December3, 2012
“Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work;” (Isaiah 54:16 KJV)
Smith, my last name, is perhaps the most common name in the English-speaking world. A smith would have been a metal-worker. I can imagine a conversation that went something like this; “Excuse me, sir.” “How can I help you?” “The axle on my cart has broken. Is there someone in town who could repair it?” “Yes, yes there is.” “Proceed to the town square and you’ll find the shop of Jerald the smith.” Eventually, Jerald the smith became Jerald Smith.
A smith takes some raw iron ore and heats in a furnace until it become red-hot and pliable. The metal is placed on an anvil and beaten with a hammer to shape it into a useful form. As the metal cools, it cannot be shaped easily, so it may be repeatedly put back into the furnace, heated and then beaten again before it is done.
Wordsmiths do with words what blacksmiths do with iron. I have great admiration for writers and speakers who can form and shape words with such craft and skill as to evoke emotions and images in the hearer or reader that penetrate to the heart or fire the imagination. Lincoln did that in the Gettysburg Address. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did that on the steps of the Capitol.
Frederick Buechner, the author of the quote at the top of this page, was quite a wordsmith himself. Writing about the Advent season, he plays with the images of light and darkness, the coming of Jesus as the light of the world and the darkness that persists around us and in us.
“We watch and wait for a holiness to heal us and to hallow us, to liberate us from the dark. Advent is like the hush in a theater just before the curtain rises. It is like the hazy ring around the winter moon that means the coming of snow which will turn the night to silver. Soon. But for the time being, our time, darkness is where we are, (Buechner, Listening to Your Life, p. 315).”
I’ve been thinking on his “darkness is where we are” thought for several days now. It neatly, powerfully and concisely describes what I sometimes sense with patients here in the hospital. Being a patient can be a very dark place, sometimes filled with grief over a radical change in their sense of who they are or the narrowing of what had for so long seemed like an open-ended expanse.
It is a holy thing to be invited into that darkness. Tread lightly.
Blessings to you all,
Jerald
