Courage
I don’t feel very courageous these days. I feel tired, and shell-shocked, and limp. I feel frayed. I don’t know if you can feel courageous when you’re frayed. But I also don’t think courage is only available when you feel bold and strong and good. I don’t think the courageous people I know constantly feel brave, and I bet a lot of the time they must feel weak. In fact, during the year that I chose the word courage, it mostly meant being vulnerable. It meant showing up and telling the truth. It meant being honest with myself and with the people I loved. It meant naming my flaws and weaknesses.
When used in the Old Testament, the word courage is always paired with human weakness and God’s grandness. It is never, not once, about what people can do – it’s about what God can do when we step aside and allow him to take a shot at forging the battle plans. Strangely, I love the example of Isaiah 41:13-14: “For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob, little Israel, do not fear, for I myself will help you, declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.” I immediately cringed at the use of worm to describe people — it felt somehow derogatory. But then I remembered how much I loved worms as a kid, digging through the mud and finding the longest one, creating little homes for them only to find they were nowhere to be found the next day, having burrowed themselves back underground. I wonder, now, if the word worm here is used lovingly, tenderly. In comparison to an all-knowing, all-powerful God, my little life is quite worm-like. There is very little I can do in the world besides make my small space, move some soil around, do what good I can for the place I’m in. We are necessary, but small.
What’s also interesting is that the word courage is nowhere to be found in the New Testament. The closest thing we find are the words “confidence” (to be discussed in the later years of my life), and the command of Jesus to “take heart.” I love this phrase. He says it to the paralyzed man in Matthew 9:2 (“take heart, son; your sins are forgiven”), and then to the woman who touched his cloak in Matthew 9:22 (“take heart, daughter…your faith has healed you”). Take heart. It has nothing to do with grand plans or world change, really. It has everything to do with humbling yourself enough to seek healing. It’s about hope.
Hope — the precedent to any act of courage. I have lacked it, recently. In fact, I’m not sure I ever really had it – the real kind of hope, not the idealistic optimism I used to call by the same name. My idealism hasn’t lived past a deep and perpetuating view of poverty, of broken systems and broken people, of my own ineptitude to do much to change any of it – my own failure to be loving in the face of such despair. I suppose that’s the opposite of courage, and of hope: despair, and bitterness. I was watching the Two Towers the other day, and became completely absorbed in the scene where Helm’s Deep is being captured. Theoden, the King, has completely lost hope. The children are crying. The women are hugging each other goodbye. “So much death,” says Theoden. “What can men do against such reckless hate?” I felt his despair in my bones. I thought of the hundreds of Haitians who have been trafficked into slums in Columbus and who might be homeless soon. I thought of the families who I have put in unaffordable homes due to the housing shortage. I thought of the refugee camps, the racism, the violence that just keeps on going. I thought of my own complicity and faults.
And then Aragorn looks at Theoden. “Ride out with me,” he says. “Ride out and meet them.” He says it before he remembers that there might be salvation on the other side of the dawn. He says it knowing they will both die. He says it anyway; he says it to spite despair, to choose hope, and therefore courage, when it was completely absurd to do so. They ride out, and because it’s a movie, they obviously don’t die. Help shows up, and the giant trees do their work, and we’re on to the third movie. But still, that’s why these stories have endured, right? In some way, they resonate with our own lives. They tell us the truth about ourselves. It made me think of these verses in Ephesians:
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. ”
I don’t have the power to fight these battles, and I didn’t 12 years ago. But I’m realizing that it’s never been about adrenaline — it’s always been about the Holy Spirit. God is the only thing I will always have, and that faith rekindles my hope, which then allows me to keep serving, to keep loving, in a world where everything seems to always be on fire. Courage is first knowing who I am: small, little, a drop in the ocean – but deeply loved by God. And then courage is choosing to live into that life with God. It is choosing to put on truth, and goodness, and peace, and healing. It is choosing to live a Spirit-filled life, to ride out into the danger knowing that, if all else fails, at least we have God to hold us up. Courage is acknowledging our weakness, naming God’s goodness, and riding out anyways. Lift up your eyes – the dawn is coming. Look to the east. We may win this battle yet.