Of Prayers Offered and Icons

The academic life, despite its social structures, can so often become very solitary. For us monkish types, that is just a-okay dandy most of the time. But on days like today, the silence and solitude of a library study room can feel not so much comforting as empty. My wife’s brother, Delane, is facing necessary but life-threatening surgery on Tuesday. My wife, Anna, and our child (in her womb) will be traveling in the midst of cold, and possibly stormy, weather over the infamous I-80 tollway. I’ve hit backlog in classes and teaching. It sure feels pretty overwhelming. Especially when I want, and need, to minister to my wife in her own state of anxiousness and concern.

But the responses to the email I’d sent earlier this morning to family and friends about Delane, were deeply encouraging. “I’ll pray for Delane.” “I’ve forwarded your email to five of my Bible study partners. We’ll be praying.” And so it went. I probably got a dozen replies within the first hour. It’s enough to make you cry.

I also headed over to the seminary bookstore, to just sort of go into a mental vegetative state. That’s what us academics do to decompress: browse books. I was drawn, however, not to books, but to icons. And two in particular: the icon of the Crucifixion and the icon of Extreme Humility (the repose of the Savior in the tomb). In ways difficult to articulate, I was deeply moved by these icons. I sure felt empty, yet my emptiness was encompassed by that of the Lord. Indeed, in my emptiness I can, by grace, participate in that of Jesus. But the emptiness which Jesus willingly experienced is an emptiness that ultimate fills us. And so, strengthened by this encounter, I ate a late lunch, and boarded the bus to go teach my evening class.

SDG!