Groundhog Day

Americans (and Canadians) commemorate Groundhog Day every February 2. According to tradition, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on that day and spots its shadow, it will retreat to its den and winter will persist for six more weeks; if it doesn’t see its shadow, spring will arrive early. We may also recall another Groundhog Day, the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray as a man who finds himself reliving the same day over and over again.
 
The idea of being permanently stuck in the same situation comes from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Recurrence or Eternal Return, which posits that nothing new will ever happen even if we were to live an infinite number of lives. In fairness, Nietzsche never said things would always occur in exactly the same way as before with each repetition, but what he was suggesting may not be unlike what the Teacher declared in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). It is as if the groundhog keeps seeing its shadow and, as a result, winter never ends, and spring never comes.
 
Some of us may feel the same way. The vaccination programs have started – thank God for that – but the pandemic isn’t leaving us anytime soon; in fact, new variants of the coronavirus are showing up. The darkest shadows of disease, divisiveness, depression, despondency, and death continue to stalk us, seemingly without end. What are we to do? Nietzsche’s advice would be to accept our fate – we don’t have a choice anyway, according to his reasoning, because things will remain the same – and to live life as best as we can. But we can only do so in own strength and by our own wits, because God, for Nietzsche, is dead.
 
I recently met a young man whom I will call “CJ”. CJ was the boss of the moving company my family used for our move last December to our new home. We obtained CJ’s contact from his aunt and uncle, a godly couple we had gotten to know shortly after arriving in Colorado Springs, and who have become close friends of ours. Only 24 years old and having lost his father when he was a child, the CJ we met was a confident yet humble, enterprising, and outstanding Christian young adult who had survived all manner of adversity and hardship.
 
CJ was familiar with ISI because he worked the audiovisuals at our National Conferences in Colorado Springs in 2018 and in Portland in 2019. In fact, when he came by to our apartment with his moving truck last December, the first thing he said to Trina and me was, “Hey, I remember you guys from the ISI conference in Portland!” That was pretty cool. My family and I ate lunch at our new home with CJ and his crew after they were done moving our stuff, and we all spoke openly about life and the Christian faith at the dining table, while one of his crewmembers, a young man from Libya, listened intently as he munched his cheeseburger and fries. We made plans to have them over for dinner once we were a little more settled in.
 
But alas that isn’t going to happen, because a few days ago, CJ took his own life. His fiancée was leaving him and caught in the throes of a deep sense of abandonment, rejection, and depression, he put a gun to his head. A young man in the prime of his life, with his own thriving business and already a homeowner, it all ended abruptly and tragically. Having met him only for a day, I didn’t know CJ at all, but my sense is Groundhog Day never quite stopped for him. His opportunity for a wonderful spring dried up when his dreams got shattered, and he presumably felt that all he had left was a long dark unceasing winter – the shadow of despair, guilt, and hopelessness, despite him knowing Christ from a young age and who, as was clear from the many moving tributes given at his memorial service, never shied from sharing Christ’s love in word and deed.
 
What about us? On what have we pinned our hopes for the ending of winter and the coming of spring: on a vaccine, or on the pandemic lifting, or on the political situation settling, or on a return to some semblance of normalcy, or on our 401Ks, or on a groundhog or palm-reader or false Christ to determine our future? And if or when those options fail, to what or whom do we turn in the depths of our despair?
 
Though I know I will see CJ again when it’s my turn to go to glory, I’m crushed that I won’t get to see him at our National Conference this summer as he would have been part of the AV team again. I don’t know if, in his downward spiral, CJ remembered Jesus or spoke with Him. Yet CJ wasn’t alone in such dire circumstances. On the run from Jezebel, Elijah sat under a tree and prayed that he might die. Elijah said to God, “I have had enough, LORD … Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4). Weighed down by unforgiveness toward the Assyrians, Jonah told God, “Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 19:4). These guys knew a thing or two about the dark nights of the soul.
 
When I first joined ISI back in 1999, during new staff orientation, when we had to undergo psychosocial testing, my score marked me out as borderline suicidal. I recall one of the ISI trainers trying his darnedest to explain that it didn’t mean I harbored a death wish! We need not wallow in our Groundhog Day, in the dark nights of our souls. As the Apostle Paul has written,
 
“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Romans 5:1-5).
 
Let’s pin our hopes on Jesus, our Hope of Glory.