The truth around the corner
When my father was in hospital, the doctor following his condition called us into his office and laid out what my father's future would be. Death was around the corner.
One word the doctor said made me angry, but it had nothing to do with anger towards the person saying it; it was towards myself, for not having thought of it. He told us that if we had done an X-ray not only of the back but also of the side or the chest, we could have discovered in advance the illness that was about to spread through his whole body.
His words echoed in my head because he described it like this: our body is like a wardrobe; if you X-ray the front you can't discover what's around the corner, on the side of the wardrobe. To discover what's around the corner you have to do an X-ray there too, you have to look there too.
The desperation at that moment was to save your loved one, shaken by the fact that we had been living calmly with what seemed a normal backache; never, ever could we have imagined what the doctor had just told us, even though my father carried on his normal life while completely invaded by the illness that was taking him away from us. The doctor even called what he was living through in those days a miracle, saying: in these conditions it's strange that he can still move, talk, react and do everything.
I still remember telling my father I wanted to shave him, because he used to shave on a regular weekly basis, but he answered: there's no need, I can still do it myself, and so he did. He took that razor and, with his usual skill, brought his skin back to that perfect shave where not even running a hand against the grain would make you think there had ever been a beard.
There is a truth around the corner that we cannot fail to discover.
We can't stubbornly stay still and wait. The situation is like waiting at a street corner for the person who is supposed to meet us, who instead has also stopped, around the opposite corner, waiting for us. Out of a question of position and stubbornness we don't move to look, before anything else, at what lies beyond where we stand, at what the discovery around that corner holds for us.
We are so stubborn about our positions and the beliefs built over the years that we struggle to take hold of the Truth, a truth which, once revealed, hurts us, or even worse, makes us angry.
Jannes and Jambres may mean nothing to you, and surely they don't. In reality they are part of a story we watched over and over as children, and our children still watch on TV.
They are characters we see as beings to be defeated, who oppose our hero, but who hand us a pure truth. What we see in these characters to be defeated is in reality what still needs to be defeated inside us.
Paul teaches Timothy something truly simple and meaningful, telling him these words:
Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.
2 Timothy 3:8
So these characters opposed a truth with a lie, that is, by giving the same truth but with a veiled yet real, clear deception.
These two characters are the magicians of Pharaoh of Egypt; we know them from the story of Moses when he, together with his brother Aaron, went before Pharaoh, at God's request, to ask him to free the Hebrews, the Israelites, from Egypt.
In the biblical verses we read that Pharaoh had a hard heart, but specifically it was God Himself who hardened Pharaoh's heart, only to show Moses, His people and Pharaoh His real Greatness and Presence. On one of the occasions when God sent Moses to Pharaoh, He asked Moses to take his staff with him and explained that if he threw it on the ground it would turn into a snake, and if he picked it up again it would go back to being a staff. This was one of the things God asked Moses to do. The two magicians did the same, replicating exactly Moses' act of turning the staff into a snake, as well as in some other events during the meetings between Moses and Pharaoh.
Lie or not a lie, deception, situations God wanted, magic God willed for Moses, magic these two characters also had; the fact is that all this is a clear demonstration of what happens every day among people, from ancient times to the present day. We keep our eyes fixed on situations, we imitate the most absurd things, we deceive each other just to reach our goals, we lose sight of the real things, namely that God is One and Present. God would not have needed all that theatre to free His people from Egypt, but everything God does in our lives is carried out to make us clearly understand that we need nothing but Him. All that we are losing ourselves in is chasing human situations that lead us to clash with other people's same realities, which we believe are different but have the same end: losing our attention towards God.
Speaking of today, it's clear that we get lost in chatter, in writing like what I'm doing now, to explain how worn out we are by circumstances and how far from concrete things. Even my way of explaining the story to you may make you think of a trick to catch you in something, and I think you did think it, but concretely I answer that the reality is not in my words but in the possibility of going to understand where this Truth is.
Certainly God isn't interested in how and what you look at around you, but in how much you keep your eyes fixed on Him.
The Truth is biblical
How many times have I been told that I have my own idea of the Bible and my own interpretation, yet I've never found myself talking with people who confirmed or disproved the things I know. This happens because people don't know it, haven't read it, and so have no way to disprove or confirm. I could never go to a professional and tell him that this or that, in his work, in what he studied, can't be done, above all presuming to know without having the same competence. We don't necessarily need competence in everything, but what remains important for our life is knowing how to live it the right way for a right purpose. We don't need to claim extreme knowledge, but let's at least start from a foundation of life: life itself. Knowing the creation of life helps us understand where we are heading to die.
Now, if the truth that was behind that X-ray could have saved my father's life, if the truth of moving around that corner could give back salvation, why shouldn't I recommend to you a Salvation that is hiding right behind what you're not seeing, or don't want to see, or haven't thought of checking? It's not a truth that hides a trick. It may look like a truth concealed in something else. Surely there is a reality that is clear, simple and verifiable, even if you don't want to Believe it. Reading about these two characters, Jannes and Jambres, I discovered that even Pythagoras, in one of his texts, acknowledges the falsehood of these two characters. Pythagoras and a biblical reference! This made me realise that behind all the quotes waved around on social media, whether personal ones or quotes from a public figure, they are all phrases built ad hoc for a clear purpose. The purpose is to strike the reader with something catchy, behind which are hidden realities you can discover already written in the Bible. Shall we bet? I don't need to, because I'm sure of it.
We live on ready-made phrases, but everything is already written. We think we're inventing new things, but things have all already been done; they're just evolving. We think we're doing unique things, but everything has a beginning and an end. Humanly we need to lean on something concrete, and we fall ill spiritually because we chase dreams. If we took care of the spirit before the body, we would surely have a peaceful life, such as building a healthy family; just as a newly formed couple could do in advance, namely talk for a long enough time without first going through sex, the couple would surely be closer beforehand , instead of ending up "discovering each other" afterwards, in a marriage destined to fail.
Your life can be saved if, through these words of mine, you discover what truth lies around the corner, before the anger comes from knowing that the outcome is becoming death.
Don't wait, collapsing as we did at that doctor's conclusions; take hold of the truth of a Creator. Whoever creates knows their creation, and whoever wants to learn only needs to understand how everything came about and works.
My father would have died anyway in the cycle of his life, but even his death helped me understand that he was not only a father but also an earthly example of how I am, can be, want to be and so on. We are an example for others, but we must become imitators of God, the Lord, the Father, the Creator and the tireless lover of His creation, of His children. Because we are born children and we "make children", leaving behind an example of life. So let's take life from the One who gave it to us, in order to Give it in Abundance to those who think they are living just a few years but are destined for an eternity thanks to a Promise.
Stay curious about life.
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