Through My Father's Eyes

A Reflection on the Gospel for November 18th, 2018: Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

​Mark 13:24-32

24"But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.26 And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 28 "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 32 "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

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It was a complete and utter surprise to me.

I was 16 and had just started talking to and with Jesus. I couldn’t get enough of reading the Bible. All I had to work with was one of the little red KJV New Testaments that the Gideons handed out to my grade 6 class. When I brought it home, my Dad showed me his from when he was in grade 6 and where he had signed it, and where I should put my name in mine. He said it was important, even though we didn’t read it.
 
One day I came into church, marched up to a bunch of people gathered around a table, slammed that little bible down in front of them and exclaimed, “Why didn’t anybody tell me!”
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“Tell you what?” they asked.
 
“That He’s coming back!!!”
 
This was news to me. I figured when my Dad told me, “You’re as slow as the second coming of Christ!” that it was in the same category as, “You’re as slow as molasses in February!” Finding out that Jesus the Messiah was coming back for all to see was earth-shattering news to me. It caused this intense wild joy to bubble under the surface of my life — He is coming! But mixed in with that was a current of unease. It seemed that as Jesus drew nearer, things around here would become painful, even devastating. Somehow they co-exist — the suffering and the joy.

"Somehow they co-exist — the suffering and the joy."

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Did you ever see Life Is Beautiful? It’s unique. The first half of the movie is an Italian comic romance — a sweet and funny Jewish waiter falls in love with a beautiful and gentle teacher and woos her away from her arrogant fiancé. They marry, open a bookstore and have a son together. Then the second half of the movie shifts — WWII starts, the family is separated, with father and son taken to a concentration camp. But darkness doesn’t descend as the father creates an alternate story for his son. His dad shields him by telling him that they have been entered in a complicated game. The first boy to 1000 points wins a tank. The boy does things that keep him alive, not out of fear, but because he’s outsmarting the guards for the win. His dad uses the same humour and love that won the fair maid to protect not just the life, but the joy of his young son, who makes it through a place of suffering by seeing the world through his dad’s eyes. 
 
I saw the movie in my early 30’s, but the feeling I had as I watched the credits remains. It seemed as if God were saying, “That’s what I do for you. If you are there ‘in those days, after that suffering, when the sun will be darkened and the moon not give its light’ — just stay close, listen to me, and you will make it through with joy intact.”
 
Now in my early 50’s, I’ve realized something else. It isn’t theoretical. It’s not just about the possibility of some future suffering, should I happen to be here just before Jesus comes back and breaks through ‘in clouds with great power and glory’. It’s now. It’s day in and day out, through trials small and large and immediate. He breaks through with great power and glory now. I can make it through unscathed — actually with joy — when my Jesus is my world, my truth, my way, my life.  

​Noreen Smith

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