YEARNING FOR LIFE: PART VI
As many of you know, our oldest son, Rob, is a student at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. And as many of you also know, he’s had issues with post-concussion syndrome since his football playing days in high school. That’s why I was a little concerned about his judgment – or lack thereof – when I discovered that the young men on the lacrosse team had talked him into playing with them in a college tournament in Chicago. Now as I understand it, he did mention his concussion issues to a few of them, but they assured him that he wouldn’t hit his head if he was playing as a defenseman. So he went with them last weekend. Believe it or not, he did not solicit my opinion on the matter. Yet I should have suspected that something was up when he wanted us to send him his old football cleats.
I believe it was last Saturday afternoon when my wife stopped by my office at the church. We were getting ready to go to Logan Luce’s birthday party in fellowship hall. She said to me, “Rob just called. He’s in the emergency room at a hospital in Chicago.” Now news like that has never set well with me. My first response is usually somewhat less than compassionate. I said, “What did he do this time?” She said, “He got hit in the hand with a lacrosse stick and apparently he broke two fingers pretty badly.”
I just shook my head and said, “When is that child ever going to grow up?” My wife looked at me incredulously and said, “Do ya hear yourself? Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black!” I was a little hurt. I’m not sure I know what she was trying to say. Sure, I play basketball with a bunch of other old guys on Mondays and Thursdays, but we do it for the exercise. It’s not that we can’t grow up, or that we’re overly competitive, or anything like that. We’re not concerned with who wins or who loses. It’s just a low-key game among friends and we play strictly for fun. (Isn’t that right, Marty?)
Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that we were a little competitive. Have you ever known anyone who was competitive to a fault? They do not like to lose, do they? They will do anything in their power to win. They feel like they have to win at all costs and if they don’t, they take it personally. That competitiveness then tends to extend beyond game playing and into other aspects of their lives. They have to make more sales than anyone else. They have to win more awards than anyone else. They have to have the spotlight on themselves more than anyone else. When someone is competitive to a fault, they can make themselves and everyone around them absolutely miserable. The question we need to ask ourselves here is this: Do setbacks and losses eat away at me?
I think of one of the best things I ever heard in terms of having a successful, long-lasting marriage. Someone once said, “You can choose to be happy, or you can choose to be right.” People who are competitive to a fault tend to opt for choosing to be right. Like I said, they can make themselves and everyone around them absolutely miserable. Perhaps they need to ask themselves: Do setbacks and losses eat away at me?
Then there are the internal monologues that can sometimes go on in our heads. Suppose we get into a disagreement with someone. We argue with them and in the end, we come out the obvious loser. In those instances, I like to say I have 20/20 hindsight. I always know what I should have said! The question is, how long do we stew about that? Do we go over it again and again in our minds to the point of distraction? Or, can we simply let it go and chalk it up to experience? The question is: Do setbacks and losses eat away at me?
One of my all-time favorite quips is this: If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans! But we still make plans, do we not? We still have hopes and dreams. It can hurt very deeply when life does not go according to our best-laid plans. A child we loved more than life itself doesn’t turn out quite the way we planned. The economy collapses and we lose half our savings, meaning retirement will not be quite the way we dreamed. Then a husband or a wife dies, and you feel as if half of yourself has been torn asunder, meaning your golden years will not be quite the way you hoped. It’s easy to become bitter. It’s easy to focus on what is wrong with our lives instead of what is right. How do we resolve to face the world when our deepest hopes and dreams have been dashed before our very eyes? Again the question is: Do setbacks and losses eat away at me?
Ladies and gentlemen, today is Palm Sunday, otherwise known as the sixth Sunday in Lent. As I’ve mentioned each Sunday over the course of the last five weeks, Lent is a time for self-examination. And if we are to be about the business of self-examination, then perhaps there are a number of questions we should be asking ourselves as we seek God’s presence in Lent – as we find ourselves yearning for life in Lent. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves questions like the following:
- Do I ever feel as if I am in a wilderness?
- Do I doubt God, myself, or others?
- Do I see weakness in myself and the need to change?
- From what – or from whom – do I run away and hide?
- How far have I strayed from God’s purpose for my life?
- Am I facing temptation that I need help to resist?
- What do I need to confess in order to be free of guilt?
- With what am I struggling and in pain?
- What do I need to allow to die in me in order to be closer to God?
And then there’s the question we’ve been wrestling with today. Do setbacks and losses eat away at me? Ah, things don’t always work out the way we plan, do they? The question is: Do setbacks and losses eat away at me?
Now at first glance, the passage I read from the gospel according to Matthew would not appear to have anything to do with setbacks and losses. I mean, we just read about Jesus’ triumphal ride into Jerusalem amid pomp and circumstance; amid shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” What on earth does that have to do with set-backs and losses?
I want you to think for a moment about what transpired by the end of the week. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a Sunday afternoon. He taught the multitude in the streets who were gathered there for the feast of the Passover. He created quite a scene in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers. He celebrated what came to be called his Last Supper with his disciples. Then on Thursday night, he was arrested. By Friday he had been tried in a kangaroo court and hung on a cross to die. The fact of the matter is, Jesus knew all this would happen to him when he rode into Jerusalem in the first place.
How was Jesus able to ride into Jerusalem when he knew it spelled his ultimate demise? Clearly setbacks and losses didn’t eat away at Jesus. He was about to experience the consummate setback and loss. What was his secret? How was he able to fulfill his mission in spite of what he knew lay ahead? The secret, I think, is the hope that burned inside his heart. He knew that beyond his crucifixion lay his resurrection. He knew that his ultimate welfare was in the hands of God. The question is, how do we get there ourselves? How do we come to trust our ultimate welfare to God?
I think a part of the secret can be explained by what we call The Law of Expectation. The Law of Expectation says that whatever we expect with emotional conviction has a tendency to materialize. What’s more, this is equally true for both positive and negative things. That which we expect to see is what we generally come to see.
For example, before I came to Meadville, I don’t think I ever noticed a Subaru Outback station wagon on the road. Yet now that I’ve come to Meadville and a good friend of mine drives one, I see them all the time. I think half of the professors at Allegheny drive Subaru Outback station wagons! The point is, now that the Subaru Outback station wagon is in my mind, I see them all the time.
That’s kind of how The Law of Expectation works. We come to see that which we expect to see. We come to see what we’re looking for. If setbacks and losses eat away at us, we thus have a tendency to look for the dark side of everything. It can literally become a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if we were to start looking for God in the things we see? What if we were to start looking for the good in everything we encounter? Don’t you think we’d start to see things a little bit differently? Don’t you think The Law of Expectation would come to apply to us?
Jesus saw God in everything around him. Jesus saw the good in everything he encountered. That might be how he was able to ride into Jerusalem in the face of certain death. He trusted God to deliver him in the end. The question is, how do we get there ourselves? How do we come to trust in the fact that God will deliver us in the end?
Charles and Winnie were homeowners in New Orleans, Louisiana. Charles was 70 years old and Winnie was 63. They’d moved out of the 9th Ward and into a blond brick ranch-style home in eastern New Orleans just a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina. Both of their houses were flooded in the storm. In fact, the old house was knocked clear off of its foundation. Volunteers from all across the country came to help, but after more than a year, Charles and Winnie’s homes were still in shambles. They were living in a FEMA trailer in the front yard of their newer home.
The trailer was small, even by FEMA standards. You couldn’t stand side-by-side inside the trailer, and the bedroom was basically a bed squeezed between two walls. The bathroom was so small that you couldn’t lift your arms to wash in the shower. They could tolerate the cramped quarters themselves, but they really wanted their house to be finished. You see, Winnie’s mother was 97 years old, and she needed to come to live with them as well.
The rebuilding crew was a good bunch of folks – about 25 strong – mostly from Pittsburgh. Many were teenagers, but there were a few couples, and even entire families there. Seventy-year-old Charles did what he could to help. Now I’ve been on mission trips where we worked on people’s houses myself. It’s frustrating when you’re out there working in the blazing sun, while the people you’re there to serve are sitting inside an air-conditioned house smoking cigarettes, but I digress. Charles did what he could to help. He even managed to bond with many of the teenagers.
On Good Friday, they gathered in the front room of the house for a sort of dedication. Most of the major work was done and much of the group would be going home over the course of the next few days. A Pittsburgh pastor led the dedication, strumming a guitar and leading the group in song.
Then the pastor pointed out how appropriate it was that they were gathering there on a Good Friday. Like so many who lived in New Orleans, Jesus had felt forgotten and forsaken when he died. It was a dark day, he said, but the best part about that was knowing that things were going to get better. “New Orleans,” he said, “like Jesus, will one day rise again.” Then the pastor from Pittsburgh asked this question: “When have you ever felt that God has forsaken you?”
Then Winnie, through her tears, began telling their tale: How they’d just moved into the house when the storm hit, and they’d moved so they would have a place to bring her mother. She talked about losing her father after the storm, and how it felt to be homeless. Then she added, “I know what it’s like to be hungry. I know what it’s like to go to bed at night listening to the crying and moaning of people around you. I know what it’s like to be in pain and to think that God has abandoned you.”
Her soft sobs sparked tears all around the room. Charles, who rubbed his wife’s neck with one hand while she spoke, then took over for his wife. He said he knew they’d suffered some, but still he believed that they had been blessed. He may have had arthritis pain in his shoulder, but at least he could still lift his arm, and there were so many people who couldn’t even walk when “Uncle Arthur,” as he put it, came to visit. So many people had lost loved ones in the storm, but he hadn’t had to bury any of his children or grandchildren. He may have lost everything, but people came forward to give. “Everything I’ve got on, someone gave me,” he said, tugging at a Pirates baseball cap.
“God is good,” Charles said, “God is good.” He knew this because God had sent so many wonderful strangers to New Orleans to help his family put their life back together. Charles concluded his speech with these words: “God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time.”
God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time. I think that might have been Jesus’ mantra as well. He was able to face Good Friday because he knew that Easter was right on its heels. He trusted in the fact that God would deliver him in God’s time. And that, my friends, is why setbacks and losses should not eat away at us. It’s all a matter of trusting in God. Just remember that God’s time is not the same as our time. Thus, while God may not come when you want him to, he’s always right on time. Those are the words of life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment