The Lord is the only light that shines in the darkness of this world. All else is but misery and pastime. I can see why Man thinks that he expands himself with his pastime and that he falls back on himself due to his anguish; this is due to Man, in his shallowness, regarding himself as the center of his own existence, and extending himself horizontally in order to ease himself from the tension in his life.
And so Man is subject to his present predicament, an offspring of his illness and sorrow; he is created by the times he lives in because he believes that nothing exists outside of time and space. He lives within the confines of his body and those of his memories and hopes, that nourish the body and imagination, or he lives only through another person and revels in a slavery that deprives him of the effort of transcending himself, his entourage and his clan.
And the predicament could be a grave one like the possibility of war, poorness or war-like calamities. And no doubt also that Man is the victim of his own ignorance, poorness, richness or the conflicts in his life. And due to that or part of it, Man realizes his own depravity; he also can become miserable due to his ignorance of it. That is why the Bible calls the above situation “the valley of Baca (Tears)” where there is no end to pain, debility and the loss of dear ones.
All that evil is a part of life and it befalls the righteous as well as the evil ones. And the person who is not in touch with the Lord resorts to pleasures that lose their ability to gratify once they are experienced. Man seeks after pleasures with which he thinks he can cure his sense of alienation or heal his bitterness. He might remain the slave of his bodily pleasures if he loses the light of the Lord. Thus, while Man is waiting for the disappearance of the events that afflict him, he only finds that new calamities as painful as the former take place and are so depraving that they lead him to despair. This means that he creates his own hell, and few are those who find a way to leave this hell. I am not exaggerating when using this term because I have heard hundreds of times from the mouths of those who have chosen to describe a crisis in their family life: “my life has become hell and I do not know how to get out of it”.
The people described above have placed themselves in the horizontal dimension and know nothing about the vertical dimension which is the power that ties them to God. As for those who know God, they live in tranquility even in times of war. They are at peace whether they are in health or in sickness, whether their circumstance is stable or shaky; they do not consider a misfortune or a sickness as the end of the world because they dwell in God and God dwells in them.
I know people who take refuge in God, whether they are in ease or adversity because they know that God is their strength and help; these have transcended their physical existence and already dwell in the “heavens”. The believer, whether rich or poor, finds his all in the Lord and does not consider anything as important in his himself. You ask the Creator-Savior to come to you and you receive Him as one who is “all your life” as [St.] Paul says: “It is not I who live, but Christ lives in me” See Ga.2, 20.
You cannot rid yourself of its pain if you “borrow” consolation from this world, because the world does not supply you with truth. Pleasure is no substitute for pleasure and no fun is more entertaining than the one you are in now; it is all the same because all pleasure and fun is in itself empty. It makes you forget your worries only for a while because you draw your consolation from this world that you have made yourself its center. But if you choose the Lord to be the center of your life, you free yourself from being a slave to ill-health or persecution or oppression or crisis whether in your immediate family or in your country.
You cannot escape the weight of the situation in which you live, whether political or economic. This world is, as we perceive, full of wars and it is up to you to aspire for peace. But we see that wars are endless, and disease has no end and that one sin, when committed, leads to another; and that brings inner pain if your conscience is still alive to admonish you; only “monsters” would stifle their conscience to the end.
And if you decide to hold on to your horizontal dimension, that is to say, if you accept to live in a superficial manner, you are dead inside. You may perhaps keep in mind and believe in certain values, but these values in their depth come from the Faith even though some have tried to make of these values a philosophical entity, a god in itself. Why substitute God with cultural understandings. You can live only through God. Fatih in God is active in Man’s heart to change it and to heal it. That gives you a personal relation with God who pours His life in you; philosophy cannot do that. God alone has life, and the rest are ideas which your mind can accept yet they cannot give your life.
I do not want to dwell on the suffering that you endure because of your sins, illness or crises in the country and the world and I’m not trying to insinuate that they are the only way God uses to draw us closer to Him. Yes, many verses in Scripture call the sufferer to seek help because God wants to heal us; in that David said: “From the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord” (Ps. 129.1) and in saying “depths” he speaks of the affliction in which we throw ourselves. But the righteous lift their hearts up to God because they rejoice in Him who Himself is the source of their joy. As such they dwell in the intimacy of invoking Him and not only in that of asking for his help.
And when we Christians talk about the cross on which each of us is crucified, we request that it be taken off our shoulders, because of the suffering it represents; yet we believe that our cross is our way to the resurrection, not only the Resurrection of the last day, but the one brought about in this present life through our relationship with Christ who is our life and resurrection. Our present sufferings, when accepted with contentment, gratitude and hope, give us consolation for we know that the Lord “remembers” us and “visits” as the saints say. We also know that if we believe, the Lord will dwell in us whether we are in pain or in sin lifting its burden away from us so that our hearts will be purified.
Afflictions befall us because things are like that in a fallen world like this is. The world is like that and we do not always understand it. God heals Man; He converses with him, admonishes him, chastises him and loves him so that bitterness leaves him as peace flows in him. And with that inner peace, he lives with war, with hunger, with the tribulations and psychological difficulties. Physical healing might happen permanently because of God’s mercy; but Peace is your cure even if the disease persists, and with that you can live through any situation. We do not call for heroism in Christianity, but we call for patience. And patience is not a defeat before reality but an active reliance on God who cures you the way He wishes pointing put to you that the greatest crisis in you is sin which you confront with repentance or in other words with the presence of God in you.
God does not cancel human history or even your personal history but He accompanies you as you live your times during which He consoles you if you are patient. As such, Heaven will dwell in you before you get to dwell in It on the last day. So God does not rid you of the horizontal dimension of your earthly life, but He grants you mercy through the vertical dimension and He watches over you in guarding that vertical dimension.
This God is not an abstract thought. He is Truth, Reality, Joy and Happiness. With that God you look at the world and its tribulations. All this is accomplished by believing that God is the One longed and sought for and that He is a Spring of giving that does not cease.
Translated by Riad Mofarej
Original Text: – “البعد الأفقي والبعد العامودي”15.09.07
