I sat in our fellowship hall with two women. Our adult classes and small groups had concluded and we were waiting for the children to emerge. It was close to 8 pm on a Weds night.
A single mom came in and her ten year old boy soon followed. She works full-time at McDonalds and takes the bus to come to us every Wednesday and every Sunday without fail. I could see the strain on her face as she handed her son his math homework and told him to sit down and start. I invited him to come and sit by me.
Within two minutes, I could see a few things about this boy. He had more energy than he knew what to do with. He was smart. And he was struggling to concentrate.
“My teacher hates me,” he said to me.
“I get my problems wrong.”
I watched as he did his math. He understood it but he was rushing and guessing just to get it done. I worked with him on a few problems. He found it hard to concentrate.
I asked his mother if he had ever been evaluated for ADHD. “Oh, yes, he has it!” she said. “But I have never brought him to the doctor.”
Within twenty minutes, I had asked the head of an Episcopal School to email me the name and address of the best psychologist for children in town. And I had someone make a donation to pay for the visit.
This little boy’s life may be altered by his ability to concentrate. And all this happened within a half and hour one evening at church. Such is the power of community.
Why come to church? For certain, we come to learn about God, to give thanks to God and to worship, but we also come to see God at work in the community. There is a great strength that comes when members of a community are united in caring for one another. I have experienced this kind of support in my life and I will never forget it. It can alter a person's life, this kind of pervasive love.
If we could bottle to advertise community, everyone would want to join. But there is no way to adequately explain the grace and power of church until you experience it. The only thing that we can do is continue to invite people in, again and again and again.
Come inside, we say. Come and see. You are welcome here.
I am so glad that this little boy has come inside.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Lost
I have a terrible sense of direction. Anyone who has ridden in my car with me can attest. I live with my GPS. We have a close personal bond. It is a GPS for dummies and it is perfect for me. You would never believe how many times I have to drive back and forth to a place before I know my way. It has been ten months since I moved to Jacksonville, and I still use the GPS religiously. I am a person who is easily lost.
There are many ways to get lost. Many of us get lost in our lives. We don’t know how to make the right decisions or who to ask for help. We make decisions sometimes that hurt ourselves and others. We go off in a completely wrong direction and only add to the brokenness and confusion in the world.
Take this crazy guy in Gainesville. How in the world did he come to the conclusion that burning the Quran would make things better on Sept 11th? And how in the world did the media get the idea that it would be wise to blow this all up out of proportion? Will he burn the Quran or won’t he? That seems to be the question. The media is selling loads of papers and everyone is watching as a furniture salesman gains the attention of the world, not through goodness, but through threats of book-burning.
Why do we pay attention to such craziness? Why are we buying papers or turning on our televisions? How could we have let our attention get so diverted?
20 million people are now watching a reality show that films pregnant teenage girls as they decide what to do with their lives and the lives of their babies. Viewers hone in, fascinated as families yell and scream, cry and blame. Millions of dollars are made from people’s pain. From watching the lost.
What does it mean to be lost? Spiritually, it means to have lost a connection to the compass of life that is God, to be going in the wrong direction. To sin literally means to miss the mark in the ancient Hebrew, so there is a sense that anyone who is hurting others or leading a life filled with mistakes is essentially lost from God, they do not know the way home so they wander in a land that is waste and misery, holding onto things that will not bring them peace. And the farther we wander from God’s presence, the greater the chaos and pain that we produce.
Why does the sheep wander away from the fold? It is not that the sheep wants to move away from the shepherd, it is that they become distracted, lured by a scent or a curiosity, and then they find that they have lost their way, lost their sense of direction. There are many things that can distract us from God, and hurt and hatred are among the most potent distractions.
Jesus ate with tax collectors. In other words, he dined with the IRS. And he dined with prostitutes and criminals. These were the people that scare us and make our skin crawl. These were people who we would think of as bad or even evil. He shared a meal with them, why? Because God does not abandon see the human soul as bad. God sees the human souls as the lost, God seeks them out.
Ben Clance is a deacon here at the Cathedral. Ben goes into the maximum security prisons here in Florida and he talks to the prisoners about God. Ben sees terrible things, things that I cannot mention in this pulpit, but whenever he sees a man mistreat his own body or try to hurt another man, he does not walk away or leave, he says things like, “How dare you treat yourself in this way? How dare you treat me in this way?” Ben is tough and Ben never leaves. He will visit the same men for months and years, and some of them still refuse his love, they still refuse his company, they want nothing to do with communion. But some turn around and begin to wonder, and others turn their lives around.
Ben calls prison The Belly of the Beast and for ten years he has been going in there, bringing communion to the lost. He seeks out the truth that lies deep within them. Is it still there? Is there some glimpse of God’s light that can be found in this man who has been locked up for life? Is there anything left to seek?
When a man is being executed, Ben goes and washes his feet. He seeks out their goodness, hoping to find some part of them that is willing to be found and to be forgiven.
But you don’t have to be in prison to be lost, and you don’t have to be half-crazy either. Sometimes we all are lost. Sometimes everyone of us wonders if there is any point to our lives at all. When I think back to Sept 11, 2001, I feel lost. I think of the people who joined hands to jump from the windows of skyscrapers and what it must have felt like to hurl through the air knowing that your life would end in a breath, and I feel helpless.
My brother is a surgeon and he rushed to the hospital in New York City that morning. He was ready to have some direction, something to do to help, and no one came in. It was empty. Because everyone was dead and he felt lost.
There are moments in all of our lives when we cannot see the way forward and we don’t know which way to turn. We wonder if the decisions that we have made in life have been the best decisions, we wonder where we would be if we had done things differently. And we don’t know which way to go.
The Psalmist writes You look for truth deep within me.
God actively seeks out the lost, searching hard. In fact, if the parables that Jesus tells us today are right, God looks harder for the lost than He does for those who are on the right track. To get lost is to ensure that God will focus harder on us, not to glory in our brokenness but to find us and help us find our way home.
If you feel at your wits end, saddened by the state of the world and unclear about how to help, God is looking for you.
If you feel aimless and unsure about your future, God is looking for you.
If you feel that there might not be a God, and maybe this is all a sham, God is looking for you.
With the intensity of a blood hound, God is moving closer to you in your darkest moments, the moments when you feel that God is nowhere to be found. There God is, searching.
And we are called to be like God, to search for the broken and the lost. When you look around this morning, when you go to coffee hour or offer someone the peace, look for the person who seems lost. Don’t just greet your friends. Find those who have no friends and let them know that you are there.
And when you wake up on Monday morning, walk in the steps of Jesus. Seek out the man who sits alone on the side of the road with no place to sleep. Even if you are afraid that he will ask you for money, say hello. Speak to him and look him in the eyes. Find him and see him, even if all that you can say to him is to give him directions to the shelter.
We Christians are not placed on this earth to just enjoy life. We are called to follow the Shepherd and that means walking into the brokenness of the world and offering food. That means looking for the lost and helping them find their way home.
This is your home. This altar here, where you are fed every week. This is your anchor, your resting place, so that you may go out into the world and do the work of the Shepherd. Each week you kneel down together, rich and poor and you are fed.
I have never seen someone more lost than the man who lost his wife of 50 years. We had to nearly carry him through the funeral, for he could hardly walk. He was like a lost child, like a baby, he could not hear a word I said, so I just put my arm around him as the coffin was lowered into the earth, and then I took him to get something to eat.
When a baby is lost and afraid, it cries. When it needs to be comforted, it will put something in its mouth. That is what God is doing here, God puts something in your mouth because when the rubber hits the road and we face death and the meaning of life itself, we are all lost. We are all infants, facing something so unknown that it frightens us beyond imagining. So God puts something on our tongues, God feeds us. God finds us. Again and again and again, God seeks you out and God finds you.
There are many ways to get lost. Many of us get lost in our lives. We don’t know how to make the right decisions or who to ask for help. We make decisions sometimes that hurt ourselves and others. We go off in a completely wrong direction and only add to the brokenness and confusion in the world.
Take this crazy guy in Gainesville. How in the world did he come to the conclusion that burning the Quran would make things better on Sept 11th? And how in the world did the media get the idea that it would be wise to blow this all up out of proportion? Will he burn the Quran or won’t he? That seems to be the question. The media is selling loads of papers and everyone is watching as a furniture salesman gains the attention of the world, not through goodness, but through threats of book-burning.
Why do we pay attention to such craziness? Why are we buying papers or turning on our televisions? How could we have let our attention get so diverted?
20 million people are now watching a reality show that films pregnant teenage girls as they decide what to do with their lives and the lives of their babies. Viewers hone in, fascinated as families yell and scream, cry and blame. Millions of dollars are made from people’s pain. From watching the lost.
What does it mean to be lost? Spiritually, it means to have lost a connection to the compass of life that is God, to be going in the wrong direction. To sin literally means to miss the mark in the ancient Hebrew, so there is a sense that anyone who is hurting others or leading a life filled with mistakes is essentially lost from God, they do not know the way home so they wander in a land that is waste and misery, holding onto things that will not bring them peace. And the farther we wander from God’s presence, the greater the chaos and pain that we produce.
Why does the sheep wander away from the fold? It is not that the sheep wants to move away from the shepherd, it is that they become distracted, lured by a scent or a curiosity, and then they find that they have lost their way, lost their sense of direction. There are many things that can distract us from God, and hurt and hatred are among the most potent distractions.
Jesus ate with tax collectors. In other words, he dined with the IRS. And he dined with prostitutes and criminals. These were the people that scare us and make our skin crawl. These were people who we would think of as bad or even evil. He shared a meal with them, why? Because God does not abandon see the human soul as bad. God sees the human souls as the lost, God seeks them out.
Ben Clance is a deacon here at the Cathedral. Ben goes into the maximum security prisons here in Florida and he talks to the prisoners about God. Ben sees terrible things, things that I cannot mention in this pulpit, but whenever he sees a man mistreat his own body or try to hurt another man, he does not walk away or leave, he says things like, “How dare you treat yourself in this way? How dare you treat me in this way?” Ben is tough and Ben never leaves. He will visit the same men for months and years, and some of them still refuse his love, they still refuse his company, they want nothing to do with communion. But some turn around and begin to wonder, and others turn their lives around.
Ben calls prison The Belly of the Beast and for ten years he has been going in there, bringing communion to the lost. He seeks out the truth that lies deep within them. Is it still there? Is there some glimpse of God’s light that can be found in this man who has been locked up for life? Is there anything left to seek?
When a man is being executed, Ben goes and washes his feet. He seeks out their goodness, hoping to find some part of them that is willing to be found and to be forgiven.
But you don’t have to be in prison to be lost, and you don’t have to be half-crazy either. Sometimes we all are lost. Sometimes everyone of us wonders if there is any point to our lives at all. When I think back to Sept 11, 2001, I feel lost. I think of the people who joined hands to jump from the windows of skyscrapers and what it must have felt like to hurl through the air knowing that your life would end in a breath, and I feel helpless.
My brother is a surgeon and he rushed to the hospital in New York City that morning. He was ready to have some direction, something to do to help, and no one came in. It was empty. Because everyone was dead and he felt lost.
There are moments in all of our lives when we cannot see the way forward and we don’t know which way to turn. We wonder if the decisions that we have made in life have been the best decisions, we wonder where we would be if we had done things differently. And we don’t know which way to go.
The Psalmist writes You look for truth deep within me.
God actively seeks out the lost, searching hard. In fact, if the parables that Jesus tells us today are right, God looks harder for the lost than He does for those who are on the right track. To get lost is to ensure that God will focus harder on us, not to glory in our brokenness but to find us and help us find our way home.
If you feel at your wits end, saddened by the state of the world and unclear about how to help, God is looking for you.
If you feel aimless and unsure about your future, God is looking for you.
If you feel that there might not be a God, and maybe this is all a sham, God is looking for you.
With the intensity of a blood hound, God is moving closer to you in your darkest moments, the moments when you feel that God is nowhere to be found. There God is, searching.
And we are called to be like God, to search for the broken and the lost. When you look around this morning, when you go to coffee hour or offer someone the peace, look for the person who seems lost. Don’t just greet your friends. Find those who have no friends and let them know that you are there.
And when you wake up on Monday morning, walk in the steps of Jesus. Seek out the man who sits alone on the side of the road with no place to sleep. Even if you are afraid that he will ask you for money, say hello. Speak to him and look him in the eyes. Find him and see him, even if all that you can say to him is to give him directions to the shelter.
We Christians are not placed on this earth to just enjoy life. We are called to follow the Shepherd and that means walking into the brokenness of the world and offering food. That means looking for the lost and helping them find their way home.
This is your home. This altar here, where you are fed every week. This is your anchor, your resting place, so that you may go out into the world and do the work of the Shepherd. Each week you kneel down together, rich and poor and you are fed.
I have never seen someone more lost than the man who lost his wife of 50 years. We had to nearly carry him through the funeral, for he could hardly walk. He was like a lost child, like a baby, he could not hear a word I said, so I just put my arm around him as the coffin was lowered into the earth, and then I took him to get something to eat.
When a baby is lost and afraid, it cries. When it needs to be comforted, it will put something in its mouth. That is what God is doing here, God puts something in your mouth because when the rubber hits the road and we face death and the meaning of life itself, we are all lost. We are all infants, facing something so unknown that it frightens us beyond imagining. So God puts something on our tongues, God feeds us. God finds us. Again and again and again, God seeks you out and God finds you.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Overhearing the Gospel
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple, Jesus said.
Herbert O Driscoll was walking in an old cemetery years ago. He heard voices on the other side of an old stone wall. The wall divided one area of the cemetery from the other. The voices were speaking softly and he found himself listening.
An old man was explaining something to a boy. He was explaining death and how his son, the boys father, could still love them even though he had died. The old man explained everything with deliberate carefulness, gently, calmly. And the boy continued to ask questions. “But can my dad hear me, grandpa?”
“Yes, dear, he can hear you.”
“But is his body in the ground?”
“Yes, but his soul rests with God.”
“Is he asleep?”
“No, he is very much awake, I think.”
“Why did he die?”
“I wish I new, my love. I wish I knew.”
And lastly, the boy asked, “Is God mad at me?”
And the old man said, “Oh, no. God loves you so much, even though this is hard.”
O’Driscoll said that he felt that he was overhearing something so intimate that he should not be listening. And yet, on the other hand, he somehow felt that he was meant to hear it, all of it, all of the pain and the love.
He walked on, his feet moving through the thick grass of the cemetery, and something came to him. I have just overheard the gospel, he thought to himself.
For years he would ponder what it means to overhear the gospel. Not to just hear it, but to overhear it. You see, in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we are overhearing conversations that Jesus had with particular people in a particular time and place. And yet, the gospels were written for us to hear. The writers wanted us to know what Jesus said, how Jesus acted. They knew that coming to know Jesus would change our lives. They knew that he was talking to us too. God meant for us to overhear the gospel. God meant for us to listen to Jesus’ conversations across time and space, through years of stone buildings and churches, and to hear his voice as if from far away. God means for us to hear it and God means for us to listen.
Today’s gospel is disturbing. There is no way around it. It is just plain disturbing.
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple, Jesus said.
I looked up the Greek word for hate. That is what I do whenever the gospel makes no sense to me, I look up the Greek word and often it means so much more than what the English translation means. But I’m afraid that I ran into a dead end in the Greek. Miseo does mean hate. It also means ignoring or letting go. But its primary meaning is to hate. There is no way of getting around that. Jesus chose to use a very strong word.
Does that mean that I am supposed to beat up my mother-in-law or abandon my children in order to be a disciple? That makes no sense to me. Does Jesus mean for families to be broken up or to ignore one another? That does not seem to make sense given the entirety of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus told us to love one another. Jesus took care of his mother when he was dying on the cross. He made sure that John, his beloved disciple, would take care of her. He loved her. So what was he saying here?
It is vital to remember that we are overhearing the gospel here. We are hearing a conversation that was taking place between Jesus and a crowd of people. This crowd had just blitzed him on the countryside. There he was, walking along, when they came up to him, a huge number of them, and said that they would like to be disciples. They had no preparation, no knoweledge, they just walked up to him and said that they wanted to follow. Jesus knew that they had no idea what they were asking.
Are you willing to leave everyone that you love behind? Are you willing to have everyone in your family convinced of your insanity? Are you ready to abandon everyone for me? You have to be willing to abandon your family to come with me. I don’t think that you have any idea what you are asking.
Jesus was willing to give up having a family, having a home, making money… Every normal kind of life comfort was denied to him because he chose to travel the countryside telling people about God. Did they want to follow him? They had no idea what they were asking.
So what is Jesus saying to us? Does he want us to leave our families or hate our relatives? Or are we supposed to give up everything that we own, as he asked the young rich man to do? What would Jesus say to us?
Jesus was responding to the presumptuousness and pride of the crowd, just like he responded to the pride of the wealthy young man who thought that he was the perfect disciple. Jesus was trying to tell all of these people that they can do nothing if they are proud of themselves and they can do nothing if God is not their first priority.
If you want to follow Jesus, you will be asked to leave everything behind. Everything.
So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
Jesus did not call everyone to walk with him. He did not call Mary or Martha or Lazarus. He did not call the Samaritan woman or Jairus or the centurion. And yet he loved every one of them. Jesus knew that the call to abandon family was reserved for only a few.
But for all of us, regardless of whether we become monks or faithful family members, if you cannot put God ahead of everything that you love and value, then you cannot be a disciple. God must come first.
Which is why you and I need to practice putting Jesus first. Ironically, you cannot have a successful marriage if you love your spouse more than you love God. And you cannot be a successful parent if you love your child more than you love God. For if you put any of your family members over and above God, you will distort your relationship. It will become idolatrous, for you will have put your loved one in the place of God. You will hold on too hard, and you and your loved ones will suffer.
The only One who is capable of being your first priority without disappointment and without dysfunction, is God. And ironically, to love God first means to love everything else more fully.
Let me say that again, to love God means to love everything else more fully.
Jesus may have put God ahead of his family, but in the end he loved all of us more than any of us had ever been loved before. We all became his family. His love was made perfect because he loved God first and foremost, and all other relationships became reflections of his love for God.
There will come a day when Christ will call you to follow him. For many of us, it happens quietly over the course of our lifetimes. For all of us who love him, it will happen when we die. Jesus will come to us and he will hold out his hand and, if we are to take his hand, we must leave everything else behind: our stuff, our families, everything. There will be nothing else to hold onto but his hand.
In Kansas, a new couple joined our parish. They had been married for over 50 years and they were so loving. They had just retired and were planning to travel together when Wayne came down with stomach cancer. His wife was devastated and mad at God. He quickly began to wither under the chemo and was soon on hospice care. She became more and more angry. When I visited their home, she would be lying in his bed, literally holding onto him, telling him that she did not want him to die.
He lingered in great pain for weeks and weeks. I urged her to give him permission to die, she could not do it.
In the middle of the night, after three weeks of dying, he sat up in bed. He had not spoken for three days and had seemed comatose. He spoke in a loud voice, clear as a bell…
Jean, I am going… Horray! Horray!
And he lay down and died.
She could not believe that he had said Horray. He had never used that word before. And there was such a look of ecstasy on his face. She knew that he was going to Someone who could love him and show him beauty that she could not show him. He was gone.
I see over and over people getting stuck in their lives because they are living for another person instead of for God. Expectations and attachments to our loved ones cripple our lives and make us less than we could be. Don’t put your loved ones in front of God or you will hurt them and you will hurt yourself.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And everything else will come from that.
Herbert O Driscoll was walking in an old cemetery years ago. He heard voices on the other side of an old stone wall. The wall divided one area of the cemetery from the other. The voices were speaking softly and he found himself listening.
An old man was explaining something to a boy. He was explaining death and how his son, the boys father, could still love them even though he had died. The old man explained everything with deliberate carefulness, gently, calmly. And the boy continued to ask questions. “But can my dad hear me, grandpa?”
“Yes, dear, he can hear you.”
“But is his body in the ground?”
“Yes, but his soul rests with God.”
“Is he asleep?”
“No, he is very much awake, I think.”
“Why did he die?”
“I wish I new, my love. I wish I knew.”
And lastly, the boy asked, “Is God mad at me?”
And the old man said, “Oh, no. God loves you so much, even though this is hard.”
O’Driscoll said that he felt that he was overhearing something so intimate that he should not be listening. And yet, on the other hand, he somehow felt that he was meant to hear it, all of it, all of the pain and the love.
He walked on, his feet moving through the thick grass of the cemetery, and something came to him. I have just overheard the gospel, he thought to himself.
For years he would ponder what it means to overhear the gospel. Not to just hear it, but to overhear it. You see, in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we are overhearing conversations that Jesus had with particular people in a particular time and place. And yet, the gospels were written for us to hear. The writers wanted us to know what Jesus said, how Jesus acted. They knew that coming to know Jesus would change our lives. They knew that he was talking to us too. God meant for us to overhear the gospel. God meant for us to listen to Jesus’ conversations across time and space, through years of stone buildings and churches, and to hear his voice as if from far away. God means for us to hear it and God means for us to listen.
Today’s gospel is disturbing. There is no way around it. It is just plain disturbing.
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple, Jesus said.
I looked up the Greek word for hate. That is what I do whenever the gospel makes no sense to me, I look up the Greek word and often it means so much more than what the English translation means. But I’m afraid that I ran into a dead end in the Greek. Miseo does mean hate. It also means ignoring or letting go. But its primary meaning is to hate. There is no way of getting around that. Jesus chose to use a very strong word.
Does that mean that I am supposed to beat up my mother-in-law or abandon my children in order to be a disciple? That makes no sense to me. Does Jesus mean for families to be broken up or to ignore one another? That does not seem to make sense given the entirety of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus told us to love one another. Jesus took care of his mother when he was dying on the cross. He made sure that John, his beloved disciple, would take care of her. He loved her. So what was he saying here?
It is vital to remember that we are overhearing the gospel here. We are hearing a conversation that was taking place between Jesus and a crowd of people. This crowd had just blitzed him on the countryside. There he was, walking along, when they came up to him, a huge number of them, and said that they would like to be disciples. They had no preparation, no knoweledge, they just walked up to him and said that they wanted to follow. Jesus knew that they had no idea what they were asking.
Are you willing to leave everyone that you love behind? Are you willing to have everyone in your family convinced of your insanity? Are you ready to abandon everyone for me? You have to be willing to abandon your family to come with me. I don’t think that you have any idea what you are asking.
Jesus was willing to give up having a family, having a home, making money… Every normal kind of life comfort was denied to him because he chose to travel the countryside telling people about God. Did they want to follow him? They had no idea what they were asking.
So what is Jesus saying to us? Does he want us to leave our families or hate our relatives? Or are we supposed to give up everything that we own, as he asked the young rich man to do? What would Jesus say to us?
Jesus was responding to the presumptuousness and pride of the crowd, just like he responded to the pride of the wealthy young man who thought that he was the perfect disciple. Jesus was trying to tell all of these people that they can do nothing if they are proud of themselves and they can do nothing if God is not their first priority.
If you want to follow Jesus, you will be asked to leave everything behind. Everything.
So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
Jesus did not call everyone to walk with him. He did not call Mary or Martha or Lazarus. He did not call the Samaritan woman or Jairus or the centurion. And yet he loved every one of them. Jesus knew that the call to abandon family was reserved for only a few.
But for all of us, regardless of whether we become monks or faithful family members, if you cannot put God ahead of everything that you love and value, then you cannot be a disciple. God must come first.
Which is why you and I need to practice putting Jesus first. Ironically, you cannot have a successful marriage if you love your spouse more than you love God. And you cannot be a successful parent if you love your child more than you love God. For if you put any of your family members over and above God, you will distort your relationship. It will become idolatrous, for you will have put your loved one in the place of God. You will hold on too hard, and you and your loved ones will suffer.
The only One who is capable of being your first priority without disappointment and without dysfunction, is God. And ironically, to love God first means to love everything else more fully.
Let me say that again, to love God means to love everything else more fully.
Jesus may have put God ahead of his family, but in the end he loved all of us more than any of us had ever been loved before. We all became his family. His love was made perfect because he loved God first and foremost, and all other relationships became reflections of his love for God.
There will come a day when Christ will call you to follow him. For many of us, it happens quietly over the course of our lifetimes. For all of us who love him, it will happen when we die. Jesus will come to us and he will hold out his hand and, if we are to take his hand, we must leave everything else behind: our stuff, our families, everything. There will be nothing else to hold onto but his hand.
In Kansas, a new couple joined our parish. They had been married for over 50 years and they were so loving. They had just retired and were planning to travel together when Wayne came down with stomach cancer. His wife was devastated and mad at God. He quickly began to wither under the chemo and was soon on hospice care. She became more and more angry. When I visited their home, she would be lying in his bed, literally holding onto him, telling him that she did not want him to die.
He lingered in great pain for weeks and weeks. I urged her to give him permission to die, she could not do it.
In the middle of the night, after three weeks of dying, he sat up in bed. He had not spoken for three days and had seemed comatose. He spoke in a loud voice, clear as a bell…
Jean, I am going… Horray! Horray!
And he lay down and died.
She could not believe that he had said Horray. He had never used that word before. And there was such a look of ecstasy on his face. She knew that he was going to Someone who could love him and show him beauty that she could not show him. He was gone.
I see over and over people getting stuck in their lives because they are living for another person instead of for God. Expectations and attachments to our loved ones cripple our lives and make us less than we could be. Don’t put your loved ones in front of God or you will hurt them and you will hurt yourself.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And everything else will come from that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)