The Wisdom That Comes With Age

“King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon…
‘How do you advise me to answer these people?’ They answered him, ‘...speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.’ But he disregarded the advice the older men gave and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him” (I Kings 12:6).

I’ll be sorry when our iconographer completes his task of surrounding our temple with beautiful icons. It’s always interesting to hear the comments of those who voice their opinions on the work in progress. One might think that he would add pigments to the white surface until he arrives at skin tone; but it’s not how it’s done. The master begins the faces and hands of his subjects by applying dark colors. Gradually he lightens the area until he arrives at the proper skin tone. Essentially he is recapitulating the work of the Holy Trinity in bringing out the true nature of the human being. We start in darkness and grow towards the light. We gestate in our mothers’ wombs, then we come into this world and by our deeds and life styles either increase in radiance, or else we stumble in darkness, losing our direction through the world and calling it “the good life.” If we continue to burnish our faces and grow in the ways of the Lord, we will be preparing ourselves for the vision that the three select apostles had witnessed at the Holy Transfiguration.

The way to salvation is not an easy one, and our society does not help us much to attain it. Ours is a youth-oriented culture, with all the tendencies of the young. We are conditioned to be impulsive, quick to speak and slow to ponder. Like the spectators of the partially drawn icons, the typical American cannot wait to see how it will come out at the end. He must blather his half-thought criticisms on a half-completed icon. Of course one can live and die without gaining an appreciation of the beauty of Orthodox icons. Indeed, most western Christians fall into that category. It is tragic, however, to go through life in a helter-skelter way, not considering that one might develop in acquiring virtues, gaining some perspective from the experiences that come to us all, both successes and failures, happy times and sad, satisfactions and frustrations. These are what mold and shape a human being on the way to the Kingdom of God.

Much that we are taught as Orthodox Christians is designed to help us achieve that overview. When we pray in the morning, we ask a blessing for the day. When we pray at bedtime, we sum up the experiences of the day and put them in perspective. When we are taught to “keep the Sabbath day holy,” or rather to refrain from work on Sundays, the reason is beneficial to us as human beings, not an abstract command from a God Who takes into account how we reacted to the events of the week and the way it fashions who we are, but rather to make time for reflection and perspective.

Not by accident was the early church first called The Way. Christianity is a journey through life. Just as we are never the same after having the adventure of a faraway vacation, so much more are we transformed as we make the pilgrimage through this world and into the next. You are called to become the person whom the Lord fashioned you to be in His plan for you. You are like the icons on the wall as the master works on them, on the way to perfection—at least in theory. And you won’t know who you really are in this lifetime; but you are given the challenge of self-discovery with hints as to the outcome.