There is something arbitrary about identifying 1st January every year as holding some significance, and yet we do (at least in this part of the world). It is not as though between 31st December and the 1st January there is a change of season. It’s not the winter solstice (the day with the shortest period of daylight, after which day length increases again); that was on the 21st December. Yet every year the transition between the 31st December and 1st January induces reviews of the previous twelve months, predictions for the next twelve, and even manages to induce, in at least some of us, an incoherent and usually unwarranted optimism about what is to come. Not this year.
I started 2023 off with a dose of the ‘flu (the real thing, not the ‘man’ variety). It commenced on New Year’s day, and I went rapidly downhill from there. I’m assuming that if I had not had my ‘flu shot back in the autumn my experience would have been a lot worse. But it was bad enough. It is said that if you feel like you’re dying you have a cold; if you don’t care if you’re dying, it’s the ‘flu. So, instead of long forest or beach walks to clear the mind of Christmas fug, I spent the first week of the year unable to do much of anything, much of it in my bed, and I spent the second week recovering. And when I have the ‘flu it also always messes with my head. Admittedly I didn’t have any serious near-psychotic episodes this time, but there were weird dreams and the occasional loss of place and person. It was all very odd indeed. Bounce into the New Year I did not.
All in all it was a reminder of my frailty and fragility. After all I had been floored by what for someone of my age and generally good health was a fairly minor viral infection. However, as the pandemic reminded us all, frailty and fragility is part and parcel of our human lot. Perhaps partly as a coping mechanism, many of us avoid the reality of just how frail as human beings we are. The reason the pandemic was such a shock to many of us was that, initially there was nothing that could be done. We all had to stay home and hope we didn’t get the bug. And if we did get it, we had to hope it wouldn’t be too bad. And of course for many it wasn’t. And yet intensive care units filled with people who couldn’t breathe, many of whom did not survive. I was scary. How quickly we forget and move on.
But there is value in starting the year off with a reminder of one’s fragility and indeed mortality. I admit this is partly a function of age. When I was twenty I doubt that even a bad dose of the ‘flu would have had much of an impact. There was lots of time to recover and move on, and no need to worry about anything as serious as death. But it is worth bearing in mind that it is only relatively recently that life expectancy has been long enough, and general healthcare good enough, for us to fool ourselves about mortality. Current male life expectancy in the UK is just over 80 years. Given this, my suspicion is that most of us probably spend about the first fifty years of our lives convinced implicitly that we are invincible and immortal, even although we know that we really are not. But there are lots of things to engage with and to keep us busy and distracted. Any younger person whose mind takes a more sober turn is likely to branded morbid. But then one reaches a certain stage in life where contemplating one’s demise in this life becomes much easier. There is a realization that, all other things being equal, one is nearer one’s death than one’s birth (something I wrote about last January).
All of this
would be depressing were it not for the fact that there is a bigger picture. As
important as life in the here and now is, if I really thought that this was all
there is, I’m not sure it would be enough. If I really thought that from this
point all that faced me was an increasing propensity to succumb to disease or
injury, until my resources (plus those of various health professionals) were
exhausted and I was unable to make a recovery, what really would be the point? So
it’s just as well that my conviction is that there really is a bigger picture.
Our very weakness and fragility is a sign, a reminder, that we are created creatures,
and our needs are no accident. The tragedy of Western individualism is that it
has misdirected us, telling us that each of us is all that we need, when this
is clearly not the case. To deny my creatureliness and my createdness is to
deny that I have a Creator, and also to deny myself the resources that He has provided.
Importantly, my Creator is not the remote watchmaker-type creator of the Deist,
but a Creator who is self-described as Father. Henry Lyte captures the reality
well in his famous hymn. As well as writing “Frail as summer’s flower we
flourish; blows the wind and it is gone; but while mortals rise and perish, God
endures unchanging on” he writes: “Father-like
he tends and spares us, well our human frame he knows”. My reality (and I would
suggest yours too) is that I am dependent on Him and created to know Him.
The here and now matters; this physical life now is important. If the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity tells us anything, it is that there is value to these lives lived now in weakness, frailty and dependence. Jesus Himself lived a life like this (and paradoxically a life completely unlike it in other ways). The value of these lives lies partly in what we learn about how things really are, and what we really are or ought to be. To deny all of this is of course a common strategy that has been adopted by humanity from almost the beginning of everything. But such a denial never ends well. Reality has a way of asserting itself eventually and inescapably. So to begin a year by being reminded reality is no bad thing. To be reminded of my real physical and spiritual dependence on my Creator and Father, and to be reminded of His gracious provision of all that I need will keep my focus on exactly where it should be.
