Month: February 2021

Someone asked me recently what the point of prayer was when the people she is praying for die anyway. It’s a legitimate question and is probably in the back of everyone’s mind. Will I be the lucky one? Is there a formula for being blessed? Will my prayer be the one that gets answered?

This is a heart wrenching question that many people have written books about, but it is one that we are all struggling with, as a friend’s father that I had been praying for died just this week. There are easy answers and hard ones. One easy answer is that we are finite. Our bodies are not perfect. We get sick and sometimes we don’t have the resources to recover. One easy answer is social sin. We pollute creation, our healthcare system is not fair, we don’t invest in health as we should, personally or nationally. 

But those answers offer us no comfort.

Neither do the hard ones. Let’s take a couple things off the table. We can’t earn God’s love, we can’t bargain for God’s favor. It is almost impossible for us to imagine a scenario where we are completely and eternally loved as equally as the person standing next to us, but it is true. God loves us beyond our capacity to measure or understand. We are each absolutely beloved. 

I also believe in all my being that God’s heart is broken by suffering and death. God lives every day with the consequence of giving us free will, just as we do. We do not begin to take advantage of the consolation and compassion that God offers us in every grief, big or small. We choose to engage with God or not, depending on our mood, even though God is waiting to flood us with love. I know that I do anyway.

I do not believe that God picks and chooses who lives and dies. I don’t believe that God has a magic wand. I do believe that God can do anything, so when God “chooses” to let people die, I get very angry. But anger is a stage of grief, and a reasonable response to loss. So is it really God that I am mad at, or God that I trust enough to love me and hold my anger? 

When I pray for God to intervene, I know that means that I also have work to do. I can’t expect God to engage and fix when I am not willing to be a part of it. God is always willing to work with us, and gives us the skills we need to live into God’s call to build the Kingdom of God. When I ask God to heal someone, I have to work on my own healthy response to the world, my own relationship with the one who I am praying for, my support of their family, my kindness to those who are caring for them, or whatever I can do to help. I can’t pass the baton to God and expect a miracle. Sometimes we have to be kind of miraculous too, a sign of love in the world. 

And…

And a part of me believes that God does intervene. I still ask God for a miracle most days, things I think are beyond me but I just know are the right thing. I hold on to hope. I want my way, my desired outcome. And most of the time I believe that God agrees with me. It isn’t rational, but neither is faith. I hold on to God’s infiniteness, God’s expansiveness, God’s big picture, and I trust. And when things are not what I want them to be, I have to take a deep breath, believe in God’s love, and keep walking the path.

I told the woman who asked me that I didn’t know the answer. I don’t understand why bad things happen. And that is true. In that moment of her grieving she didn’t need theology or explanation, she needed compassion. I told her I was so sorry and that I loved her and that I didn’t have a good answer. But I have thought about it, prayed about it, and this is my more complete answer to an unanswerable question.

Last week I received two unexpected gifts in the mail. One was a belated Christmas present from a fellow priest who was looking for the perfect thing and definitely found it!  The other was a book from someone in the community who thought I would appreciate the read. And I will. 

These gifts were unexpected, which made them even nicer to receive. To be thought of and cared for is always so much more than the object that is sent. In fact, that is the essence of gift giving, not the gift itself but the building of relationships and memories.

Gifts are not transactional in the tradition sense. It is not in the spirit of giving to expect something of equal value or better in return. You give a gift to express a bond of love or friendship or common humanity. Once the gift is offered, the giver let’s go of control and invests in the hope of a stronger bond, a deeper sense of care. It isn’t about tit for tat. It is about generosity and care. Gift giving is an act of humility. 

When a homeless person on the street asks you for a dollar, and you offer it, that is a gift, and you trust the person to use the gift as they see fit. Yes, they might spend it in a way that you would or would not choose, in a way that you think is not appropriate to their circumstances, but how do you really know what another person needs. If you give a gift, it is about relationship. If you give charity, it might be about control.

If what you really want is something in return, then you have to let the person know your expectations, We are not mind readers, it is only fair. I tell some of my boys gift choices they might purchase because it helps them. But I know that there is a difference between an offering of love and an obligation, and we are careful about conveying the love. Resentment over poor communication is not the fault of the other.

Valentines’ Day might be a time to look at our sense of generosity and what gift giving means for us. To examine our relationships and make sure they reflect out values, mutuality and respect. To shed some of the control that giving often is strangled by. To love is freedom and joy. Let’s reflect on that!

My furnace is old. Way old. And every once in a while it reminds me of its age. I know people like that. For several months it has been touchy. I had someone out in November and it seemed to fix the problem, but around Christmas, it got cold, then in the beginning of January it got hot, and two weeks ago it got very cold. 

The guy came out again and installed a new thermostat. That is what I thought the problem was, with all my HVAC experience. I asked the guy what happened if this didn’t work, and he said he was out of ideas. About 5 minutes after he left it got really really cold. I gave it a few days to see if there was maybe a delay in the benefits of his work. By Friday I was cold and cranky, so I asked for another service call. No reply. 

Saturday I called another company, and they came, and they found the problem and they fixed the problem, and by evening I was in a warm house again. The difference in my mood and ability to get things done was significant, and I prayed for people who are cold for whatever reason, I don’t usually think about things like that until I have to, and I am going to try to be better about remembering people who are suffering.

But what I have been wondering about is why the first guy didn’t find the problem after two tries, and the new guy found it in 10 minutes. I asked my hero what he thought about that, and he said people see different things when they look at a problem. It depends on their experience but also their mood and the day they are having. He was actually pretty nice about it. 

I wonder how many problems that I do not solve because I am stuck in my way of looking at things. How often do I try to get a new perspective, have a new experience? How open am I really to learning and growing and getting better? The isolation and anxiety of a pandemic don’t help. But I am committed to thinking more broadly, more openly and intentionally about the problems that need to be solved. 

Perspective is everything.