Audacious Audacity

I learnt a new phrase today (or rather coined). “Audacious Audacity”. It is like “double whammy” – a situation in which two bad conditions exist at the same time or two bad things happen one after the other. But amid this, people have the audacity to have an audacious belief that things will work out fine! 

 

There is a beautiful story in the Good Book. A meeting between a prophet and a widow. It goes like this…

"Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land".

“So the Prophet got up and went to Zarephath. As he came to the entrance of the village he met a woman, a widow, gathering firewood. He asked her, “Please, would you bring me a little water in a jug? I need a drink.” As she went to get it, he called out, “And while you’re at it, would you bring me something to eat?  She said, “I swear, as surely as your God lives, I don’t have so much as a biscuit. I have a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a bottle; you found me scratching together just enough firewood to make a last meal for my son and me. After we eat it, we’ll die.” The prophet  said to her, “Don’t worry about a thing. Go ahead and do what you’ve said. But first make a small biscuit for me and bring it back here. Then go ahead and make a meal from what’s left for you and your son. This is the word of the God : ‘The jar of flour will not run out and the bottle of oil will not become empty before God sends rain on the land and ends this drought.’” And she went right off and did it, did just as Prophet asked. And it turned out as he said—daily food for her and her family. The jar of meal didn’t run out and the bottle of oil didn’t become empty: God’s promise fulfilled to the letter, exactly as Prophet had delivered it!”

Consider the audacity of the prophet – to ask a widow for food, who has nothing in her kitchen, only a morsel for her son, before they decide to starve and die! A double whammy for her! The audacious audacity of the widow is much more confusing! To believe an itinerant prophet whom she is meeting for the first time and act on his words. 

 

The graphs given below is pushing me for this audacious audacity, to hope beyond hope amid double whammy's around us. 

 

There are a few ways to respond to these...

 

One – resigned resignation, that there is nothing we can do, like Puddleglum the ultimate pessimist in Sliver Chair of C S Lewis!  When they were trapped in deep earth “And you must always remember there’s one good thing about being trapped down here: it’ll save funeral expenses.” 

Or as we are consistently told, these reports are not to be believed, these are intentional mis-representation put out there by subversive elements. All is well and all will be well. 

Two – go about life with the belief that this is the circle and cycle of life. Things have happened in the past; this is the circle of life. The song from Lion King is what some hold on to. This is a season of drying brooks, this too shall pass! 

Three - have a passionate hope beyond hope, or an audacious audacity to believe that “All will be well” not because our leaders tell us, not because of circle of life. But because there is a someone, a God who is working out greater purposes even though this is a season of drying brooks!

 

I hope I will cultivate this audacious audacity this season!