generosity, and compassion. It is healing. It makes us more whole. The greatest gift to ever receive will come through these relationships. The most meaningful connections may last for a few moments, or for a lifetime, but each will be a reminder that we were meant to be a part of one another's lives, to lift one another up, to reach heights together, greater than any of us could reach on our own."

The world is full of struggles right now, but I think they all mask our biggest struggle - this struggle between love and fear.

The sad part is, while we wrestle with and work to develop cures for all of those other struggles, we know the answer to the biggest one - it's called grace.

It's not an answer waiting to be discovered, it's one waiting on us all to extend.