Sights and Insights
Devotion for Feb. 15, 2022
They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.- Isaiah 61:3b-4
I have been doing some reading to prepare for the activity time classes that I will be leading during Lent on sin and virtue in our everyday lives (still working on a catchier title!). As I am reading, I came across a 14th century complaint about how people are not as virtuous as they once were. Have we really been on a steady deterioration for the past eight hundred years or more? I doubt it. It seems to me much more likely that we have not changed much at all, and that we always tend to assume that things used to be better. Humans have always, I suspect, looked to the past as a better because we are sure of what happened. We are rarely sure of what is going on around us, and the future is always uncertain. We are quick to equate “uncertain” with “bad.” Yet being virtuous means, above all else, to be open enough to current circumstances to be able to respond appropriately. It means not being too optimistic or pessimistic, but rather to recognize the possibilities and limitations of a current moment and act within those parameters.
The development of character and virtue can most clearly be seen in times of uncertainty. It is found in not overreacting to situations but also not under-reacting. As I continue to read stories of unrest and frustrations being vented in contexts around the world from people from a vast range of viewpoints, and cannot help but think of the high levels of uncertainty that have become part of everyday life. It seems that so many people are struggling to cope with the reality that we are in dynamic times marked by uncertainties. I will not say that we as people are less virtuous than we once were; rather I would say theologically that we are in a time that the limits of our human capacities are being revealed in particularly visible ways. The level of powerlessness we have to control the world around us has been laid bare again and again. Time and again the response is to rail against the forces of this world that we cannot control. This response can sometimes be helpful, but at others it can be destructive.
Our ability to be people of virtue who can stand amidst the unknown swirling around us is not a human work but a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is in recognizing this gift that we become open to the spiritual depth that allows us to be rooted as the things around us are shaken. Isaiah speaks of those who will be called “oaks of righteousness.” Such people build on the past but do not idealize it. They put their trust in what God is doing now and will do in the future. Human acts always have been and always will be ambiguous at best, and all that humanity builds will fall into ruin sooner or later. Yet the righteous or virtuous ones are those rooted in God. In them God will build new and wondrous works that emerge from all of the times that the anxiety of uncertainty gets the better of us.