An Ever-Flowing Stream

I am so tired of losing. Every major candidate I voted for last week lost. Again. I mention that not to raise a political agenda, but an emotional one. I feel exhausted by losing over and over.

Teresa and I were part of a church start in Fort Worth years ago. We poured ourselves into it, but the church failed due to a terrible choice for a new pastor. We’ve lost two denominations — the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist General Convention of Texas — as they made hard right turns, narrowing the tent so far that we no longer found a home there. We’ve also lost the two seminaries where we invested our lifeblood for decades — Southwestern and Logsdon Seminaries — both of which fell victim to fundamentalist power moves. Then earlier this year we lost the creative new pastor who had recently come to our church with such promise.

I am exhausted from losing. I’m wondering: is life mainly about losing? Not all of life of course, but a lot of it.

Perhaps the point is simply that everything changes. Everything. And what we hold dear can slip through our fingers. It’s hard to long for something, to love it, and let go. Perhaps life is about letting go – about kenosis – always letting go.* I hate that. Maybe because I hate changes to what I love.

But the thought occurs to me that while letting go feels deeply depressing, maybe there can be good in it. If you let go of one thing, then you’re able to pick up or hold another.

Let us let go even when we love what we lose,

for then maybe we can pick up something else to love.

And perhaps even learn to love what we hate.

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* “Kenosis” is an anglicization of the Greek word for “emptying” in Phil 2:7.

Photograph from Freepik.