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Loss of Direction
By David G. Duggan ©
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
May 20, 2022
Somehow, I have a decent sense of direction and early on learned to tell North-South-East-and West by pointing my watch's hour hand at the sun. It's a good party trick that works 12-months a year but at least as importantly it shows the Creator not only as divider of land from the sea but as divine watchmaker who set the heavens so that we can make sense of the world. And since my car doesn't have GPS, I can always get a bead on my direction in daylight hours by getting out of the driver's seat.
"He who would save his life must lose it," said Jesus (Mark 8:35; Matt. 16:25). I'm not anxious to get lost and losing things drives me nuts. Losing my life sounds even worse than losing my path or my pen so what could it mean to lose my life? Jump off a cliff? Get rid of all my accoutrements? Go into a monastery? Even if I could find a monastery that would accept me, could I put up with restrictions on the liberty that my forbears and I have fought for in war after war to preserve our way of life? Am I destined for eternal damnation because I hold onto a vestige of what I've acquired over 70 years, much of it inherited from people who were prepared to sacrifice all but got a pass from the grim reaper?
Jesus' promise to those who lose their lives for His sake offers some comfort: "Whoever loses his life for me will find it" (Matt: 16:26). But where? At the church which has sold the Gospel down the river? At the soup kitchen which provides a steady diet of woke theology? At the homeless shelter where people sleep on beds of diversity, equity and inclusion? This search seems endless and pointless.
The guideposts of the sun and the time of day give some direction. The Creed states that by Jesus all things were made which include the sun and the moon, the hours and the seasons. Jesus is not the sun but He is seen by the sun.
Losing ourselves amid the sun of direction and warmth and the hours of existence and purpose seems a fate worse than death. But Jesus says that by doing so we will gain our lives. We know what we have. Are we prepared for what we might have?
David Duggan is a retired attorney living in Chicago. He occasionally writes for VOL
