Life and Death and God's Plan

This past summer our church hosted a reading program called Project Transformation. It's really much more than a reading program. It is an opportunity for children to spend time together, to work on their reading skills, to work on their social skills, and to help them succeed in school. The program emphasizes the success of the students and the success of the congregation where they meet. Along with this, the program gives space for college interns to work with the children, to make a good wage for a summer job, and to explore and question their plans for future careers.

We had a wonderful summer. Our site coordinator and interns were fun, they were loving, and they were great to work with. Every one of them was loved by all the students and the volunteers from the congregation.

We were met on Monday with the devastating news that one of the college interns who had served at our church, a wonderful 19 year old woman, was shot and killed. 

What to think? What to say?

In my Sunday School class, we have been watching videos from the Memphis Theological Seminary Sunday Morning Seminary program, now called Pulpit and Pew. Here's a link if you are interested: https://memphisseminary.edu/pulpitandpew/. The most recent study, presented by Dr. Lee Ramsey, has been about grief. In one of his presentations, he posted several things not to say to people who are grieving. They were things like, "God just needed and angel," or, "At least (insert whatever you like here)," or things like this. One thing that we must be mindful not to say in situations like this is "It must have just been God's plan."

I am a minister, and I do not believe everything that happens is God's plan. When we read scripture, we often see what God's plan is, and we see how people ruin it. Sometimes God is able to redeem those things in some way, but often the damage has been done.

And I can't help but think of the many damages the loss of this one woman's life  may cause in the world. She had a brother and cousin that she brought to camp every day. That's why she got the job. What might she have been in their lives moving forward? We won't know. 

She had a loving heart and a bright mind and offered a lot to our world. What might she have done? We'll never know.

God's plan isn't a plan for suffering. God's plan isn't violent death or pandemics or hurricanes. God's plan is for love, God's plan is for justice, God's plan is for good.

Sometimes terrible things happen because of nature. More often they happen because humans made a wrong turn.

And the loss of one person like this young woman resounds through history. All those losses, to war, to starvation, to suicide, to cancer, they all resound, because those people aren't where they were meant to be. Because those people aren't where they were meant to be, the world suffers, and maybe someone else is sent down a wrong path.

Tragedy is not God's plan. It must not be, not if we serve a God who loves us.

And so, I can only believe God grieves with us, and I can only hope that, as God sometimes does, God can create something redemptive from the sorrow.

It is overwhelming to me to think that, as much as I grieve for the loss of a woman I worked with for two months, how her family must feel, and how the families of all those torn from us must feel, and I cannot process all that pain.

I only, simply believe--hope--that God can.

May God be with all who grieve.

You Need a Break

I have a computer at home that runs really slowly. It did this as soon as we bought it about three years ago. We don't use it anymore because it just takes too long to do anything.

If you have been around computers much, you probably know that you can bring up a window to show what programs are open and what processes are being performed. Each one of those will have a percentage of the amount of the processor's capacity it is taking. 

When I opened this on my slow computer, I found a bunch of processes that were running in the background that each were taking up a bit of the processor's capacity. Maybe one would be 3% and one 5%, and then there'd be 20% for something I was trying to open up, but all these processes would overwhelm the computer. It just wasn't made for that type of capacity.

I have been thinking about this in terms of our human brains. We developed these brains living in a world that had certain processes. We needed to eat, we needed to find shelter, we needed to have companionship, we needed some type of entertainment. I'm sure I am leaving a lot of things out. 

Just as certainly, most of the things we spend our time on in the modern world weren't taking up brain processing capacity back then. Just think of the information that comes into our brains now. Just think of all the sources of data. Our phones, our cars, our televisions--even our watches give us more information to process than our ancestors did.

It has been hard enough to adapt to the digital world, but now we have a global crisis in our minds all the time. We have the cacophony of politics. We have so many things that our brains just weren't designed to deal with, and then extra, frightening things on top of that.

Just like my computer at home, perhaps your processor is overwhelmed. That's OK. We ought to be overwhelmed. This is an overwhelming time.

So, give yourself a break. let your processor wind down a bit. Don't be too hard on yourself if you can't do everything you think you should do. 

We all need space right now and we all need to be able to give one another downtime. Our bodies minds and souls will pay the price if we can't make this happen.

Go ahead... Take a break.

Worth

I had an epiphany of sorts. We are getting close to two years of pandemic. With that comes pandemic fatigue, and for many, I think, a kind of pandemic depression. You may be wondering about your future, about the work you have chosen, or maybe the work that has chosen you. You are likely wondering about family--when will we be able to be together and visit like we once did? It used to seem so hard to find time to visit our families, especially the ones far away, and now we look back and think how easy it was back then. You may be wondering about what new fears may come along with the virus as it continues to change in order to survive our attempts to eradicate it.

And you may struggle with your own self worth. It is common in a time of fear and crisis, especially one as prolonged as this one, to take a step back and look at ourselves. Are we doing what we are meant to do? Are we doing it as well as we ought? Are we the people God has chosen us to be, or for non-believers, are we the best we can be for the sake of ourselves and humanity?

Can we ever be the best? Could we not always say we could have done better, worked harder, spent more time?

Is our worth found in what we do, in what we produce?

If you feel this way, you are not alone. The information we consume every day emphasizes those who do big, amazing things. It reinforces any negativity we may have about ourselves by comparison.

But our worth is not in what we do or in what we produce. Our worth is in who we are.

We don't spend much time thinking about or reading about that. Yet I know it to be true, because I know whatever we have done or not done, our accomplishments cannot fill the void of self-worth. There is always a way to judge ourselves harshly. There is always a way to say we haven't done enough. 

There is a poster at the gym where I used to work out that says, "You can't out-train a bad diet." Well, you can't out perform your own self image.

And you can't rely on others to lift you up, either. At best it would be a momentary boost, and at worst you would always be thinking you somehow had fooled them.

It must come from you.

It has to come from deep within, too. It's not a shallow re-assure yourself in the mirror type of thing, although that may help for some. Finding worth in who you are means letting go of finding worth in what you do and what you make and what you have. 

It is who you are that is precious. For believers, it is confirmed in the loving way God created you. It may mean more to you to recognize that who you are is the only truly unique thing about you. Others can have stuff or do stuff, and maybe better. But they can never be you.

Of course, do your best with what you are, but always realize the value and beauty of who you are.

It's not whether you need the church...

 I am writing today specifically to those the church has pushed out or otherwise made to feel as if you don't belong. At some point in your journey, you, who are likely a person of faith, looked at the church and wondered why you felt so out of step with it. You likely eventually made an assessment that the church didn't have the values that you thought were taught by Jesus, and you decided that you didn't need that organization any longer.

I understand. There is a question of whether or not you need the church at all. My answer to that question is, "yes," but that is a message for another day. Instead, my message to you today is that the church needs you.

I am painfully aware that the church is seen as a political entity. Politics, of course, is fickle. The church itself isn't political, but many people use the church to put forward a political agenda, but these partnerships are only matters of convenience for politicians and church folks. Especially politicians are using the church to sanction their policies, and who better to sanction something than God?

But the church is Jesus at its heart, and Jesus' actions are not in line with any political party of which I am aware. Jesus invited those who were outcast to sit at table with him and he even washed the feet of and served communion to Judas, his betrayer.

If you have felt cast out by the church, that is the fault of the church, not you. Jesus is the great receiver of all who come seeking him. If the church isn't that, then we aren't living up to our calling.

And so, it's not whether you need the church, it is that the church needs you. We need you to come and remind us that the fellowship of Christ is not homogeneous, as many of our churches are. We need you to remind us that in you is the life of Christ, the image of God, and the church doesn't own that. We need you, so we can come to know you and love you and find out that our narrow minded definitions aren't God's.

I pray that if you give the church another chance you find a place that welcomes you as you are, that offers you hospitality, and that recognizes you as a child of God. Come and help us get it right.