Tuesday, November 12, 2013

A God moment at just the right time

When was your last God moment? Oh, you know those things. The kind of moment where you're absolutely certain God was involved in whatever the heck happened. I love 'em. I've had them. I need them.

Here's one God moment of mine, just yesterday:

I was sitting in the secretary's office on a Monday morning, playing secretary since we don't have one, and the phone did it's best jingle jangle. Answering, I listened as a young woman explained she was the manager at a local business. I listened some more, not understanding what she was telling me for the longest of times.

She was friends with a young lady whom was married a short time ago in our church, hence the connection of business to church.

She had a thought. It was a good thought. Last year for the beginning of Black Friday, the business opened for customers at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening. This young lady said that the line waiting for the doors to spring open was a long one. She said it was cold that day, and she worried it will be again, particularly since Thanksgiving is a late one this year.

She asked if we, the church, would be interested in coming and handing out coffee and hot chocolate to those persons lined up around the business buildings, out into the parking lot. I said sure, immediately. Then as I thought about it more (as she talked), and it became apparent to me this was an opportunity to take the church out of the church doors, and it was a wonderful opportunity to do a bit of Turkey Day evangelism, as well.

I asked the young lady, Anna, if we could bring our own coffee cups with a label on them with the name of the church, the address, the phone number, my name or whatever. She said, with a flourish, "sure."

And there you go.

God moment on a Monday.

Later in the morning, and into the afternoon, our world pretty much fell apart, like a ship that struck an iceberg the size of Donald Trump's wallet. Without going into detail, I will say that family issues are sinking the already sinking ship. Three weeks or so of great difficulty and pressure and stress have me looking for peace in all the wrong places.

Just when I'm pretty sure it can't get any worse, with my bad back feeling the need to be bad, my knees anticipating the coming cold front, and my blood pressure numbers looking like the prices of some kind of cut-rate tablet, it gets worse.

Again, for once not getting into details, let me just say that Mary and I have decided we are going to circle Nov. 11 on the calendar the rest of our lives and never again have one. In other words, we're going to do Nov. 10 and go right on into Nov. 12 from no own.

Finally, when it can't possibly, no way, no how, no, no, no, get worse. IT GETS WORST. Worst of all, in other words.

We we get a call telling us the renter of our house in Lacombe won't be able to make the payment, after he first lied about sending us the November payment. We might be stuck with that payment.

As someone once said in a moment of great thought: Arrrrgggggg. I think it might have been Popeye who threw out that expression when his can of spinach was shockingly empty.

By the time I got to the back doctor in Lake Charles for four steroid shots, my blood pressure was 197 over 110, and I could actually feel my heart beat and feel a kind of warmth in the skin on my forehead.

Still, I couldn't forget the God moment. It was a big ol' life preserver to a sinking swimmer. There was joy in a cesspool of stuff. Joy in a true moment of pain and suffering. Joy in a cauldron of kookiness.

In a little book by James Merritt called "9 Keys To Successful Leadership," Merritt writes, "Jesus makes clear that being a faithful follower of His teaching brings one an inner joy that is real and resilient regardless of economic indicators, interest rates, government deficits, or the triumvirate of pestilence, disease, and death."

Or as someone said, "we cannot be happy without being joyful, but we can be joyful without being happy."

All that stuff that is coming against me, against us, is so without muscle because the power of the living God lives in me, in us. I, we, have been given a number of things by our creator, but among the most important is this process we call peace. Ever heard of that term, peace process. It simply means there is a place to fine peace, but people are looking for it every place but the right one. Why? Because they do not get where true peace comes from, so they will never, never find it. That process works or does not work for clergy as well as laity.

Richard Blackmon, in a Los Angeles Times story a while back, wrote, "Pastors are the single most occupationally frustrated group in America. About 75 percent of pastors go through a period of stress so great that they consider quitting the ministry; 35 to 40 percent actually resign. Incidents of mental breakdown are so high that insurance companies charge about four percent extra to cover church's staff members, compared to employees in other professions."

They tell me, then, that we -- pastors and pastors wives and even pastors friends -- aren't immune to stress, frustration, and the feeling that we are on an Interstate coastal highway roaring down hill near the edge without the first sign of brakes.

What to do, what to do?

First, by reading scripture it becomes very clear that peace is not the absence of problems, but instead it is the presence of God in the midst of all my stuff. I read a story the other day about a woman at a party trying her best to look happy. Someone noticed a huge sparkling rock on her finger and said, "What a beautiful diamond."
"Yes, it's a Callahan diamond."
The other woman said, "I wish I had one."
"No, you don't."
"Why not?"
"Because it comes with the Callahan curse."
"The Callahan curse ... what's that?"
The woman with the diamond sighed and said, "Mr. Callahan!"

Maybe we're simply going through the Turner curse, but through it all, through it all, there He is, encouraging us, reminding us that those God moments still exist, still happen, still are memorable, still are moving, still are emotionally satisfying. Still are there, evident, viewable, feel-able, establishing a beachhead on the spiritual Omaha Beaches of our lives.

Perhaps if we simply wait for them long enough, those God moments completely overwhelm those Godless moments.

In fact, I'm fairly sure they do.

God moments, indeed.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Prayers for you & yours! Ultreya, Mona

Anonymous said...

I have known you and Mary through many crises. I am sure your faith will carry you through, as it always has. I pray for peace for you both.