Dealing With Impossibilities

I face sev­eral impos­si­bil­i­ties each day of my life, and I know you do too. The cat­e­gories range from finances to failed rela­tion­ships. They include health con­cerns and career lim­i­ta­tions. Some deal with out-of-control chil­dren and aging par­ents. The obsta­cles seem to grow a lit­tle faster than I am able to scale them. I am Sisy­phus, for­ever push­ing a giant rock up a moun­tain, only to watch it tum­ble to the bot­tom at the end of the day. I sleep. I get up. I put my shoul­der to that all too famil­iar rock, and I begin the day’s push.
You would think, that under these cir­cum­stances, I would be unhappy. I am not. That is the really weird thing about life. Some­how we get up each day and begin the impos­si­ble quests all over again. Are we insane, or is this just the nature of life itself?
I think it is all about the soul. The appar­ent point of life is not win­ning against inevitably impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tions. It is hav­ing the dig­nity and courage just to con­tinue the bat­tle. There is some­thing redemp­tive about life. No mat­ter what the mis­ery, there is an essen­tial hope that keeps us in motion. All around, I see peo­ple in greater strug­gles with less com­plaint. By that I am hum­bled. Maybe that is the point of it all!
Jesus will­ingly par­tic­i­pated in the inevitable trap set by Judas and the reli­gious lead­ers of his day. He saw the social noose tight­en­ing and chose to let it run its course. The impos­si­bil­ity posed by cru­ci­fix­ion and death became his avenue to an eter­nal state. Maybe that is how we are sup­posed to han­dle all of this. We live bravely until it gets us, then we just go on liv­ing. Life after divorces, bank­rupt­cies, deaths, and pro­fes­sional fail­ures some­how goes on — in a vari­ety of forms. You will not suc­ceed against the impos­si­bil­i­ties of this life, but you will inevitably win.