The pastor found her just around the corner of the funeral home, sitting in the long-cut, Georgian lawn, staring forward.
“May I sit beside you?” the pastor asked.
“Sure,” the young woman said with a smile.
The pastor lowered himself, making an indent in the long grass; legs outstretched matching the young woman’s.
He looked over at her face and was confused by what he saw. What he expected to
see was anguish. What he expected to see were red eyes and a running nose that
required one of the pre-loaded tissues in his breast pocket. The pastor
expected to be counseling a crushed soul who needed a savior in a harsh world.
Instead, he saw that the smile that she had given him still lingered as she
stared forward across the lawn. Granted, it was a smile with a slight hint of
pain, but a smile none-the-less.
“You’ve just lost your husband. I can’t believe you would have a smile left in
you.”
“Not just my husband Reverend, but also my grandfather a month ago, and my best
friend to an automobile accident two months ago.” After she spoke, there was a
great silence. The smile lingered in the silence.
Finally breaking the silence the Pastor stated, “You know, when someone loses
so many people in such a short period of time, it is normal to be angry with
God. Some people wonder why bad things happen to good people. Still others
wonder if God is good at all. This is all normal, in case you’ve felt any of it
recently.”
“Thank you Reverend for your words, but I tend not to worry about the things I
cannot know or answer. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people or if
God intended all of these bad things to happen. Maybe, God wants to prove a
point, or maybe they just happened. I don’t know. I don’t get riled up about
such things. There are depths to God that I just cannot know, so I don’t worry
about them. But, there is one thing that I do know…one thing that keeps me
going…one thing that allows me to smile even now.”
The Pastor searched her face, waiting for the answer; waiting as a gentle
breeze blew waves across the lawn.
As the woman indicated, there are just some things that we cannot know about
God.
Oh, how we wish we could ascend the mountain with Jesus and his disciples, see
the glory of God shining through Jesus, and listen in on the holy discussion
that Jesus has with Moses and Elijah about the depths of God’s purpose. Oh, how
we wish, like Peter, that we could pitch a tent with the three of them, and
over the course of a few days be guided and enlightened by the deep truths of
the Holy One. But, the reality is: such insights into the divine are
short-lived and fade quickly.
I remember one night in college; I was pondering the depths of God’s grace in
my mind. No, I was not some holy child
during my college years, I had a paper to write on the subject. None-the-less, I was pondering God’s
grace. I was just on the edge of sleep,
and at that very moment I had an insight. It was as if I had been brought up
the mountain of God to see the depths of God’s heart. And, for one instance…one
brief moment…I felt what it must be like for Jesus to love even an enemy so
much that he would go to the cross for them.
I can remember that what I felt was an empathy that understood someone’s pain,
their longings, their misguided desires to fix their world. For one brief
moment, I felt what it must be like to have unconditional love with no
reservations. But, it was just a moment later, and in the next it was gone.
It is weird, I remember that I had the experience, but I cannot for the life of
me bring myself back to that mindset where I had that unconditional love with
no reservations. That memory blew away just as quickly as it had come. The
depth of God’s love that I understood for that brief moment is just as hidden today
as it had been before that mountaintop experience. Some things just are not
available to us to understand.
Maybe, it is because our visions of Jesus’ pure light are so brief that God
gives us further instructions. Maybe it
is because of the inaccessibility of God’s depths…the inaccessibility to the
answers to the questions such as “Why do we suffer?” and “Does God intend this
evil for good?”…that God does speak out clearly from the cloud saying, “This is
my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
“Listen to him.”
Listen to Jesus.
One of this church's stated values has to do with paying close attention to Jesus. Our values are those things that we hope every member of the congregation would find vital to their lives and incorporate into their lives. These are the values:
Jesus Centered Worship
Real,
Caring Relationships
Active
Generosity
Loving
Service
Sharing
Faith
All the values are essential, and I hope that your life will reflect each one, but the value that we are talking about today is the first one: “Jesus Centered Worship.” We are a people who are Jesus centered. Our decisions in life are based on looking at Jesus and listening to him. We listen to Jesus. We look at his life. We pay attention to him, and when we do, we will see who God is and what God cares about.
In the story, God cares about a child. One of the lowly ones is brought to Jesus, infested with a terrible spirit. The child spits and snarls and screeches. No one else has been able to give him any help.
Maybe, no one believes that he can be helped. Maybe, no one believes that he is important enough to be helped. Maybe, people are afraid to even look at him. That is what people tend to do when they see the hopeless walking about, they tend to look away.
But, Jesus looked. He looked and he healed. Maybe, we do not know what it feels
like to have God’s unconditional love…love that knows no enemies and fears no
one…, but we know what it looks like. It looks like giving time to even the
most lost of causes. Even people who are the most lost of causes are children
of God.
“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
“Thank you Reverend for your words, but I tend not to worry about the things I
cannot know or answer. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people or if
God intended all of these bad things to happen. Maybe, God wants to prove a
point, or maybe they just happened. I don’t know. I don’t get riled up about
such things. There are depths to God that I just cannot know, so I don’t worry
about them. But, there is one thing that I do know…one thing that keeps me
going…one thing that allows me to smile even now.”
And, she pointed straight ahead. Ahead, the Reverend saw what looked to be a
three year old boy spinning with his face to the sky with complete abandon. He
recognized the boy as the woman’s son. The boy seemed oblivious to the pain
surrounding his world.
“I smile because of him. I smile because Jesus cared that little children be
given a fair shot at life. In the Bible
Jesus takes the time to stop what he is doing and heal children. Well, that boy
right there deserves the same. He does not deserve a broken mother or a broken
world. I smile because I love him, and he needs that love right now.”
The child stopped spinning, and waved to his mother and the pastor. The mother kept smiling and the pastor gave a smile of his own. It was a fake smile, of course. But, for the child it was the reassurance that life can be whole and new and wonderful again. The smile told the story of the cross...of death and resurrection. One does not need to understand the depths of God to understand the need for God’s unending love.
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