Lenten Journal, Day 21

God, I’m depressed. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.”[1]

Going through Lent without the regular support of a faith community while also recovering from major orthopedic surgery and observing the state of American politics and the state of American Christianity really has me in a blue funk and I can feel the “black dog” prowling around in the fog. It’s too much. Maybe this retirement thing, or the surgery, or both were bad decisions. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”[2]

I’m pretty certain that checking the New York Times and the Washington Post, Facebook and Twitter is occasionally a bad idea, maybe frequently a bad idea.

I wrote yesterday about feeling that one’s legacy is crumbling. The presumption of those comments, of course, is that one has a legacy, that one is remembered (hopefully for good), and that may not be a correct assumption.

A comedy group years ago (it was the Firesign Theater) included the name of a church in one of their skits: The Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of the Blinding Light. It’s brilliant. Our presumptions and assumptions frequently are, usually are blinding.

Democrats assumed the Mueller report would hang the Current Occupant. Wow, blinded by that one and surprised by reality! Lots of progressives are assuming that whoever gets the Democratic nomination will beat the Current Occupant in 2020. Wow, don’t count on it! “Beware of your neighbors, and put no trust in any of your kin.”[3]

God, I’m depressed, and despite Paul’s rhetoric, I can see little reason for hope.[4] “My flesh trembles with dread of you; I am afraid of your judgments.”[5]

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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.

[1] Jeremiah 8:18

[2] Jeremiah 8:22

[3] Jeremiah 9:4

[4] Romans 5:1-11

[5] Psalm 119:120