Anyway

Readings: IS 49:1-6; JN 13:21-33, 36-38

The first reading from Isaiah offers us a line that I’m sure many of us can relate to, “I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength.”  I am guessing that anyone who is reading this has thought something similar about an undertaking or relationship.  We might have wondered, “Why did I pour myself into this for nothing?”

In the gospel, Jesus is surrounded by his friends as they gather for the Passover meal.  He reminds them that one of them is going to betray him, and he tells another that he’s going to deny even knowing Jesus before morning. And these are his friends!

Needless to say, today reminds us that life is just hard sometimes.  There’s little comfort, reassurance or ease. And people in our lives betray us, let us down and just don’t show up as we had hoped.

I actually don’t know what else to say to this besides that’s just how it is.  

Sometimes this feeling lasts a day.  Sometimes a month.  Sometimes years.  And while hardship and dis-ease is not all that is true in the world at any given moment, it seems to be what keeps popping up and getting our attention.

I know in these moments, I can be tempted to get down on the world, people or even God.  I can start globalizing, catastrophizing and criticizing. 

It is in these times that we need to try to find an opening.  Maybe we return to our breath.  Maybe we try to find beauty somehow.  Maybe we redirect our attention.  Maybe we talk to God about what hurts and try to release it.

I often think about the words written by Kent Keith (which he wrote when he was only a sophomore in college and are often attributed to Mother Theresa because they were written without attribution on the wall of her hospital in India):

Lessons for life
People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest person with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest person with the smallest mind.
Think big anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack if you help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you might get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Somehow these words create a little space for me.  Space to believe that something else might emerge – even in the most trying of times or the most trying of people. Nature also does this for me. I see a tree growing, for example, from a crack in a rock and I think of how life can emerge even in the harshest of conditions…

No doubt, Jesus needed to create some space in his life to carry on with what was his to do – even in the face of discouragement, disappointment, misunderstanding and betrayal. This was not an easy time for him – facing the possibility that his work and mission were not going to work out as expected. But he did it anyway.

No matter what you are going through right now.  No matter who has let you down or disappointed you.  No matter what situation you face.  Know that God is with you in this.