It was my daughter who reminded me that sometimes, in real life, things just keep going wrong and getting worse – as was the case in A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It’s not just sometimes for some people, but nearly always.
Paul Simon makes the same observation in one of his songs…
Some folks’ lives roll easy as a breeze…
Some folks’ lives never roll at all…
But most folks’ lives
Oh, they stumble, Lord, they fall…
We live in a fallen world, a world not in balance, a world not given to fairness. I had forgotten that at the end of A Fine Balance. My feelings were too raw to make sense of what I had just read. Now, I can understand Maneck’s reason for doing what he did. There was a time in my life when nothing made sense – life seemed pointless. And, my bitter disappointment made me anything but fun to be with. I saw myself as a millstone of negativity around the neck of my family. The only solution was to swim out to sea and not come back. That way, nobody could know for sure if I had done it on purpose or drowned accidentally, and I would have spared my wife and my two little boys a lifetime of guilt and shame.
But it never came to that because someone started talking to me about Jesus. Oh, yes, I scoffed, “Not another Jesus freak!” It took a fortnight of influenza, a secular book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and a movie made in Hollywood, Ben-Hur, to bring me to my knees. Maneck, however, never got to hear what I heard or to see what I saw. No one threw him a lifeline. Seeing his tailor friends reduced to begging was so unfair, that, for him, life no longer made sense. Like the kids in The Sound of Music, singing DoReMi, he was confused and thinking, “But it doesn’t mean anything!” I understand him now, and I can forgive Rohinton Mistry for the bleakness of his story and the tragedy of its conclusion. I only wish I had been there to grab him before he fell.
In Psalm 73 we read of a man who had almost stumbled when he observed the prosperity of the wicked and was envious. They seemed to live trouble-free lives, to grow rich and fat, even while they strutted and scoffed, threatened oppression, and shook their fists at God; while his life was a struggle. It wasn’t until the writer came into the presence of God that he learned how to interpret the situation. It’s not until he ‘saw’ the end of their story that he became thankful not to be in their slippery place, heading for ruin. Better to have God as your refuge than to be bitter and twisted with ignorance and envy.
Quotable quote
Augustine suggests a test for why you might consider the Bible as a guide: Does it provide guidance you couldn’t get elsewhere? Even if the way it delineates is difficult, does it look like a way out, a way home? If every other map has left you lost, what’s to lose trying out this one? In Augustine’s experience, the Word was like an enchanted map. It not only told him, “You Are Here” and pointed him toward home; it also gave him legs to run.
From On the Road with Saint Augustine –James K. A. Smith
Creation observation
From the soundtrack of my life
I came to the Beatles’ after their pop became serious with Revolver and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I played A Day in the Life over and over. But it was the songs of George Harrison that had the biggest impact, for example: Long, Long, Long on The White Album. After they split up, his triple vinyl album All Things Must Pass became a guide to my spiritual life. He had embraced Krishna whom he called My Sweet Lord. Even though I wasn’t believer at that time, when I sang it I had Jesus in mind. When he urged us to call on the Lord, and sang, with great longing, “Hear me, Lord,” I unwittingly stored up those words so that, when I was in dire need of help, I took them and prayed them to the One I still didn’t know. To my surprise God heard me and led me in the path I was to take. It’s almost 50 years ago, but I am still grateful that God can take the words of an unbeliever and make them a prayer for a soon-to-be believer.
In My Life 
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