Once Upon the Ink

(Contemplation on Habbakuk 2:1 “I will stand at my watch post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”)

I saw him in passing. Just for a second, when I turned my head, absently scanning my surroundings. I was in too much of a hurry to slow down and too lost in my spiral to think he was real. My mind was too full of chaos and that clinging kind of dementia I sometimes suffer from that makes me forget him so easily.

That dementia with its despair always springs on me when my mind zooms out into a panoramic kind of lense – when I’m trying to take in the whole world and make sense of what I see. Figure it out. I’ve been looking out at the horizon of social media, listening to all the social critics pointing various fingers, whether they be political or religious, environmental, or people just tired of the emptiness of “progress.”

All of them are grumpy, concerned, and very passionately lecturing at the mob of humanity. As if you can ever change a mob.

All of that noise was buzzing around my head when I saw him. Along with the heartbreaking reality of bad things happening moment by moment in this world. Hateful things we do to each other. Hearing all the ways we let ourselves down and forget that we were made to love and to be loved.

I stumbled and lost my footing for a second when I caught that glimpse of him standing there. It was so unexpected – my heart was immediately in my throat, a wish gripping me that what I saw was true, that it was real.

He was on the ramparts of a fortress, looking out at the horizon. Keeping watch and waiting. Waiting for his dad to speak.

But then I looked again, and I knew I was mistaken – that it wasn’t actually Jesus standing there, but that I had imagined him. It was supposed to be the ancient prophet Habbakuk, (or me), doing what I thought I saw Jesus doing. Keeping watch, keeping our eyes on the horizon and waiting for God’s answer to the absolute gong show that is this world – this mob that feels so empty of good sometimes. So full of dark things and angry, disillusioned people.

I think sometimes, for me, it’s almost more disillusioning to listen to all the different versions of God theology out there – all the many people getting vocal about God while they shake their finger at the “others” (whoever the others might be). It can feel like none of the most vocal are really being affected by the invisible presence of Holy Spirit. I heard a man praise God in the midst of bullying a woman on a reality show in the worst way. Where’s the gentleness? I keep asking myself – where’s the authenticity of these people and the heart focus that Jesus supposedly spills into us just by hanging out with him?

But those thoughts lead to the skeptic in me, the cold judger and despairer… and to the knowledge that I can be one of “them” too. One of the hypocrites. I never want to press into any form of them vs us kind of thought pattern, and it raises a red flag in my mind that I’m thinking like that now.

So I hurry past that quick vision of Jesus on the rampart, my head full of argument with myself, full of a despair loop. It’s disheartening when I’ve decided that the reality of Jesus makes no difference to this world one way or the other. Wasn’t he supposed to fix everything?

I swallow back the tightness in my throat, trying to stuff down the longing that bloomed so quickly at just the thought that he could have been there standing where I was supposed to stand.

Why does it make my eyes sting? Why do I keep wanting to look over my shoulder and see if I can see him there again, when I know I read that verse wrong? I try to pick up my pace, walk away quickly, put that picture of him; that patient stance as he watched from that place, as if he was a bulwark, a protective soldier on guard, out of my head.

But the intensity of his expression, the safety of his figure against the sky – it keeps tripping me up, making my steps slow and halt and stumble forward in an uneven, unconvincing gait.

I want him to be there. I want that verse to be about him rather than me and Habbakuk waiting and hoping God might fix things one day. It’s exhausting keeping watch alone.

I stand there indecisive, longing. Can he be there? And that’s when I remember – the thought popping casually into my head that Jesus is God’s answer. He is the word God speaks into the darkest corners of doubt and pain.

And part of that answer means he is standing there alongside me and Habbakuk, keeping “a weather eye on the horizon.” He watches and waits for God’s answers to the dark. He is guarding the fortress that is this lived experience with his presence, not as an alien presence but as one of the mob of humanity I can be so skeptical of.

My heart clenches as I imagine him, letting him stand there on the rampart in my stead. And the despair loosens its grip, the dementia clears little by little the longer I stare.

And if he is stationed in that spot on the rampart for me, his big hands on that rough wall, bent forward and searching the horizon with that intensity of his… then I know enough of his character to know he never tires or moves from his place, all while holding the worlds sadness on his shoulders…

The longer I watch him the more I can feel him pulling his rock-steady faith over my own panicky, dementia riddled mind. Wrapping me up in that safe blanket that is his strength in times of trouble. His own faith, his own unwavering patience acts like a spring inside me, a flow of love that anchors me to his side and tucks me under his watch until I am me again.