Children of the Wasted Lands

The young child saw those wasted lands; 

he longed to set things right.

He prayed that Christ might one day send

some messenger to care and tend,

to heal where others tear and rend,

and turn the darkness bright.

– Malcolm Guite, Galahad and the Grail

This passage stirred something in my heart the first time I read it; it both spoke to a longing within me as well as gave words to that longing I had but didn’t know how to describe. It gave me a window into what I realized was the summation of what I hope and long for my sons – that they would see, long, and pray in the same way that this child, Galahad, does. 

That they would see as the child Galahad did – the reality of the wasted lands around us. And yet, that it would not move them to despair or hopelessness but rather a longing to have those things set right because there is a fundamental belief that things can be set right. And then that longing would move them to prayer – their eyes heavenward, to seek and ask Christ, the only true source of deliverance, healing, redemption, and hope, that He would send the ones who will care, tend, and heal the darkness of this land. This prayer, only coming about because of the dual belief and recognition that God alone brings about the healing of this world and that He does so in partnership with humanity. 

This exactly then is what I pray for my sons – that they would see and respond to reality in accordance to the truth, beauty, and goodness of the gospel alone. 

But why is it not simply a given that they would see as Galahad did, particularly if they grow up in the church? It has become difficult to view the world, the happenings around us, according to what is true. This is, at least in part, because we in the church have lost the enchantment of the gospel. Our Christian imagination has been starved and warped, and is in a dire state. 

The “why” of the situation as well as the remedy to it is found in the stories we surround ourselves with. Our Christian imagination is emaciated because we either submerse ourselves in too many shallow stories, or we do not grasp the full beauty and weight of the stories intended to purge and refurbish our Christian imagination. On the former, the amount of words and content we consume from social media, click-bait news articles, and the like do great harm to our Christian imagination.  We become dominated by the narrative and stories of our culture – the despair, the hopelessness, the fears, the vain hopes that we can, by our own means, achieve our own redemption and empowerment. On the other hand, the kinds of stories we need to lose ourselves in, from Scripture to great literature, require time to be fully grasped and take root in our hearts. They must be wrestled with, pondered, and then submitted to in the mystery of what it does to our soul, our loves, and our longings. But who has time for that in the hustle and bustle of all that we have to do? 

The question then is not whether or not you surround yourself with stories, but rather which type of stories you surround yourself with? Is it the kind of stories which act to purify and refurbish the Christian imagination? This is exactly what Richard Bauckham says the book of Revelation does:

unmasks [the] dominant construction of the world as an ideology of the powerful which serves to maintain their power. In its place, Revelation offers a different way of perceiving the world which leads people to resist and to challenge the effects of the dominant ideology.

I believe this doesn’t just hold true for Revelation, but for many of the classical stories that have withstood the test of time. 

Listen carefully to the stories being told to you, and choose wisely which ones to listen to, to be submerged in, for it is not a given that just because we go to church and read the Bible that we will see as the child Galahad does. 

One such story that I’ve encountered occasionally considers the pain and danger of our world and asks if we should even be having children, given all the pain and suffering happening around us. We see ‘those wasted lands’ – the political strife, the increase in polarization and hatred across people groups, the debates about environmental impacts such as global warming, resource shortage, etc, and we wonder – is it right to bring children into this? And that’s the narrative we at times hear, that to bring children into this world under these circumstances is irresponsible, selfish, and cruel – how can we subject our children to that? 

But is this the narrative of the Bible? The world is broken, yes, and yet, it does not stop there. God is setting it right – healing it, already healing it. God saw these wasted lands and longed to set things right, and he did by sending His own Son into this chaos. He did not find this world or our situation so dire or hopeless that He refrained from bringing His own Son in, but rather because he saw how dire and hopeless things were, He sent His own Son, that this wasted land may be healed, that it may be cared for, and that the darkness may not only see a great Light but become light. And even then, the process is not done. The plan was always to partner with us, humans, to bring about the full healing and redemption of this world. As seen from the Old to the New Testament, God’s purposes, though can be achieved without us, are often such that they are chosen to be done with us and through us. 

So then, what stories do we surround ourselves with regarding even so basic and simple a question as ‘should we bring children into this world?’ If we immerse ourselves in the stories that reflect God’s truth, beauty, and goodness, then when we see these wasted lands, we will have just one desire – not to escape or to protect our children from it, but to long to set it right, because we know it will be set right and it is being set right. And then we’d pray that God’s will would be done, and that He’d send people to do his will in bringing about that healing and caring and tending. And we would bring our children into this world because we know that they will carry forward God’s redemption and healing. We will surround them with stories such that when they see all that happens around them, they will not just see the wasted lands, because indeed these are wasted lands, but of the promise of what these wasted lands will become one day – Eden, a place where God and humanity dwell together, a kingdom of God. 

And they will long to be the one to set these things right. And we will teach them to set their longings into prayer, and we ourselves will pray with them, that Christ would send the messengers to care and tend, to heal where others have hurt and torn apart, to bring light into this world. 

And perhaps they will also then one day be able to receive both the fulfillment of their longing and the answer to their prayer, as the young man Galahad did, and proclaim along with Galahad – “I am the one the Spirit sends to heal both land and lord.” For truly we all are called and sent out by Christ to be the healers of our land, to realize that the longings we’ve had in our hearts are but God’s Spirit stirring within us, propelling us toward, and preparing us for our ultimate destiny in fulfilling those longings to bring about the healing and redemption of our world – all we need are the eyes to imagine and the hearts to long for what God is already bringing about. So may we surround ourselves with the stories that stir us and send us according to the beauty of what God is already doing around us even when it is hidden behind these wasted lands.