Resistance

 

During the past 12 months small signs with the word, "Resist", have popped up in our neighborhood.  Nothing more, no indication of who is called upon to resist or whom it is that the sign is encouraging others to resist.  Like I, you may have your guesses as to whom or what the sign-poster is urging resistance depending on one's political persuasions.  Are these bold, single-word encouragements being posted to remind us of the danger of not resisting, of subtle, threatening powers that must now be withstood, or... or what?

A recent Advent reading prompted me to think about resistance from another vantage.  In its hubris, humanity encourages the belief that, whether God is there or not - if there, then disinterested or, likely, impotent - we are on our own.  It is within our capabilities, as the boasting crescendos, to fashion our race's future into one that is disease-, poverty-, illiteracy-, and judgment-free.  (Increasingly, liberated from truth claims that weigh us down, there are those who would add religion- and gender-free to those boasts.)  

From the perspective of the Almighty such pomp is pointless and powerless.  We believers praise and find great comfort in the omnipotent authority that God holds and wields.  I for one, however, may overlook that His holy and peerless mercy cannot be resisted or opposed successfully.  The Advent reading - with poem included - alerts me to the irresistible compassion of the living Lord God to persistently pursue ones, who resist His position and  unrelenting posture of everlasting mercy.  Mercy.  Mercy keeps being offered to all who resist His mercy apart from their desire or perceived need of that mercy, until resistance is worn down and the water of life runs free.  

What a vivid word picture does Denise Levertov paint!

To live in the mercy of God

     ... waterfall flinging itself
     unabating down and down

     to clenched fists of rock.
     Swiftness of plunge,
     hour after year after century...

     Arcs
     of steelwhite foam, glissades
     of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
     rage or joy?
     Thus, not mild, not temperate,
     God's love for the world. Vast
     flood of mercy
     flung on resistance.