Dichotomy?

We recently celebrated our 34th anniversary; as in all of life looking at the present and looking back I see what appears to be a dichotomy (division into two parts), good times and bad times or so it seems. Waking early on the first morning of our anniversary trip in Va. Beach I experienced conflicted feelings; I was glad to be on a trip with my hubby but feeling terribly guilty that we were at the beach enjoying ourselves while there are people who are starving. Yeah I can be a real downer to those seeking to party hardy. Truth be told I’ve always been this way. I can see wonderfully joyful things and at the same time weep for the lost of the world. I often feel I live in this state of tension between exultation and travail. I exalt in His grace and provision and weep for the fallness of a world that is stumbling by and large in darkness. I saw families pushing little ones in strollers these little dinks full of vim and vigor and heartbreaking sights of families pushing children in wheelchairs, children with obvious afflictions. This was the first year of several that we’ve been doing the Va. Beach anniversary trips that I have not been ill so I exalted in the ability to walk the boardwalk an average of 5 mi per day feeling strong and not having to push my body to put one foot in front of the other while noticing some much younger than I who possibly due to a stroke had trouble walking at all. This seeming dichotomy (I say seeming since we know that there could be many who though afflicted in body were free of spirit and many strong in body have broken spirits) does not cause me to walk around and lose hope nor does it dim the joy of Abba’s grace and goodness, it simply keeps me rooted in compassion, a part of the overall suffering of living in a fallen world while still knowing with great assurance that I can be a part of the solution, a helping hand extended.
On Monday, the day after our anniversary, the day after the Neptune festival was over, Dave and I were sitting on the balcony of our room watching the greatly lessened crowd on the boardwalk when we noticed the chainsaw sculptor was packing up his area. We also noticed his wife and little girl walking around. When Dave noticed the wife trying to help her husband with an obviously heavy bench he commented that he felt badly seeing a lady trying to heft something like that. I said, ‘let’s go help.’ He agreed and we went down at first we tentatively stood around not wanting to get in the way nor seem like weirdos but eventually starting to join in on the moving of carvings etc. At one point the young wife looked at me and said, ‘you don’t have to help us.’ I her we had just been chillin on the balcony and my hubby couldn’t stand to see her having to heft heavy stuff and keep an eye on their two year old. I also told her that if more people would just help each other we would all have an easier time of it. You could see that they weren’t used to people helping but eventually they accepted us as part of the process and we chatted and worked together. Skyler, their two year old had no problem with our presence accepting us immediately as only children seem to be able to. I suddenly realized sometime in the middle of the hour and half that we helped that I was helping my nemesis. Okay, maybe the chainsaw sculptor wasn’t really my enemy but I had been complaining to Dave for three days that his noisy chainsaw demonstrations just down from our room were very irritating. I think chainsaw noise rates way up on my scale of noises that get on my nerves. I had to smile at the dichotomy; here I was volunteering to help an irritant to my anniversary vacation with no ulterior motive other than to help out a young couple.
I’m so glad that Abba doesn’t’ allow my often whiney prayers to irritate Him to the point of refusing a helping hand. He always looks down and sees when the load is heavy for this lady and sends help, often anonymously but none the less with His hand print on it.
For me the only way this dichotomy makes sense is to look at it with an exalted view, the view that Yeshua took while on the cross. From His pain, His sacrifice came not only the promise of future help but the offer of being a present help. To the thief on the cross He promised, ‘today you will be with Me in paradise.’ We could argue what or where paradise was/is but that’s not the issue, it’s the today. The thief would die but would know instant translation into the today of Yeshua’s hope. We don’t have to die in order to grasp that helping hand for today we can in the midst of all the struggle know what it is for Him to bear our burdens, to take away our fears to give certainty in an uncertain world. We live in a world skewed by sin but redeemed by grace. It is the cross that keeps the seeming dichotomy from yawning into a great divide which would keep us from walking in grace and peace now. It was through the suffering of God the Son that the sons of God can walk without division, with our hearts full of compassion, full of praise, with the knowledge that we need not allow suffering to impale joy in hopelessness but with the knowledge that today is your salvation nearer than when you first believed. (Romans 13:11)

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