Early fall in late August.
Cool.
Sunny.
Football weather.
Fat lot I know about football.
If my younger son, Jonathan, reads this, he's already gagging at my even mentioning The Game, as they call it in the South Carolina Upstate.
He knows I have a defective sports gene.
Russell, our older son, inherited that gene from me.
With Jonathan, the "good gene" jumped a generation. He loves football. Born in DeKalb General Hospital in the Atlanta suburbs, he especially loves Georgia Bulldogs Football. He probably will never forgive me for failing to take him to see Georgia -- or at least Clemson, 17 miles up the road. I took him to Athens a couple of times to see the Basketball Dawgs. Does that count, son?
Jonathan inherited his love of football from his Grandpa Webb and a host of uncles.
Daddy loved football. My older brother Lee Roy loved football. My younger brother Leonard loves football. Lee Roy and Leonard would have played football if we had been in school in the fall instead of being in the cotton patch. Our "baby" brother Lew, born as I was starting college, actually did play football. Was Daddy ever proud! Members of our generation of nephews are ardent footballers. Even brothers-in-law love the sport: Don, who married my younger sister Marie; and Jeff, who married my older sister Leta.
In fact, I was with Jeff the last time I was in a football stadium nearly thirty-three years ago. We were living in Waco, where Jeff and Leta lived for many years.
Jeff was more brother than brother-in-law. He had an extra ticket for a Baylor game, and he invited me to go with him. I went because I knew I would enjoy being with Jeff, even at a football game.
I don't remember the team the Bears were playing. I don't remember who won, but it probably was Baylor. I was working on the Waco Citizen Newspaper, and I heard enough in the office to know the Bears were having a good season.
My only surviving memory from the stadium after thirty-three years is the home fans standing to sing "That Good Old Baylor Line," to the tune of "That Good Old Summertime." Near the end of the BU anthem, everyone in that half of the stadium -- except me -- stretched out his or her right arm and bent fingers and thumb into the representation of a Bear Claw.
Did I mention I have a defective sports gene?
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
WHY, OH WHY, OH WHY
A twenty-year-old gunman went into the grade school in Newtown, Connecticut, last December and shot and killed twenty children and two teachers. With any senseless shootings such as this one, people raise questions.
Jason Coker is a Baptist pastor in Wilton, Connecticut, about a half-hour away from Newtown. His son was a first grader, the same age as those children who were gunned down. Pastor Coker wrote an article about the conversation he had with his son about the incident as he was about to take his son to school on Monday after the fatal shootings.
The preacher told his son, “A man who was very sick in his head came into a nearby school and hurt a lot of children and teachers.”
His son asked, “Is he going to come to my school and hurt me, Daddy?”
The father assured, “No, son, he can never hurt anyone again.”
“Why, Daddy?” the boy asked.
The father said, “Because he died, son.”
“Did he go to heaven, Daddy?”
The father said, “I don’t know, son. I hope so” (Coker).
Many questions will remain unanswered. Those directly affected by the Connecticut massacre will ask unanswerable questions the rest of their lives.
Why did the gunman kill the children and teachers?
Why did he kill his mother?
Why did she have guns so easy for him to get hold of?
How did he manage to get into the school and start shooting?
Why didn’t God stop the killer?
Why did this happen to innocent children?
Why?
Why?
Why?
This question posed at Newtown might well be called The Great “Why.”
This is one of those “Questions We Keep Asking.”
You may be grappling with a nagging question you’d like to have some help in finding a biblical, a Christian answer for. These questions don’t have easy answers. That’s why we keep asking them. But there’s nothing wrong with asking questions about life, questions about God.
PSALM 22
The 22nd psalm asks hard questions.
It begins with an anguished cry:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
This is a cry many of us have raised at points in our lives. This may be the cry of your heart this morning.
Psalm 22 is a song, a religious song. The Psalms are the song book for Jewish worship. Many of the psalms express discouragement. Why would the compilers of the Psalms put such unhappy songs in the book to sing when they gather to worship?
We have a few songs of that sort in Christian song books. Consider this one by John Newton, the man who also wrote “Amazing Grace”:
Sad songs are in Jewish and Christian hymn books to help us understand it’s OK to raise our complaints to God. Such songs usually have happy endings. That will be true of this 22nd Psalm. But, at first, the singer is so low he has to reach up to touch bottom:
He has prayed day and night but gets no answer
O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest (v. 2).
He is from a godly family, a godly ancestry. Listen again to verses 4-5:
In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed.
The blessings God gave this man’s ancestors haven’t continued with him. Maybe the statute of limitation expired.
He feels like a worm, not a man:
But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people (v. 6).
People mock him as they view his troubles:
All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads;
"He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!" (vv. 7-8).
This doesn’t seem right to the singer. He has believed God for as long as he can remember:
Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts. Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God (vv. 9-10).
What’s going on here, God?
He feels completely cut off from any help
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help (v. 11).
He feels he is being attacked by strong bulls of Bashan, as fierce as lions. Bashan was an area known for rich pasture land, herds of cattle, and fierce bulls (Durham 214):
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion (vv. 12-13).
In verses 14-16, the Psalmist gives a series of word pictures to show his misery:
He’s as out of control as water that’s being poured out.
His bones feel as if they are disconnected one from another.
His heart is melting in his chest like wax.
He feels his strength is dried up like a broken piece of pottery.
His tongue feels like it’s stuck to his jaw.
He feels God has laid him in the dust to die, and dogs are gathering about his carcass.
It’s as if he can count his bones, as if they’re protruding through his skin.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.
Yea, dogs are round about me;
But the dogs are more than dogs. They are men who treat him like a dog:
a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet -- I can count all my bones -- they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.
Gospel writers pick up on part of this passage in describing the crucifixion:
In Matthew 27:8, people around the cross echo this psalm:
"He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!"
Matthew reports that Jesus cries out the first verse of this Psalm:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Jesus’s human side shows through as He suffers the pain and agony of death. He expresses the feeling of isolation from the Heavenly Father. These words help us understand that Jesus shared our human suffering. Perhaps Matthew records this to remind us, “Even Jesus raised questions in His final hours, as life faded from His body.”
A friend wrote me an e-mail, expressing anger at a loved one who had died. This friend was apologizing for feeling angry. I tried to reassure him, this is a natural feeling. It’s not logical, but it’s quite common. Unless death was a suicide, the person didn’t choose to die. But we feel cheated because we don’t have her with us any more. We feel she is cheating us by leaving us.
WALTER BRUEGGEMANN
Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, reminds us the Psalms -- including Lament Psalms -- were an integral part of Jewish worship and still are. This means it is acceptable in Jewish worship to lay grievances before the Lord God. Dr. Brueggemann calls these “Psalms of darkness” (Brueggemann 27).
But the Christian church largely has ignored the Complaint Psalms, as if it is an act of “unfaith” to acknowledge negativity (26). But it can be a bold step to bring our grievances before God (27).
We can be honest like “Good Ole Charlie Brown” in the Peanuts strip. When Charlie is at a low point, Linus tries to encourage him:
“Don’t be discouraged, Charlie Brown . . . In this life we live, there are always some bitter pills to be swallowed.”
Charlie says, “If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather not renew my prescription” (Schulz).
Remember, these Psalms are not the voice of some agnostic. These songs have the blessing of the religious leaders for use in corporate worship. Life is not all “Blessed Assurance” and “Standing on the Promises.” “Psalms of Darkness” in worship are a way to acknowledge life often is rough and it is acceptable to voice our lament to God about the rough times.
MY “WHY” FOLDER
I keep a file folder labeled “Coping.” I could call it “How Do I Deal with Difficulty?” or “When the Going Gets Tough” or “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” Or maybe the file could be called simply “Why?”
Whatever I name it, the folder is for one of those “Questions We Keep Asking.”
From that folder, here is a lament from the obituary page of the Anderson paper several years ago. It’s a lament aimed at God (Anderson Independent-Mail):
I have a friend That is sweet as a baby.
He has a family that loves him, and a happy life.
We all love him to death, but something is not right.
Everything was fine until that day You came and took him away. . . .
I start to cry just thinking about the whole situation.
He won’t be there to see his sister’s graduation.
He won’t be there to see his brothers grow up
to be successful young men and marry great ladies.
Or see that his little sister does her best.
You came out of nowhere while we were unaware
And took him away just like that.
I just can’t believe what You have done.
You’ve brought pain to everyone. Why did You do this to him?
I just keep thinking to myself, “How can this be?”
But what I really keep thinking is,
“Why God, why did You take him from us?” (Pammy)
Another person who struggled to find the answers was Eugene O’Kelly. CEO of a highly
successful accounting firm, he was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer at age fifty-three.
Faced with death, he applied the same intentional, focused approach to dying as he had
to working. It was all he knew how to do. He quickly put into place a succession plan [in the
company] . . . wrote letters to old friends. He spent more time at home with his wife & family.
He tightened his circle of friends closer as the months crept on and his death loomed near.
As he faced death, he wrote that he was blessed and was told he had only three months to live. He said those two sentences back to back sounded crazy. But, despite the fact that he adored his family and enjoyed his friends and his career, he said he had attained a new level of awareness, one he didn’t possess the first fifty-three years of his life. He knew he likely would not make it to his daughter’s first day of eighth grade, the opening week of September. Because he was forced to think seriously about his own death. That meant he was forced to think more deeply about his life than he’d ever done. He said, "It’s just about impossible for me to imagine going back to that other way of thinking, when this new way has enriched me so. I lost something precious, but I also gained something precious" (Howell 12-13).
A husband and wife in Texas asked The Great “Why” when their 19-year-old daughter was raped and murdered. Here are some of their thoughts several years after their daughter died:
The most difficult thing was dealing with anger, and the whole issue of forgiveness
and bitterness.
We have to come to grips with the fact that this is something we cannot change,
and “Why” is something we will not have an answer to that would ever satisfy us.
It is a meaningless question.
Several places in the Bible we are told, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” but I
always thought that meant that God was going to get even for me. What it came
to mean was that God was going to carry the problem that I couldn’t handle. I had
to let God carry the load of anger and bitterness and vengeance, because it was too
big for me (Martin).
This grieving couple cited Second Corinthians at a time when Paul had despaired of life itself:
For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead; he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again (2 Corinthians 1:8-10).
The couple’s closing comment tells what they found concerning God in grave difficulty: “What is true is that He will carry us when our pain and grief are too great even to think about.”
THE WILTON PASTOR
Answers to “Why” are slow coming to rich or poor, small or great. The pastor who talked with his son about the shootings in Connecticut reminds us, authentic answers come slowly. He said . . .
In the aftermath of the tragedy, people wanted answers. Many turned to clergy and other
care providers for help. Personally, I was looking for answers myself and was trying to find
someone to follow who had all the answers.
To my shock, I discovered that everyone in my purview was looking to me for answers.
I was the pastor, and for many this made me the mouthpiece for God (Coker).
In that environment, ministers, social workers, and other professionals -- acknowledging they didn’t have all the answers -- banded together to help people in their struggle. Pastor Coker tried to be a “non-anxious presence,” encouraging people to raise their question of ministers and of God.
NOT ALL ABOUT PHYSICAL DEATH
It’s not always about physical death.
Joe has college degrees. He had an office on the twelfth floor as he moved up the corporate ladder. Then he got downsized. Now he’s a short order cook at Bojangles. And to keep food on the table for his wife and kids, at night, he cleans toilets in a building such as the one where he had his own office and his own secretary. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Sarah’s husband walked out on her and their three young children. She’s hundreds of miles away from her relatives. No one to leave the kids with. No money to put them in day care. Now, she’s on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- SNAP. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
SHARON RANDALL
Sharon Randall writes a syndicated column. Highly autobiographical. Over the years, she wrote extensively about losing her husband to cancer at a relatively young age. She guided three
children through adolescence and then watched them fly from the nest. After several years of
widowhood, she remarried and moved to a new state with her new husband.
In one column, Sharon wrote about her grandfather’s explanation of March winds:
It’s simple, he told me: God sends the wind in springtime to clear the Earth of all
that’s dead -- crumbling leaves, broken branches and other casualties of winter --
to make room for new growth and shout out the promise of everlasting life.
Then Ms. Randall said,
I don’t know much about wind. But I know something about the winds of change.
They come howling through our lives when we least expect them, ripping up
plans, forcing us off course, stripping away what was -- no matter how dearly
we loved it, or how fiercely we try to hold on to it -- to make room for what will be.
I hate it when that happens. I turn up my collar; hunker down and try my best
to resist--until the wind stops and I start to ask how did my neck get so stiff?
Someday before I leave this world I hope to learn to weather change with all
the grace and style and abandon of a hawk. Until then I’ll just try to hang on
to what’s left of my hair (Randall).
POSITIVE SIDE OF PSALM 22
The Psalms were written for singing in the synagogue--even Psalm 22 with all its wondering why God has forsaken the singer. This gives legitimacy to telling God our worst feelings toward Him. To sing the song in group worship is to remind us that we are surrounded by people with similar issues, similar feelings.
But Psalm 22 doesn’t end on the sour note. After howling, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” the psalmist declares the Lord is with him --is with US -- after all.
I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee: You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel! For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
We’re not told how the singer gets from agony to ecstasy. It’s not like going from Point A to Point B. It’s more like going through a maze from Point A, hunting your way to Point Z.
Sharon Randall often writes about her faith in God, but she writes as someone who has sung both parts of Psalm 22, the Song of Desolation: “My God, why have You forsaken me?” And the Song of Praise: The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD!
CONCLUSION
I haven’t offered much by way of concrete answer to The Great “Why.”
I’ve tried to say: It’s all right to raise the questions. Psalm 22 give us permission to gripe at God about the dark, disturbing areas of life as we hold on for dear life. Psalm 22 also offers the promise of a new start, a new day. If you’re still singing the sad, lonely, questioning part of the song, God bless you. Try to remember: He is holding you, even though you feel you are going it alone.
SOURCES
Walter Brueggemann, Spirituality of the Psalms. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.
Jason Coker, “Life in the aftermath of Sandy Hook,” Baptists Today. Macon, Georgia: Baptists Today, August 2013, page 14.
John I. Durham, “Psalms,” Broadman Bible Commentary, Volume 4. Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1971.
Eric Howell, “How the Tomb Becomes a Womb,” Christian Reflections. Waco, Texas: The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2013, pp. 12-13.
Dan Martin, “God ‘carries’ family through tragedy,” Baptist Standard, Dallas, Texas, September 30, 1998, page 6.
Pammy, “In Loving Memory of Pat (Fat-Back),” The Anderson Independent-Mail, May 31, 2002.
Sharon Randall, “Clearing out brush to make way for change,” The Anderson Independent-Mail, Anderson, S. C., March 5, 2007. Front page, :”Life” section.
Charles Schulz, “Peanuts” strip, The Anderson Independent-Mail, Anderson, S. C., Comic Section, May 24, 2007.
Jason Coker is a Baptist pastor in Wilton, Connecticut, about a half-hour away from Newtown. His son was a first grader, the same age as those children who were gunned down. Pastor Coker wrote an article about the conversation he had with his son about the incident as he was about to take his son to school on Monday after the fatal shootings.
The preacher told his son, “A man who was very sick in his head came into a nearby school and hurt a lot of children and teachers.”
His son asked, “Is he going to come to my school and hurt me, Daddy?”
The father assured, “No, son, he can never hurt anyone again.”
“Why, Daddy?” the boy asked.
The father said, “Because he died, son.”
“Did he go to heaven, Daddy?”
The father said, “I don’t know, son. I hope so” (Coker).
Many questions will remain unanswered. Those directly affected by the Connecticut massacre will ask unanswerable questions the rest of their lives.
Why did the gunman kill the children and teachers?
Why did he kill his mother?
Why did she have guns so easy for him to get hold of?
How did he manage to get into the school and start shooting?
Why didn’t God stop the killer?
Why did this happen to innocent children?
Why?
Why?
Why?
This question posed at Newtown might well be called The Great “Why.”
This is one of those “Questions We Keep Asking.”
You may be grappling with a nagging question you’d like to have some help in finding a biblical, a Christian answer for. These questions don’t have easy answers. That’s why we keep asking them. But there’s nothing wrong with asking questions about life, questions about God.
The 22nd psalm asks hard questions.
It begins with an anguished cry:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
This is a cry many of us have raised at points in our lives. This may be the cry of your heart this morning.
Psalm 22 is a song, a religious song. The Psalms are the song book for Jewish worship. Many of the psalms express discouragement. Why would the compilers of the Psalms put such unhappy songs in the book to sing when they gather to worship?
We have a few songs of that sort in Christian song books. Consider this one by John Newton, the man who also wrote “Amazing Grace”:
How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus I no longer see;
Sweet prospects, sweet birds and sweet flowers,
Have all lost their sweetness to me;
The midsummer sun shines but dim,
The fields strive in vain to look gay.
But when I am happy in Him,
December's as pleasant as May. . . .
Dear Lord, if indeed I am Thine,
If Thou art my sun and my song,
Say, why do I languish and pine?
And why are my winters so long?
O drive these dark clouds from the sky,
Thy soul cheering presence restore;
Or take me unto Thee on high,
Where winter and clouds are no more.
He has prayed day and night but gets no answer
O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest (v. 2).
He is from a godly family, a godly ancestry. Listen again to verses 4-5:
In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed.
The blessings God gave this man’s ancestors haven’t continued with him. Maybe the statute of limitation expired.
He feels like a worm, not a man:
But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people (v. 6).
People mock him as they view his troubles:
All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads;
"He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!" (vv. 7-8).
This doesn’t seem right to the singer. He has believed God for as long as he can remember:
Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts. Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God (vv. 9-10).
What’s going on here, God?
He feels completely cut off from any help
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help (v. 11).
He feels he is being attacked by strong bulls of Bashan, as fierce as lions. Bashan was an area known for rich pasture land, herds of cattle, and fierce bulls (Durham 214):
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion (vv. 12-13).
In verses 14-16, the Psalmist gives a series of word pictures to show his misery:
He’s as out of control as water that’s being poured out.
His bones feel as if they are disconnected one from another.
His heart is melting in his chest like wax.
He feels his strength is dried up like a broken piece of pottery.
His tongue feels like it’s stuck to his jaw.
He feels God has laid him in the dust to die, and dogs are gathering about his carcass.
It’s as if he can count his bones, as if they’re protruding through his skin.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.
Yea, dogs are round about me;
But the dogs are more than dogs. They are men who treat him like a dog:
a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet -- I can count all my bones -- they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.
Gospel writers pick up on part of this passage in describing the crucifixion:
In Matthew 27:8, people around the cross echo this psalm:
"He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!"
Matthew reports that Jesus cries out the first verse of this Psalm:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Jesus’s human side shows through as He suffers the pain and agony of death. He expresses the feeling of isolation from the Heavenly Father. These words help us understand that Jesus shared our human suffering. Perhaps Matthew records this to remind us, “Even Jesus raised questions in His final hours, as life faded from His body.”
A friend wrote me an e-mail, expressing anger at a loved one who had died. This friend was apologizing for feeling angry. I tried to reassure him, this is a natural feeling. It’s not logical, but it’s quite common. Unless death was a suicide, the person didn’t choose to die. But we feel cheated because we don’t have her with us any more. We feel she is cheating us by leaving us.
Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, reminds us the Psalms -- including Lament Psalms -- were an integral part of Jewish worship and still are. This means it is acceptable in Jewish worship to lay grievances before the Lord God. Dr. Brueggemann calls these “Psalms of darkness” (Brueggemann 27).
But the Christian church largely has ignored the Complaint Psalms, as if it is an act of “unfaith” to acknowledge negativity (26). But it can be a bold step to bring our grievances before God (27).
We can be honest like “Good Ole Charlie Brown” in the Peanuts strip. When Charlie is at a low point, Linus tries to encourage him:
“Don’t be discouraged, Charlie Brown . . . In this life we live, there are always some bitter pills to be swallowed.”
Charlie says, “If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather not renew my prescription” (Schulz).
Remember, these Psalms are not the voice of some agnostic. These songs have the blessing of the religious leaders for use in corporate worship. Life is not all “Blessed Assurance” and “Standing on the Promises.” “Psalms of Darkness” in worship are a way to acknowledge life often is rough and it is acceptable to voice our lament to God about the rough times.
I keep a file folder labeled “Coping.” I could call it “How Do I Deal with Difficulty?” or “When the Going Gets Tough” or “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” Or maybe the file could be called simply “Why?”
Whatever I name it, the folder is for one of those “Questions We Keep Asking.”
From that folder, here is a lament from the obituary page of the Anderson paper several years ago. It’s a lament aimed at God (Anderson Independent-Mail):
He has a family that loves him, and a happy life.
We all love him to death, but something is not right.
Everything was fine until that day You came and took him away. . . .
He won’t be there to see his sister’s graduation.
He won’t be there to see his brothers grow up
to be successful young men and marry great ladies.
Or see that his little sister does her best.
You came out of nowhere while we were unaware
And took him away just like that.
I just can’t believe what You have done.
You’ve brought pain to everyone. Why did You do this to him?
I just keep thinking to myself, “How can this be?”
But what I really keep thinking is,
“Why God, why did You take him from us?” (Pammy)
successful accounting firm, he was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer at age fifty-three.
to working. It was all he knew how to do. He quickly put into place a succession plan [in the
company] . . . wrote letters to old friends. He spent more time at home with his wife & family.
He tightened his circle of friends closer as the months crept on and his death loomed near.
and bitterness.
We have to come to grips with the fact that this is something we cannot change,
and “Why” is something we will not have an answer to that would ever satisfy us.
It is a meaningless question.
Several places in the Bible we are told, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” but I
always thought that meant that God was going to get even for me. What it came
to mean was that God was going to carry the problem that I couldn’t handle. I had
to let God carry the load of anger and bitterness and vengeance, because it was too
big for me (Martin).
For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead; he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again (2 Corinthians 1:8-10).
The couple’s closing comment tells what they found concerning God in grave difficulty: “What is true is that He will carry us when our pain and grief are too great even to think about.”
Answers to “Why” are slow coming to rich or poor, small or great. The pastor who talked with his son about the shootings in Connecticut reminds us, authentic answers come slowly. He said . . .
care providers for help. Personally, I was looking for answers myself and was trying to find
someone to follow who had all the answers.
To my shock, I discovered that everyone in my purview was looking to me for answers.
I was the pastor, and for many this made me the mouthpiece for God (Coker).
It’s not always about physical death.
Joe has college degrees. He had an office on the twelfth floor as he moved up the corporate ladder. Then he got downsized. Now he’s a short order cook at Bojangles. And to keep food on the table for his wife and kids, at night, he cleans toilets in a building such as the one where he had his own office and his own secretary. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Sarah’s husband walked out on her and their three young children. She’s hundreds of miles away from her relatives. No one to leave the kids with. No money to put them in day care. Now, she’s on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- SNAP. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Sharon Randall writes a syndicated column. Highly autobiographical. Over the years, she wrote extensively about losing her husband to cancer at a relatively young age. She guided three
children through adolescence and then watched them fly from the nest. After several years of
widowhood, she remarried and moved to a new state with her new husband.
In one column, Sharon wrote about her grandfather’s explanation of March winds:
that’s dead -- crumbling leaves, broken branches and other casualties of winter --
to make room for new growth and shout out the promise of everlasting life.
They come howling through our lives when we least expect them, ripping up
plans, forcing us off course, stripping away what was -- no matter how dearly
we loved it, or how fiercely we try to hold on to it -- to make room for what will be.
to resist--until the wind stops and I start to ask how did my neck get so stiff?
Someday before I leave this world I hope to learn to weather change with all
the grace and style and abandon of a hawk. Until then I’ll just try to hang on
to what’s left of my hair (Randall).
The Psalms were written for singing in the synagogue--even Psalm 22 with all its wondering why God has forsaken the singer. This gives legitimacy to telling God our worst feelings toward Him. To sing the song in group worship is to remind us that we are surrounded by people with similar issues, similar feelings.
But Psalm 22 doesn’t end on the sour note. After howling, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” the psalmist declares the Lord is with him --is with US -- after all.
I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee: You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel! For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
We’re not told how the singer gets from agony to ecstasy. It’s not like going from Point A to Point B. It’s more like going through a maze from Point A, hunting your way to Point Z.
Sharon Randall often writes about her faith in God, but she writes as someone who has sung both parts of Psalm 22, the Song of Desolation: “My God, why have You forsaken me?” And the Song of Praise: The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD!
I haven’t offered much by way of concrete answer to The Great “Why.”
I’ve tried to say: It’s all right to raise the questions. Psalm 22 give us permission to gripe at God about the dark, disturbing areas of life as we hold on for dear life. Psalm 22 also offers the promise of a new start, a new day. If you’re still singing the sad, lonely, questioning part of the song, God bless you. Try to remember: He is holding you, even though you feel you are going it alone.
WHY, OH WHY
Psalm 22
Baraca Class & Anderson Place, May 28, 2007
Reworked for Baraca August 11, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Are there degrees of sorrow in the death of a child?
I don't know the answer to that question.
I know in our first pregnancy, one of our premature twin sons lived only 13 days. It was 1969. Randall died, but, I'm glad to say, Russell is alive and well more than 44 years later.
I ponder the question as I think about a little four-year-old girl whose life expectancy is short.
Callie's dad was one of my students at Anderson University. He and his wife and Callie and her three preadolescent brothers live in High Point, North Carolina.
You probably never get over the death of a child. The general expectation is that we will die before our children. When it doesn't go that way . . . when it doesn't go that way . . .
Each grief is different. We didn't have long to ponder the fact that Randall was going to die. But we had years to deal with his death after the fact. With lack of oxygen reaching the brain, he probably would have been mentally deficient if he had lived.
I knew babies die. I knew other people's babies die. But somehow I didn't know my baby would die. We prayed earnestly for his survival, and when death came, it hit hard. For many months, a couple of years, maybe longer, I winced every time I saw twins, of any age or either gender.
Grief for Callie's parents is different from ours. They don't know when or exactly how, but they've had longer than we did to try to come to grips with this reality because they've lived with it for years.
Callie has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which I liken to a child's version of Lou Gehrig's or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
In an Internet posting, the parents acknowledge, "With SMA, there is no treatment, but there are many interventions that can be done." They confess, it's easy to cling to the idea that these interventions can somehow save her. But reality returns, and they realize they can only buy her time.
Bottom line: "As horrible as it is, our little girl was not made to survive."
http://www.calliegolden.org/blog/2013/08/17/summer-news/
Perhaps Callie's parents are paying out their grief on the installment plan, but I suspect there still will be a balloon payment when the end comes.
People said horribly insensitive things to me when Randall died:
"WELL, YOU STILL HAVE THE OTHER ONE."
Yes, we still had -- still have -- "the other one." But that word did nothing to assuage our grief.
"WITH HIS DIAGNOSIS, YOU'RE BETTER OFF."
That's not for you to say. If it's true, we need to determine that for ourselves over the course of time.
"WE STILL HAVE ROMANS 8:28."
Yes, we still have God's promise that He will work all things together for good. But this is not a spiritual prescription pill to hand to someone locked in grief. This is a personal testimony from someone who has worked through difficulty and arrived at that conclusion for himself/herself.
I still don't know the answer to my question. But I know our hearts ache for this dear couple, their three all-boy sons, and this beautiful, alert, sensitive little daughter.
I don't know the answer, but here's what I believe:
Healing comes as we are able to claim God's sustaining love and grace, but that doesn't come overnight. Years ago, when Cort Flint was pastor of our First Baptist Church, Anderson, South Carolina, he wrote a helpful little book whose very title was therapeutic: Grief's Slow Wisdom.
I know in our first pregnancy, one of our premature twin sons lived only 13 days. It was 1969. Randall died, but, I'm glad to say, Russell is alive and well more than 44 years later.
I ponder the question as I think about a little four-year-old girl whose life expectancy is short.
Callie's dad was one of my students at Anderson University. He and his wife and Callie and her three preadolescent brothers live in High Point, North Carolina.
You probably never get over the death of a child. The general expectation is that we will die before our children. When it doesn't go that way . . . when it doesn't go that way . . .
Each grief is different. We didn't have long to ponder the fact that Randall was going to die. But we had years to deal with his death after the fact. With lack of oxygen reaching the brain, he probably would have been mentally deficient if he had lived.
I knew babies die. I knew other people's babies die. But somehow I didn't know my baby would die. We prayed earnestly for his survival, and when death came, it hit hard. For many months, a couple of years, maybe longer, I winced every time I saw twins, of any age or either gender.
Grief for Callie's parents is different from ours. They don't know when or exactly how, but they've had longer than we did to try to come to grips with this reality because they've lived with it for years.
Callie has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which I liken to a child's version of Lou Gehrig's or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
In an Internet posting, the parents acknowledge, "With SMA, there is no treatment, but there are many interventions that can be done." They confess, it's easy to cling to the idea that these interventions can somehow save her. But reality returns, and they realize they can only buy her time.
Bottom line: "As horrible as it is, our little girl was not made to survive."
http://www.calliegolden.org/blog/2013/08/17/summer-news/
Perhaps Callie's parents are paying out their grief on the installment plan, but I suspect there still will be a balloon payment when the end comes.
People said horribly insensitive things to me when Randall died:
"WELL, YOU STILL HAVE THE OTHER ONE."
Yes, we still had -- still have -- "the other one." But that word did nothing to assuage our grief.
"WITH HIS DIAGNOSIS, YOU'RE BETTER OFF."
That's not for you to say. If it's true, we need to determine that for ourselves over the course of time.
"WE STILL HAVE ROMANS 8:28."
Yes, we still have God's promise that He will work all things together for good. But this is not a spiritual prescription pill to hand to someone locked in grief. This is a personal testimony from someone who has worked through difficulty and arrived at that conclusion for himself/herself.
I still don't know the answer to my question. But I know our hearts ache for this dear couple, their three all-boy sons, and this beautiful, alert, sensitive little daughter.
I don't know the answer, but here's what I believe:
Healing comes as we are able to claim God's sustaining love and grace, but that doesn't come overnight. Years ago, when Cort Flint was pastor of our First Baptist Church, Anderson, South Carolina, he wrote a helpful little book whose very title was therapeutic: Grief's Slow Wisdom.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Keep your chin up high
A secular song that can easily be baptized into Christian meaning is “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Carousel. I think of that song in connection with chaplain interns at our local hospital. Before Dr. George West retired as head chaplain at AnMed, he invited me to meet with him from time to time as he debriefed his chaplains-to-be. They reported on patients they had recently visited in the hospital rooms, and the rest of us around the conference table provided feedback.
A female intern told of working with a woman who had severe difficulty walking. Even when the medical team said she should be able to walk, the patient didn’t believe she could walk. She refused to try. Then, the chaplain offered to walk with her. At first the woman was doubtful about walking, even with someone beside her. But the chaplain persisted, and one day, the patient agreed to try to walk. They walked down the hall with no apparent pain or harm to the woman. They walked more day by day, with the chaplain as the embodiment of Christ. Before many more days, the woman was dismissed. As the chaplain was finishing her story of success with the patient, George and I started singing:
When you walk through a storm,
Keep your chin up high . . .Is a golden sky . . .
And so on through the rest of the song.
There were more than a few tears as we all sang:
And you'll never walk alone.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
God forgives our sins and dumb things
The first seriously stupid thing I can remember doing was as a first grader: I stepped behind two horses who were feeding on the barn lot. I frightened them. They kicked and ran. One of their kicks left me lying with my head split open.
If you know me personally, you may think that explains a lot of things. But there’s more to the story.
Daddy and my older brother Lee Roy were milking the cows. We had put out some bundled maize for the plow horses, and they were eating. I decided I would take a stalk of the grain and offer it to one of the horses, not realizing I was coming up right behind them.
I wound up in the Sweetwater, Texas, hospital for two weeks, in bed at home another two weeks, and then had to learn to walk all over again.
A few years later, when my voice was beginning to change, I was attending a singing school. Toward the end of the week the instructor decided to record some of the singing, so we could hear how we all sounded. He called on me to hold the mike, perhaps so I wouldn’t be tempted to sing. But sing I did. So when he played the disk back, guess whose voice was heard above everyone else!
With the passing of years, I did many other simply dumb things. And I've done things more seriously hurtful to other people, though rarely with malice aforethought. But I certainly have done nothing more physically hurtful to myself than that misstep on the farm.
I think I’m pretty good at not holding grudges against other people. But I confess, I’m not great at forgiving myself or forgetting dumb things, bad things from the past. Sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night, I am brought face to face with something I did years ago that caused trouble or confusion. I’m probably the only person on God’s earth who still remembers most of those incidents, but they loom large as I try to return to sleep. I often think, "What might I have done differently that would have caused less difficulty?"
In the Fourth Gospel, religious leaders bring a woman to Jesus. They say they caught her in the very act of adultery, and they ask what should be done with her. This looks like a setup. Where is the man? It takes two to commit adultery. But they didn’t haul him to Jesus for judgment.
This is a question with no right answer: Their religious law says they should stone her to death, but the Roman government of the time does not allow them to put people to death. So if Jesus says, “Kill her,” this will put Him in trouble with the Romans. If He says, “Let her go,” He will cross religious law.
At first, Jesus says nothing. He simply gets on His haunches and writes in the dirt. He may be following the example of judges of that time who write out their decisions and then read them aloud. When pressed to say something, His words are the judge’s verdict: “Let the one of you who is sinless throw the first stone at her.”
One by one, the men leave the scene. Perhaps one of them had led the sting operation, going to the woman as a customer.
Whatever the details, all the accusers leave. When Jesus sees they all are gone, He asks, “Where are your accusers?”
She says, “There’s nobody here to charge me.”
Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
The woman may have difficulty forgiving herself. We don’t have the rest of the story. But we know Jesus forgave her, and we can hope she is able to forgive herself and start a new life.
God says, in the prophecy of Isaiah, "I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (43:25).
In a story -- perhaps a fable -- a woman tells her young pastor that she regularly talks to God and God answers her.
Though he is skeptical, the preacher does not openly challenge the woman. Instead, he says, “Next time you talk with the Lord, ask Him about a serious sin I committed when I was in college.”
Though he doesn’t specify his sin, the parishioner says, “Of course, I’ll talk with God about this.”
Next time they meet, the pastor asks, “Did you talk with God about my sin?’
“Yes, I did,” she assures.
The preacher asks, “And what did God say?”
The woman replies, “He said He didn’t remember.”
Thursday, August 1, 2013
On the receiving end of a mission trip
Our cinder block church building originally was a grocery store. So we could wax eloquent about how the new occupant (namely, the church) was still in the business of serving up food, albeit a different kind.
This was a tiny church in New York's Hudson River Valley where I was pastor. We were glad we had a building, but those cinder blocks created a mammoth problem. In the hard winters of the Northern Tier, icy wind whistled in through cracks in those cinder blocks because there was nothing but a coat of paint to keep it out. That wind blew in, and our old furnace sent air out to heat the parking lot.
Enter Hubie. He and his wife Trish were a young couple who came north when Hubie's company reassigned him. He worked for a gypsum company whose retail products included wallboard. As he and the other deacons discussed the problem of heating the building, he said he probably could get the company to donate wallboard to provide some insulation against the cold.
Hubie got the wallboard, but none of the handful of men in the congregation felt competent to lead the task of putting it up. We were more helpers than leaders in building repair and upkeep. Of course, we stood ready to do our part if we found someone to point the way.
What to do?
Enter mission teams.
In my years of congregational and denominational work down South, I had been aware of mission groups from churches and colleges who ventured out of their home territory for various projects. So I had in mind that our little church ought to connect with some of those "mission-minded" groups. Nowadays, the buzzword is "missional."
Somehow in the providence of God, a Baptist Student team from a college in Tennessee were looking for a need such as ours. The campus minister's father was in construction work, and -- fortunately for us -- the son had learned much of the trade from childhood.
I honestly can't remember how our church in New York connected with that campus group in Tennessee. They didn't "just happen" to hear about us, and I don't recall any Tennessee connections I could call on. There probably was a reasonable explanation, but -- any way you look at it -- I felt God's hand matched us up.
We told the Tennesseans about our little building and how we had been given the gypsum board. We also discussed neighborhood ministries aimed at youth and children. So they piled into a van overflowing with suitcases, sleeping bags, and, of course, equipment for installing the drywall.
Our visiting helpers spent most of their days and nights in the church. In the morning, they crawled out of their sleeping bags on the floor or on the pews, then cooked breakfast in our semi-equipped kitchen and took showers in the parsonage just across the parking lot. Then they alternated between the physical work project and Vacation Bible School (VBS) type programs. In the evenings when our men got off their paying jobs, they did a second shift under the guidance of the campus minister from Tennessee.
The Vols were the first of a fairly steady stream of Southerns venturing into the Frozen North Country to aid our struggling congregation. In summers, we hosted a couple of youth choirs with 80 or 100 voices, more singers than we had in regular attendance in our services. We found locations around the area for the choir kids to lead VBS and give concerts in shopping malls, county fairs, and the church parking lot.
A little church history: Our congregation was one of many that started near World War Two military bases outside the territory of the historic Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In their heyday, the churches easily drew in Southerners who were "serving their sentences" far from home.
By the time my family and I arrived in the Hudson Valley, many of those bases had closed, and many military-oriented churches such as ours had to scratch to find replacements for those airmen and their families. In that environment, we welcomed help from larger, better-established churches in the South.
My wife and I no longer identify with the SBC whose structure now is dominated by the authoritarian religious and political right wing. This move from center to right, religiously and politically, began while I was pastor in New York. We relate to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a much smaller, more open group, formed after the takeover, still committed to Baptists' historic autonomy of the local congregation: no top-down decrees.
But denominational politics are beside the main point of my story. All that happened after we left New York. Our SBC-related church had various needs, and I found various connections with SBC groups back in my native territory who were willing to help us meet those needs. We always were buoyed by these visits, more determined, by God's grace, to "keep on keeping on."
Bottom line: I'm not sure who are more blessed by mission trips, the travelers or the hosts. I expect it's a draw.
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