Disillusionment

I started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand with my cousin Jenna this month.   I will confess that I'm totally intimidated.  For one thing, my copy has 1,168 (that's one thousand one hundred sixty eight!) pages--each of them covered with fine print.  For another, I'm not sure I'm smart enough to read and actually understand this book.  But I'm all about "learning how much I don't know", so here goes.  It would be going faster were I not reading three other books in addition to this one, but this is who I am so I'm only part way through chapter three and on page 56.

That said, I am fascinated with the book already.  Her writing is simply beautiful.  I can't read the story quickly because I have to savor her talent, her word choices, her descriptiveness.  I had to stop and ponder the following description which the character described as "immense betrayal" and I relate to as "disillusionment."

The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there.  Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string.  He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree.  Eddie saw it the next morning.  It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel.  The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside--just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind.  The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. (5)

 Haven't we all experienced this?  At times we put our faith, our trust, our hope in the wrong thing (or person).  But when it fails (as it inevitably will if it's not the Lord Himself) we feel betrayed or disillusioned.  I am reminded that we can't see as the Lord sees.  Something that may look like a "symbol of strength" might actually have a heart rotted away, completely absent of the Living Power, leaving an empty shell vulnerable to the storms of life.  This reminds me to be thankful for the trials of life which test us, prove us, and ultimately strengthen us as we yield to the Lord's pruning.