The Blessed Thread

I was in the car with my twelve-year-old son Max this past week. I still have a few years of driving him around and I am cherishing them. He asked me a question.

If you could be anyone in history, who would you be?

I thought about it for a while. I knew that I would want to be near Jesus, to know him. I thought of Mary Magdalene, but I was too scared to be possessed by demons. I thought of Peter but I really didn’t like the thought of being crucified upside down. So I settled on John. I would want to be John. He knew and loved Jesus and he lived to a ripe old age. And he got to write books. Perfect!

You see, when the rubber hits the road, I want to be near Jesus but I don’t want to have to suffer. I don’t want martyrdom or exorcisms. I don’t want to starve or be stoned. I just want the easy life with Jesus. I just want Jesus to come easy for me. Isn’t that what we all want?

If you asked a seven-year-old girl to write an essay about what it will be like for her to fall in love and get married, you will not find that she knows much about it.

If you ask a three year old to plan his diet, he will eat candy and ice cream, for he does not know what is good for him.

So it is with us. We think that we know what is best for us but we have no idea because we are children and God is God.

The truth is that we don’t get to pick who we are. We just are. But Jesus does give us words today about what it takes to be blessed. And his words are really hard.

Blessed means happy, fortunate, favored by God. Jesus says that we are blessed when we are poor. Basically, we are fortunate in God’s eyes when we are poor.

Which makes no sense at all. As Saint Paul said, the wisdom of God sounds like foolishness to us. And this does sound a bit crazy.

You are blessed when you are poor.

I spent this past week trying to make sense of these words. I did some research. The word poor in the ancient Greek refers to a physical gesture, to bending over and holding out your hands for help. When a poor man asked for help, he would bow and hold out his hands.

Blessed are you when you have to ask for help.

But I don’t want to have to ask for help. I don’t want to be poor, or hungry or grieving. I just want Jesus.

Why does life have to be hard sometimes? Why can’t we just get what we ask for every time we pray? Why is the world so broken and people lost and refugees suffering and people disagreeing?

Why can’t Jesus just make it all better? Why does it have to get harder first?

And why are we blessed when life is hard, when we are forced to ask for help?

Over 150 years ago, George MacDonald wrote a children’s book called The Princess and the Goblins. George MacDonald knew that telling children’s stories sometimes is the best way to point to the mysteries of God. C.S. Lewis loved George MacDonald and modeled his Narnia series off of some of George’s stories.

In The Princess and the Goblin, Irene is eight years old. She finds a magic room in her attic and every once in awhile her fairy grandmother appears there. Irene wishes that her grandmother was always in the room. She asks her grandmother for a way to reach her, so her fairy grandmother gives her a ring with a thread tied to it, and the thread is connected to a ball of thread. Her grandmother explains that she will hold the ball of thread and Irene is to keep the ring.

“But I can’t see the thread,” the little girl says.

“That is right, you can’t see it, but you can feel it,” says the grandmother. And Irene tries to feel the thread and sure enough, she can feel it.

“Listen closely,” instructs the fairy grandmother. “If you are ever in danger, put the ring under your pillow and then put your forefinger on the thread. Follow the thread and it will lead you to me, for I will not let go of the ball of thread. “

“Oh, yes! I will do that!” exclaimed the girl.

“The way that the thread leads you may not make sense to you. You may wonder where you are going and why. It may seem roundabout but trust that while you still hold the thread, I hold it too.”

So the girl goes back to her room and just a few days later, goblins get into her house. Irene is afraid but she has the presence of mind to put the ring under the pillow and to put her finger on the thread. “Now, the thread will lead me safely away from the goblins,” she thinks. But to her dismay, the thread leads her in the opposite direction, not up to the attic to her grandmother but downstairs, through the house and outside toward the cave of the goblins themselves.

Inside the cave, the thread leads to a great pile of rocks. “This can’t be!” cries the girl. “This can’t be the way!” Irene tries to turn back but when she does so, the thread just disappears. She begins to cry, but the image of her grandmother’s loving face flashes before her eyes. Irene remembers that she trusts her grandmother so she begins moving the rocks. She moves them and moves them until her hands are bleeding and tears are streaming down her face. She continues to tear down the heap of stones pulling and shifting the rocks until she hears a small voice. It is Curdie, her friend who has been trapped behind the pile of rocks in the goblins cave.

“How did you find me?” Curdie asks. She is astonished.

“I followed my grandmother’s thread,” exclaims Irene.

“Great! Let’s get out of here!” exclaims Curdie. But Irene tells her that she must continue to follow the thread and it leads deeper into the cave. Irene keeps on digging down into the stones. When Curdie begs her to stop, Irene just explains that this is the only way forward, because she trusts her grandmother.

You are blessed when you finally ask for my help, says God. When you are poor enough to realize that your way does not lead to life. You are blessed when you learn to follow my will and not your own. You are blessed when you follow me, even when it doesn’t make any sense at all. I may take you to places that may be very hard. You will wonder if I know what I am doing. You will wonder why you have to suffer but I want you to trust me. Never let go of me. I am the only one who can lead you home.

It is important to remember that the goblins made the pile of rocks. And so in life, there are things that happen in this broken world that God did not originally intend: illness, injustice, grief. But we must trust God to lead us through these things. Rather than running away from the darkness, if we ask for help, we can move through it to the other side.

You are blessed when you ask for my help, says Jesus, for I know the way.

I am the way.