The Thing That's Bigger

"The Thing That's Bigger" is an awkward title.  Melville had a better title for his book on the same subject.  He called his story "Moby Dick."

In "Moby Dick," Melville writes about a great white whale that is both malevolent and irresistible.  The central character, Ahab, is as driven a man as Melville could find words to express and he knew where to look for words.  In the book, Ahab spends his life trying to destroy the thing that took his leg, the thing that gave offense.  In the end though, the great whale takes Ahab and his determination and extinguishes him in a great, wild ocean without ever expressing the barest hint of even having been in a fight.  Although the great beast carries scars and wounds, it swims on as it always had.

I'm writing this during Advent.  It's maybe an odd subject for Advent but I think this season is really the season of "The Thing That's Bigger."  The miracle of Christmas, the love of our friends and family stacked on one side, often in stark contrast with our unmet expectations and disappointments and maybe even loneliness on the other.  These two polar opposites can leave us at the bottom of a valley of our own making.  On each side of rise things that are truly bigger than we are. 

The New Testament Joseph faced things bigger than he was.  When he found out Mary (his fiancee at the time) was pregnant with someone else's baby, he decided to break up with her quietly rather than subject her to some of the punishments that were in play at the time.  Then an angel came to Joseph.  The angel said an interesting thing to Joseph.  He said this:  "...do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife..."  That's always hit me as interesting because of the things the angel didn't say.  He didn't say, don't be jealous or don't be angry.  Joseph was afraid.  Whether or not Joseph understood that he was afraid, the angel did.  The angel knew that Joseph was facing The Thing That's Bigger.

It's easy to imagine that seeing an angel would make you brave and help you understand the ins and outs of the problem(s) facing you.  The truth is though that it will be only a brief time until you're distracted, scared by some new facet of the situation or start to doubt that "the thing with angel" happened at all.  Too often our forgetfulness causes us to be afraid.  We think we're mad, hurt, discouraged or even at wits end.  Really though, we're just afraid.

I could probably take pretty good guesses at our common fears because "such is common to man."  None of them really matter though.  What matters is Joseph's decision.  Joseph with the help of the angel decided to not be afraid. 

The thing that Joseph understood before most of the rest of us is that the fact and person of Christ makes fear irrelevant.  We still trip over it and even embrace it.  We dress it up all different ways and get confused about what we're feeling but it's hold on us, it's relevance in our lives is dead.

White whales come in many flavors.  It might be cancer, unemployment, kids behaving badly or any number of other things.  We all face them multiple times during our lifetimes.  When an angel or even Christ himself shows up in whatever form to tell us to not be afraid, he reminds us that we have a different path we can choose.  There's no fear on the path at all unless we bring it with us...and he'll even help us put our fear down.  Remember that the "valley of the shadow of death" isn't the valley of death; it's the valley of the shadow.   The white whales are real but as Joseph learned, they don't matter any more.