Meditatio

Debbie just told me how an on-line friend of hers, a deathly ill woman, has been so horribly mistreated by her husband in her illness and dire needs that, in my most callous moment, would consider that kind of human behaviour as beastly and evil.

Winnipeg has honestly earned its ill-repute as the murder capital in the nation as it has added onto its curriculum vitae four more murders in this past weekend.

A plot to blow up his high school in a Columbine-scale massacre by a fifteen-year-old boy in the U.S. was uncovered by his alert parents today.

One truly can’t help but shake one’s head and fatalistically wonder what everybody else has been wondering, “What has the world come to?”

American poet, Ezra Pound, deeply considered this troubling question over 70 years ago in his poetic judgment of human nature, "Meditatio".

"When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled."

How far have we fallen since Genesis 1!

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness... So, God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created him, male and female, He created them. (Genesis 1: 26, 27)

In His image! In His likeness!

Psalm 8 echoes the divine intent:

“When I consider Your heavens,
The work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars,
Which You have set in place,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
The son of man that You care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
And crowned him with glory and honour.
You made him ruler over the works of Your hands;
You put everything under his feet:
All flocks and herds,
And the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea,
All that swim in the paths of the sea.” (Psalm 8: 3 - 8)

Nowhere did the Creator intend that man rules over one another and does atrocious acts to each other! Human nature turned horribly wrong and twisted at the first bite!

We disobeyed God and began a life-time of struggle between allegiance to God and our contorted propensity to satisfy our lust for “Me! Me! Me!” at the slightest prompting of the sneering enemy and the desires of the flesh.

We began a human journey in a twilight zone of time and space between the divine light of God and the sordid darkness of unspeakable evil, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".

Seemingly, we are forever thoroughly lost… Not so fast!

The Divine Drama did turn out to be “All’s well, ends well” as the following story tells.

The story narrates about two friends who were visiting a world famous art gallery in a big European city. As they went from one masterpiece to the next, they came upon one that depicts the dynamic tension brought about by two players at a game of chess.

One man, with a cigar in his fingers, blows a puff of smoke with a sneer of his broad grin, a grin that blares out that he has just made the final decisive unequivocal winning move. One can even hear the loud boastful yell across the airspace of the gallery: “Checkmate!”

The other player, with his face half-cupped in his hands, looks dejected, defeated, downcast, and soundly beaten. The painting is entitled, “Checkmate!”

While looking at the painting for some minutes, one of the pair was eager to move on to enjoy the hundred other works on display. But, this young man, a chess player himself, became so entranced by what he saw that he asked his friend to go on alone. He needed more time to appreciate this painting.

Fifteen minutes turned into thirty minutes. Thirty minutes turned into forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes turned into an hour, while an hour turned rapidly into an-hour-and-a-half.

The young man was still looking intently at the game board and the positions of each piece as if he was retracing every single move of how the entire game had been played. All the while, he was making deliberate hand gestures as if he were strategically moving the game pieces and totally engaged in re-playing the game itself.

Lo and behold! Totally oblivious to him, a crowd of curious on-lookers had been watching the most peculiar behaviour of this seemingly enchanted art connoisseur for quite some time.

Almost two hours had elapsed when this young man awoke from an apparent trance and yelled jubilantly to himself, “This is not over! The king has one more move! The king has one more move!!”

Yes. Against the backdrop of sin, corruption, hopelessness, desperation, despair, loss, wickedness and unspeakable evil in this world, God is in solid control and majestic sovereignty because “The King has one more move!”

In the end, the Good Guy wins!

Quite contrary to what T. S. Elliot says in his poem, “The Wasteland”, the world does not end with a bang, neither does it end with a whimper.

The world, according to God, ends in His majestic glory, clothed in love, justice, mercy, grace, and His eternal goodness!

Amen.