Making Meaning

Dave Brisbin 3.29.20 Fascinating thing about human nature is that we will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty and find meaning in the events and circumstances around us. And the bigger the event or circumstance, the bigger the cause needs to be to give the event the meaning we crave. But events, circumstances, and object don’t have meaning in themselves—they’re inanimate objects. If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it mean anything at all? It’s we who must bring meaning to the events and circumstances we experience. When we stop asking why something is happening, what it means in itself and start asking how it is teaching us and growing us, then meaning becomes clear…not in the event or circumstance but in ourselves. The first few verses of the book of James could have been written to us right now in the middle of this pandemic. James is trying to get his own people, faced with the persecution and societal meltdown of mid first century Israel, to completely reframe the questions they were asking so they could begin to see the meaning for themselves in the hardship. Because once that meaning comes clear, we can endure anything—knowing it is the very thing that will take us where we really want to go.