Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers. - Clyde Staples Lewis

Sometimes Sunday afternoons are the worst.

Not always. Actually, its rare. Most Sunday afternoons I'm busy teaching the Senior High youth group at church. Then there's the 16 glorious weeks or so that I'm straight away to the sports bar to meet up with my best bud Dave and see how bad my fantasy team is performing that week. But the NFL can't be there for you all the time, alas.

For me, as I travel to work on Monday mornings, Sunday afternoons are usually a rush of laundry and packing and bills and mail and whatnot, so that I can have a few hours free in the evening to chill, as it were, although it seems that's usually the unobtainable ideal.

But then there are those random Sunday afternoons, like the ones on a holiday weekend, where we don't have youth group, and I get home early, and I don't really feel like starting the responsible tasks of the day.

The worst ones are always, ironically (cosmically), the ones where worship was such a beautiful thing that morning. I felt God in my heart in so many ways, and that's something I haven't felt so much, so often, for so long. I felt His sorrow for the ways in which I've betrayed Him, in the morning's Reflection:

In any group of teacher and disciples the disciple was never permitted to greet his teacher first, since this implied equality. Judas' sign, therefore, was not just a signal to the mob, but a deliberate insult, and final repudiation of his relationship with Jesus. - Moses Auerbach

I felt His ever-present love in the Psalms in our Call to Worship:

We praise you Lord, who crowns us with love and compassion, who satisfies our desires with good things so that our youth is renewed like the eagle's...From everlasting to everlasting your love is with those who fear you..

I felt drawn to Him and into the body in the Renewal:

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son purifies us from all sin... - 1 John 1

I felt my utter, utter need in the Prayer of Confession:

Though you should guide us, we inform ourselves. Though you should rule us, we control ourselves. Though you should fulfill us, we console ourselves...For we think your truth too high, your will too hard, your power too remote, your love too free. But they are not! And without them, we are of all people most miserable...

I felt my desire to truly turn back to him, re-awakened in the African-American spirtiual first written by Joseph Hart in 1759 - I Will Arise and Go to Jesus:

Let not conscience make you linger,
nor of fitness fondly dream.
All the fitness He requireth
is to feel your need of Him.

I will arise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms.
In the arms of my dear Savior, oh,
there are ten thousand charms.

I understood Mark's account of Jesus' arrest in a completely new light, through the sermon:

Then everyone deserted him and fled.

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen gament, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. - Mark 14:50-52

You see, all 4 of the Gospels recount the story of Jesus' arrest in quite some detail, and yet Mark was the only writer to capture the story of this young man, which occurred after everyone had deserted Christ. Its not entirely unsubstantiated to suspect that this young man may have been Mark himself - recreating, as N.T. Wright noted, the naked flight from God in the garden, all over again. Inviting me, as it were, to put myself into the story, to see myself in that same state.

And I pondered this all, set to the brassy strains of Edwald's Vivo from Quintet No. 3.

I experienced all of this and more in my wonderful, huge church, on this windy, cold winter morning. How could this lead me to the worst of afternoons?

Its quite simple.

Think of the most beautiful sight you have ever seen. Go ahead, it may take you a minute to recall, and even then to evaluate or decide. It may be the sunset over a deep blue sea, perhaps the wisp of snow off of soaring peaks, or deer in a meadow in the fog of dawn, with Half Dome rising above the trees.

Think of the most beautiful sound you've ever heard. Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites in G Major, maybe just a thunderstorm, or children laughing.

The best taste to ever cross your lips - beef braised to tender perfection, or avacado in a mustard glaze. A '90 French Bordeaux. Or maybe just plain old macaroni and cheese when you hadn't had anything to eat in days.

We may enjoy these wonderful things for what they are, yet our deepest enjoyment of them isn't found when we hoard them for our own experience. The finest wine, the most breath-taking vista, the sweetest strains - all fall lost on us if we can't see the gleam in the eyes of another person realizing the same thing that we have. We were created in this way - its simply not in our nature to be able to know the fullness of something, anything, on our own. Alone, we cannot have that complete joy that we know when we have an otherwise identical encounter in the presence of others.

This is where I get to on these rare afternoons. The sun sets so painfully slow, but the hours pass all too fast in the end. I have these wonderful truths bubbling up in my heart, and no cups into which to pour the overflow. I know that God puts me here, at times, for a reason, but I still struggle in these times when I feel like I'm missing out on the complete experience. It feels like I'm watching things through a one-way mirror: I see and hear and know the situation for what it is, but I'm not part of it as if I were in the room itself, breathing the same air.

I must be clear: when I say these are the worst, it is not so much out of a spirit of complaint, as it is yearning. I think my namesake did a fair deal of this in his writings.

I know He's given me good friends to call or meet for dinner or just simply blog at, and I return to Him even with these words, with a trust that will not fade, and... I wait.