February Already

January flew by as a month unremarked upon. I was distracted by a short trip to the Mid-East in the middle and travel to the US at the end. It would have been hard to write in January without mentioning Haiti. The last entry of 2009 was taken up with suffering. I found the prospect of an encore daunting. Sometimes it's better to simply weep and pray and leave the commentary to others. We've long heard that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. How do we conceive of those who have nothing losing everything? New Orleans bounced from Katrina to the Super Bowl. It's difficult to conceive of Haiti bouncing anywhere very high.

Years ago I had contact with a brilliant RAF officer, eccentric, unmarried and a believer. He was a Cambridge graduate and a fluent Russian speaker. At a wedding we both attended at the Air Force Academy he was holding forth (apropos of what I can't remember) on the subject that Haiti was dedicated to the devil at its founding. That was news to me and I never thought about it again until I heard that some were attributing Haiti's earthquake to its alleged diabolical origins.

Linking specific suffering to specific sins is a hazardous enterprise at best. Unless the link is direct (as in crime/punishment, drunkenness/accident etc) I think proving a connection is beyond the scope of human competence. There are innocents who have no knowledge or sympathy with the darker components of Haiti's founding (or their parents' HIV or something similar) who suffer dreadfully. And there are those who sin dreadfully who seem to be eluding immediate consequences in the short run. Suffice to say that in these mortal bodies, on this fallen planet, suffering is our lot until the coming of the Son of Man. Even so come quickly Lord Jesus.

The snow is heaped high here. I am in Budapest and Jane is in Florida. Good for her but a tough Valentine's Day assignment for me. One of our best memories as a couple is taking the train from Munich to Vienna on February 14, 1986, on our first visit to Austria. It's a five hour run through some beautiful countryside. It was snowing that day and the train stopped in St. Valentine Austria, a city whose existence I knew nothing about until the train pulled into the station.

Christians may overlook or underestimate romantic love. But it's a nearly overwhelming thing which has inspired the forlorn, the sublime and the dastardly for all our history. The Bible first mentions such love in describing what Jacob endured for Rachel.

The first mention of any kind of love in the Bible bears no trace of the romantic. Nor is it, as we would guess, the love of God for man or the love of man for God. It is rather the love of a father for a son in the most excruciating of contexts.

"Take now your son, your only son, the son whom you love..."

Genesis 22:2

When we take it upon ourselves to ask how a Son infinitely loved could be a Son actually sacrificed we begin to gaze upon the heart of Reality.

We begin to get at the root of things.

Now may the romance of Valentines compensate for the cold of February.

And if romance seems no part of your life remember that the Gospel itself is a romance.

The Church is, after all, a Community Betrothed.

If we are not consciously and conscientiously awaiting the Heavenly Bridegroom the only thing we've missed is the point.

So let us wait with longing and with faith.

We expect the consummation of the greatest Romance (theological not biological).

I am quite sure the weather will improve as well.