A Bowlful of Trouble

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” (Jn 14:1) 

The word “troubled,” in Greek tarassomai, is often used in the Scriptures to describe water: rough seas, big waves, a storm on the lake.  Imagine holding your own heart, or perhaps the whole world, in the form of a great bowl, whose circumference requires the whole length of the arms for support.  In it is water, troubled water. 

“Then one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of 
the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever.” (Rv 15:7) 

The angels receive these bowls with reverence, hold them until the appointed time, and then pour them upon the earth – the wine-cup of fury and of staggering.  Perhaps genocide is one such bowl, earthquake and flood another, drought and famine another, disease yet another, and war, terrorism and exile one more. 

There are some who can see these bowls for what they are – vessels of God’s inscrutable mercy – and they receive them with reverent awe.  But there are others, maybe the majority, who cannot see, cannot understand and who suffer blindly and bitterly and curse God.  But it is we who are the angry ones, not God.  It is our wrath and our fury that is consuming us. 

The absence of trouble today’s gospel speaks of is not a false peace, a kind of enforced indifference achieved by suppression or avoidance of anxiety.  There has to be a basic acceptance of troubled waters rising in the heart, and a willingness to listen to them.  I am not tossed by the waves; I hold them in my bowl.  I am a witness to their turbulent movements, but I am not shaken.  I listen; I look; I understand; I accept; I offer words of consolation.  I hold, as in a bowl, this trouble before the Lord.

Evagrius of Pontus, sixth-century desert father and expert on movements of the heart, says this: in time of great distress, a person should divide their soul in two; one part is to console and the other part to be consoled. 

This means that I am never only the victim of my trouble, I am always also both witness and consoler.  In John’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Paraclete, which means “Consoler.”  The ability to stand apart from, observe and minister to one’s own inner turmoil is the work of the Holy Spirit within.  And this leads naturally into holding other people’s trouble and the trouble of the whole world - whether genocide, earthquake, flood, drought, famine, war, terrorism or exile - with reverent awe and compassion.