The Great Gatsby

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning… So we beat on, Boats against the current, Borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is my muse for today’s post. Do you have to read that book to understand it? I’ve read it 5x at the time of this writing. Give it a shot!

The Great Gatsby has resonated with me so deeply, I hardly know just why as yet.

When my Mum passed away, a few short years after my father, a Hope that had been there died. It was an idea hidden there inside me in open sight.

Paint me a picture, of a raging seaside shore line, rocks holding back the tide, and take away one of them, let it leave a vacant space, vacuous shining, blinding white light and I’ll see and know it’s gone.

My childhood had hung on all that time… “I’ve just gotta get this done and then I’ll get to that…” and that, what was that?

“When I have the money, then I’ll make it happen, only money stands in the way.” There’s The Great Gatsby!

My Mum, she’d been safely tucked away, waiting in the nursing home, until she could move into my mansion with green gardens and her own private room, and that oh so comfortable chair. But then she died.

My Green Light shattered!

But my Mum? Her hope had already been realized!

I’d been sent a message that I hadn’t quite needed yet a couple of years before. It lay dormant, that message from God, through my Mum, a message to me when she sweetly sang that song “shrimp boats” on the way home from our night out… it was a clear summer night, and as we drove along she was quiet. Soon I’d be going back to my home 2400 miles away, and she’d be buried in the silence of the miles once again. “Mum” I said, “I want to hear your voice” her reply, so sweet, “what? Singing?” Eagerly I encouraged her, “sure, Mum” She immediately started to sing a song I’d never in my life heard before. It was a song before my time.

“The Shrimp Boats are a coming…”

We had taken her out to eat, at a cheap restaurant, and one of us had brought back some shrimp from the buffet cart, perhaps this had pushed her mind back, past her present moment, past my childhood, back past when she and my Dad wrestled in the back seat of that car in order to conceive my oldest brother, a weight she would bare for the rest of her days, back past to when she sat with her father, mother, brother and sister, as the phonograph played, “Shrimp Boats” by Jo Stanford

Look at the lyrics, When those shrimp boats left homeport they rode high, because there were no shrimp in their holds. But when they returned they rode low, full of the catch…

As I meditated on that song… I mean I put it on back to back repeat and let it permeate my brain, I saw it in my mind’s eye, o felt it in my Spirit, my Mum was ready to go home! Ready to go back to Port, she was satisfied; another name for peace.

…happy, content, satisfied, fulfilled, she walked to the station and waited for the train to take her home, at last.

That’s the poetic image… the stark reality of what some may have seen, a frail old lady in the nursing home. Cold linoleum, white washed, generic walls, her room’s only autonomy was the cork board photo collection.

Those of us here who cling to life‘s hopes wanted her to be a part of it…

… If only money, but if only in that moment of time, then we’d go out to see, we’d go out to sea,

But soon we’d know that life has other storms, other unexpecteds

All the while he appears on the shore and calls out to us, “try the other side…” And if we do! The fish are there!

The obedience that comes from Faith can look so much like the random movements of the rest of my life, but it’s only difference is it’s God’s coaching on the sidelines,

“Now, do it now…”

The drawings and diagrams of the chalkboard are there in our minds eye, and we follow the pattern he taught us, and it’s for the win!

Just then and there we fully realize that he’s prepared us! supplied us! according to the eternal purpose of his will, and our satisfaction is his happy dance there just in front of the bleachers.

We certainly understand what he meant when he said, “ask whatever in my name, and you’ll have it”, we finally know what we tried once upon a time to understand.

I remember how foolishly naïve I felt. How pixelated I thought I might be, following the fairy down that path.

“Seek ye first… “ The fairy said,

And I had to find out, so I followed, just to know, just to see for myself what he meant.

Apart from faith it’s impossible to see him do that happy dance, and Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes from the word about Christ.

We heard him in the garden, “where are you?” And we stepped out into the light of our shame, into the glory of his presence, into the confession of our fall, into the grace of his ever loving plan.

They were handing out green lights, those preachers, and we innocent fish, BIT!!! And the hook was set!

So what saved me from false hope? Hebrews 12 is a clue. My father in heaven, is that guiding hand in my life. Jesus Christ, the light of the world shone there before me through his word. If you seek him, he will let you find him. Hebrews 11:6