The duvet – friend or foe?
Most of us would agree that it is certainly one of life’s irritations to
know that you have to get up, when you are warm and snug in bed after a good
sleep in the midst of a cold, dark winter. While Jack Frost is prancing around
your bedroom early on a January morning, your valiant duvet takes up your
battle, protecting your toes from the nip of Jack’s icy fingers. Yet, as the
day’s work calls, you know that you have to fling aside your defender and enter
the chilled atmosphere of the winter bedroom.
The reason why it is an irritation is quite obvious. You are
torn between your duties and claiming back just a few more minutes under the
duvet. You know what you ought to do, but summoning up the strength to throw
off the bedclothes is very hard, especially as it is so comfortable and warm
there. It is a place where we run to when we are upset or sad or demoralised,
because of its comforting nature. Even the psalmist speaks of the comfort of
his bed when confronted with sadness: ” I
am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim ; I water my
couch with my tears.” The bedclothes have soaked up tears for millennia.
Ultimately, we must leave the embrace of our feather-filled
protector and enter into the reality of the cold world outside.
Just how easy do you find that?
[PAUSE]
There used to be an advert for “duvet days” which depicted
folk wandering about, all bulky and wrapped from head to toe in their sheets,
protected from the sharp corners of the world. It sounds like a terribly good
idea. Why not do such a thing? Yet, imagine the impracticality of living life
wrapped in a duvet. Imagine trying to
drive a car while covered completely in bubble wrap, or doing gymnastics in
thirteen layers of woolly jumpers.
There is, of course, a bigger danger, that in our sleepy
state we miss what is real. If our desire to be protected gets too indulged
then we lose sight of what problems need to be fixed. We would not want to live
our lives in a state of sleepiness and numbness from pain, would we?
[PAUSE]
Pain exists for a reason and none of us live can life
pain-free. We all naturally try to avoid it but somewhere along the line,
because of our human frailty, pain and sorrow are inevitable in every human
life. We try to protect ourselves, our children and our loved ones, but to no
avail. God gave us nerves so that we might be aware when things really are
wrong. The ancient disease of leprosy is so awful due to the injuries people
sustain because they cannot feel pain.
Look how happy the lepers are when they are healed by Our
Lord. They are given the gift of pain
again! They are able to re-join society and in some sense be real people.
Despite their lack of physical pain, they have suffered from being cast out of
acceptable society and shunned, unloved and unwanted. They have been treated as
half-human because of their disease. Theirs was a different pain from the physical,
and Our Lord recognises that as much as He recognises the suffering of
paraplegics, of the blind and the lame, and the pain of losing someone.
Pain lets us know when attention is needed. Sometimes it’s
right to take a headache pill, but the Anadin packet tells us that, if symptoms
persist, consult a doctor. If we prefer to be numb, to remain under Life’s
duvet, then we are not able to know when we are in grave danger.
[PAUSE]
All too often we prefer to ignore the pricking of our
conscience when we have sinned. The
World’s position is to say that sin does not exist, full stop! The World says
that there is nothing to be ashamed of. The World says, “come back to bed and
stop worrying.” But the World is not God, and that is the point.
God is real. He is here in the real world. He is here in the
real pain of animals and people just as much as He is in the joys and ecstasies
of others. He is in the sorrows as well as the joys and that is how we really
experience life. The World promises us a sugar-filled life which is pain free.
Not only does it not deliver a pain free life, but our laziness makes us fat
and unable to move.
[PAUSE]
Laziness is the sin that prompts us to live life from under
the duvet. It is a failure to trust completely in God. It is a failure to
engage with Him in reality and can lead us into worshipping a false god of our
own construction. Associated with this is the eighth deadly sin which is only
known by its Latin name – acedia. Acedia is the sin of giving up on God, a
refusal to be happy, a wallowing in self-pity. This is the soaking-wet duvet of
someone who refuses to believe God when He promises Eternal happiness. It is
most associated with monks and nuns who find their prayer lives so dry and
empty that they give up and fail to persevere.
[PAUSE]
It is easy for us to get discouraged by our sins; they do
hurt God and they do hurt us. But this is what Lent has been about. It is our
chance to change our attitudes to our property, to ourselves, to others and to
God Himself. We are not to run from life in fear of sin, nor to give in to despair
because we have sinned and thus give up. He that shall endure to the end shall
be saved. If we take away only one lesson from Lent this year, let it be the
lesson that we have to keep our Faith alive by dropping the duvet and walking
in the cold light of reality, trusting in the active presence of God in our
lives.
Let us persevere in prayer. Let us persevere in reading and
thinking and talking about God and living a life ruled by Him, trusting in Him
to make Life’s agony worth bearing and Life’s joys point to His kindness to us.
How has Our Lenten discipline prepared
us for this?
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