A Spot of Dickens for a Dreary Day

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Rating: Fair

Recommendation: High

Summary: Charles Dickens is a delightfully entertaining author. It seems odd to say this of the author who is known for killing significant characters off for the sake of the plot. Dickens, however, possesses the unique ability to mix humor with abject poverty so as to engage his audience and to reveal that there is still joy to be found in the sadness of this life.
The Old Curiosity Shop is no different. Dickens uses his signature wit to paint a powerful picture of human poverty.  His story vividly describes how easily a person can ruin themselves because of their devotion to another. It also contains a colorful array of characters, each lending humor and vivacity to a story that would otherwise be harsh and bleak in its portrayal of human suffering. The book has enough intrigue, mystery, and villainy to keep the reader riveted until the very last chapter. Dickens does not lose his comforting theme of poetic justice, found in so many of his books. While the book leaves the reader brokenhearted, it also leaves them rejoicing with the characters, as good triumphs and evil meets its timely demise.

The Burning Days

This past week I visited my sister, who lives in a city an hour away from me. The drive can be a nice one, through open fields, past the odd herd of cows and stunted trees, reaching their wind-blown branches to the sky. On this particular wintery day, the fields were brown, the cows hiding from the biting cold, the trees hunched over against the blustery winds.
As I neared the city, suddenly the fields opened up to an even bleaker view:
Whole fields charred and blackened by fires. My already bleak mood dove to even darker depths as I viewed this by-product of pre-planting season. There was no sign of life across the open stretch of ground. Even the birds avoided those blackened plains.

Everything was burned. It looked ugly, dark, and miserable under the wintery sky. Nothing but despair for acres.

Our hearts so often look like those fields. We come to the end of a messy year, or years, and we look around and see only ruined fields. All that was once alive and hopeful has been burned off in our suffering.

Later that same weekend, I went hiking in the woods behind my parents' house with my brother. I was astonished that the fire that had burned those fields had found their way into these woods also. In the undergrowth, what used to be tall weeds, was now black and charred. Whole swaths of ground, burnt and frozen on this wintery day. We marveled that the woods, once so familiar and close, looked completely different. The empty spaces made us hesitate and wonder if we had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

As I look into my own heart in this new season of my life, I see a lot of things burned. Things I thought the fires of suffering would never touch have been set ablaze. The terrain that was once familiar is now unrecognizable.

Why do farmers burn their fields? Why do those caretakers of the woods allow the ground to burn? Why does God allow suffering and loss burn our hearts?

Farmers burn their fields to root out the old weeds, allow new grass to seed, so that in the Springtime these devastated fields will yield an abundance. Caretakers burn the brush in the woods to rid it of poison ivy and poison oak, to destroy them to the very root and core so that they may be replaced by new plants that are good for the trees, for animals, and for hikers.

In the same manner, God burns our hearts again and again through suffering, that He might kill once and for all that bitter root of sin. The fire is often excruciating. Often in the aftermath we look about us and we see only devastation and loss, like those blackened fields in late winter. We so easily do not see past the burned and charred landscape of our hearts. Yet there is a Springtime awaiting our souls. Even as we cry out in pain and confusion, as we flail about in our suffering and seek to despair, the promise is that God makes way for new life. He burns away the creeping vine of sin, leaving for a moment in its place an ash heap. But His promise is that, through the burning, He makes way for new life to be planted in us. In the place of sin, holiness inches its way to the surface, delicate, beautiful, and green.

As I sit on the other side of a season of suffering, I do not recognize the terrain of my heart. I hesitate, wondering if I have taken a wrong turn somewhere, if I am not heading down a path of continued wandering and loss. Yet even in the midst of this devastation and change, I find peace and hope in the promise of God: that He is making all things new, that this devastation is but momentary, that His heavy hand of discipline is yielding in me the sweet fruit of righteousness.

"Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him." -Psalm 126:4-6