Infinite Both Ways

"Infinite hopes--and fears--may both be yours." -Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"She kept on, went on out of sight, journeying always further into death." -ibid.

I have a friend who commented to me recently that he has been thrown out beyond cliche, out beyond any reasonable expectation, into an abyss, and into truth.

It seems to me that the suffering and joy of the Christian are both infinite--both. Our suffering is the furthest thing in the world away from a kind of rational, comprehensible calculus in which each pain is divinely allowed for the sake of some earthly good to which it is directly tied: you break a bone, and during the scan, the doctor discovers cancer in stages early enough to be treated fully. Sure, that does happen, but the quality of suffering is so much more; it simply doesn't fit into any kind of cost-benefit analysis. You can't say, I'll be in the desert long enough to build up my spiritual constitution and only so long, all for the sake of doing big things for God. The desert is infinite, and you have to wander around in it, glare-blind and parched, until you finally give up and die--and somehow keep going, keep walking, even though you're dead. Deeper and deeper in to death, and thus into life, participating in the sufferings of Christ himself.

The joy is infinite too. It is also not reducible to any cost-benefit analysis; it cannot be contained as one part of my perfect little earthly life and all the plans I have for myself. It bursts those old wineskins open.

On a slightly different note, from MacDonald's Lilith:
'Lilith,' said Mara, 'you will not sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened your hand and yielded that which is not yours to give or to withhold.'
'I cannot,' she answered, 'I would if I could, for I am weary, and the shadows of death are gathering about me--'
'They will gather and gather, but they cannot infold you while yet your hand remains unopened. You may think you are dead, but it will only be a dream; you may think you have come awake, but it will still be only a dream. Open your hand, and you will sleep indeed, then wake indeed.'
'I am trying hard, but the fingers have grown together and into my palm--' . . .
The princess turned her eyes upon Eve, beseechingly. 'There was a sword I once saw in your husband's hands,' she murmured. 'I fled when I saw it. I heard him who bore it say it would divide whatever was not one and indivisible.' . . .
'Bring it, Adam, and cut me off this hand that I may sleep.'
'I will,' he answered.

O God, lead me deeper and deeper into death, do what you must, and save me.