Suffering

Elisabeth Elliot, in her book, These Strange Ashes, makes the point that a God fearing life does not mean that we are immune or exempt from the troubles of the world. Perhaps that is why the story of Job has always fascinated me. He was involved in a cosmic match of power. I suppose we all are to some extent, but Job was different, more so. The devil actually approached God and challenged him to see if Job would be faithful when he had nothing. Job’s story stretches over 43 chapters and it is a story of intense suffering. My favorite part of the book, apart from when God shows up, is the reaction to Job’s suffering. I think that the people in the book give us great examples of how we should minster to people who are suffering: through encouragement, our presence, and compassion.
Suffering has become a weighted word. It covers so many different struggles that we often don’t think it’s applicable to us or those around us, especially in light of worldwide suffering. But that doesn’t make the pain less. For the purposes of this speech, I want you to think about all the terrible things we encounter. For some, that’s death. Sometimes it’s divorce or betrayal. Not all of us have encountered a Job-like situation. But we’ve been around people who have been in situations like divorce or the death of a loved one, and we always will. For that very reason, we must study and learn from Job’s situation.
The first person to input her opinion on Job’s suffering was his wife. In chapter two, she tells him to “curse God and die.” Not the most encouraging words for someone in intense suffering. I think there’s definitely a possibility that, since her situation was directly tied to his, she wanted to short-cut the suffering. Much like the doctor we’ve all encountered who barely listens to the symptoms and rattles off some prescription because he wants to get through his patients quickly; we often want to give a quick solution before actually examining the problem. But if Job had taken this advice, he would have sinned and the challenge would’ve been won by the devil. I’m sure this was tempting to Job. At this point, he had lost all his wealth and family, he’s covered in painful sores from head to toe. Death was appealing. But he was faithful. Job was unique – he was God’s example of “blameless, upright, a man who feared God and shunned evil.” Not everyone is like that. If we can learn any lesson from the example of Job’s wife, it’s to encourage those we know who are suffering.
Encouragement isn’t something to check off the to-do list. It’s an intentional change in our lives. Merriam-Webster’s defines encouragement as a means of spurring someone on, helping them go forward. It certainly takes longer than a five minute phone call to accomplish that. The other day in class, Kirschner addressed this issue. He gave us a list of do’s and don’ts for when we encounter the suffering. Many had to do with the issue of encouragement. He suggested that we read books on the subject of miracles and healings. There’s nothing more encouraging than remembering that we serve a God who is powerful. Of course, the disclaimer attached to this one is that we should be careful not to stake our faith on it. We have to let God be God and not come to view miracles as an obligation of him. Another way to encourage someone suffering is with practical service. Help them with day-to-day chores that would help relieve them of some stress. Jonathan Acuff, author of Stuff Christian Like, was reminded of how much a simple meal can be an encouragement. In his blog post on the article, he humorously analyzes the type of food that’s appropriate for certain tragedies, but he hits on an important truth: Christians do an excellent job of providing meals for each other. But I think the most important way to encourage someone suffering is to simply listen. Let them talk and express what they feel.
The most powerful example of this in my life was one day last May, when my friend and I were at Wal-Mart. We met a woman at a photo kiosk that had just lost her husband. Of course, that wasn’t the first thing she said to us. But as we listened to her story, it became clear that she just needed to talk about him and their life together. She spent everyday at Wal-Mart, scanning literally hundreds of pictures to cds because she couldn’t bear to be in their home without him. She told us about their childhood together and her very first kiss from him-a butterfly kiss. The mood completely shifted as she spoke of his death. “I’m mad at him,” she insisted. She paused. “On our last anniversary, he promised me twenty more,” she said, as her voice cracked slightly. Tears running quickly down her cheeks, she told us about the funeral, and her little granddaughter’s haunting sob that they had left Grandpa. Throughout all of this, it was so clear that she simply needed someone who would listen to her. When we left we knew that, in some small way, simply talking had lessened the burden.
The second group we meet in Job’s story are his friends. In verses 11 through 13 of the second chapter, we get a picture of what I think our encounters should look like. “When Job's three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” I love this passage. They wept with him, they didn’t speak for a week after they arrived – they engaged in his suffering. It’s a great precedent to have when it comes to dealing with our friends as they suffer.
The three friends were wonderful until they open their mouths. After Job expresses real emotion in response to their suffering, his friends almost reprimand him. They all blame his faith or lifestyle for the suffering brought onto him. They attribute it to God, to correction. Job’s reaction is not one of the comforted. He is increasingly distressed by each friend’s speech. As I read through this a couple years ago, I became convicted of something in my own life. Sometimes, when we encounter hard times in our friends’ lives, we rush in with clichés and actually hurt their faith and make their suffering worse. My friend Sarah, whom I’ve talked about before, lived in an abusive home for years before she told me. By the time she did tell me, the physical abuse had stopped, but her father continued to emotional abuse and manipulate her. Often, she’d call me in tears. At 17, with literally no life experience, I had no idea what to say. Sometimes I’d just cry with her, sometimes I’d try to reason with her. Now, she’ll say that I wasn’t that bad, but I know that I made it harder for her sometimes. People don’t want to hear that God is trying to build your faith. They want to hear that God’s crying with you. And sometimes they don’t even want to hear that. As much as they want to know why, the answer will never satisfy them. Don’t try to explain, sympathize. Show compassion.
The woman Katie and I met in Wal-Mart had gotten a dose of religion that replaced compassion. She described the minister, comforting her, and all the well-meaning people using the cliché “He’s in a better place now.” “How can it be a better place,” she wondered, “if we’re not together?” The pain on her face spoke more than any amount of talking ever could. The tone of her voice slid from the gloomy, melancholy tone to a dark, anguished one. I don’t know what to say in that situation. But I know that admitting that is okay. People don’t expect you to know how they feel – how can you truly know? But a lot of times, they just want someone to be there, to show them that someone cares.
At some point, even already, you’ve encountered someone who is in a hard season of life. Maybe you said and did the perfect thing. But maybe you’re in the same category as me: you don’t know what to do. You’ve said or done the wrong thing, you haven’t cared enough, you’re still learning. And that’s okay. But let me remind you of Job and the example of the people in his life. Don’t be Job’s wife and tell them to curse God and die. Encourage them. Be there with them. Take a lesson from Job’s friends’ reaction. Go to them, mourn with them. But don’t blame them. Don’t give them some b.s., religious talk about enduring the suffering. Show them the God of compassion and sympathy.

On the Road...again.

For someone who isn't all that crazy about driving, I spent entirely too much time doing just that this weekend. The past three days seem to be a blur of dashed lines and a countdown of miles. Nevertheless, it was a good weekend. As exhausted as I am, and as little as I'm looking forward to the drive back to JoMo, I have to say is that it was a good weekend.

Friday:
-Two and a half hour drive home in the room. Chiro appt, coffee with Katie. Thespian banquet, night at home with the family. Total car time: Maybe three hours.
Saturday:
-Half hour drive to and from Anna's basketball game (she likes to shoot three-pointers), twenty minute drive to meet a friend, graduation party, forty-five minute drive to and from Blue Springs for a mini-Antique reunion. Total car time: about four hours.
Sunday:
-Church, cousin's graduation party (Two and a half hours away), visit the grandparents. Total car time: Five hours.
I feel like I've spent the entire weekend in the car, with a few snapshots of fun - but as much as I hate spending so much time in the car, it was totally worth it to get to see so many wonderful people. I've already spent over twelve hours in the car this weekend and the drive back to Ozark is even less appealing as I stare at the
tally. But after that drive, only one more stands between me and summer!

A Different Way of Looking at Prayer

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Eph 6:18

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Colossians 4:2
Prayer is pretty important, I guess. Especially the way Paul puts it in these passages. But sometimes I think we forget just how great prayer is. I mean, I’ve been hearing it for 19 years, and to be honest, sometimes I just tune it out. But the more I think about prayer, the more captivated I become. I'm so blessed to go to a school that has literally hundreds of books on this subject. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to read them all. No Twilight for me, give me some Moody or Murray. Which, on a side note, is infinitely better anyway. I mean, come on. Twilight. The Itsy Bitsy Spider could beat that. But I digress. What I want to share with you is some of what I’ve learned, some of the things that have revolutionized how I think of prayer. Hopefully, these things will help you in the same ways they did me.
The first thing that I realized was the Fatherliness of God. While God is always pictured as the Father, I don’t think that we consider all it means often enough. He’s so close to us that we can call him “Dad.” It’s mind-blowing, really. I recently finished reading With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray. One of his greatest themes is the Fatherliness of God. Every chapter is permeated by reminders that the Creator of the universe longs for our small voices to call to him, “Abba, Father.” Here's a journal entry I wrote in response to a chapter that I read that dealt especially with this topic:

I love my Dad more than just about anything on this earth and he's an awesome dad. So if an earthy, fallen human can be so amazing and so committed to taking care of me and loving me, how much more will my heavenly Father be? I can't imagine a better dad than my own, but there is One! My favorite quote of this chapter, though, is this: "We aren't supposed to learn to be holy as a hard lesson at school so we can make God think well of us. We are to learn it at home with the Father to help us. God loves you not because you are clever or good but because He is your Father. The Cross of Christ does not make God love us. It is the outcome of His love for us. He loves all His children: the clumsiest, the dullest, and the worst.”

If that is the God we are praying to it doesn’t matter what we say or the words we use, but what we mean and our attitude. If I were to talk to God the same way I talk to my earthly father, I can tell you I’d be praying a lot more. And with a lot more enthusiasm! And honestly, since I thought about this, I have! It’s amazing.
The second thing that changed my view of prayer was in Catherine Marshall’s book Adventures in Prayer. Marshall mentions a lot of interesting points on prayer, but the one that really captivated me was that we should pray to “catch a vision” of God’s plan for our lives. In her book, she writes:

He wants us to catch from Him some of His vision for us. After all, this is what prayer is, men cooperating with God in bringing from heaven to earth His wondrously good plans for us....

When we engage in prayer, we make ourselves available to God’s bigger plan for our lives. It enables him to prepare us for the incredible things that he has for us. He’ll allow the plan to get inside us, to ignite our passions, and allow us to do things for God that we never would’ve dreamed for ourselves. And I can honestly attest to this. When I’m active in my prayer life is when I dream biggest. Prayer gives us a vision for ourselves, but also for the future, for God’s glory. In his sermon entitled “Prayer or Fainting,” George Campbell Morgan says:

"Prayer is not merely position of body or of mind. Prayer is not merely asking for something in order that I may obtain it for myself. Prayer forevermore says when it asks for anything, 'Not my will, but Thine be done,' which means, if the thing I ask for,however much I desire it, however good it seems to be, will hinder or postpone by a hair's breadth or a moment, the ultimate victory, it should be denied to me. Those who know the real secret of prayer life have discovered the fact that God's denial of our requests is over and over again the graciousness of overwhelming answer. To pray is to desire forward, to seek forward, to endeavor after. It is to have a new vision of God and of the ways of God, of the perfection of all He does and of the certainty of His ultimate victory, and then to respond to the profound and tremendous conviction by petition, by praise, and by endeavor; and so men 'ought always to pray' and to 'pray without ceasing.'"

Finally, prayer gives us a chance to be real. In prayer, we can be ourselves. We don’t have to put on a face, say the right things. We’re not under any sort of rules or judgment. So why do we act like we are? Anyone who hasn’t been “in the church” for a significant amount of time will attest to the fact that Christians speak their own language. And unfortunately, that often carries over into prayer. When Kyle Lake first raised this point in [Re]understanding Prayer, I didn’t realize what a big part of my prayer life is in clichés. Then I started to try to eliminate them. Boy, is that hard. And it isn’t that I don’t mean them sincerely. But I’ve used them so often that I don’t think about what they mean anymore. For example, if I say “Bless and protect” or “Guide” so and so, what am I really praying for? If I “lift” someone up to God, what exactly am I doing? These are great expressions, and they’re cliché for a reason. But are we hiding behind them? Have we gotten to the point that we pray without thinking? Because I think that is a dangerous line to walk. So I want to challenge you to eliminate them. Spell out for God what exactly you mean. Of course, God knows. But do you? If nothing else, it’ll give you something more tangible to understand the cliché by. And if you can’t be real and honest and specific with your Heavenly Father, who can you be real and honest and specific with?

So today I challenge you to marvel at the Fatherliness of God, to catch a vision for what he wants for your life and what he’s doing around you. And finally, I want to challenge you to be real with God. For, as George Campbell Morgan says,

“If we do not pray always, we never pray. The man who makes prayer a scheme by which occasionally he tries to get something for himself has not learned the deep, profound secret of prayer. Prayer is life passionately wanting, wishing, desiring God's triumph. Prayer is life striving and toiling everywhere and always for that ultimate victory. When men so pray they do not faint. They mount up with wings as eagles, they run without weariness, they tramp the hardest, roughest road, and they do not faint."

Antique Girls

I met my best friends at Antique Photo the summer after my freshman year. None of us had any idea what was in store for us that summer. None of us had very high expectation, I'd venture to guess. But there we were, stuck in a small shop, where we'd sit for hours on end and simply talk, if it was slow (ie for all of June...). Perhaps it was the sheer amount of time we spent talking about anything and everything; it could have been our shared love of taking pictures. Perhaps what sealed the bonds of our friendship was every negative customer that we made fun of after they left. Whatever it was, we became fast and forever friends. Well, maybe not forever. But I sure hope so.
These girls redefined so much for me, especially in terms of relationships. There's way to confine their influence to one area or to try to explain it in one sitting. They've changed my life, become an integral part of it. A part that I hope to never see go. Working with them was the best working experience of my life. It made a crappy job seem amazing. It never dawned on me that Antique was a terrible and frustrating place to work until I was there alone. Yes, I had a few girls from the group working but we were never scheduled together. And one transferred, the other was frequently sent away. The first summer we were all there. We had a few other girls every year, but they were really just drifters. The second year, almost all of us returned. Another INCREDIBLE summer. The third year began to go downhill. It was just me and Katie. Rachael had to grow up and intern at a graphic design place, Hannah was working at the mall, Khira had to work in Richmond because of the gas places, and we'd fallen out of touch with Sunny. Katie and I had a lot of fun together, but it was hard without the other girls. My fourth (and final, Praise the Lord) season it was just me and Hannah and Khira. I already mentioned how that went.
The point is that I love these girls. They are truly my best friend. Which is why I've decided to devote a blog exclusively to Antique escapades and memories, a way to walk down memory lane and keep each other current as well. I'm so excited about it I could hardly sleep last night. So, if you want to be amazed at tales of the friendship that makes Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants look like the fight scene from Star Wars, check it out.
http://sixgirlsandacamera.blogspot.com

15 Days to Go!

I am so ready for summer, it's unbelievable.

This year has flown by. It's weird to think that I'm old enough to have a year of college finished, but it's true. At the same time, I can't wait to be completely done. I have no clue how that will feel. It seems so....grown-up. And while I am okay with being 19 or 20 or even in my mid-twenties, I still don't feel like I should be classified as an adult. But I guess that's officially a couple years away. Right now I can still be a college kid.

It's crazy to think about this time last year. I can hardly remember it. So much has changed since then! I guess I had no idea what to expect at Ozark, and thus, very few expectations. I thought this would be one of the best years of my life, and it was definitely a good year. But it dawned on me that God is forever preparing us for his work.

It doesn't matter how old we are, he always has another ministry in mind for us, and it's better than the last. Sometimes I picture God in heaven, sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning forward and saying excitedly, "This is coming together so cool. This is gonna be awesome. Watch how this falls into place. It's gonna be so great." (theologically speaking, that may not be entirely accurate. But I still see it.) It's funny how we think that we're being prepared for our career and family and that's how we'll serve God, then eventually retire. The thing is, you never retire from God's service. And why would you want to? "Oh hey, God, listen. I'm getting up in the years, and it's been a great run, but I'm gonna need to step down from helping to bring your heavenly kingdom to earth and this whole 'spreading Jesus' shindig. The old body's just not what it used to be. But we're cool?" What? Who would say that? But I thought that. I mean, not in so many words, but the principle stood. I assumed there was one ministry God was preparing me for, and I'd just work there as long as I could. Except that I gave my whole LIFE to God's service, not just my career years. And family can extend beyond that and it is a viable ministry. But that's not all we're limited to. It just blows my mind to think that God can use me in bringing his kingdom to earth, his words to action, whether I am 9, 19, 29, 59, or 99. And he's using each to prepare me for the next! So awesome.

I have kind of stopped trying to guess what God's up to. It never turns out the way I think it will anyway. I was going to try to put together a list of expectations or goals for next year, but I can't begin to imagine it. I'm just going to take it one day at a time, I suppose. I can say that I hope to read this summer. Like, always. I have a list of authors that I want to check out and some for fun books I've been dying to read! I'm a huge nerd, and I'm okay with this. But I can't wait to have time to read! Of course, I'll be lifeguarding at the camp. But who knows what else will spring up? God has a way of putting incredible opportunities in our path when our eyes are open...