More Alive than We Thought

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

Picking up a few things at my local Walmart, I noticed three T-shirt slogans in the span of five or ten minutes, each a variation on a theme.

One, worn by a young woman pushing a cart with a baby, read “This mama needs a nap.” Another, on an older man shopping with his wife and (I assume) grandchildren, proclaimed something like “Retired … But still tired.”

I can’t recall the third T-shirt, but it broadcast a similar sentiment: I’m worn out. Those few minutes made me realize just how much weariness has become a shared experience in our culture.

Some days we don’t feel fully alive so much as simply tired. Our exhaustion may be physical, but often it has emotional and spiritual roots as well.

Don’t a lot of us wish for more stamina, for alertness that doesn’t come merely from caffeine or a so-called energy drink? As Tish Harrison Warren writes in What Grows in Weary Lands, “All of us hit points in our lives where we’re out of steam, where we can’t get traction, where we feel lifeless or tired, disoriented and unsure of ourselves. Things seem hard, maybe harder than we think they should be.”

Sometimes it’s simple monotony that weighs on us. We feel stuck, as Kate Bowler put it, “in a Groundhog Day of the same, same, same.”

Or we worry, worry about all kinds of things, which leaves less emotional energy for what we face or try to get done. “Right now, circumstances have shaken up the snow globe,” wrote Anne Lamott recently, tongue only slightly in cheek, “and for nervous cases such as myself, it is hard to get my bearings.” The extreme polarizing takes a toll. The latest war news or political folly makes you toggle through more kinds of anxiety than you knew existed. For people in the “sandwich generation,” caught between caring for aging parents and raising children, the demands seem to drain the reserves needed to love others creatively or create something good.

We may sense the need for a kind of internal reset—a change in habits or patterns that have grown stale, musty. But from what little we’ve tried, we still end up tired. We worry that we have run out of possibilities. We settle into the doldrums, barely getting by.

How can you feel more alive when mostly you feel tired?

Spiritual resources help me here. Especially the Bible’s stories of blessed reversal, of outcomes that don’t rely only on mere human resources. Alan Koppschall, writing on Ploughstack, says “When you can’t see a way forward for yourself or for the world, what you need is a sense that something new can happen, and that another life is possible.”

I think that’s one way to think of what happens in a miracle: Another way opens up. More than the merely human intervenes. You find through that infusion an unexpected (or desperately needed) ability to re-engage the work at hand. And I don’t mean that we expect only big showy miracles, but I mean also the little gains, the small surprises.

I see this miraculous aliveness in the New Testament’s accounts of Jesus’s resurrection. The overcoming of death (his traumatic death) was so dramatic and breathtakingly complete that, at first, his followers seem stunned, a little uncertain on their feet. But then reality begins to dawn—in a good way. Shock gives way to elation, and energy positively bursts from the pages. That just as true in the stories of what happens next.

There’s a lot of running, for one thing, in the resurrection aftermath. In every one of the Gospels, in fact. (If we’re being picky, Mark only says they “fled,” but close enough.) Take Matthew’s Gospel: “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary … left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell [the] disciples.” No stroll here. No draggy sense of duty.

Or Luke’s account: Peter ran to the tomb when he heard about the tomb being empty. An amble won’t cut it.

And look at John’s account: Mary Magdalene “ran” to Simon Peter and John with the news, and then those two “were running together” to the tomb.

This isn’t what we mean by running around. It’s running with caution thrown over the shoulder. I see Jesus’s followers driven by curiosity and determination to see for themselves, to get to the bottom of what they feared was only an “idle tale.” Jesus’s followers simply can’t sit still now. There’s no shortage of energy.

For adults, running in that day and age was undignified. But it’s exactly what happens when you stop worrying about appearances and yearn to move toward hope. You feel drawn onward.

Of course, running is not without its risks. Spiritually, I mean. We get excited about some movement in our devotional practices, some answer to prayer, some stride forward in our life with God spilling into our life with others—and then comes a setback. Seasons of deep closeness with God can give way to a dark night of the soul. We falter or even stumble. We lose focus.

It struck me as a small irony that I was reading these resurrection stories the day after I fell while running on the Greenway not far from here. I had been pushing myself to go farther and faster. A glance at my Garmin fitness watch distracted me. Or perhaps a tired foot simply got stumbly. I skidded across the pavement ahead, bruising my hip and scraping my palms, elbow, and knee. I’m fine, but not before hobbling around the house a bit, waiting for healing.

Even so, the desire to run hasn’t left me. Already I’m counting the days until I can get back out there.

Immense in Meaning but also at Hand

The resurrection of Jesus, I’m seeing, places in our line of vision pictures that remind us to keep keeping at it. To be clear: The resurrection of Jesus was unprecedented. Here is something so immense in meaning it’s impossible properly to fathom. But what if the power unleashed that first Easter has never stopped prodding and empowering, never ceased bringing renewal? What else could Paul mean when he writes, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you”? Sometimes I mentally remove the sentence’s opening if. Stripped of Paul’s rhetorical setup, it reads simply: “The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you” (Romans 8:11).

Alive in us. Still helping.

That doesn’t mean every illness is healed or every disappointment disappears. I think of caregivers living with a profoundly disabled or chronically ill loved one, where the work never stops. Or those struggling with addiction or compulsive behavior. Or church leaders burning out. Or someone whose prayer life feels desert-like.

The resurrection does mean we never face those realities with only our own resources. A stab of delight pokes through an exhausting schedule. A pinprick of light assures us that that God isn’t finished yet, that all ahead is not dark. When doomscrolling we tell ourselves a power still, still moves in the world. In our own weariness we see a glimpse of the divine doing what cannot be humanly done. 

Then we see how the resurrection life of Jesus is at work—not just on Easter Sunday but on this ordinary weekday. And we get back on our feet with a little more within us to keep moving forward.