At the Sea of Galilee I looked out over the waters, to the hills, and the sky, and I saw what our Lord himself must have seen, the same topography, the same rises and falls.
And in Nazareth I saw this: a middle-aged man walking with his son. The son was 15 or 16, with wild eyes and a wild smile, neck straining, head at a crooked angle, stumbling and twitching down the sidewalk. Flapping his arms.
I looked away, as we do. I didn’t want to see it—not there, in Nazareth.
But later I remembered. I remembered how patiently the father managed to get the boy into a car. I remembered how heroic the father seemed, and how terribly burdened.
And I believe in the dove, too, descending from the sky. I believe in the wind blowing against the door. I believe the man who wept over Jerusalem entered into it, and let it enter into him, and we must, too, and when we do, when we feel what we must feel, we will rise with him and we will live with him and somehow, in the midst of this sadness and loss, there is joy, too, joy we can’t explain and don’t have to because it’s real, it exists, it’s true.
All of it. All at once.
from Light When It Comes (Eerdmans 2016)