My Thoughts on Rescue

I used to be a faithful listener to the national news.  But in the last year or so with so much bad news, I've become more of a sporadic listener.  Of course, I recognize that most news has rarely, if ever, been uplifting.  The events deemed "newsworthy" are generally traumatic or catastrophic events.  The collapse of marital fidelity in politicians, along with down right evil, seemingly lies, obfuscation, accusations; national, religious and personal security, unemployment, economic downturn, the worldwide debt crisis, the health care system, energy catastrophe, flooding and wild fires across our country, and the military involvement of conflicts in Afghanistan, Egypt, and now I Syria, all serve as recent examples.

These "bad news" stories are even more difficult to deal with because they are not simply news stories affecting someone else, far, far, away; they are real stories of the everyday realities of me and people all around me. Every Sunday, at church, I am reminded of friends who have loved ones in impending danger in Afghanistan and other places in the world. Others, who’s grandchildren are at death’s door due to drugs, abusive situations, or HIV. Friday evening my brother and sister -in - law shared how a young mother of four had suffered for a year prior to her recent death attributed to cancer. Now, how the deep difficult turmoils seem to be ravaging the husband and children. The next morning, an email came from a long time client and dear friend which  said, "  my dear husband is dying.  His aorta started leaking 2 wks ago and we have been to three hospitals and nothing can be done.  We have hospice and all 4 children are here and helping me.  Actually, the decline started about a month ago and is progressing." Then there are precious colleagues who have spent 30, 40, 50 years in sacrifical ministry with meager funds then and minimual retirement funds now, struggling to make ends meet, and wonder how they can continue to keep up with the rising costs associated with gas, food, medications, or health care. Necessities become negotiable and disappear altogether. For many, these are extraordinarily dark times.

While these particular circumstances are specific to my surroundings, extraordinarily dark times are sadly nothing new.  Even the greatest of leaders in the ancient world were not immune to trouble and despair.  David, the great king of Israel, experienced many difficulties throughout his life.  And when he experienced trouble, he turned to poetry.  Psalm 18, as one example, appears to have been a poem written after the experience of deliverance from national enemies and the current king of Israel, King Saul. 

These poems express the grief and distress David experienced in his trials.  The imagery he uses is of a near death experience: "The waves of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me; the cords of Sheol surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the Lord" (2 Samuel 22:5-7a). His distress is as palpable as being engulfed by the mighty waves of the sea.

Yet, somehow David continually hopes in God's deliverance. Even though confronted by powerful forces at work against him, David affirms that "The Lord was my stay. He brought me forth also into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me" (Psalm 18:19).

It is tempting to understand the Lord's rescue operation as one that restores the equilibrium or status quo to David.  Bernard W. Anderson, in “Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today” notes, “the psalmists' chief concern to give thanks to God are not chiefly found in regaining physical health, or adding more years to life, or by enhancing the life they now enjoy with greater comfort or security.  That is a modern conception of life, whose emptiness is eventually disclosed.  According to Israel's way of thinking, life is missed when people do not choose it: 'See, I have set before you life and death....Therefore, choose life.'

God's rescue is not simply a return to the "way things were" or always a salve of comfort and ease.  If I read the poem this way I miss its main image of the God whose rescue shakes the deepest foundations. "The earth shook and quaked the foundations of the mountains were trembling."  God's rescue often involves the overturning and upending all the things in which we place our hope apart from God.  For the poet David testified: The Lord was his stay.  Ultimately, salvation does not come from the things God does for David, or me.  God's rescue opens up new worlds in which I can find a way to trust. Sometimes, God's rescue involves the deliverance from all the things I think make up true life.  As Christoph Barth observes in the same book, "[W]hat the psalmists pray for in laments, or thank God for in thanksgiving is the restoration of life that they have lost, or its radical renewal through true life—that is the life that is given through
relationship to God."

At the time I make God my stay I acknowledge that all other ground is like sinking sand—even those things that appear as a strong foundation.  My notion of rescue is turned upside down. Yes, my days can often be filled with bad news, but if God is my stay then I can want more than being rescued and instead become the means of rescue. 

I am learning that active hands and feet that swiftly move to help others in times of need, and in times of abundance, just as God rescued David.  Even as I find myself toward the later years of life, living at times in want and in times of bad news, I can renew and restore the lives of others in remarkable ways, set them in a broad place as I find my sustainer is God.

Thoughts on Turning 70

This morning, sitting here with a hot cup of raspberry/hibiscus tea, ruminating,  I realize that within thirty days I begin my seventieth year. Not surprisingly my contemplative soul is setting interesting goals, aspiring to a new height, and pray tonight I dream some new dreams.  I pray that it will afford me the chance for a fresh start and a new beginning.  But on the other hand, for some of my neighbors, acquaintances, and even friends, at this age, are fearful and dreading both real and imagined disaster.  I must confess, I also do see the world at times a terrifying place not welcoming to my timididty, sensitivity, or fearful heart.

In one of the climactic scenes of The Lord of the Rings, the young hobbit, Frodo, laments the world he sees around him with all its tragedy and darkness.  Looking at the difficulty in continuing on the mission before him, Frodo makes a plaintive request, "I wish it need not have happened in my time."  Gandalf the Grey, ever his wise mentor, consoles him with these words: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.  There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.  Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it.  And that is an encouraging thought."

I have decided  that all I have to decide is what to do with the time that is given me. It is fairly safe to say that in entering a new decade there will indeed be crises of one sort or another.  I’m not naive to think that such crises might cause me to pine for another time from some yesteryear gone by or make me wish my journey would be a different and a far more pleasant trip.
 
While my longing for something more, something different, and something better speaks to me of what should be, I recognize in the past I often allow my longings to lead me beyond my present moment.  I have made myself impotent to the possibility of decision to make the best of the time that is given to me.  Mired in wishful thinking, I have fail to act here and now with resolute mission in the times I have been given.

I had never thought before this morning: that when Jesus prayed what would be one of his last prayers prior to his crucifixion, he prayed for his disciples as he knew he would leave them to a task far greater and more difficult than they could possibly imagine.  I realized that he didn’t pray that God would rescue them from the times they would face!  Peter and others in this fellowship would soon be martyred as a result of their mission.  Yet, Jesus doesn't pray that they would be saved from the world in which they were living.  Jesus prayed, "I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from evil.... As you did send me into the world, I also have sent them into the world" (John 17:15-18).

Jesus, sent into the world by God, now sends me, as a seventy year old follower to bear witness to the faith, hope, and love found in the kingdom Jesus inaugurated in his life and ministry.  Jesus encourages me to find my peace and security in him.  "These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).  On the other hand, Jesus is empowering me by calling me to mission—to witness to him in the world, regardless of the tribulation I am going to find there. He is calling me to purposeful action in this small part of the world of "here and now," and is sending me into my world to share the good news regardless of the times I have been given.

Like Frodo and the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring, I can so easily look around myself and see the peril of the journey in this world.  I don’t want to deceive myself in the temptation and desire to avoid difficulty and pain, and my longing for another kind of world, to borrow the words of a familiar phrase of my dad, often make me "so heavenly minded that I am no earthly good."  Yet, I’m convinced that my longings for what is good, beautiful, and right for my world does not have to lead me to escapism or flights of fantasy.  Rather, as another decade begins, my longing for a better world can compel me as a resolute witness to the gospel as the force of good for my world.  Indeed, my longings can lead me to decide what I can do to make the best of the times I have been given.