Some things come home in your soul. Some things stick, like a stake in the ground that determines a trajectory towards the ultimate. Some of these things are surprising, difficult, even unasked for and therefore all the truer. How does any one of us even know what is really true? What will last that is significant? I have some musings today, which support why I made this piece some years ago on old brown paper using gesso, graphite and pastel. The making of this didn’t take me long, you can see the fast fat brush stroking. But the thinking that prompted this image has been lifelong.

There are universals we all wrestle with: like suffering, choices, the struggle in relationships, the reality of how things fall apart, and the passage of time. When I was young, I used to wonder why things fell apart so easily, it really bothered me. Then in a High School physics class I learned there was actually a thermodynamic law over natural things: the organic systems in our lives: micro and macro are all winding down to randomness. Strangely this gave some comfort knowing this was admitted in science. The thermodynamic law didn’t offer any solution — at that point maybe I didn’t even expect solution — I was just glad there was some reason for what I was observing.

Now I am decades older. I have come to value time for what it offers any one of us while we still have it. Like gravity, time holds us here and allows the opportunity to reflect on things that are bigger than our words or our boundaries. And there are many musers through time who have also recorded their ideas on what is lastingly true. What is over the hill from randomness? And how we can approach that with some integrity?

A 2nd century theologian named Irenaeus posited that objective truth could be known through the attestation or the witness of several distinguishers:

1. Real things, on the ground that we can see and test and touch (not just imagined nor manipulated) are markers. Real things are the basis for reasoning and how we can make decisions, rationally grounded.
2. Then there are things we cannot touch, shared transcendent concerns which are universal, beyond culture and subjectivities. All humans, no matter where living or when living feel fears and longings. These make our hearts beat faster and they can direct decisions too. But unseen things need careful evaluation. ‘What’s the cause, where is this going, what is sure, what can I do now…?’ If we’re alert, we know there’s more than just what is materiel and touchable, we just know little about how to resolve these bigger unseen concerns well.
3. And then there’s things that line up in time. Evidences that direct solidly from the seen to the unseen. One needs the courage or the urgent curiosity to follow the leads. This involves direct engagement with the world but also with the bigger questions that the world can evidence.

Irenaeus said that objective truth enfolds individual subjectivites through the witness of love in time and through time. He began where it all begins in John’s gospel chapter one.

Basically the Creator who made all matter’s systems entered within it all! He came into a certain period of time and pierced it. He took on flesh and in dying He died for all of us. For those who listened to the Hebrew prophets earlier, not all was clear, much was surprising, but then specifics precisely lined up. For those who look back in time to that event, and are alert, can see evidence which is historically incontrovertible in time, on the ground, though still so surprising. He pierced time and lived in time.

He was as fragile as a bird’s nest on purpose, so that He could offer with His own sacrifice of blood what we could never do. We know about flesh and blood and time and cruelty. We don’t know how to break out of it. He did. This was the ultimate intervention into and out of randomness. And what He did in abject love is everlastingly sufficient. This was the stake in our ground. It can be ours simply for the apprehending of it. This is where courage comes in and turns the tables. This is where the unseen things get answered.

This large gesture drawing hangs currently in the lobby at Medical Care in Elizabethton, TN.