Illness and infirmity have been prescient reminders of an impending end that we’re all faced with. An end to earthly tribulations, for which we will be crowned with inestimable glory, or the torture of eternal separation from our Lord. I imagine sin and death creeping into my leg, occupying the flesh and sinew around my knee, and whispering that inevitably, I will go the way of all flesh.
It is an end of course, that is hastened by the atrophy of prayer, silence, reading, art, writing. We can peer around us and see the world littered with the bodies of the malcontents, the bitter and the burnt that set aside their creative impulse, their vision, their playful engagement with the talents and insights God has granted them. To let the instrument gather dust is a sin, unless you’ve set it aside to better serve He who put it in your hands in the first place.
But the sickness, the atrophy can spur us into renewal, conversion and awakening. Sometimes the sin, or the torpor serves to shock and appal one enough to flee from it, into the loving arms of the Father who will leave the house to meet us before we even reach it. I must tap the vein that grants such a wonderful sense of life in the creative act, the word set upon the page, to remember who I am again.
I sit in the precious little nook where I used to write so often, littered with the detritus of a thousand lives. I clear baskets. I find the pen, the paper, the pursuit, that only lasts from one word to the next as they trace themselves across the page. I follow them, from one line to the next, and know that I am alive.
You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
your bones shall flourish like the grass;
and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD is with his servants,
and his indignation is against his enemies.
Isaiah 66: 14 - 16