If you pay any attention to my Facebook timeline, you’ll see me share the Coffee With Jesus comic strips, from Radio Free Babylon, on a pretty regular basis. The author, David Wilke, has published a Coffee With Jesus book, which will be available in paperback on December 1, 2013. However, you can buy it today in several different electronic formats. I bought a copy last night to read on my Kindle app and find myself having to put it down so that I can enjoy it over time rather than just gobbling the whole thing up all at once.
I am a Christian. I’m not ashamed of that; but, I also know I’m not always the best example or role model. I want to be, but my humanity sometimes gets in the way.
So why do I share those comic strips? Because they really do represent the Jesus I know today…the one I wish everyone knew.
I wish this was the Jesus I had known for the first four decades of my life. Regardless of how He may have been presented to me, I spent most of my life thinking I wasn’t good enough, couldn’t be good enough, and felt like there was no way He could love me. The burden of salvation rested on my shoulders and I was failing miserably at achieving Heaven. My spiritual life consisted of a bunch of “do’s” that I wasn’t doing enough, if at all, and a bunch of “do not’s” that I too often found myself doing. My vision of the final judgement was pretty bleak. It was me, standing in front of God, alone, and He was pretty angry about it all.
I’ve got a new perspective today. One that gives me hope.
The Jesus I know today doesn’t say, “you must.” He reaches out and says, “let me.”
The Jesus I know today doesn’t say, “do not.” He reaches out and says, “I have a better plan.”
The Jesus I know today doesn’t waggle His finger at me and shake His head from side to side with that “I told you so” look we all dread. No, He’s the Jesus who jumps up off the porch when He sees me off in the distance, trudging back home in my rags that smell of pig manure and other waste, a lost and hopeless look on my face, desperation in my plea, and He runs, as fast as He can, swooping me up in His arms, a smile on His face, with joy and love and compassion in His voice, giving orders for the preparation of a feast of celebration, all the while shouting, “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:11-32)
That’s the Jesus I know today. My vision of the final judgement looks a lot different. I’m still standing there in front of God, but Jesus is standing in front of me. That is all God sees, His blameless son, taking on my sin, advocating for His client, paying the price, absorbing the wrath that was supposed to be for me.
“As a Christian, I wanted to show people a practical savior, one who used humor, sarcasm and gentle ribbing to address their concerns. Through various social media, the comic took off, and I soon felt the need and obligation to portray Jesus as I know him. “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (Revelation 3: 19 NASB) is a verse that came to mind whenever I had Jesus speaking a stinging rebuke, but it was time to show that he is, above all, merciful. Does he care about your first-world problems while other believers are being martyred in the third world? Yes, but he might put your problems in perspective for you. He’s going to question your motives, examine your heart and reveal to you some ugly things you might be overlooking, all while loving you.” (Wilke, David (2013-02-19). Coffee with Jesus (Kindle Locations 98-105). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.)
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Sunday, April 28, 2013
My Testimony (The Great Wall of Text)
I was privileged to share my testimony in both services at the Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church on April 21. The process of preparing to share was both difficult and rewarding. Reflecting on the past two years of my life grates against wounds covered in fresh pink skin while at the same time allowing me to see where God has moved in my life.
If you're not into reading, you can watch and/or listen as I read it for you:
For the academics among you, below is the text of what I was reading. The one thing I wish I could have done is presented my testimony through song, a musical as it were. Music has played a vital role in both my grieving and my spiritual journey. Even as I type this up, iTunes is pumping out the soundtrack of the past two years for me:
If you have time to read, and for some weird reason prefer that to listening to me drone on in the background, have at it:
Good morning! A few of you already know me, know who I am, and know where I come from. A larger number of you know who I am in the “your family has gone to church here for a long time” way of knowing someone. And some of you might not know me at all. If you’re a Spring Arbor University student who was in chapel on April 8, I’m the guy who fell off the horse in Belize.
Those of you who know me the best know that I’m incredibly uncomfortable right now. Not so much because I’m speaking, but because I’m not wearing a t-shirt and jeans or shorts. Of course, I’d be even more comfortable wearing a motorcycle helmet and listening to the sound of pavement passing beneath me. I can feel comfortably at home just about anywhere if I’m riding on my motorcycle.
The good news is I’m not here to preach today. I don’t really feel qualified to preach. I’m not trained to be a preacher, I haven’t studied to be a preacher, and at this point in my life I don’t feel called to be a preacher. I’m just a guy who sat down to lunch with Pastor Mark, 61 days ago, and was asked to share the testimony of how God has been working in my life with you today.
And I pray that I can do that in the vein of Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Whether you know me or not, my goal today is to humbly allow God to show you what He has been doing in my life over the past couple of years.
For those of you who may not know me, let me introduce myself. I’m Chad Cole. I have three brothers, Ryan, Jared, and Aaron, and two parents, Jim and Kathy. Over the past 17 years I’ve managed to pick up a couple of sisters-in-law, an adopted sister from Estonia, and some wonderful nieces and nephews.
The Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church has been the home church for my family since my parents first moved to Spring Arbor back in 1969. Like a number or you, I first started attending the Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church as a small bundle of cells being knit together in my mother’s womb. That was back in 1971. I grew up in the nursery, attended Sunday School, children’s church, and CYC on Wednesday nights. I went to young teens and senior teens. I even remember the old stone church. I remember when the chapel was the sanctuary. I remember the day when we celebrated the opening of this sanctuary; I was seven years old and there were lots of balloons. I have been on mission trips with the youth group to the Ozark Mountains and have been to Rancho Betania, in Mexico, twice. I graduated from Western High School and went to Spring Arbor College. I dropped out of college when education just didn’t agree with me and I went back when it did. By the time I finished the course work for my degree it become Spring Arbor University.
Like a lot of college students, I met my wife at Spring Arbor. Our first official date was October 27, 1995. On January 11, 1996, I asked her to marry me when I took her out to dinner to celebrate her 20th birthday. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. We were married on August 10, 1996…288 days after that magical first date.
A few years later, I took the like opportunity to open the discussion about family. Her response was not what I expected. When we were engaged and first married, we’d always talked about having children. She had changed her mind. There were some extenuating circumstances with the health of one of her family members, she had come to conclude that having children was not something she could do, and even if she could, she shouldn’t. In addition, she felt too young, there was too much life left to live to worry about having kids when she was only 23.
I would bring the subject up, a couple times a year after that, but the conversations were short, and always ended the same. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want a family; she just didn’t think it would be possible to have children. As my 20s gave way to my 30s, I asked about it less and less. By the time I had reached my mid-30s, it wasn’t something we discussed anymore. I had come to accept the possibility that we might never have children. I was resolved to a life of being a good husband and a good uncle. For the first time in my life it really kind of felt like life is not fair…
Early in 2009, when I was 37 and Sara was 33, as we crawled into bed on a cold winters night Sara said, “There’s something I need to talk to you about.” My heart started racing. We had been married 12 and one half years at this point and I don’t think Sara had ever said those words to me, ever, about anything. My hesitant “OK” was followed by a long silence…a very long silence. After a while, I asked her if she was going to let me in on the secret or if she wanted me to guess…she thought guessing might be the faster route. I loved this woman with everything in me and I could only think of two things she would tell me we needed to talk about at 11PM on a work night…she either had been lying to me about how she felt about me and wanted to leave me or she wanted to have a baby. I quickly and quietly told her I was going to pick the more positive of the two things I was thinking and I asked her if she wanted to have a baby…she said yes…and my whole future changed. It took everything in me to not jump out of bed, shouting with joy, and run out into the street and let everyone who could hear know about this wonderful change of heart. Instead, I hugged her close, told her that it was wonderful, and we both fell asleep happy.
However, the joy of wanting a baby turned quickly to frustration. Even though there were documented and persuasive reasons to suspect fertility might be an issue, her doctor did not want to test anything until we had tried all the natural methods for a least a year. And so we tried…and month after month after month went by with the same results…negative…negative…negative. The following spring after a year of trying and 3 months of tests and referrals…the doctors prescribed the treatment we had been seeking for over a year. And we tried. Negative. And tried. Negative. And tried. Negative. It was now mid-June 2010…after almost a year and a half, our joy had been replaced with a sense of resignation…it wasn’t going to work. Life is not fair...
On Saturday night, June 19, Sara took one last test, just to affirm the last negative test. On Monday morning she was going to call the doctor and let him know we were done. We wouldn’t be pursuing IVF due to personal convictions. Our desire to be parents was not going to be fulfilled. For the first time in over a year, I didn’t sit and wait with Sara for the test to display its results. I waited in the family room, head down, emotions clouded, discouraged, dismayed, and disappointed. Life is not fair...
Sara’s shouts startled me out of my sad stupor. She was screaming that I needed to come to the bathroom. I wondered if she’d somehow fallen and hurt herself. As I rounded the corner to the bathroom, my concern dissolved as I saw the joy on her face as she jumped up and down waving that little white stick in the air like a pennant. I grabbed it from her hand and looked…two pink lines. We were going to be parents…
Despite the immense joy and pride we felt, we managed to keep the pregnancy secret until late August. We had wanted to make it to Grandparents Day in September to make the announcement, but Sara had finally grown tired of sucking it in all day at work. The announcement was greeted with bewildered joy. I was 38 and Sara was 34, we’d been married for 14 years. I think most people had just started to assume children were not on the docket for us. Our due date was late February 2011. Registries were created. Quilts were sewn. We had a baby shower at Thanksgiving. Holidays and birthdays came and went, each one drawing us closer to that impending due date.
On February 4, we drove over to the Toy House, in Jackson, and picked up the baby seat for the car. Here is my Facebook post from that night.
…and then you blink…and life changes. In the span of less than 1 minute you can go from bliss…to blank…from a future full of joy, challenges, and delight…to a future that seems as black as night. A reality where life is not fair…here is my Facebook post from the next night.
One minute I was sitting next to my 37-week pregnant wife, having a pleasant conversation with her parents. The next minute the minivan we were passengers in was a crumpled tin can and I was lifting her chin and asking her if she was OK. I watched as her pupil dilated, her lips and face lost their color and I found false hope as the primal reflex that causes a baby to take its first breath caused her to take her last. The seatbelt designed to save Sara’s life had held firm during our accident. It held her in place as a semi pushed us down the snow-banked median of I-94 crawling farther and farther into the back of our vehicle. The pressure caused her uterus, designed by God to protect the life within to rupture. She was gone…in an instant…and that small life within her would fade in the minutes that followed. The safety measures, both man made and God designed, put in place to save life, had taken it.
It took almost an hour to get Sara to the emergency room. Miranda was delivered less than 1 minute after arriving at the hospital. The doctors and nurses were able to miraculously start her heart and get her on a ventilator. She had already been moved to labor and delivery when they rolled me into the emergency room, strapped down to a gurney, unable to turn my head. They let me hold Sara’s hand as the staff continued to perform CPR, everyone knowing it was in vain but refusing to give up, eventually the chaos stopped, the room got quiet, and what I had known in my heart for over an hour was officially declared…she was gone. Life is not fair…life just is.
Even though the hospital staff had been able to revive Miranda, she had been without oxygen for too long. A little more than 72 hours later, late in the evening on February 8, after all the other family members had filed through and taken time to hold her, I held my daughter, Miranda Evangelene Cole, in my arms as the life support systems were disconnected. I held her and waited…waited for her perfect tiny little heart to beat its final beat. All of my hopes, all of the joy of the previous 9 months, the expectations of a lifetime, the family I had always wanted…were gone. My future was an empty and bleak wasteland. Life is not fair…life just is.
I remember waking up the next morning and staring into the mirror for what seemed like forever. I did not recognize the man standing and staring back at me. A man who felt like everything he had been living for had been taken away from him. His eyes were vacant, with barely a glimmer of life in them. I did not know who he was. The rest of that week was a whirlwind of numb activity. The hours spent planning visitations and a memorial service, taking care of loose ends at the hospital in regards to birth documentation, taking visitors, and sharing in meals provided by caring members of the community at my parents home here in Spring Arbor.
On Friday, as I got into my car to head to the church for the visitation, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I turned on my car radio and switched it over from ESPN to a local Christian radio station. The first song that came on was a decade old song by Steven Curtis Chapman. I heard these words that morning:
And the pain falls like a curtain,
on the things I once called certain
And I have to say the words I fear the most…I just don't know
And the questions without answers,
come and paralyze the dancer
So I stand here on the stage afraid to move,
afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must
On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust
God is God and I am not, I can only see a part
Of the picture He's painting. God is God and I am man
So, I'll never understand it all; For only God is God
God is God...and I am not. Those words got me through two visitations and the memorial service the following day. For the first time in my life I had an experience with the Peace that Passes All Understanding. I was also starting to understand the message behind life’s not fair…life just is. When I was earning my degree in communication from Spring Arbor back in the early 90s, we had a professor who would always respond to the repeated pleadings of his students cries of “that’s not fair” with the simple phrase, “life’s not fair…life just is.” In looking back on this, nearly 20 years later, I now have eyes to see and ears to hear, and I can hear the story behind the phrase. I had heard his testimony 20 years ago this very month, as he shared about the pain of losing his son before he himself came to know Christ. Now, I can understand the truth of “life’s not fair, life just is.” It takes on a whole different meaning when you’ve lost like that. You see, life isn’t fair. We were never promised fair. Fair is what you get in a fairy tale, not in this life. I had a new appreciation for, a new perspective on “life is not fair…life just is.” But in that unfairness God is still God, and I am not…he is still sovereign…and the story isn’t finished.
As the following days turned into weeks, I would hear Steven Curtis Chapman’s song in my head over and over again. God is God and I am not…and I soon realized that I had a choice to make. As the numbness and the nearness of the loss wore off, as my new reality caved in on me, I had to make a choice. I could sense two options for me to choose from, I could choose to stand with my fist raised asking “why?” and “how could you?” and shouting “this isn’t fair” or I could lay my broken and battered heart at the foot of the cross, crawl into the lap of Jesus, and ask him to carry me through the storm. I chose the route of the broken and battered heart because I didn’t have the strength to wrestle with God or be angry with Him…and I didn’t see any reason to do so. For me the story of Job had already been written. I didn’t need to ask those questions again. I want to make sure you understand that even if I had raised my fist and demanded answers that would likely have never come, that wouldn’t have been the “wrong path.” There are few wrong ways to grieve and for many people part of grief is anger at God. And guess what, He’s big enough to handle that anger…it was just not the path that made sense for me. I found I only had strength enough to ask God to carry me through and to put my hope in the resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. That choice didn’t take the pain away. That choice didn’t alleviate my grief. It doesn’t ease the anxiety when a semi is coming up on me at a stop light, or when I have to drive west on I-94, or every time is snows. It doesn't take away the hurt when I see everyone posting pictures on Facebook of their smiling families, their happy children, and the celebrations of life events I will never get to experience with Sara and Miranda. That choice didn’t put a smile on my face, because life’s not fair, life just is. But...it did change my perspective, and it did open me up to His love, His grace, and His mercy in ways I have never felt before. As I look back on the events of the past 2 years, I can see God’s movement and blessing in my life.
Over the course of the past couple of months, as I have slowly prepared for today, I have been able to see that in the course of my life God has surrounded me with the people who helped me the most during my darkest hour. I have a loving family and together we have clung to the promises of faith. When tragedies like this hit, many families fall apart; but because we were able to turn to God, focusing on His goodness in our time of need, we drew closer. We have cried together, laughed together, and celebrated together the time that we had with our loved ones.
In addition to my immediate family, I have an unusual “extended family.” God has blessed me with six friends from college. These men are not just friends, they are brothers; they are as close as family. My friends did not try to console me with empty words. When we would meet later on, we talked about the weather, life events, and if I wanted to talk about Sara and Miranda, they listened…I now realize they had all been down this road already, and whether they knew it or not their words meant less than their actions. You see, each of my closest friends had experienced either the loss of a parent or a child. They had all already tasted the bitter tears of grief. As I look back today, I can see God’s hand in their actions as they helped me adapt to my new normal. In response to this loss, they did not offer me platitudes of faith, they did not try to console me with their own grief, and they did not abandon me; instead, they offered me their lives and their time. They helped me clean my house. They invited me over for dinner. They put together 12 months of activities as a purposeful attempt to bring our whole group closer together and show their love and support. My friends, without realizing, took the lessons of Job chapter 2 to heart:
“When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”
Job 2:11-13 (NIV84)
No one said a word to him…that’s some good advice on how to deal with the bereaved, especially in a tragic loss. It’s advice my friends followed instinctively and it’s advice we would all do well to consider. Over the past two years I have learned that in our rush to console the bereaved, Christians sometimes say the dumbest and most hurtful things to each other and to non-believers. We feel like we HAVE to speak at a time when our mere presence and a hug would be sufficient; this compulsion to open our mouths comes out of a desire to avoid an awkward silence and we end up doing more damage than good. I find this is especially true in the tragic situations of life where both the bereaved and those looking on are left wondering why? When we are all left asking why bad things happen to good people? If we take the time to be silent, to eat a quiet meal with those who suffer, to just sit with them and let them cry when they need to cry and allow them to talk when they want to talk it can change our whole perspective on life and suffering. In one of his sermons dealing with the suffering of creation, John Wesley expressed a belief that suffering exists “by the wise permission of God, determining to draw eternal good out of this temporary evil.” Athol Dickson said essentially the same thing in his book The Gospel According to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus, “I believe sometimes bad things happen to good people so we can watch God turn the greatest tragedies into the purest love.” Life’s not fair…life just is. Through my experiences of the past two years God has opened my eyes and ears and taught me that if we’re busy trying to make ourselves feel better about someone else’s loss, we’re going to miss out on a great opportunity to experience the love of God. Being surrounded by Godly people has gone a long way towards bringing me through “the valley of the shadow of death.” Yet, God has done other things in my life, too.
Being plunged into the depths of despair has a tendency to strip away all the things you think you believe about God and leave you with the truth of what you actually believe about him. In the course of my life, I have memories of being taught the tenets of the Christian faith by people like Oletha Johnston, Donelda Clevenger, Joann Cleveland, Lorain Whiteman, Dave Johnson, Janice Chilcote, Oreon Trickey, Mark Bain, Larry Angus, Carl Spring, Ron Kopico and many, many others. I heard the preaching of three pastors filling this pulpit in my lifetime…not many churches can claim to have only had 3 pastors in a span of 4 decades…yet, for all those people, and the godly messages they brought, I feel like I took the wrong message away…and that’s my fault. I had ears to hear and eyes to see, but my relationship with God was all about me. I spent a significant portion of my life telling God why I wasn’t qualified to serve Him. I couldn’t be the man he needed me to be.
I don’t know about you, but I live in a performance based society. I got good grades as a child to make my parents happy. I got good grades when I was older to earn scholarships. I worked hard at my job so that I could get a raise or a good evaluation. In my relationships with other people I have often “performed” for love and acceptance…and I don’t know about you, but I carried that into my relationship with God.
For most of my life, my relationship with God has been about me trying to please Him. I have spent most of my life traveling a path of good intentions. “God, I want to serve you, but I need to get my life in order first. I need to start reading my Bible every day. I need to start praying every day. I need to stop swearing when I stub my toe or hit my thumb with a hammer. I need to get out and exercise more to take care of your temple. I need to do this and I need to stop doing that because there’s no possible way you could love me or want to use me until I can clean this up and cross that chasm that exists between us.” I’ve been focused on looking at the mess that is my life, the life I see, not necessarily the life the public sees, and in that focus Christ is somewhere over there. I have lived my life thinking that my job, my duty, was to get rid of all the bad things in my life…I had a lot of work to do if I wanted to appear spotless when I reached my judgment. I was stuck in the last 10 verses of Romans 7. The problem with that way of thinking is that I fail, a lot. I can’t be perfect, not matter how hard I try. But it was what I kept thinking I had to be, and it kept me from having a growing relationship with God.
Last June, I finally went through some counseling. I had reached a point of realizing that even though I was working through my grief in mostly good and healthy ways I had other issues that needed to be dealt with. I scheduled myself for a 4 day, one-on-one counseling retreat with a Godly couple, Jerry and Denise, who run a faith based counseling ministry out of their home in Georgia. I flew down thinking I needed to work on some anger and other relationship issues. By the end of my first day with them, those issues had been put on the back burner. Jerry and Denise had quickly cut through the mustard and made me realize that my bigger issue was putting my trust in God, trusting in His grace. I didn’t understand it, it wasn’t part of my life, and it wasn’t part of my relationship with Him. I understood the concept that grace meant receiving something I didn’t deserve and that mercy meant I didn’t get what I had coming to me, but I had never really figured out how that worked in my life.
It turns out I’m a little bit of a control freak. I don’t like not feeling 100% in control. Jerry and Denise spent the next three days guiding me toward the Father. Helping me strip away my presuppositions about who He is, based on my life experiences, setting aside who I thought He was, based on my perceptions of the people in my life, and teaching me that if I’m willing to walk the path of trusting God, the path of God’s grace, the other issues I had been struggling with would be things He would start to take care of. For almost a year and a half I had been grieving with the hope of the resurrection, but I hadn’t REALLY learned how to make that hope part of my own life. I still struggle with this, and will for the rest of my life. Giving up control is not natural, it’s not what my humanness desires, but I have finally learned that giving Him control, living in His grace, allowing Him to wrap his arms around me and stand beside me is the only way I’ll make it through life. He is here, standing beside me, looking at the mess of my life with me, and promising that He will carry me through the minefield.
The last thing I want to share with you today is how hope, and my journey of grief, have impacted the way I live. The biggest thing I have learned about the hope of the resurrection is that salvation is for today. It’s not just fire insurance. The hope of the resurrection changes how I interact with the world around me. It puts a whole new spin on “thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” The hope of the resurrection is for right here, right now, it is for every single little moment I live in. Grief has opened my eyes to how much pain exists in the world around me…the hope of the resurrection gives me the power to do something about it. The hope of the resurrection causes me to pick up hitchhikers and drive them an hour out of my way just to make sure they’re safe and to have an opportunity to pray with them. That might not be the wisest thing for some of you, but I tend to feel pretty safe around the rest of you puny humans. The hope of the resurrection directs me to invite the guy at the corner of Boardman and Airport Roads to get in my car and let me take him grocery shopping and then drive him back to his apartment, instead of making him walk, so the two kids he’s trying to feed can have some food. The hope of the resurrection shows me that it is the small day to day opportunities that most of us let pass by that really would be doing His will here on earth.
In January, God worked through Pastor Mark and brought us a great series about generosity. As the end of the month came around, a little more than two weeks before the second anniversary of the birth of my daughter and the accident that took her and her mother from me, I was struggling to come up with ways to remember Miranda. I wanted to find something special to do for her birthday. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as I was driving to church on January 27, on a day when Pastor Mark was preaching about the Liturgy of Abundance, I got the idea that the best way to remember my daughter would be to do something special for other people…and The Miranda Gift was born.
I created an event and invited my family and friends to it. The next thing I knew they were inviting their friends to it. By February 5, over 1,700 people had been invited and nearly 500 said they were going to participate. On a day when grief could have beat me up, sent me back to bed, and left me waiting for February 6, God provided a way for the hope of the resurrection to triumph over the grave. I spent my day running errands and looking for the perfect opportunities to hand out my own Miranda gifts. Instead of tears, God had given me purpose. Instead of pain, He was giving me joy. The hope of the resurrection was offering beauty for ashes. When I got home that afternoon, I logged onto Facebook and the reality of God’s greatness came flooding in as I saw examples of people reaching out and offering something to complete strangers all over the country.
The world inside Facebook saw a woman in Jackson who had gone to East Side Meijer to cash in her spare change in order to help make ends meet. With her last few pennies she was treating her 3-year-old daughter to a ride on the horse at the front of the store when she received a Miranda Gift. She took her daughter to the toy department and let her pick out a tricycle. The rest of the money helped them with their other needs.
There was the cashier at a store in the mall who was given a Miranda Gift to hand out to the next person who came up to the counter to buy something. One of you was that person; you shared the story of Sara and Miranda with that clerk and asked her to give it to someone else. You posted about the encounter without even knowing what the Miranda Gift was. Later the clerk you had given the gift back to posted on Facebook, telling her part in the story, and the joy she had found in handing the gift to a young mother pushing a stroller through the mall. That young mother posted on Facebook when she got home, her sons birthday was the next day and she was overwhelmed with the generosity and blessings of others.
There was a father who received a card while pumping gas; the woman whose daughter brought a card with a gift certificate home from school; the mother whose son had found a card in his school locker; the woman at Target who found a card had mysteriously appeared in her shopping cart; the parents of the babies born at Allegiance Hospital on February 5th; the person who saw a friend post on Facebook about receiving a Miranda gift, and then started sharing the event with their friends; the young mom at Airport Road Meijer who was handed a gift as she was checking out and then proceeded to head back out once she got home and figured out what was going on so she could give a Miranda Gift to someone, too…hope, handed from one hand to another; hope given freely and without expectation. And you know what I learned…there is VICTORY in the hope of the resurrection.
I want you want to take you back to my professor from college. “Life’s not fair, life just is” wasn’t the end of the story. He had another catch phrase, I’ll never forget, and somehow I never made the connection between “ life’s not fair, life just is” and his question of greeting, “You got the victory?” When he asked, I would always answer in the affirmative, no different than if he’d asked if I was having a good day. I now see the question behind the question, “Do you have the hope of the resurrection?” Folks, there’s victory in hope. “You got the Victory?” isn’t about my day…it’s about my soul. I get that now and I better understand the way he ended many of his conversations, “Keep the Victory.” Life’s not fair, life just is. BUT there is VICTORY in the hope of the resurrection.
And that VICTORY can be overwhelming. The hope of the resurrection is what pulls me back and allows me to get out of my pew most Sundays after I listen to Pastor Mark bring us God’s words. Have you ever seen Schindler’s List? I was a big deal about 20 years ago. It was a movie about the Holocaust and one man’s role in saving some of the Jews from Hitler’s genocide. At the end of the movie, the main character, Oskar Schindler, is preparing to flee in fear of his life. He is standing outside the factory where he saved 1,100 Jews from certain death by employing them. These people of little means, present him with a gold ring, made from the fillings and crowns in their own teeth. In a time when Oskar Schindler should be raising his arms in celebration of the 1,100 lives he has saved, he breaks down. He is overwhelmed at the thought of all those who he did not save. His last scenes in the movie are of him sobbing uncontrollably realizing he could have used his wealth and power to save even one more person. Folks, I have that moment sitting right here in this sanctuary almost every Sunday. I am so overwhelmed by the grace of God and the hope of the resurrection that I can’t help but feel like I wasted a significant portion of my life. I wasn’t living in sin, I just wasn’t living in the grace of God with the hope of the resurrection.
The hope of the resurrection calls me to serve my fellow man, to be Jesus in human skin. Here I am, at the age of 41, climbing out of the miry clay, out of the pitch black dark of grief and I’m finally starting to understand the full extent of the power of God’s grace and the hope of the resurrection. Life’s not fair, life just is. But there is Victory in the hope found in Jesus Christ.
My testimony is that I live with the hope of the resurrection, a hope born of the Grace of God. I live with the promise that my daughter and wife are rejoicing in Heaven, worshipping the Living God with the angels and all those who have gone before. I live with the promise that they are made whole, recreated, resurrected with perfected physical bodies, as God fully intended them to be. I live knowing that I, and all those who believe, will join them in that resurrection when our time here is through. I live knowing that my only responsibility is to lay my brokenness at the feet of Jesus every day and say here I am Lord, use me in whatever way you see fit. That is my testimony.
Life’s not fair, life just is…but do YOU have the Victory?
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 5:10-11 (NIV)
If you're not into reading, you can watch and/or listen as I read it for you:
For the academics among you, below is the text of what I was reading. The one thing I wish I could have done is presented my testimony through song, a musical as it were. Music has played a vital role in both my grieving and my spiritual journey. Even as I type this up, iTunes is pumping out the soundtrack of the past two years for me:
- God is God - Steven Curtis Chapman
- Come Thou Fount - David Crowder Band
- How Deep the Father's Love for us - Kendall Payne
- In Christ Alone - Owl City
- Leaning on the Everlasting Arms/'Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus - David Crowder Band
- O Love That Will Not Let Me Go - Christ Rice
- You Are My Vision - Rend Collective Experiment
- Before the Throne of God Above - Chris Rice
- 10,000 Reasons - Rend Collective Experiment
- Build Your Kingdom Here - Rend Collective Experiment
If you have time to read, and for some weird reason prefer that to listening to me drone on in the background, have at it:
Good morning! A few of you already know me, know who I am, and know where I come from. A larger number of you know who I am in the “your family has gone to church here for a long time” way of knowing someone. And some of you might not know me at all. If you’re a Spring Arbor University student who was in chapel on April 8, I’m the guy who fell off the horse in Belize.
Those of you who know me the best know that I’m incredibly uncomfortable right now. Not so much because I’m speaking, but because I’m not wearing a t-shirt and jeans or shorts. Of course, I’d be even more comfortable wearing a motorcycle helmet and listening to the sound of pavement passing beneath me. I can feel comfortably at home just about anywhere if I’m riding on my motorcycle.
The good news is I’m not here to preach today. I don’t really feel qualified to preach. I’m not trained to be a preacher, I haven’t studied to be a preacher, and at this point in my life I don’t feel called to be a preacher. I’m just a guy who sat down to lunch with Pastor Mark, 61 days ago, and was asked to share the testimony of how God has been working in my life with you today.
And I pray that I can do that in the vein of Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Whether you know me or not, my goal today is to humbly allow God to show you what He has been doing in my life over the past couple of years.
For those of you who may not know me, let me introduce myself. I’m Chad Cole. I have three brothers, Ryan, Jared, and Aaron, and two parents, Jim and Kathy. Over the past 17 years I’ve managed to pick up a couple of sisters-in-law, an adopted sister from Estonia, and some wonderful nieces and nephews.
The Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church has been the home church for my family since my parents first moved to Spring Arbor back in 1969. Like a number or you, I first started attending the Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church as a small bundle of cells being knit together in my mother’s womb. That was back in 1971. I grew up in the nursery, attended Sunday School, children’s church, and CYC on Wednesday nights. I went to young teens and senior teens. I even remember the old stone church. I remember when the chapel was the sanctuary. I remember the day when we celebrated the opening of this sanctuary; I was seven years old and there were lots of balloons. I have been on mission trips with the youth group to the Ozark Mountains and have been to Rancho Betania, in Mexico, twice. I graduated from Western High School and went to Spring Arbor College. I dropped out of college when education just didn’t agree with me and I went back when it did. By the time I finished the course work for my degree it become Spring Arbor University.
Like a lot of college students, I met my wife at Spring Arbor. Our first official date was October 27, 1995. On January 11, 1996, I asked her to marry me when I took her out to dinner to celebrate her 20th birthday. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. We were married on August 10, 1996…288 days after that magical first date.
A few years later, I took the like opportunity to open the discussion about family. Her response was not what I expected. When we were engaged and first married, we’d always talked about having children. She had changed her mind. There were some extenuating circumstances with the health of one of her family members, she had come to conclude that having children was not something she could do, and even if she could, she shouldn’t. In addition, she felt too young, there was too much life left to live to worry about having kids when she was only 23.
I would bring the subject up, a couple times a year after that, but the conversations were short, and always ended the same. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want a family; she just didn’t think it would be possible to have children. As my 20s gave way to my 30s, I asked about it less and less. By the time I had reached my mid-30s, it wasn’t something we discussed anymore. I had come to accept the possibility that we might never have children. I was resolved to a life of being a good husband and a good uncle. For the first time in my life it really kind of felt like life is not fair…
Early in 2009, when I was 37 and Sara was 33, as we crawled into bed on a cold winters night Sara said, “There’s something I need to talk to you about.” My heart started racing. We had been married 12 and one half years at this point and I don’t think Sara had ever said those words to me, ever, about anything. My hesitant “OK” was followed by a long silence…a very long silence. After a while, I asked her if she was going to let me in on the secret or if she wanted me to guess…she thought guessing might be the faster route. I loved this woman with everything in me and I could only think of two things she would tell me we needed to talk about at 11PM on a work night…she either had been lying to me about how she felt about me and wanted to leave me or she wanted to have a baby. I quickly and quietly told her I was going to pick the more positive of the two things I was thinking and I asked her if she wanted to have a baby…she said yes…and my whole future changed. It took everything in me to not jump out of bed, shouting with joy, and run out into the street and let everyone who could hear know about this wonderful change of heart. Instead, I hugged her close, told her that it was wonderful, and we both fell asleep happy.
However, the joy of wanting a baby turned quickly to frustration. Even though there were documented and persuasive reasons to suspect fertility might be an issue, her doctor did not want to test anything until we had tried all the natural methods for a least a year. And so we tried…and month after month after month went by with the same results…negative…negative…negative. The following spring after a year of trying and 3 months of tests and referrals…the doctors prescribed the treatment we had been seeking for over a year. And we tried. Negative. And tried. Negative. And tried. Negative. It was now mid-June 2010…after almost a year and a half, our joy had been replaced with a sense of resignation…it wasn’t going to work. Life is not fair...
On Saturday night, June 19, Sara took one last test, just to affirm the last negative test. On Monday morning she was going to call the doctor and let him know we were done. We wouldn’t be pursuing IVF due to personal convictions. Our desire to be parents was not going to be fulfilled. For the first time in over a year, I didn’t sit and wait with Sara for the test to display its results. I waited in the family room, head down, emotions clouded, discouraged, dismayed, and disappointed. Life is not fair...
Sara’s shouts startled me out of my sad stupor. She was screaming that I needed to come to the bathroom. I wondered if she’d somehow fallen and hurt herself. As I rounded the corner to the bathroom, my concern dissolved as I saw the joy on her face as she jumped up and down waving that little white stick in the air like a pennant. I grabbed it from her hand and looked…two pink lines. We were going to be parents…
Despite the immense joy and pride we felt, we managed to keep the pregnancy secret until late August. We had wanted to make it to Grandparents Day in September to make the announcement, but Sara had finally grown tired of sucking it in all day at work. The announcement was greeted with bewildered joy. I was 38 and Sara was 34, we’d been married for 14 years. I think most people had just started to assume children were not on the docket for us. Our due date was late February 2011. Registries were created. Quilts were sewn. We had a baby shower at Thanksgiving. Holidays and birthdays came and went, each one drawing us closer to that impending due date.
On February 4, we drove over to the Toy House, in Jackson, and picked up the baby seat for the car. Here is my Facebook post from that night.
…and then you blink…and life changes. In the span of less than 1 minute you can go from bliss…to blank…from a future full of joy, challenges, and delight…to a future that seems as black as night. A reality where life is not fair…here is my Facebook post from the next night.
One minute I was sitting next to my 37-week pregnant wife, having a pleasant conversation with her parents. The next minute the minivan we were passengers in was a crumpled tin can and I was lifting her chin and asking her if she was OK. I watched as her pupil dilated, her lips and face lost their color and I found false hope as the primal reflex that causes a baby to take its first breath caused her to take her last. The seatbelt designed to save Sara’s life had held firm during our accident. It held her in place as a semi pushed us down the snow-banked median of I-94 crawling farther and farther into the back of our vehicle. The pressure caused her uterus, designed by God to protect the life within to rupture. She was gone…in an instant…and that small life within her would fade in the minutes that followed. The safety measures, both man made and God designed, put in place to save life, had taken it.
It took almost an hour to get Sara to the emergency room. Miranda was delivered less than 1 minute after arriving at the hospital. The doctors and nurses were able to miraculously start her heart and get her on a ventilator. She had already been moved to labor and delivery when they rolled me into the emergency room, strapped down to a gurney, unable to turn my head. They let me hold Sara’s hand as the staff continued to perform CPR, everyone knowing it was in vain but refusing to give up, eventually the chaos stopped, the room got quiet, and what I had known in my heart for over an hour was officially declared…she was gone. Life is not fair…life just is.
Even though the hospital staff had been able to revive Miranda, she had been without oxygen for too long. A little more than 72 hours later, late in the evening on February 8, after all the other family members had filed through and taken time to hold her, I held my daughter, Miranda Evangelene Cole, in my arms as the life support systems were disconnected. I held her and waited…waited for her perfect tiny little heart to beat its final beat. All of my hopes, all of the joy of the previous 9 months, the expectations of a lifetime, the family I had always wanted…were gone. My future was an empty and bleak wasteland. Life is not fair…life just is.
I remember waking up the next morning and staring into the mirror for what seemed like forever. I did not recognize the man standing and staring back at me. A man who felt like everything he had been living for had been taken away from him. His eyes were vacant, with barely a glimmer of life in them. I did not know who he was. The rest of that week was a whirlwind of numb activity. The hours spent planning visitations and a memorial service, taking care of loose ends at the hospital in regards to birth documentation, taking visitors, and sharing in meals provided by caring members of the community at my parents home here in Spring Arbor.
On Friday, as I got into my car to head to the church for the visitation, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I turned on my car radio and switched it over from ESPN to a local Christian radio station. The first song that came on was a decade old song by Steven Curtis Chapman. I heard these words that morning:
And the pain falls like a curtain,
on the things I once called certain
And I have to say the words I fear the most…I just don't know
And the questions without answers,
come and paralyze the dancer
So I stand here on the stage afraid to move,
afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must
On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust
God is God and I am not, I can only see a part
Of the picture He's painting. God is God and I am man
So, I'll never understand it all; For only God is God
God is God...and I am not. Those words got me through two visitations and the memorial service the following day. For the first time in my life I had an experience with the Peace that Passes All Understanding. I was also starting to understand the message behind life’s not fair…life just is. When I was earning my degree in communication from Spring Arbor back in the early 90s, we had a professor who would always respond to the repeated pleadings of his students cries of “that’s not fair” with the simple phrase, “life’s not fair…life just is.” In looking back on this, nearly 20 years later, I now have eyes to see and ears to hear, and I can hear the story behind the phrase. I had heard his testimony 20 years ago this very month, as he shared about the pain of losing his son before he himself came to know Christ. Now, I can understand the truth of “life’s not fair, life just is.” It takes on a whole different meaning when you’ve lost like that. You see, life isn’t fair. We were never promised fair. Fair is what you get in a fairy tale, not in this life. I had a new appreciation for, a new perspective on “life is not fair…life just is.” But in that unfairness God is still God, and I am not…he is still sovereign…and the story isn’t finished.
As the following days turned into weeks, I would hear Steven Curtis Chapman’s song in my head over and over again. God is God and I am not…and I soon realized that I had a choice to make. As the numbness and the nearness of the loss wore off, as my new reality caved in on me, I had to make a choice. I could sense two options for me to choose from, I could choose to stand with my fist raised asking “why?” and “how could you?” and shouting “this isn’t fair” or I could lay my broken and battered heart at the foot of the cross, crawl into the lap of Jesus, and ask him to carry me through the storm. I chose the route of the broken and battered heart because I didn’t have the strength to wrestle with God or be angry with Him…and I didn’t see any reason to do so. For me the story of Job had already been written. I didn’t need to ask those questions again. I want to make sure you understand that even if I had raised my fist and demanded answers that would likely have never come, that wouldn’t have been the “wrong path.” There are few wrong ways to grieve and for many people part of grief is anger at God. And guess what, He’s big enough to handle that anger…it was just not the path that made sense for me. I found I only had strength enough to ask God to carry me through and to put my hope in the resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. That choice didn’t take the pain away. That choice didn’t alleviate my grief. It doesn’t ease the anxiety when a semi is coming up on me at a stop light, or when I have to drive west on I-94, or every time is snows. It doesn't take away the hurt when I see everyone posting pictures on Facebook of their smiling families, their happy children, and the celebrations of life events I will never get to experience with Sara and Miranda. That choice didn’t put a smile on my face, because life’s not fair, life just is. But...it did change my perspective, and it did open me up to His love, His grace, and His mercy in ways I have never felt before. As I look back on the events of the past 2 years, I can see God’s movement and blessing in my life.
Over the course of the past couple of months, as I have slowly prepared for today, I have been able to see that in the course of my life God has surrounded me with the people who helped me the most during my darkest hour. I have a loving family and together we have clung to the promises of faith. When tragedies like this hit, many families fall apart; but because we were able to turn to God, focusing on His goodness in our time of need, we drew closer. We have cried together, laughed together, and celebrated together the time that we had with our loved ones.
In addition to my immediate family, I have an unusual “extended family.” God has blessed me with six friends from college. These men are not just friends, they are brothers; they are as close as family. My friends did not try to console me with empty words. When we would meet later on, we talked about the weather, life events, and if I wanted to talk about Sara and Miranda, they listened…I now realize they had all been down this road already, and whether they knew it or not their words meant less than their actions. You see, each of my closest friends had experienced either the loss of a parent or a child. They had all already tasted the bitter tears of grief. As I look back today, I can see God’s hand in their actions as they helped me adapt to my new normal. In response to this loss, they did not offer me platitudes of faith, they did not try to console me with their own grief, and they did not abandon me; instead, they offered me their lives and their time. They helped me clean my house. They invited me over for dinner. They put together 12 months of activities as a purposeful attempt to bring our whole group closer together and show their love and support. My friends, without realizing, took the lessons of Job chapter 2 to heart:
“When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”
Job 2:11-13 (NIV84)
No one said a word to him…that’s some good advice on how to deal with the bereaved, especially in a tragic loss. It’s advice my friends followed instinctively and it’s advice we would all do well to consider. Over the past two years I have learned that in our rush to console the bereaved, Christians sometimes say the dumbest and most hurtful things to each other and to non-believers. We feel like we HAVE to speak at a time when our mere presence and a hug would be sufficient; this compulsion to open our mouths comes out of a desire to avoid an awkward silence and we end up doing more damage than good. I find this is especially true in the tragic situations of life where both the bereaved and those looking on are left wondering why? When we are all left asking why bad things happen to good people? If we take the time to be silent, to eat a quiet meal with those who suffer, to just sit with them and let them cry when they need to cry and allow them to talk when they want to talk it can change our whole perspective on life and suffering. In one of his sermons dealing with the suffering of creation, John Wesley expressed a belief that suffering exists “by the wise permission of God, determining to draw eternal good out of this temporary evil.” Athol Dickson said essentially the same thing in his book The Gospel According to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus, “I believe sometimes bad things happen to good people so we can watch God turn the greatest tragedies into the purest love.” Life’s not fair…life just is. Through my experiences of the past two years God has opened my eyes and ears and taught me that if we’re busy trying to make ourselves feel better about someone else’s loss, we’re going to miss out on a great opportunity to experience the love of God. Being surrounded by Godly people has gone a long way towards bringing me through “the valley of the shadow of death.” Yet, God has done other things in my life, too.
Being plunged into the depths of despair has a tendency to strip away all the things you think you believe about God and leave you with the truth of what you actually believe about him. In the course of my life, I have memories of being taught the tenets of the Christian faith by people like Oletha Johnston, Donelda Clevenger, Joann Cleveland, Lorain Whiteman, Dave Johnson, Janice Chilcote, Oreon Trickey, Mark Bain, Larry Angus, Carl Spring, Ron Kopico and many, many others. I heard the preaching of three pastors filling this pulpit in my lifetime…not many churches can claim to have only had 3 pastors in a span of 4 decades…yet, for all those people, and the godly messages they brought, I feel like I took the wrong message away…and that’s my fault. I had ears to hear and eyes to see, but my relationship with God was all about me. I spent a significant portion of my life telling God why I wasn’t qualified to serve Him. I couldn’t be the man he needed me to be.
I don’t know about you, but I live in a performance based society. I got good grades as a child to make my parents happy. I got good grades when I was older to earn scholarships. I worked hard at my job so that I could get a raise or a good evaluation. In my relationships with other people I have often “performed” for love and acceptance…and I don’t know about you, but I carried that into my relationship with God.
For most of my life, my relationship with God has been about me trying to please Him. I have spent most of my life traveling a path of good intentions. “God, I want to serve you, but I need to get my life in order first. I need to start reading my Bible every day. I need to start praying every day. I need to stop swearing when I stub my toe or hit my thumb with a hammer. I need to get out and exercise more to take care of your temple. I need to do this and I need to stop doing that because there’s no possible way you could love me or want to use me until I can clean this up and cross that chasm that exists between us.” I’ve been focused on looking at the mess that is my life, the life I see, not necessarily the life the public sees, and in that focus Christ is somewhere over there. I have lived my life thinking that my job, my duty, was to get rid of all the bad things in my life…I had a lot of work to do if I wanted to appear spotless when I reached my judgment. I was stuck in the last 10 verses of Romans 7. The problem with that way of thinking is that I fail, a lot. I can’t be perfect, not matter how hard I try. But it was what I kept thinking I had to be, and it kept me from having a growing relationship with God.
Last June, I finally went through some counseling. I had reached a point of realizing that even though I was working through my grief in mostly good and healthy ways I had other issues that needed to be dealt with. I scheduled myself for a 4 day, one-on-one counseling retreat with a Godly couple, Jerry and Denise, who run a faith based counseling ministry out of their home in Georgia. I flew down thinking I needed to work on some anger and other relationship issues. By the end of my first day with them, those issues had been put on the back burner. Jerry and Denise had quickly cut through the mustard and made me realize that my bigger issue was putting my trust in God, trusting in His grace. I didn’t understand it, it wasn’t part of my life, and it wasn’t part of my relationship with Him. I understood the concept that grace meant receiving something I didn’t deserve and that mercy meant I didn’t get what I had coming to me, but I had never really figured out how that worked in my life.
It turns out I’m a little bit of a control freak. I don’t like not feeling 100% in control. Jerry and Denise spent the next three days guiding me toward the Father. Helping me strip away my presuppositions about who He is, based on my life experiences, setting aside who I thought He was, based on my perceptions of the people in my life, and teaching me that if I’m willing to walk the path of trusting God, the path of God’s grace, the other issues I had been struggling with would be things He would start to take care of. For almost a year and a half I had been grieving with the hope of the resurrection, but I hadn’t REALLY learned how to make that hope part of my own life. I still struggle with this, and will for the rest of my life. Giving up control is not natural, it’s not what my humanness desires, but I have finally learned that giving Him control, living in His grace, allowing Him to wrap his arms around me and stand beside me is the only way I’ll make it through life. He is here, standing beside me, looking at the mess of my life with me, and promising that He will carry me through the minefield.
The last thing I want to share with you today is how hope, and my journey of grief, have impacted the way I live. The biggest thing I have learned about the hope of the resurrection is that salvation is for today. It’s not just fire insurance. The hope of the resurrection changes how I interact with the world around me. It puts a whole new spin on “thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” The hope of the resurrection is for right here, right now, it is for every single little moment I live in. Grief has opened my eyes to how much pain exists in the world around me…the hope of the resurrection gives me the power to do something about it. The hope of the resurrection causes me to pick up hitchhikers and drive them an hour out of my way just to make sure they’re safe and to have an opportunity to pray with them. That might not be the wisest thing for some of you, but I tend to feel pretty safe around the rest of you puny humans. The hope of the resurrection directs me to invite the guy at the corner of Boardman and Airport Roads to get in my car and let me take him grocery shopping and then drive him back to his apartment, instead of making him walk, so the two kids he’s trying to feed can have some food. The hope of the resurrection shows me that it is the small day to day opportunities that most of us let pass by that really would be doing His will here on earth.
In January, God worked through Pastor Mark and brought us a great series about generosity. As the end of the month came around, a little more than two weeks before the second anniversary of the birth of my daughter and the accident that took her and her mother from me, I was struggling to come up with ways to remember Miranda. I wanted to find something special to do for her birthday. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as I was driving to church on January 27, on a day when Pastor Mark was preaching about the Liturgy of Abundance, I got the idea that the best way to remember my daughter would be to do something special for other people…and The Miranda Gift was born.
I created an event and invited my family and friends to it. The next thing I knew they were inviting their friends to it. By February 5, over 1,700 people had been invited and nearly 500 said they were going to participate. On a day when grief could have beat me up, sent me back to bed, and left me waiting for February 6, God provided a way for the hope of the resurrection to triumph over the grave. I spent my day running errands and looking for the perfect opportunities to hand out my own Miranda gifts. Instead of tears, God had given me purpose. Instead of pain, He was giving me joy. The hope of the resurrection was offering beauty for ashes. When I got home that afternoon, I logged onto Facebook and the reality of God’s greatness came flooding in as I saw examples of people reaching out and offering something to complete strangers all over the country.
The world inside Facebook saw a woman in Jackson who had gone to East Side Meijer to cash in her spare change in order to help make ends meet. With her last few pennies she was treating her 3-year-old daughter to a ride on the horse at the front of the store when she received a Miranda Gift. She took her daughter to the toy department and let her pick out a tricycle. The rest of the money helped them with their other needs.
There was the cashier at a store in the mall who was given a Miranda Gift to hand out to the next person who came up to the counter to buy something. One of you was that person; you shared the story of Sara and Miranda with that clerk and asked her to give it to someone else. You posted about the encounter without even knowing what the Miranda Gift was. Later the clerk you had given the gift back to posted on Facebook, telling her part in the story, and the joy she had found in handing the gift to a young mother pushing a stroller through the mall. That young mother posted on Facebook when she got home, her sons birthday was the next day and she was overwhelmed with the generosity and blessings of others.
There was a father who received a card while pumping gas; the woman whose daughter brought a card with a gift certificate home from school; the mother whose son had found a card in his school locker; the woman at Target who found a card had mysteriously appeared in her shopping cart; the parents of the babies born at Allegiance Hospital on February 5th; the person who saw a friend post on Facebook about receiving a Miranda gift, and then started sharing the event with their friends; the young mom at Airport Road Meijer who was handed a gift as she was checking out and then proceeded to head back out once she got home and figured out what was going on so she could give a Miranda Gift to someone, too…hope, handed from one hand to another; hope given freely and without expectation. And you know what I learned…there is VICTORY in the hope of the resurrection.
I want you want to take you back to my professor from college. “Life’s not fair, life just is” wasn’t the end of the story. He had another catch phrase, I’ll never forget, and somehow I never made the connection between “ life’s not fair, life just is” and his question of greeting, “You got the victory?” When he asked, I would always answer in the affirmative, no different than if he’d asked if I was having a good day. I now see the question behind the question, “Do you have the hope of the resurrection?” Folks, there’s victory in hope. “You got the Victory?” isn’t about my day…it’s about my soul. I get that now and I better understand the way he ended many of his conversations, “Keep the Victory.” Life’s not fair, life just is. BUT there is VICTORY in the hope of the resurrection.
And that VICTORY can be overwhelming. The hope of the resurrection is what pulls me back and allows me to get out of my pew most Sundays after I listen to Pastor Mark bring us God’s words. Have you ever seen Schindler’s List? I was a big deal about 20 years ago. It was a movie about the Holocaust and one man’s role in saving some of the Jews from Hitler’s genocide. At the end of the movie, the main character, Oskar Schindler, is preparing to flee in fear of his life. He is standing outside the factory where he saved 1,100 Jews from certain death by employing them. These people of little means, present him with a gold ring, made from the fillings and crowns in their own teeth. In a time when Oskar Schindler should be raising his arms in celebration of the 1,100 lives he has saved, he breaks down. He is overwhelmed at the thought of all those who he did not save. His last scenes in the movie are of him sobbing uncontrollably realizing he could have used his wealth and power to save even one more person. Folks, I have that moment sitting right here in this sanctuary almost every Sunday. I am so overwhelmed by the grace of God and the hope of the resurrection that I can’t help but feel like I wasted a significant portion of my life. I wasn’t living in sin, I just wasn’t living in the grace of God with the hope of the resurrection.
The hope of the resurrection calls me to serve my fellow man, to be Jesus in human skin. Here I am, at the age of 41, climbing out of the miry clay, out of the pitch black dark of grief and I’m finally starting to understand the full extent of the power of God’s grace and the hope of the resurrection. Life’s not fair, life just is. But there is Victory in the hope found in Jesus Christ.
My testimony is that I live with the hope of the resurrection, a hope born of the Grace of God. I live with the promise that my daughter and wife are rejoicing in Heaven, worshipping the Living God with the angels and all those who have gone before. I live with the promise that they are made whole, recreated, resurrected with perfected physical bodies, as God fully intended them to be. I live knowing that I, and all those who believe, will join them in that resurrection when our time here is through. I live knowing that my only responsibility is to lay my brokenness at the feet of Jesus every day and say here I am Lord, use me in whatever way you see fit. That is my testimony.
Life’s not fair, life just is…but do YOU have the Victory?
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 5:10-11 (NIV)
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Because He Lives
I was sitting at the kitchen table, in the Archer home, earlier today and working on a jigsaw puzzle with John and Jason when Jason pulled out his iPhone and started playing a short playlist of some songs from The David Crowder Band's latest project. As the songs spilled out of the small speaker in the bottom of the phone, I found myself singing along to a couple of hymns that many might call "fundamental" to the faith...and Jason and John both joined in. It wasn't exactly worship but it felt right and good and I enjoyed those few minutes a great deal, "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them." Matthew 18:20. It was just supposed to be a cookout, right? :)
One song, in particular, touched my heart strings. The classic Because He Lives, written by Bill and Gloria Gaither.
God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.
The line that really reached out to me is the second one...He came to LOVE, HEAL, and FORGIVE. Those three verbs seem to be central to the story of the Gospel...but, have they been the cornerstones of my faith? Have they been the cornerstones of the faith of all who take on the yoke of Christ? I'm not sure they have, which might explain why so many people who need to experience the healing, forgiveness, and love of Christ instead feel persecuted by those who bear His name. I'm guilty of this...judging the wounded...pointing my finger instead of extending my hand...but I'm trying to change.
These days, I find myself being reminded on a regular basis that Christ reached out to the outcasts...to those who were "not good enough." Not one of the 12 disciples had been found worthy of taking on the yoke of a rabbi...yet Jesus, who was a rabbi, chose them. He made a habit of dining with "sinners" and those who were considered "unworthy" of His attentions.
I'm trying to change, from the inside out. He set the example...love, heal, forgive.
Abba, I bring my brokenness to you and lay it at your feet. Father, please keep my eyes and my heart open to loving the unloved, forgiving those who I need to forgive, and brining those who need healing to you, instead of opening their wounds.
One song, in particular, touched my heart strings. The classic Because He Lives, written by Bill and Gloria Gaither.
God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.
The line that really reached out to me is the second one...He came to LOVE, HEAL, and FORGIVE. Those three verbs seem to be central to the story of the Gospel...but, have they been the cornerstones of my faith? Have they been the cornerstones of the faith of all who take on the yoke of Christ? I'm not sure they have, which might explain why so many people who need to experience the healing, forgiveness, and love of Christ instead feel persecuted by those who bear His name. I'm guilty of this...judging the wounded...pointing my finger instead of extending my hand...but I'm trying to change.
These days, I find myself being reminded on a regular basis that Christ reached out to the outcasts...to those who were "not good enough." Not one of the 12 disciples had been found worthy of taking on the yoke of a rabbi...yet Jesus, who was a rabbi, chose them. He made a habit of dining with "sinners" and those who were considered "unworthy" of His attentions.
I'm trying to change, from the inside out. He set the example...love, heal, forgive.
Abba, I bring my brokenness to you and lay it at your feet. Father, please keep my eyes and my heart open to loving the unloved, forgiving those who I need to forgive, and brining those who need healing to you, instead of opening their wounds.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Simple complexity
"The issue then isn’t my beating myself up over all of the things I am not doing or the things I am doing poorly; the issue is my learning who this person is who God keeps insisting I already am...There is nothing we can do, and there is nothing we ever could have done, to earn God’s favor. We already have it...We cannot earn what we have always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting is true about us is actually true." Miscellaneous quotes from Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith, by Rob Bell
"Only let us live up to what we have already attained." - Philippians 3:16
It already mine...it's already yours...
I have to be honest, I'm struggling with the concept/process of trusting God as opposed to pleasing God. Maybe struggling isn't the right word...maybe it's just about internalizing it, chewing it up, swallowing it down, digesting it, and letting it infuse into my being. It's not that I don't believe it...it just feels so much the opposite of what I feel like I've been taught my whole life (whether that is indeed what I was taught or not.)
My inner voice keeps wanting to pipe up and say, "it's all about not doing bad things, punching that ticket to Heaven, avoiding Hell." Somewhere, in the back, there's a new voice...one that is quietly encouraging me to stop worrying so much about what I do and don't do, what I did and didn't do, and start LIVING up to what I have already attained. I have ALREADY attained Heaven. Am I listening to myself? I have ALREADY attained Heaven.
It's almost too complex to put into words...because it's so simple...which, I guess, makes sense...since it's complex to integrate into my core, too. I mean, after all, if I live up to what I've already attained, the inner voice will be satisfied, right? The difference will be...motivation?...inspiration?...reason?
I've lived a lot of my "avoiding" God, not running away...just avoiding, because I didn't think I could live up to His expectations...now I'm realizing the expectations I wasn't living up to were mine. I've avoided grace because I thought I couldn't be good enough to earn it...now, I'm finally realizing it can never be earned.
Abba, I bring you my brokenness. I ask that you help me internalize the reality that I already have what you've given me. That the joy over receiving this gift should drive the way I live, not worrying about earning something I can't earn.
"Only let us live up to what we have already attained." - Philippians 3:16
It already mine...it's already yours...
I have to be honest, I'm struggling with the concept/process of trusting God as opposed to pleasing God. Maybe struggling isn't the right word...maybe it's just about internalizing it, chewing it up, swallowing it down, digesting it, and letting it infuse into my being. It's not that I don't believe it...it just feels so much the opposite of what I feel like I've been taught my whole life (whether that is indeed what I was taught or not.)
My inner voice keeps wanting to pipe up and say, "it's all about not doing bad things, punching that ticket to Heaven, avoiding Hell." Somewhere, in the back, there's a new voice...one that is quietly encouraging me to stop worrying so much about what I do and don't do, what I did and didn't do, and start LIVING up to what I have already attained. I have ALREADY attained Heaven. Am I listening to myself? I have ALREADY attained Heaven.
It's almost too complex to put into words...because it's so simple...which, I guess, makes sense...since it's complex to integrate into my core, too. I mean, after all, if I live up to what I've already attained, the inner voice will be satisfied, right? The difference will be...motivation?...inspiration?...reason?
I've lived a lot of my "avoiding" God, not running away...just avoiding, because I didn't think I could live up to His expectations...now I'm realizing the expectations I wasn't living up to were mine. I've avoided grace because I thought I couldn't be good enough to earn it...now, I'm finally realizing it can never be earned.
Abba, I bring you my brokenness. I ask that you help me internalize the reality that I already have what you've given me. That the joy over receiving this gift should drive the way I live, not worrying about earning something I can't earn.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Idols
I'm trying to read through the Bible in a year. To help me accomplish this task, I bought the One Year Bible. What seemed like a daunting task, is actually turning out to be rather easy. Of course, I'm not sure why we make it seem like reading through the Bible in one year is such a huge undertaking to begin with. Yes, it's a long book, but most of us have read other long books in a much shorter time period than a year. The Lord of The Rings trilogy is a long book, but I can read it from cover to cover in a matter of a few weeks. The Harry Potter series, if you read all 7 books in a row, is a loooooong book, but I can read it from the cover of the first book to the back cover of the last in less than a few months. Yet, the Bible seems almost impossible to consider reading in a year. I'm starting to wonder if this Christian "accomplishment" is much ado about nothing. Do we make it seems harder than it is just because it's not something we look forward to? If so, why don't we look forward to it? After all, it's the Word of God. The Word we are supposed to hide in our hearts, which I think might require reading it more than once....hmmmmm...I shall think on these thoughts and try to internalize them for myself.
"Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their ancestors did." 2 Kings 17:41
I read this passage today. Unfortunately, my eyes kept wandering back to it as I was trying to move on, which made it hard to concentrate on the rest of the readings. At first, my thoughts were predominantly about how sad this verse is. It pretty much sums up what most of the books of 1 Kings and 2 Kings is about. The people of God wanted a king, so God gave them a king, then the kings turn their backs on Him, the people follow suit, and the results are always disastrous. Every once in a while, a king comes along who tries to turn the people back to God, but either he turns away before he dies or the people do when the next king takes the throne. It's a horrible and sad cycle. It's a dark time in the history of Israel and Judah. The people of God are scattered to the wind time and time again. Yet, they don't seem to learn their lesson.
The more I pondered this, the more I started to wonder if we are any different, or, more importantly, am I any different than these wayward children of the most High and Holy God? I constantly find myself "serving" the idols in my life, whether it be TV, travel, food, etc. Given the choice of serving God or serving myself, I tend to lean more towards serving myself.
Which brings me back to reading the One Year Bible. Maybe the desire to do this came from Him. I thought I was the one who wanted to read the scriptures in a year...but, maybe He wanted me read them. I thought I was doing this to please Him...but, maybe He wants me to read them so that I'll trust Him.
As sad as the words of 2 Kings 17:41 are, in the end there always seems to be redemption, and the redemption of Israel, the redemption of God's people, is ultimately what the scriptures are about, not the failings. The failings are recorded and put on display to prove a point...God is always here. He is always waiting to redeem His children. We just need to change our hearts to allow Him to do it.
Abba, I come to you today in brokenness. I offer you my failings and trade them for a redemption that only comes through Christ. Father, help me keep my focus on you when the idols of my life loom large.
"Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their ancestors did." 2 Kings 17:41
I read this passage today. Unfortunately, my eyes kept wandering back to it as I was trying to move on, which made it hard to concentrate on the rest of the readings. At first, my thoughts were predominantly about how sad this verse is. It pretty much sums up what most of the books of 1 Kings and 2 Kings is about. The people of God wanted a king, so God gave them a king, then the kings turn their backs on Him, the people follow suit, and the results are always disastrous. Every once in a while, a king comes along who tries to turn the people back to God, but either he turns away before he dies or the people do when the next king takes the throne. It's a horrible and sad cycle. It's a dark time in the history of Israel and Judah. The people of God are scattered to the wind time and time again. Yet, they don't seem to learn their lesson.
The more I pondered this, the more I started to wonder if we are any different, or, more importantly, am I any different than these wayward children of the most High and Holy God? I constantly find myself "serving" the idols in my life, whether it be TV, travel, food, etc. Given the choice of serving God or serving myself, I tend to lean more towards serving myself.
Which brings me back to reading the One Year Bible. Maybe the desire to do this came from Him. I thought I was the one who wanted to read the scriptures in a year...but, maybe He wanted me read them. I thought I was doing this to please Him...but, maybe He wants me to read them so that I'll trust Him.
As sad as the words of 2 Kings 17:41 are, in the end there always seems to be redemption, and the redemption of Israel, the redemption of God's people, is ultimately what the scriptures are about, not the failings. The failings are recorded and put on display to prove a point...God is always here. He is always waiting to redeem His children. We just need to change our hearts to allow Him to do it.
Abba, I come to you today in brokenness. I offer you my failings and trade them for a redemption that only comes through Christ. Father, help me keep my focus on you when the idols of my life loom large.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Where There Is Faith
It's 10:25PM...
My head is pounding...
There's a crack in the pad of my left foot down by my pinky toe...
My right pinky toe feels like it has a blister...
I weighed 3/4 of a pound more this morning than I did yesterday...
Why can't I just pray the fat away...gaining weight certainly didn't seem hard...why is losing it...
It was 100 degrees today...
It's still 83 and the humidity is up in the "miserable" range...
I know I need to get out there and go for a walk...but I DON'T WANNA!
It's 10:30PM...
Socks on...shoes on...shorts on...playlist Genius 04 shuffle...ready...set...go...
It's 10:40PM...
Ugh...none of this music is really inspiring me tonight...keep walking...
It's 10:50PM....
I hate this weather....
It's 11:00PM...
He's My Son, by Mark Shultz, plays...hmmm...that's a touching song...the plaintive cry of a man wondering if God is listening to his heartfelt prayer...I've been there...I understand...
...but I'm still really not in the mood for all this...
It's 11:10PM...
Where there is faith
There is a voice calling, keep walking
You’re not alone in this world
Where there is faith
There is a peace like a child sleeping
Hope everlasting in he who is able to
Bear every burden, to heal every hurt in my heart
It is a wonderful, powerful place
Where there is faith
...OK...I get it...faith...maybe my real problem today is...me...maybe I've spent the past couple days focused more on what I want than trusting in Him...Where There Is Faith...
It's 11:24PM...
Only a little bit more....
I'll never know why
Why you did what you did
You didn't have to die
But you did
You hung on the cross
So that I wouldn't be lost
You took my place
Now You're pleading my case
You didn't have to do it
Oh, but I'm glad you did
You didn't have to do it
But I'm glad you did
You didn't have to suffer
You didn't have to give your life
You could have come down from the cross
But you chose to die
You said "Father forgive them
For they know not what they do"
An when they pierced Your side
You just hung bled and died
You didn't have to come down
From the Father's side
But because of Your love for me
You made the sacrifice
You knew no sin
But became sin for me
An all who believe
Can live eternally
You didn't have to do it
But I'm glad you did
You could have come down from the cross
Then my soul would be lost
But You chose to stay
And Your love made a way
...sigh...truth...You Didn't Have To Do It...but I'm glad you did...
It's 11:30PM...
Attitude adjusted...
Abba, I come to you, a broken offering. My problems are not bigger than You. My wants, my desires, pale in comparison to what You want for me. Help my heart seek Your truth.
My head is pounding...
There's a crack in the pad of my left foot down by my pinky toe...
My right pinky toe feels like it has a blister...
I weighed 3/4 of a pound more this morning than I did yesterday...
Why can't I just pray the fat away...gaining weight certainly didn't seem hard...why is losing it...
It was 100 degrees today...
It's still 83 and the humidity is up in the "miserable" range...
I know I need to get out there and go for a walk...but I DON'T WANNA!
It's 10:30PM...
Socks on...shoes on...shorts on...playlist Genius 04 shuffle...ready...set...go...
It's 10:40PM...
Ugh...none of this music is really inspiring me tonight...keep walking...
It's 10:50PM....
I hate this weather....
It's 11:00PM...
He's My Son, by Mark Shultz, plays...hmmm...that's a touching song...the plaintive cry of a man wondering if God is listening to his heartfelt prayer...I've been there...I understand...
...but I'm still really not in the mood for all this...
It's 11:10PM...
Where there is faith
There is a voice calling, keep walking
You’re not alone in this world
Where there is faith
There is a peace like a child sleeping
Hope everlasting in he who is able to
Bear every burden, to heal every hurt in my heart
It is a wonderful, powerful place
Where there is faith
...OK...I get it...faith...maybe my real problem today is...me...maybe I've spent the past couple days focused more on what I want than trusting in Him...Where There Is Faith...
It's 11:24PM...
Only a little bit more....
I'll never know why
Why you did what you did
You didn't have to die
But you did
You hung on the cross
So that I wouldn't be lost
You took my place
Now You're pleading my case
You didn't have to do it
Oh, but I'm glad you did
You didn't have to do it
But I'm glad you did
You didn't have to suffer
You didn't have to give your life
You could have come down from the cross
But you chose to die
You said "Father forgive them
For they know not what they do"
An when they pierced Your side
You just hung bled and died
You didn't have to come down
From the Father's side
But because of Your love for me
You made the sacrifice
You knew no sin
But became sin for me
An all who believe
Can live eternally
You didn't have to do it
But I'm glad you did
You could have come down from the cross
Then my soul would be lost
But You chose to stay
And Your love made a way
...sigh...truth...You Didn't Have To Do It...but I'm glad you did...
It's 11:30PM...
Attitude adjusted...
Abba, I come to you, a broken offering. My problems are not bigger than You. My wants, my desires, pale in comparison to what You want for me. Help my heart seek Your truth.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
In Christ Alone
I listened to church today. I watched it, too. I just wasn't there. I was sitting at home, in my comfy recliner...if I told you why, it would just be one of those TMI moments that's better left just not happening. It was good to join in worship, even if I wasn't there.
In the past year and half, I've often found myself crying at church during the praise and worship time. Not bawling my eyes out, just tears as the truth of Christ's love touches my heart and soul. One of the songs that gets me every time is In Christ Alone. It was written a decade ago, by Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty, but recently took on new life thanks to Owl City and several other contemporary artists who have covered it.
A good friend gave me a CD not long after Sara and Miranda's funeral. This song was one of the tracks he'd included. It's impact on me hasn't changed since I first listened to it on that CD. The message is complex, yet simple. It's complete, it tells the whole story. When I need, He gives. Through everything I and my family have been through, Christ hasn't changed. His gift hasn't changed. His love hasn't changed. His power hasn't changed. His message hasn't changed. His purpose hasn't changed. His story hasn't changed. His truth hasn't changed. His offer hasn't changed. His promise hasn't changed. The END hasn't changed. He will return. He will take me, us, to be with Him.
He is Solid. He is The Cornerstone. He is the Light. He is Victory. He is Fearless. He is Peace. He is Power. He is Savior. He is Mine and I am His...why wouldn't I want to stand in that?
In his sermon today, Pastor Adam Davidson talked about Christ being our anchor. There have been many days since February 5, 2011, when it felt like all I had...when I didn't understand it, when all I had was the question "why?"...was the anchor to hold onto. Holding fast in the storm, eyes closed, fingers gripped tightly, to the anchor.
Jesus, I am broken, but yours. I offer you my brokenness on this day. Thank you for truth. Thank you for love. Thank you for forgiveness. Thank you for being everything for me that I can not be on my own.
In the past year and half, I've often found myself crying at church during the praise and worship time. Not bawling my eyes out, just tears as the truth of Christ's love touches my heart and soul. One of the songs that gets me every time is In Christ Alone. It was written a decade ago, by Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty, but recently took on new life thanks to Owl City and several other contemporary artists who have covered it.
In Christ alone, my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My comforter, my all-in-all
Here in the love of Christ I stand
There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ
No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
'Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand
'Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand
A good friend gave me a CD not long after Sara and Miranda's funeral. This song was one of the tracks he'd included. It's impact on me hasn't changed since I first listened to it on that CD. The message is complex, yet simple. It's complete, it tells the whole story. When I need, He gives. Through everything I and my family have been through, Christ hasn't changed. His gift hasn't changed. His love hasn't changed. His power hasn't changed. His message hasn't changed. His purpose hasn't changed. His story hasn't changed. His truth hasn't changed. His offer hasn't changed. His promise hasn't changed. The END hasn't changed. He will return. He will take me, us, to be with Him.
He is Solid. He is The Cornerstone. He is the Light. He is Victory. He is Fearless. He is Peace. He is Power. He is Savior. He is Mine and I am His...why wouldn't I want to stand in that?
In his sermon today, Pastor Adam Davidson talked about Christ being our anchor. There have been many days since February 5, 2011, when it felt like all I had...when I didn't understand it, when all I had was the question "why?"...was the anchor to hold onto. Holding fast in the storm, eyes closed, fingers gripped tightly, to the anchor.
Jesus, I am broken, but yours. I offer you my brokenness on this day. Thank you for truth. Thank you for love. Thank you for forgiveness. Thank you for being everything for me that I can not be on my own.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Trifecta...
Tonight's blog post is brought to you by not one, not two, but THREE great songs...
I tried something new today...and was very pleased with the results. Those of you familiar with iTunes may know it has the "Genius" function built into it. Genius can do several things. It can suggest songs you might like in the iTunes music store, based on songs in your library. It can also build a playlist for you, from the music in your library, based on one song. This second feature is what I tried. I built a playlist based on the song Why Should the Father Bother, by Petra. In addition to a few other great Petra tracks, it also pulled out some of the best from The Imperials, Keith Green, Larry Norman, Phil Keaggy, Steve Taylor, Margaret Becker, Michael W. Smith, and David Meece.
Saying that I was pleased with the results is actually a bit of an understatement. I liked the playlist so much I doubled the length of my walk out to 5 miles...and I'm glad I did, because it was the last 3 songs I heard that bring me to my keyboard: How Many Times (Seventy Times Seven) by White Heart; To Forgive, by Steve Taylor; Solomon's Shoes, by Margaret Becker.
I've recently become aware (in a very new and real way) that I need to work on forgiveness as part of my walk with Christ. I've been hanging on to hurt, sometimes for a long time, that simply steals my lunch (emotionally speaking...no one...and I repeat, no one, literally steals my lunch.) It's not healthy for me, it's not healthy for my relationships, and it's not what God wants for me. But it's hard...really hard. It doesn't make it any easier knowing that other people probably struggle with it as much as I do. Forgiveness is at the core of God's grace, and He wants us to experience it in such a way that we are compelled to offer it to those who hurt us.
I think part of what makes forgiveness so hard is that we're often trained, as growing Christians, to do it wrong. We're taught that forgiveness is forgetting about the wrong that was done to you. Letting it go. Getting over it. Moving on. Treating it as if it never happened. It's true that when it comes to our forgiveness, that's how God does it...He has to...it's what He does. However, we're not God. We're human. We're broken. When God offers His forgiveness He CAN forgive and forget...He's God. It doesn't happen like that for us. It's OK for us to admit, and acknowledge that we've been hurt. It's OK to have an emotional, feeling, response to that. It's OK to struggle with letting it go:
I tried something new today...and was very pleased with the results. Those of you familiar with iTunes may know it has the "Genius" function built into it. Genius can do several things. It can suggest songs you might like in the iTunes music store, based on songs in your library. It can also build a playlist for you, from the music in your library, based on one song. This second feature is what I tried. I built a playlist based on the song Why Should the Father Bother, by Petra. In addition to a few other great Petra tracks, it also pulled out some of the best from The Imperials, Keith Green, Larry Norman, Phil Keaggy, Steve Taylor, Margaret Becker, Michael W. Smith, and David Meece.
Saying that I was pleased with the results is actually a bit of an understatement. I liked the playlist so much I doubled the length of my walk out to 5 miles...and I'm glad I did, because it was the last 3 songs I heard that bring me to my keyboard: How Many Times (Seventy Times Seven) by White Heart; To Forgive, by Steve Taylor; Solomon's Shoes, by Margaret Becker.
I've recently become aware (in a very new and real way) that I need to work on forgiveness as part of my walk with Christ. I've been hanging on to hurt, sometimes for a long time, that simply steals my lunch (emotionally speaking...no one...and I repeat, no one, literally steals my lunch.) It's not healthy for me, it's not healthy for my relationships, and it's not what God wants for me. But it's hard...really hard. It doesn't make it any easier knowing that other people probably struggle with it as much as I do. Forgiveness is at the core of God's grace, and He wants us to experience it in such a way that we are compelled to offer it to those who hurt us.
I think part of what makes forgiveness so hard is that we're often trained, as growing Christians, to do it wrong. We're taught that forgiveness is forgetting about the wrong that was done to you. Letting it go. Getting over it. Moving on. Treating it as if it never happened. It's true that when it comes to our forgiveness, that's how God does it...He has to...it's what He does. However, we're not God. We're human. We're broken. When God offers His forgiveness He CAN forgive and forget...He's God. It doesn't happen like that for us. It's OK for us to admit, and acknowledge that we've been hurt. It's OK to have an emotional, feeling, response to that. It's OK to struggle with letting it go:
How many times,
Must I stand in the waves
Of this crashing sea?
How many times,
Must I forgive all the hurt
That's been done to me?
Let the jury go, set the sinner free
Oh-oh-oh
Seventy times seven
When Peter asks Jesus about forgiveness, the answer is very telling about God's understanding of us...and how we have a hard time letting things, especially our pain and hurt, go. The great part about forgiveness is that Jesus offers us the lead, He's the role model, He stands there waiting to help us, if we'll let Him:
Follow his lead
Let the madness recede
When we shatter the cycle of pain
Oh, we will live to forgive
Come find release
Go make your peace
I saw a Man
With a hole in His hand
Who could offer the miracle cure
Oh, He said live, I forgive
(Oh, He said live, I forgive)
Jesus offers us a cure! He offers us healing, we just have to follow the prescription. It's important, as we move through the process of forgiveness (the cure) to realize that we may not see the results overnight. When was the last time you had to get a prescription for something and everything was all better after you took the first dose? Seriously, we have no problem understanding that it takes time for our bodies to heal, yet we rarely give our hearts the time they need. We fight healing. I fight healing.
The last song I heard didn't have much to do with forgiveness. It was a reminder though, a reminder that forgiveness can take time, and I really need to forgive myself more. I need to stop getting mad at myself when I forget and let some of that past hurt and pain steal my lunch:
Solomon was the wisest man
But I guess not wise enough
He forgot the Blesser
When the blessing were too much
Now I know I swing with Solomon
Between the left and right
How I wish that I could find a place
Where I'd be satisfied
(Don't wanna deny You, don't wanna turn from You)
After all, Solomon was the wisest man in the Bible...but he still screwed up. He forgot. As I listened to that last song, especially after the message of the previous two, I could hear God whispering to me, "Son, listen, you've got to lighten up on yourself. Don't hold yourself to a higher standard than I do. It's ok, really. Just give it to me. I'll take care of it. Give yourself more time, let me do my thing."
Father, I come to you in brokenness. You now my heart, who I need to forgive. When anger and bitterness start to steal my lunch, please remind me about the holes in Jesus' hands. Help me offer those hurts and pains to Him, to you, and to continue down this path of forgiveness.
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