I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. John 16:33

When I hear the word assurance, in most cases today, it is being used in the context of financial, political, or educational assurances. In the sanctuary of assurances, however, blessed is always the context for assurance. Assurance has less to do with the world and much more to do with that which has overcome the world.

For there will be worldly troubles: ordinary and extraordinary troubles, inevitable and unexpected troubles. But just as assuredly as trouble blackens your life, so may peace and comfort lighten and overcome it.

For years, I have taught W. H. Auden’s poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” based–in large part–on Pieter Breughel’s painting, The Fall of Icarus. This is a stunning painting of a sparkling ocean, a luxury liner, a ploughman on a fertile hillside, and–last but not least–Icarus, the boy who dared to fly too close to the sun, which melted the wax holding his feathered wings together.

I remember searching the painting for the boy. Surely, he was the protagonist; surely, Breughel would highlight his fall and subsequent death in the sea. After scanning the painting for minutes, I remember actually gasping aloud when I discovered two small white legs in the bottom left corner of the painting. This, as poet William Carlos Williams later wrote in his poem, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” was “Icarus drowning.”

This was Icarus drowning? These were the remnants of the boy who once flew gloriously towards the sun, his father in tow? This was the end of a life? Two insignificant legs relegated to the bottom corner of a masterpiece?

As I have grown and matured in my faith, I have often thought of Auden and Breughel, of William Carlos Williams and all those who may have no assurance but the assurance that suffering has a “human position”, that it inevitably occurs when others are immersed in living, uninterested in and unaware of the fact that another’s life was being ravaged.

Musee des Beaux Arts                                                                                                                 W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,                                                                               the Old Masters; how well, they understood                                                                         Its human position; how it takes place                                                                             While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;       How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting                                           For the miraculous birth, there must always be                                                      Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating                                          On a pond at the edge of the wood:                                                                                  They never forgot                                                                                                                     That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course                                                     Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot                                                                                     Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse                   Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.                                                                                   In  Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns                                         Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may                                                   Have the splash, the forsaken cry,                                                                                             But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone                                              As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green                                     Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen                                       Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,                                                                 had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 

At this point in my life, I would like to take Auden, Brueghel, and Williams out for coffee. Then, captive in my presence, I would like to say to them: About suffering, you are wrong. There is an assurance, a blessed assurance, that one’s suffering does not define him or her. Nor does it define the world in which we live. 

I remember having to pack my car up to leave my family’s home in Nebraska to return to my life in Wisconsin or Iowa. The night before I would leave was always filled with dreadful anticipation of the moment the following morning when, my car packed and several goodbyes later, I would round the corner and no longer be able to see my home. With assurance, however, I came to dread less, for I knew that my parents would stand outside my home and wave until I was completely out of sight. This assurance carried me to new homes in other states.

As I sit at the bedside of my father, surrounded by my siblings and my mother, I take solace in the blessed assurance of God’s abiding love and comfort. And I take solace in the blessed assurance of the hospice workers and volunteers, of friends who appear with just the right supplies, just the right words, and arms to wrap you in.

And as I watch my parents greet those who have come to see my father, to hold his hand and to tell him how much his work, his very life has meant to them, I am constantly in awe of the assurance they give to each visitor. They blessedly assure each worker, volunteer, and friend that they matter, that they are appreciated and respected. In the sanctuary of this blessed assurance, we momentarily overcome the troubles of this world: cancer, grief, and loss.

We find sanctuary in the assurance of Jesus’s words: Take heart! I have overcome the world.