The parking lot was absolutely full behind the Allen Building this evening. That’s where I always park when I go to class, and tonight I could not find a space. But I was early, so I circled around, and I circled around, and I circled around.
It’s not as simple as it sounds, because this lot has two levels, and to get in and get out of each level, you have to swipe your Duke card. So I pulled in, oblivious at first to the frustration that awaited me, and swiped my Duke card (I just want to say that again: I swiped my Duke card. And again: I swiped my Duke card. My Duke card. My Duke Card.), and began to look. Nothing. Not even the semi-legal spaces I often use that are along the edges of the parking lanes.
So I pulled out of the upper level, again swiping my Duke card, and pulled around and into the lower level. Nothing. Out and up again. Out and down again. And again.
I knew that eventually a space would open. It had to. I had no other options being, as I am, unaware of the next closest parking lot. And occasionally some blessed soul would choose to vacate a space, and some lucky soul who was in front of me would take it.
It is mind-numbing activity, this, looking for a parking space. And so my mind turned to the activities of the day, and the song playing on my cd player. And here are some of the words:
The land unfit enough for planting/Barren enough to conceive/Poor enough to gain the treasure/ Enough a cynic to believe
That’s a bevy of contradictions, if ever there was one. But who says that reason always gets to win? Try this on for size: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them…. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back…. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
I find these words unreasonable, not to mention downright distasteful. What good does it do me to love my enemies, particularly if they are willfully and unpredictably unkind? If they are so self-absorbed that their hurtful words come freely and without thought or, worse, deliberately, sharply, but couched in false humor so that any confrontation can be ridiculed? Why would I love someone who knows me intimately enough to be able to meanly criticize the truly imperfect details of my life, and does it just to get his way? Why would I do this?
And then I’m thinking (still circling the parking lot) of another zinger from Jesus, one the children and I had talked about just the day before: “‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.'”
Confused enough to know direction/ The sun eclipsed enough to shine/ Be still enough to finally tremble/ And see enough to know I’m blind
No. Reason, logic, what makes sense– these aren’t always the best rules of thumb. There is something, Someone larger than me, and He is not blind. He asks me to do the unreasonable thing, the strange thing, the impossible thing. It all reminded me of a favorite line from C.S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra:
“‘Courageous. What is that?'”
“‘It is what makes you swim on a day when the waves are so great and swift that something inside you bids you to stay on land.'”
“‘I know. And those are the best days of all for swimming.'”
(Incidentally, I did find a parking space. In keeping with the above contradictions, it was a parking space that wasn’t really a parking space. But I didn’t get a ticket, and I didn’t have to go around the lots 77 times, or even seven, for that matter.)
