Lessons from Gatsby.

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." - The Great Gatsby. 

I love this because it speaks to me about perseverance. It is the quality that is written into our DNA that calls us to persist.  When I'm out running I look at all of the trees that align and shade the path that I stumble down in the heat and the cold of the varying seasons.  Sometimes I think about how remarkable a tree is.  How they don't just spring up of nowhere, all of a sudden, raining down oranges or pears like magic.  They have their magic in other ways.  They have this way of starting from nearly nothing, just a little seed, and from there they take their root and work so painfully slow to grab their first splashes of sunlight out of the soil.  Trees have this way of defying gravity and odds to shoot upward, to the sky, to stand with strength and purpose, steadily breathing out their oxygen and giving us our air and our shade and our fruit.  

I love that about trees.  

I remember a conversation that Lukas and I had a long, long time ago.  I can't remember what the specifics were surrounding the talk, but I remember what he said to me at the end, these words so encouraging: "It's just like what David said, you are a tree planted by streams of water who will bear its fruit in season."  I sure hope you were right, David and Lukas.

And while Fitzergerald talks about the way Man is, letting all those flames try to burn away who we are to be, letting all amount of fresh and present circumstances try and topple who we were formed long ago to become is no match for what was stored up and imprinted into these ancient hearts of ours. 

We persist.  We persist not because of who we are, but because of who made us.  We persevere towards our home because it is always where we were meant to be.  We struggle up like tiny trees finding the first break of day through the dark ground.  It may not be who we are in this present moment, but it is who we are in the end, and ultimately it is what drives us onward.  

We persist on in our ghostly hearts for this weight loss.  For students in ministries everywhere that long to be loved. For our jobs behind a desk or in a lab or in a classroom.  Each task taking us "further up and further in". We fight on now for relationships that have not yet seen summer.  For a bride that is waiting, for a child with eyes like ours.  

We press on, or we hope to, or we long to, because of Jesus.  I really do believe that this is where it all came from.  In John's haunting book that closes out scripture, the mystery and beauty called "Revelation", there is an intriguing thing that happens.  Jesus is talking to the seven churches of Asia Minor.  He talks to them as if he knows them, going back over their triumphs and their struggles, and at the end of each part, he makes a promise... 

He tells them that whoever will overcome will eat from a tree called "Life."  That whoever will overcome will not taste a death that is final.  For you, my friends who overcome- you will have a new name.  You will be children of God. 

Is this all a myth?  I guess that in someway it is up to each of us to decide now whether we believe it or not.  But either way, you know there is this piece of you that wants to fight on through death, that wants to grow up into the sky like a great tree: green leaves shaking in the blue. 

But what fire or freshness comes to us today we cannot name or know. But will we overcome in this bright new morning?  Will we fight on with the Life running in our veins?  Do these little things matter?  Maybe we're just seeds, just little insignificant things without a hope or a prayer.  But maybe not forever.  Maybe we can overcome in these small things today.  Maybe we can choose to love, to forgive, to be merciful and kind.  Maybe we really can rise up out of the dark earth and sway underneath the sun in the day and the stars at night. Maybe, just maybe. 

I believe its worth a shot.

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