a weekend gone awry gives one pause to question what it is they're doing with themselves. with their life. a week gone wrong is quickly quelled by the hope of a weekend. how in the hell do we put so much emphasis on our weekends? why are two days so important to us? i have some ideas...
let's assume that hope's existence is an anesthetic. we're in pain. things around us are hard. so we cling to a thing that numbs it, even if only for a moment. we hold onto to hope so that wherever we are presently doesn't feel so tumultuous. hope implies a forward motion thought process. we imagine how it will be good... one day. how things will soon get better. i'm convinced this is one of the biggest reasons humanity has made it this far. but now the question is what are we hoping for? or towards?
some hope for restoration.
some hope for peace.
some for calm and some for success.
some hope for accomplishment.
and some hope for redemption.
we all hope for something. without hope we have no reason to believe that the "now" is worth anything. if there's nothing that all of this is leading to, then who cares? about anything? whatever the case may be, whether you're hoping for a break on your taxes this year so you can get a little further out of the debt drowning pool, or you're hoping for your life to leave a legacy, whether its a longterm or a short term, chances are, you're hoping for something.
now, lets think about how that can be tangibled. (yes. i made up a word, because terms like "fleshed out" and "given skin" weird me out... thanks e.c.h.) my generation is full of people who only think about today. we don't like to make plans because if we make a plan, there's a chance something can fail and thus, we'll feel like failures. so we live here and now. which sounds very romantic. almost... hip... none of us want to even entertain the possibility of failure. so if we don't make any plans, they can't fail, and we can't fail. we will succeed at everything we do because we're always just doing what we decided to do two minutes ago. this kind of thinking, i'm finding, is pretty dangerous. even as a christian it sounds good to not make plans, because "God has it under control and will do what he wills." which isn't untrue, and i'm not about to get into a debate about Calvinism, but that is one of the shittiest cop outs i've ever heard. whether or not you're a christian, if you're saying that you won't make plans due to your lack of influence in their outcome, you're basically just saying, i'm scared. which is no way to live. so with that being the frame in which a lot of our mind's pictures are hanging, it stands to reason that short term is "good term" for us. "if i can just make it to the end of the month...", "if I can just get through this week...", "i can't wait for this day to be over..."
enter the weekend.
we live so short term that our biggest hopes lie in the closest "end" in sight. how did we ever get so weak? how did we ever become so wrapped up in the thought that we have no ability to make it through an entire year, much less a week? we're still averaging about 80 years of life on this earth, and somehow we don't allow ourselves to think past Sunday.
i remember when i was in middle school, lying in my bed on a Sunday night feeling sick to my stomach and terrified that i had to go back to school the next morning. no other night was as scary as Sunday night. now that i'm 27, the coin has just turned over: no other night is as exciting as Friday night. walking away from my office to my car on a Friday night is one of the best feelings i get in a normal week.
again... i'm 27.
i'm no longer in middle school.
i'm pretty ready to grow up. i look at my dad and see his focus on things that i can't even imagine being able to pick up in a telescope, much less see with my bare eyes and then focus on. he for his entire adult life has looked at a point in the future that is full of hope. i imagine in the first few years of looking towards it he couldn't make out its shape. he may have not even been able to see it distinguished from any other object on the horizon. just another part of a huge blurry line across the sky. but he looked at it. and moved towards it. he hoped that what he was seeing was an end that was worthy of laying down and resting in. now in his 50's i assume the point on the horizon is a little clearer, and his hope is strengthened by all the years behind him that were full of faith. faith that allowed his eyes to adjust because it pushed him closer to that point on the horizon.
we're low on faith my friends. we know there's something on the horizon we should be looking at, but we're scared its the wrong thing. or not even a thing at all. so to cope with the fear or to maybe forget it, we shift our focus to Saturday and Sunday. we can see those clearly. they don't frighten us, but rather give us a "hope" that we can feel Monday to Friday.
its a sick drug.
i write this to say that i'm tired of looking to two days to fulfill my need for a hope answered. to be clear, i believe we're given seasons of rest on the long journey of our lives. Sabbaths. but the Sabbath isn't the end. it's a reminder that the end is coming and has more rest for us than we could imagine. our hope, whatever it may be in, shouldn't be so short lived that we're back to feeling sick to our stomachs on Sunday nights. rather, our hope should push us through every single Sunday night, and Tuesday afternoon, and every year and decade until we get to that point on the horizon. it may be blurry right now, but let faith push you, because if we don't, we're never going to get closer. we'll just keep living for the... well, you can insert your favorite 80's hit by Loverboy here.
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