Daily Bread and Daily Woes

"Oh dear, oh dear," said Lucy. "...I thought you'd come roaring in and frighten all the enemies away--like last time. And now everything is going to be horrid."
"It is hard for you, little one," said Aslan. "But things never happen the same way twice."
--C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

It's so easy to be lured into the depths of memory...a seductive and beautiful place where even melancholy seems romantic and the blackness of utter despair is brilliantly outshone by the light at the end of the tunnel finally reached. It's both a blessing to look back and say, "My my, that really did turn out quite nicely in the end" and a thing of frustration when you are in the thick of a new problem that is not appearing to turn out so nicely.

In our childhood, our mindsets are completely formed by a rootedness in the past, where "But we always do it this way" is a perfectly logical argument, and we make decisions solely on how it turned out the last time. But as we grow older, our focus shifts to the hope in an abstract future. We become aware that we are breaking through the future at any given moment and that, lo and behold, it's not always how it was the last time.

Lately I have been convicted of my habit to always look to the past for answers, looking to memories as standards of happiness rather than looking at what I have today and this moment. A small example of this is that I cannot seem to be happy with even a beautiful, warm, humidity-free 75-degree day in Chicago because I internally grumble, "It would be a LOT prettier if there were mountains to look at," thinking back to my daily views of a scintillating Mount Rainier in last summer's northwest sun.

I have been very aware of missing places and people lately, and convicted of the fruitlessness of longing, and the sin of discontentment in God's special mercies for each hour (even though I don't think I'll ever be convinced that an hour spent at the Skokie Wal-Mart is as precious as an hour spent in Antigua, Guatemala, even in the eyes of Jesus). I am concerned that when I get to Chile I will spend nights not in a Bellavista neighborhood outdoor cafe with a glass of Concha y Toro merlot and a view of the Andes at twilight, but driven by my discontentment watching episodes of "Gilmore Girls" on youTube, trying to gather bits of comfort and indulgent nostalgia.

I don't think there is anything wrong with watching Gilmore Girls in a foreign country, mind you, but I do think there is something wrong with my reverence for the past just because it's something that seems more pretty or comforting or in every way desirable than my current situation. Just because things are not "how they used to be" or "how they were last time," I sometimes pass them off as not as valuable, beautiful, or ultimately beneficial as past experiences. But there is memory being seductive again--of course it is easy to think things were better before, because you see how they have worked out. In the present, you have no idea how it will work out. That is a lot less attractive than the neatly-packaged memories of yore.

In response to a brief meditation (read: frantic questions) concerning this idea of missing and nostalgia, Ben wrote me this: I must tell you this, at least to a point this life IS one of missing, of lacking and of not really knowing what it was. I guess the beatific vision will be the end of this, but a sense of getting to know happiness, or at least contentedness, is coming to terms with always lacking SOMETHING.

This summer, mountains; last summer, Chicago friends. My daily bread may not always be just like yesterday's bread, but how confined our God would be if He gave us what we were always used to, what we had last time.