Love in the Dark

I don’t know about you, but for me, this is a dark time of year. Literally: I didn’t see the sun at all yesterday. But more than that, it’s a dark time in my soul. I don’t want to get too melodramatic on you, but the end of fall semester is always the worst time of the year for me. It’s cold and dark and all I want is tea and blankets and pajamas and I have all this stuff to do that requires not-pajamas.

Actually, that's a lie: I do know about you: I talk to you, and I’m friends with a lot of you on Facebook and I know what kind of mood this group is in:

ALI HENDERSON: December 3, 10:26 am:

            “Let's take bets on how long it will take to write this 10 page paper, because I have 23 hours left to get it done.”

SARAH DAVIS: December 6, 11:00 pm:

            “Current Mood: Face plant Cat.”

ANDREW HARRISON COX: December 6, 4:00 pm

            “Study Tip: Stand Up. Stretch. Take a Walk. Go to the Airport. Get on a Plane. Never Return.”

ELIZABETH REID: December 2, 12:16 pm:

            “On the second week of Christmas, my teachers gave to me: 5 all nighters, 4 hours of crying, 3 mental breakdowns, 2 thoughts of dropout, and a month of anxiety.”

Are you feeling overwhelmed? I am. And so are you. You are feeling stressed, out of control, you are juggling work and school and extracurriculars and choir concerts and job interviews and interviews for grad school programs. You are freaking out about your future and your finals and maybe even about going home for break (don’t think we don’t know that home is not always a warm and relaxing place for you). You’re worried about decisions to be made and presents to buy for roommates and passing your final exams and where you’re going to live next semester and who you’re going to live with.

Even more, you have friends who are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, maybe with all of these things, but maybe with bigger things, too, things so big that you don’t understand them and you can’t talk about them and all you can do is sit in silence with them in their pain and cry.

The world we live in is overwhelmed, too. People are mourning the deaths of their children—of our children—of Tamir Rice and Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Of Peter Kassig, who was 26 years old when ISIS beheaded him. We are rebuilding in Gaza, after weeks of bombing left families without homes. We are fighting in west Africa, trying to get on top of this massively contagious disease that is killing entire villages of people.

We are overwhelmed. Our friends are overwhelmed and the world we live in is overwhelmed.

And despite that, despite all these things….you have come here. You could be anywhere else, doing any number of urgent things that must be done and you decided to come to church this morning.

That says something about you.

Maybe it means that you, like me, were raised in a family that only skipped church if you were bleeding or throwing up and neither of those things were true about you this morning so here you are.

Maybe it means that your roommate was too loud this morning and once you were awake, you decided to make the best of a bad situation.

Or maybe. Maybe it means that you came to church not despite the fact that you were feeling overwhelmed and out of control, but because you were feeling overwhelmed and out of control. Maybe you came here because this is the place you go when you need… something. Help? Companionship? Love?

As we’ve gone through 1 John, we’ve had this idea of love kind of bashed into our heads and you’re going to get it one more time:

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed to us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another....God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment because as he is so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God” and hate their brothers or sisters are liars for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God, whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (1 Jn 4.7-21).

The author goes on to say a little later: “Anyone who hates her brother or sister cannot love God; how can you love the parent without loving the child?”

We have been adopted into the family of God through Jesus’ death. God is our father; you are my sisters and brothers.

Love one another.

Love is not a feeling, but a response: God sent his son to die. Love one another like that.

Invest in one another.

Take care of each other.

Help each other.

Ask how you can help, don’t wait to be asked.

Pray for each other.

Ask about that, too.

Feed each other.

Hug each other.

Support each other.

Love one another.

If you don’t, who will?

When I look at the world, I am overwhelmed by their overwhelmedness.  Forget the world. When I look at this group, I see a group of people who are struggling. I know your struggles, I know your insecurities, I know your concerns. I feel them too! and I am here to tell you that the love you show each other will drive out that darkness.

Friends

The child was a mess. Belligerent, violent, adorable, but prickly like a cactus. Mischievous to the extreme. If you were watching him, you'd better make sure you never took your eyes off him. He had a grin as wide as his face and he flashed it right before you tried to reprimand him for running off or hitting someone. It was hard to stay angry when he was grinning at you. He had favorites, people he'd let in, and one of them was his teacher. His name was Jarred but we--the kids, the staff, his boss, everyone--called him Mr. Cat Daddy because he could do the Cat Daddy like no one's business. I'd seen him do it several times. Incidentally, Jarred was everyone's favorite, largely because of his ability to do the Cat Daddy.

At any rate, he and Cat Daddy were huge friends. I could not do the Cat Daddy, plus I am a girl, which is a giant liability in the eyes of a seven year old. On a good day, I was tolerated.

"Elizabeth." Mr. Cat Daddy obviously had his hands full. "Go make sure he's all right." Me? Are you sure? Okay. Cat Daddy sent me over to the pouting child. If he could've pushed himself INTO the wall, he might've.

"Hey, buddy. What's the matter?" Silence. Not that I'd expected a response. I sit down next to him and see that he's been crying. I'm no good with crying, but I try again. "What happened, buddy?" I can only assume that he was at his wit's end, just completely at the end of his seven year old rope (or maybe it was the grace of God) because he wails out this pitiful, barely understood story about hurt feelings and being angry. I make an effort at the problem solving techniques we've been taught, to little avail. He's still crying.

Then out of nowhere he says, "I miss my daddy!" He crawls into my lap and keeps crying. I rub his back and ponder. It's an appropriate reaction. Life is big and scary and sometimes you need your daddy. Heck, I missed MY dad and I had plans to see him soon. There was nothing I could do about it, though. I couldn't get his dad for him. I wasn't even sure if his father was in the picture. I couldn't heal his hurt feelings. I couldn't make it better. And so, I sat there with him on my lap and I cried. He was crying, I was crying. I don't know if he knew I was crying, but there we sat, crying together.

Afterwards, he and I were friends.

Calling

I am a product of my parents' calling
and as such it is increasingly challenging to discover
a calling of my own.

At Least I Got a Car

"...don’t you want to just sit still?
Cause you can only run so fast and drive so far
And home might feel like a funny idea that you never understood
But you want it more than you want the car.


...Going home feels like the thing you ought to do
Because you can only drive so far..."


Don Chaffer

Holy Week

It’s the day after Easter. We’ve experienced the excitement of Holy Week: the triumphal entry and the crowds shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” We’ve sat through the Last Supper, and wondered with worry and confusion at Christ’s words, “This is my body and this is my blood, the cup of the new covenant.” We watched him arrested in the garden of Gethsemane and we’ve followed him to the cross in horror. Our hopes are crushed, and we wait in anguish, our leader, our direction, our light, dead, gone, taken, dead. He’s dead. What now? What do we do now? Then, beyond all expectation, Sunday comes. Sunday comes and with it we have hope. It’s the day after Easter. Christ is risen, indeed, but I’m left behind. On Friday morning, I ask, with Pontius Pilate. “What is truth?” And like Pilate, I have killed the anointed one with my answer.

I don't know what I think about this. It feels true. But I can't quantify it. All I know is that I want to try to polish my writing less, and this is the result of like, fifteen minutes.