Disappointment: there’s no other word for it. We find ourselves distraught. We face a cheerless Christmas. The fell clutch of circumstance has throttled the three positives that had happily installed themselves at the back of our minds. Paul in one of his soaring moments lauded faith, hope and love, to such effect that they have resided in our folk memory and have found a place in wedding ceremonies for generations. They are now at the present moment in a state of collapse. Our Christmas plans are wrecked and we are wondering what we can cling on to. We are distraught.
Yet that is not the end of the matter. Downcast we may be but this is not the first time that our tranquillity has been shattered. Neither is it the first time we have been made to think of what really matters in life. Few of us have had an unimpaired comfortable, easy-going life. Our best poet in his best of sonnets considered the same thing as Paul had in mind when he wrote 1 Corinthians 13. Shakespeare, man of the world, familiar with the ins and outs of human nature, put it like this: ‘Love’s not time’s fool.’ He went on to say that love ‘bears it out, even to the edge of doom.’ Set-backs and deep disappointments do not endure. Love does.
We have to remember what kind of a man it was who put together what we know as 1 Corinthians 13. He was a man who could look back on times when he was five times under the lash, when he was cold, hungry, imprisoned, shipwrecked and left for dead at the hands of a lynch-mob. He endured, knowing that the grace of God guaranteed that there are greater things than misfortune. His lord and ours had shown the way to death being swallowed up in victory. Jesus identified himself with our fragile humanity without reserve. In doing that he accomplished our salvation.
We face disappointment, then. Yet by the grace of God we are confident that faith in Christ puts us in touch with what is sold, lasting and fulfilling. After all our troubles we can hold on to the belief that the best is yet to be. With George Matheson we can say: ‘I trace the rainbow through the rain.’ Or if we cannot go so far as to say that now, we can bear it in mind for when we can.
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