Working the Night Shift

"ғaiтнleѕѕ iѕ нe тнaт ѕayѕ ғarewell wнen тнe road darĸenѕ." J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien and his contemporary, C. S. Lewis, brilliantly used the ancient means of story to transport truth to children and adults alike. They infused their works with images and narratives that blend reason and the vivid imagination for which each is known, conferring on their characters the power to communicate ideas of faith. In looking at the world around them they sought flashes of insight into what they saw as the fundamental nature of things.

Fundamental. What is fundamental anymore?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are among the unalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.  We seem to have elevated achieving perpetual happiness to the gold medal position on the podium. Many strive to maintain the illusion of happiness and success, as though any alternative is tantamount to failure.

We may coast through some days in life, but sooner or later we are put on the night shift.  The night shift--that season when life presents what we never dreamed would happen or that which we feared to face.

Our days and nights are not our own anymore on the night shift. They’ve been usurped, taken captive by that new thing, that no longer mythical monster that holds us in its grip. Cancer does it for some. Any sudden interruption of our lives will do this.

Crises have a way of reordering our priorities. They reveal our character. They give us the chance to step up to the podium and present ourselves authentically as wounded but walking, as pierced but persevering. We may choose to be honest and press on, accepting this new life experience as an opportunity to grow—to grow in ways we would rather not but find we must. But we need help, companions on the journey.

"O Lord, do not be far from me," the psalmist says.

There is so much about sickness and pain we do not understand. C. S. Lewis wrote from his deep loss about suffering and its value. Some would dismiss the refining fire of suffering as pure myth, but not Lewis. The witness of many is that we experience redeeming grace during what I call the night shift.

We may never understand suffering; I can accept that as a limitation of our human condition. But there are some things we can know as bedrock:
That God is always good.
That God is always loving.

May I dare say that suffering is one of those things that is transformative when we encounter it: We are changed in it. Fundamentally. I have come to believe it, but do I have the guts to write it here, in this place where I am sitting up writing in the night watch feeling healthy while some of our friends or family members are in the fight of their lives? How dare I say such without sounding glib and utterly insensitive?

Because I have seen it done. Writers give us examples to point to a truth until we may accept it for ourselves; Real life examples shine brightly for me.

I have seen the example up close when a friend chose to allow God to move in her life in the presence of intense suffering and pain. She gave us glimpses of grace, pictures of what suffering looks like over a period of years.  She remained full of grace and faithfulness because she refused to give into bitterness. She denied a place for the bitter seed to take root every time it raised its persistent tendril. I want to face adversity like that!

For the faithful, that's what we do: 

We carry the Light when the road gets dark. 

We hold the lantern for one another.  

We learn to walk faithfully the path we have even when we would rather take another road of our own choosing.

In prayer we can freely offer the desires of our heart and then trust in God's provision. The trusting part can be hardest. It is the task of a lifetime. And it is not the American way of self-sufficiency and prideful independence. But when we understand another bedrock truth—that God is always trustworthy—we can rest in the care of the One who created us and loves us and will never let us go.  

Offer God our pain and broken dreams when the road is dark. Pain only festers when buried and denied.

Offer suffering so that it is shared, and then we can learn how to bear it. “Pain that is not transformed is pain transferred,” writes Fr. Richard Rohr. We pass it on.

Pursuing happiness for itself is ephemeral, not fundamental. The love of God is deep and wide, reaching to times and places we do not see and holding us fast in the embrace.

Bread for the Journey

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience in the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.

God is awake.                                   ~Victor Hugo

There is much that happens between sowing the wheat seed and baking the bread.

The seeds turn into kernels before they become loaves that satisfy. There is a time when they are buried underground with no signs of bearing grain. If the story stopped there, we'd have be no bread.

Too often we turn off the camera there. We fold up the tripod, call it a day. We think it's over. In life, as in farming, there are times when we simply cannot see what's going on. We see only in part.

Some things just cannot be rushed. In our haste we dart around searching for a substitute to hedge our bets in case the harvest doesn't come in as we thought. We don't wait well.

We gorge ourselves on frozen waffles rather than wait on rising bread.

It is discomfiting to face that we are not in control. How did we come to believe that we were ever in charge? Perhaps we finally yield in humility and find that we are still within the watchful care of our loving God.

God does not panic. He makes all things beautiful in its time. That part is for our benefit, because God is not bound by time or space.


Courage and patience take time to develop. Surely as night follows day, we will mature in the faith if we do not lose heart. Though we may grow weary, we will be refreshed.

Thanks be to  God.

I will lift up  my eyes  to the mountains;
From whence  shall my help come?
My help comes  from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow  your foot  to slip;
He who keeps you  will not slumber.
Behold,  He who keeps Israel
Will neither  slumber  nor sleep.
The LORD  is your keeper;
The LORD  is your shade  on your right hand.
The sun will not  smite you  by day,
Nor  the moon  by night.
The LORD  will protect you  from all evil;
He will keep  your soul.
The LORD  will guard  your going out  and your coming in
From this time forth  and forever.  ~ Psalm 121

In the Words of a Child

"I never like a jail!" a young boy boldly declared, broadcasting his words through a nearby microphone and interrupting Sunday's children sermon. The leader, Lori, did not miss a beat, and said that yes, jails are not a fun place to be.

She turned their attention to her topic - patience - then said how hard it is to wait patiently for something we really want. She used words to paint pictures of the challenge of waiting. Another interruption:

"I never like to wait patiently!" the same little boy exclaimed. He was not a plant in the audience, but his sentiment fed into her message perfectly. Adults nodded in amusement or laughed aloud because he had said what we were thinking: we do not like to wait patiently.

Waiting. We can expect routine waiting throughout the day and week. These times will prove to be mere inconveniences in light of real problems one day. We may even have extreme times of waiting that try our souls, such as:

Psalm 69:3 I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.

So go ahead and speak aloud the words on your heart. Pour out your heart like water before the Lord....Say boldly to the Lord exactly what you are thinking in times of impatience, distress and great anguish. God is big enough to take it. No veil can conceal the condition of our hearts and thoughts before God. Be honest. Wrapping our words in a cloak of acceptability or trying in vain to disguise our true intention is futile. Are we fooling anyone?

And thanks be to God for the witness of scripture that reminds us how to keep our focus when life's frequent interruptions keep jarring us and demanding yet another opportunity to practice patience:

Psalm 40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and God inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

We do not like to wait patiently, but we will continue to get more chances to practice being patient. I pray these life lessons will drive us to the heart of God as we await God's provision and as we grow in grace. I pray that peace and patience will be among our gifts discovered in the coming year.

Strength Under Pressure

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer (Romans 12:12).

We are all standing in the need of prayer, but some seem to take that need to heart more than others. An amazing young woman, Katie Almy, whose journey of faith and life is lovingly chronicled in her writings [see www.karisalmy.com and click 'latest on Karis' tab] has pinpointed the verse above as a focus for 2011. I am piggybacking on her pinpoint.

One might say that a mere eleven word sentence is hardly worthy of a year's meditation and application, but, since few have mastered it, maybe it is worth the effort. Initially, I infer from 'to rejoice in hope' that one is in a situation where hope is sorely needed, and that can be a bleak place. For that which is seen does not need hope, because it is present already; however, 'hope consists of the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.'

Put another way more clearly:

Now faith is the assurance that what we hope for will come about and the certainty that what we cannot see exists (Hebrews 11:1 International Standard Version 2008).

Living by faith rather than by sight through life's trials and challenges - that is, not seeing any visible progression toward what we hope for - is a place of anxiety and tribulation. We cannot conjure up a solution. We cannot create a cure. We cannot bring about healing of bodies and minds when a disease process takes over. Each of us may one day feel utterly helpless for the first time in our confident, American, magnolia blossom lives. That is when we begin to know the need - the desperate need - for something bigger than ourselves.

We need patience. Frantic activity and ceaseless fits and starts are the marks of desperation. Desperate people do desperate things which are not necessarily fruitful. How do we cultivate patience? Where do we find this elusive fruit of the Spirit when we are living in a heightened state of alert and see no help in sight? How do we practice patience even in the midst of our most heart-wrenching struggles? If it were so easy, everybody would be doing it.

But we can know the power of patience. I say power, because there is great tensile strength in the life of one who lives tethered in prayer and walks in the Presence of God. I am no physicist, but see an analogy here.

• Tensile strength is the measure of force required to pull something to its breaking point. People talk of being pulled in too many directions. We can identify.

• Compression strength is the measure of the ability of something to withstand pressure exerted perpendicularly - such as a hammer on concrete. Both of these measure to a breaking point. Have you felt that hammer? Many of you know the relentless action of pounding from illness, grief, financial instability or a host of causes. People can know the feel of being pulled and pounded. But wait, there's more.

• Shear stress is the stress state in which the shape of a material tends to change without changing volume. Force is applied at an angle causing the squeeze and a resulting altered image. A rectangle becomes a parallelogram, for example, but it is unbroken. We, too, are shaped by the experiences we live when we are caught in the squeeze.
  

• We can expect pressure to come at us from all angles. It's called life. Be prepared.
  

Those who are schooled in defending themselves from tribulation only by their own personal skill level and financial wherewithal will find one day that such an arsenal is insufficient to combat the foe. We will one day be overwhelmed....caught in some tsunami....and need a hand larger than our own.

Let practicing the presence of God be a discipline during quiet days when there is not much happening. On such days we tend to coast. We pull out the big guns of prayer and pleading for crises.

What if we reverse that pattern? What if we weave our ordinary days with prayer and practice trusting God with what we do not see, so that when what the writer calls tribulation comes and force is applied to our live from all directions, we can more fully trust God? God's grace and love come to us from an endless supply that is never exhausted. God's resources are never depleted; mercies are new every morning.

The way of wisdom reminds me that to 'be constant in prayer' as referenced above means constantly - as in all the time - not merely in times of major stress points. Some of you have been caught in the squeeze of unimaginable stresses. I know Katie Almy has, and we covenant to pray for you and your family. Thank you for lifting this little verse out for us to see today. May God strengthen you with patience in tribulation and persistence in prayer, even as you trust in His great love and provision for Karis.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not despairing; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed... (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).