Sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird

Readings for the second Sunday in Lent:

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35 

Every time I sat down to read and ponder the passages for this week, I got caught up in the story of Abram (who later became Abraham, in case you, like me, have trouble keeping track of all the name changes in the Bible). The beginning of the passage shows us Abram longing for a legitimate son to be heir to his household. At this point, he's between seventy and eighty-six, so he must have known with all his heart that he would never have an heir. I mean, a person can hold out hope for a long time, but at some point, reality intrudes, and we have to face facts. I think this is Abram's big moment of crisis. He knows it's not going to happen, and he cries out to God, basically paraphrasing Once in a Lifetime, by The Talking Heads, "How did I get here?...My God, what have I done?"

I think we can all relate to Abram at this moment. Here's a guy who has only wanted a son all his life, a boy to give his household to, and it's not going to happen. His heart's desire is slipping away from him, and there's nothing he can do about it. It's a common experience, I think, at a certain stage of our lives, maybe at several stages of our lives, to have to come to terms with the paths our lives won't be taking. And for some of us, that means our heart's deepest desire. I've been doing a little of that myself over the past few years, and it's difficult. One of the only things I've ever wanted to do with my life is to write a novel and get it published. Now that I've got the novel and I'm sending it out, I deal regularly with the possibility that being a novelist isn't in my cards. I've put a lot of time over my life into becoming a novelist--writing time, conference time, reading time, time I could have spent on other things if I knew the novelist thing wasn't going to happen. That's a terrible realization to have, and with it comes a responsibility: When you know that the thing you've been holding out for isn't going to come, do you chose to change your life, to salvage the time you have left with something that is less than the desire of your heart? At what point is it time to switch to Plan B? (Spoiler Alert: I have no idea.)

But, you know what? I'm lucky. Because being a novelist is a deep desire, but it's not my deepest desire. My deepest desire was to find someone who found me so worthy of love that he'd choose me for his new family, and then for us to have children together. And I know that makes me incredibly blessed. I have known many people for whom marriage or children (or a published novel) was their hearts' truest desire, but, for whatever reason, it did not come. Or it hasn't come yet. Or it came, but at a time when it could not be accepted. And that loss is a loss that may be more difficult than death, because we can't mourn it. Because the book is not totally closed on our deepest desire until it's closed on our lives, is it? We may, like Abram and Sarah, intellectually acknowledge that the odds of getting our heart's elusive desire are infinitessimal, but our hearts don't care, and our hope somehow lives on. As Emily Dickenson wrote:

Hope is the thing with feathers--
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tune without the words--
And never stops--at all

Hope refuses to stop. Even if outwardly, it looks like we've moved on, inwardly there's hope fluttering around.

Which is why we love the story of Abram and Sarah, who seem to have given up when God tells Abram, you will have your heart's desire. And Abram goes, "Oh, okay. Great." Which is to say, he just believes it--another testament to the strength of hope, though I think it's worth noticing that it's after he gets this message from God that he impregnates Hagar and conceives Ishmael, so maybe he didn't totally believe God after all. Maybe he was proceeding with Plan B just in case.

But there's another reason why hope flutters around in our souls, and why we find Abraham and Sarah's story so important--because it totally happens. It happens all the time. My grandmother adopted two children because she was infertile, my mother and my uncle. Then, more than ten years after my mother was born, my grandmother became pregnant with my second uncle. When my father was in the hospital dying from heart failure, my sister had not spoken to him in many years. It was my deep desire, for both their sakes, that she call him before he died. Every day at the hospital I waited, and then I heard through my mother that she planned to call. I didn't tell Dad though, just in case. I waited and waited until one day, something changed. I suddenly saw their relationship through her eyes, and I understood why she hadn't called, and I gave up. I let go of the reunion, which I  wanted as much to set my own heart at ease as for either of them. She called the following morning. A dramatic coincidence, right? But isn't it also true that often when we stop trying to force the outcome that we want, we find that we've got the outcome we wanted all along? It's frequently been true for me.

And the thing that I always tell my single-but-wanting-to-be-married girlfriends who feel like time is running out for them is that when you want something badly, it feels like it will never happen. You think to yourself, well, first we have to meet, and then we have to get to know each other, so that would take, maybe six months to a year, and then we have to decide to get married, and I don't know how you could know something like that without at least two years dating....and so on. (Or in my case, first I have to get the novel done, and then I have to find an agent, and then he has to find a publisher...) But the thing is, when your heart's desire comes to you, it comes the way it's been eluding you. Namely, not according to plan.

Which brings us rather nicely to the gospel lesson for today where Jesus says that he has longed to gather the children of Jerusalem as a mother hen gathers her brood under he wing, but they (we) were not willing. Can't you just feel his longing? It's heartbreaking. Jesus yearns to gather us together. That was the plan. But we will not be gathered.  We, his heart's desire, refuse to go to him. I don't think it's a coincidence that when he speaks of his longing and heartbreak he likens himself to a mother. Women know what it is to long for children--whether they are their own or not. Whether they exist at present or not.

There will be a lot of talking in a month or so about the good news of the resurrection, but for me, that image of Christ as a hen trying to protect her children is the good news of the incarnation. Jesus came in full humanity to live among us, and Jesus knew what it was to never have his heart's desire. So whether we are like Abraham and Sarah, and finally see our longing realized so long after we've let hope fly away that we laugh until tears run down our cheeks, or whether we, like Jesus, yearn our whole lives for something that will not be, we can be sure that in our laughter and in our sorrow, we are joined by one who was not just willing to die for the privilege of connection with us. He was willing to become, like us, a flutteringly hopeful creature, subject to the gains and losses,  sorrows and joys that can fill up a life, hoping against hope to be reunited with the ones she loves.