Solstice

Saturday 6/21/2014 5:18 AM

Today is summer solstice, the longest day of the year.  Up to this point the length of the days has been increasing but, beginning tomorrow, the day length will start to decrease.  Yesterday the rate at which the length of the day is changing was positive, tomorrow it will be negative but, for today, the rate of change is zero.  In other words, today is a turning point.

A few days ago I expressed my frustration with having no movement in my spiritual life, feeling as if I am in the doldrums.  I want to see some progress in my relationship with God but there seems to be no movement whatsoever.  In his book, The God Who Comes, Carlo Carretto writes about God’s silence and seeming lack of movement.  “For much of my life, I asked myself why God acted in such a strange way.  Why is he silent so long?  Why is faith so bitter?  He can do everything, so why does he not reveal himself to us in a more sensational way? … But it seems that God does his best to remain silent, as if to demonstrate that he does not exist, that it is useless for us to follow him, that we would do better if we went all out to possess the earth. … If God exists, why evil?  If God is love, why sorrow?  If God is a Father, why death?  If I have knocked, why has he not opened to me?  I used to think all this and more, when I was new to this school.  But then, walking patiently, … I began to see the way things are, I began to discover how God goes about what he is doing, I began to distinguish his stealthy footsteps ….  It was for him to open it, not me, always in a hurry.  Sin lies in Adam’s haste, and my lust for possession is stronger than my true love for him.  Wait!  Oh, the anguish of that ‘wait,’ the emptiness of that absence!  But then, little by little, I began to understand, as never before, that he was present in the emptiness, in the waiting.”  I tend to think that if there is no movement in my life then God has abandoned me, he is tired of working with me, but Carretto suggests that God is in the middle of the silence, in the lack of movement.  He hasn’t given up on me.  He simply says wait.

I guess there is a sense in which I am experiencing a solstice in my walk with God.  In the context of day length, a solstice represents a turning point, a time when things are about to change.  Perhaps I need to spend my time looking forward with anticipation to the changes that God is about to make in my life rather than bemoaning the fact that there seems to be no current progress.  Maybe God knows I need to rest before the ride that is about to commence.