Stay with the Trouble

As a decent, devoted and diligent worker, you may feel like you are entitled to enjoy the fruits of your work and remain at peace with your colleagues, your friends and your family. Reality may be quite different. You or your loved ones may be struck by physical or mental illness. You may suffer from unexpected lack of time and money. You may be deeply concerned by trouble with your colleagues, your life partner or your children. You may even suffer from multiple plagues simultaneously. The Matthew effect tells us that misery easily multiplies. Misery is as endless as an ocean. You may even ask the strange question how come you are still there. It feels like if you are on a ship in a storm which has no intention to go down. A ship, however, has one big advantage: it forces you to stay with the trouble.

Coping with the cruelties of daily life, you may find peace in watching Saint Walburgis on this painting by Peter Paul Rubens. As a missionary, Saint Walburgis had to cross the English Channel several times in her life. It was a dangerous activity which she survived remarkably often. She looks frightened on the painting but remained confident in her prayers that God would protect her important mission. In the Middle Ages, people prayed to Saint Walburgis to ask for protection against storm at sea and storm at life. Let us do the same and let us stay with the trouble.

You will find many churches and other references to Saint Walburgis in seafaring towns in Flanders (Antwerp, Bruges, Oudenaarde), in Holland and in Germany. We commemorate her yearly on this 25^th of February. Rembrandt painted his Storm on the Sea of Galilee thirteen years later.

I refer to my blogs Poise, Bravery and Hope and Resilience and to my Dutch blogs The Comfort of Art, the Art of Comfort and Stella Maris.

Picture: The Miracle of Saint Walburgis, to be seen in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig