Charting the way…
Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that in March life took an unexpected and unwelcome turn. Since then, many of those around me, both near and far, have experienced their own calamities. As a Pastor I see a lot of people’s sorrow at first hand. This has got me thinking about what I might term the ‘geography of sorrow’. There are many features to this particular landscape:
Shock – the moment when the landscape falls away beneath your feet and onward progress seems impossible.
Reproach – of other circumstances, of God, and most of all of yourself. This is marshy land, and a place where you can easily get bogged down forever
Optimism – looking up because it is the best thing to do.
Pessimism – looking down because it is the only thing you seem able to do.
Pragmatism – which may cross between optimism and pessimism many times.
Faith – all of this takes place in a landscape whose shores are washed by faith and where the sweeping beam of hope comes around and around – sometimes visible, sometimes hidden.
I have not depicted these on a map, because everyone’s sorrow will be different and so no two maps are the same, for they take place in different lands. The cartography of sorrow is all about how and where you place these features in relation to each other.
If you recognize the features of this landscape, I wonder how you would plot them on your map today?
