God with Us

Introduction

Acknowledging that both our work and our lives (not to mention my writing) are a work in progress, I look forward to reflecting this year on work, life, faith and the ways in which they inform – or fail to inform – one another.

Awful Stuff Happens

The last time I saw my cousin, we were driving past one another on Central Street, where we were nextdoor neighbors for sixteen years. Jeff was a senior in high school; I was a junior. He was in his old red Willys Jeep; I was tooling around in my mother’s bright green 1972 Opal, new driver’s license in my wallet. We backed up and stopped to talk a minute. He handed me a hairbrush I left somewhere, and we both drove off. Not exactly a memorable exchange. A couple weeks later, Jeff died from head injuries sustained from leaning out a car window and hitting his head on a telephone pole. The kids in the car had been drinking. At a service at a friend’s church where they were remembering Jeff, a pastor told me, “Don’t be sad. It’s God’s will.” I recoiled. Whose God was he talking about? A God pulling strings like a puppeteer seemed absurd to me. As far as I could figure, Jeff died because of a series of unfortunate choices that led to a horrific tragedy. Humans are flawed, and awful stuff happens. Sometimes random awful stuff happens. Even when nothing awful happens, we are always deeply human, deeply imperfect, and prone to all kinds of negative thinking and doing. I’m told I can be nasty, impatient, even conniving, distrustful, and defensive. Of course, my response to such challenges would be “no I’m not,” but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

God with Us

Whether I realized it or not, in that moment with the pastor I was forming my own sometimes shaky belief that God is the one who stays with us on the journey, who walks with us, delights with us, and weeps with us, no matter what. It wasn’t until years later that I heard what William Sloane Coffin said in response to a wellmeaning woman who implied it was God’s will that his son Alex had died when his car went off the road and into Boston Harbor in 1982. From the pit of grief and frustration, Coffin snapped, “I’ll say you don’t understand God’s will, lady. Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper, that Alex was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that Alex had probably had too much to drink?” Coffin lamented his own inability to convince people God is “dead set against” this sort of thing, and then he said this: “My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex died — but that when the waves closed in over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all hearts to break.” Aha. Emmanuel. God with us. Even God with a breaking heart. That sounded so right to me. That sounded like the God of compassion I learned about in Sunday school.

The Work of Trust

And how trusting am I of this God who sounds so good to me? Several years ago I had a detaching retina, and more than one doctor tried every leastinvasive procedure in the book trying to make it stop. Nothing was working, so I had a conventional, more invasive surgical procedure, tried and true. When the surgeon told me everything that could go wrong during the surgery, including loss of my sight in that eye, I was scared. I mean really scared. What I remember is that I did not feel particularly comforted by praying to God to be with me. As I walked down the hallway toward the pre-op room, I felt not much but alone and cold. My trust in God and the power of prayer seemed as elusive as my once healthy retina. I was stunned at my lack of faith. I never talked with anyone but my husband about it, and I still don’t like to think about it. The surgery worked well, and I moved on gratefully. Sort of like what I hear people say about delivering a baby – you’re so happy to see the baby, you forget about the pain. I was so happy and grateful for good vision, I forgot about my pitifully lacking faith and trust.

Nearly ten years later, I’m not sure I’m any wiser or more trusting than I was when my retina acted up. Where my faith life is concerned, I’m a work in progress if there ever was one. I crave weekly worship at my church, and I’m sure I need to be in community with other believers – shaky, rock solid, or otherwise. I am certain I need to pray, and I try to do so with some regularity. One of my prayers is to ask for the strength to stop talking, start listening, try trusting, and keep walking with the compassionate God whom I trust, somewhere deep in my heart, walks with us all.