Holding All of It

I was listening to the On Being Podcast with Krista Tippet the other day. It was a really interesting conversation she had with Sharon Salzburg, who is a Buddhist meditation teacher. Sharon was talking about her work helping parents and others who lost loved ones in the aftermath of the Parkland High School shooting. And she related that when she was there teaching, working with these parents, helping them with their grief, someone in the room raised her hand, and said, “I feel really weird, because I’m having an incredible experience, learning about mindfulness and meditation and being with you, and I know the only reason it’s happening is this horrible thing happened…I don’t know how to get over that, to be with this.” And Sharon said, “I don’t know if we ever get over it, so much as we learn to hold them both at once.” The joy and the sorrow. The light and the dark. The pain and joy of life as it comes. It’s all there. It’s all real.

I was listening to this, and I couldn’t help but think about the psalms, which really do a beautiful job of holding it all together. There is this acknowledgment: Yes there is pain. Yes, there is need. But even in the midst of that, there is good and beauty. Even in the midst of the darkness, there is a praise that comes forth.

And of course, this is not praise for the situation. We don’t give praise for cancer or school shootings. We don’t give praise for dementia or a pandemic. But we can give praise even in these circumstances… because God is with us, through all of it.

Ultimately, that is our hope. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not a hope that we will escape the hardships in life. There are no promises of that in the Bible. But it is a hope in the God who is with us in the midst of all of it… in the joy and the sorrow, the laughter and the tears, the tragic and the breathtakingly beautiful. It is a hope in the God who holds it all and who holds us, from the moment of birth to the moment of dying, and beyond…

I don’t know what you are going through in your life right now. But I do pray that you would know God’s presence, grace, and peace in the very core of your being. May you place your hope in the One who holds you – even now.

Let us pray today with the psalmist: Your power and your righteousness, O God, reach the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? You are our rock and our fortress…You are our strong refuge. Help us to trust, and to ever sing praise. In Christ’s name. Amen.