Brokenness and Hope

by: Julia Watkins; Stapleton Davidson Intern

During last year’s Lenten season, an occasion that was as naturally commonplace as it was exceptionally awe-inspiring took place. In a small, sterile hospital room, a new life arrived as baby Chandler Leigh Groves said hello to this world. Her birth was preceded by over a day of labor. Painful, ongoing, tiresome, and then—peace and an overwhelming sense of joy as her grateful parents finally held her in their arms. This scene of mixed chaos and serenity transpires every hour as new lives arrive on this earth, and those who have witnessed such occasions know of the tension between terror and hope.

For me, Chandler’s birth held a special significance, as her mother is my cousin, Bethany, and the first in our family to bear a member of the next generation. For months, I anticipated the arrival of her baby girl, and I celebrated this new life with her, even as I recognize that it arrived at a period in our family that had seemed difficult, dry, and even dead. While many dear family and friends surrounded Bethany and Chandler at the birth, Bethany’s father only heard the baby’s cries hours later from a recording they played for him through the phone stationed publicly down the hall from the prison cell where he had spent the last 10 months. In that moment, I imagine he felt a bittersweet blend of emotion as he rejoiced in the life whose arrival he could not witness.

Fast forward nearly a year, and Chandler is growing into a beautiful, lively toddler. She babbles happily to anyone who will listen, and she took her first steps several weeks ago. As the only baby in the family, she receives limitless affection and, of course, all the hand-me-down clothing. While most of the family dotes on her whenever they wish, her grandfather only sees her on select Saturdays, after Bethany has spent the night in a rural hotel in order to arrive at the prison when visiting hours begin. Spending time with Chandler has been among the highlights of his 22-month sentence, which will fortunately end soon, but it is also a reminder of how much he has missed and of what transition awaits upon his return home. In such moments of mixed blessing and despair, one has to wonder—How is God at work?

While I recognize that my family’s pain is real and has stemmed from a genuinely challenging situation, I also believe it to be rooted in a more universal state of pain. Indeed, this pain belongs to the entire human race—to my cousin Bethany and to her father, to the sick and the dying, to the world’s slaves and refugees, to all who mourn and weep. It is the pain that propels people to live in solidarity with one another through their brokenness.

Just as this deepest level of human pain is not confined to a single time or place, neither is the God who responds to it with gracious healing. God is transcendent and powerful, yet God still entered into the reality of human suffering in vulnerable form as a witness to our pain. Far from disaffected, Jesus stood alongside Mary and Martha at their brother’s tomb, and in a moment both woeful and tender, he too wept (John 11:35). With this expression of grief, Jesus reminds us that God is at work, even in the areas of our lives that feel most broken—in hospital rooms and prison cells, in the heartache of a spoiled relationship, in the passage of a loved one, in the fear and uncertainty of what’s to come.

As humans, we continuously face this pull between the brokenness of the world around us and the hope that God is at work within it. Death and life give way to one another as spring blooms prepare to push dry leaves from the branches and a baby’s birth follows the end of an elder’s life. In a single moment, our deepest fears may exist alongside our expectant trust in God’s universal presence. The challenge is in reconciling these emotions, in learning to surrender to the discomfort of our brokenness, and in being gentle with ourselves as we remember that healing and hope are rarely simple.

Why do you do the work you do?

by: Carson Dean; Executive Director of the Men’s Shelter of Charlotte

Almost 15 years ago I entered the homeless services arena, working first with “runaway and thrown away” youth before taking on the challenge of helping adult men who are experiencing homelessness. For the longest time, certainly more than ten years, I struggled with answering the question, “Why do you do the work you do?” I’ve been asked this question a lot! Oh, I’ve had some great answers. Like how I was drawn to working with youth because a sibling struggled mightily with addiction, rebellion, and unresolved family issues. I spoke often about homeless men being the underdog, and having felt like an underdog most of my life, I could relate and therefore became a champion of those who seemed to always be considered last. I’ve told the story about being a critic of the shelter in my hometown, so when asked to consider leading it, I was determined to prove that I could do things better. These are all true stories and, at the time I told them, I believed they were my motivation to work with those experiencing homelessness; but all along, those answers left an empty feeling inside me. I struggled with finding a rationale, a justification for doing the work I do. I often thought that maybe I should just do something else. After all, running a shelter is not glamorous and the responsibility for so many lives is a constant pressure.

For the longest time, I didn’t stop to think about God’s role in my work life. That’s not true. I wasn’t thinking about God’s role in my life at all. I was a Christian. I was a believer. But that was about all. Not until I went through my own struggles with divorce and becoming a single dad, which occurred while our agency was barely making it through the Great Recession, did I begin to honestly talk to God. I remember that first conversation taking place while I was walking on the new Little Sugar Creek greenway. I’m sure lots of people looked at me oddly as I was conversing with God out loud. I was questioning how I could be facing so many trials at once. I was asking God why He allowed so many unfortunate things into my life. What’s funny is that I didn’t hear His answer. However, what I did receive was much greater. I found my relationship with God. He was there all along. He was waiting on me to bring Him into the center of my life. It took time and effort to do this, but He was patient. I also found an answer to the question about why I do the work I do. It’s God’s will. God’s plan for me at this time in my life is to do whatever I can to help those who are experiencing homelessness. God decided that my gift, at least for now, is running a homeless shelter and housing agency. I never went to school to do this… my college degrees are in history of all things! God has a great, often unexpected, way of using us to fulfill His plans and, as in my story, we’re often called to do something we would have never thought to do ourselves.

It’s comforting to know that I discovered the real answer to the question about why I lead the Men’s Shelter of Charlotte. However, with that comfort, come new questions for God. Why does He allow people to struggle with homelessness in the first place? Why doesn’t He put the need to solve homelessness on everyone’s heart? I don’t have answers to those questions and doubt I ever will. I find solace in knowing His sorrow for those who are poor, homeless, hungry, neglected, and forgotten is greater than any sorrow I may ever feel. I’ve been asked if I truly believe that we can end homelessness. Many times I’ve spoken about the history of homelessness and how it is a problem created by society and, therefore, solvable by society. I still believe this completely. But what I also know is that we, as people, will not solve the problem. We will need God’s help. Why He hasn’t done so yet is a mystery to me. But I can’t help thinking, perhaps God is waiting on us to become so distraught over the plight of His children experiencing homelessness that, in addition to our own efforts, we will all join together to pray to Him for mercy.

SERVE

by: Alex Coffin

Early 2011 was a rough time for me. I was in the hospital three times almost back to back. The first was a stomach problem, the second was a very serious operation on my liver, and the third was a hernia operation that was made necessary by the liver operation. The liver operation was so serious that when my wife, Sonia, asked the surgeon if he saw any recurrence of the other stomach problem, he answered, “Mrs. Coffin, I didn’t have time to look around. I was trying to save your husband’s life!”

As I was going under for that hernia operation, I looked around a room full of doctors and nurses. They were all necessary because of other possible problems associated with me having an Afib heart. I am, by nature, not a worrier and am continuing in that direction as a get older…and older. But all this had my attention…Would I wake up?...In what condition?....

As I slowly came awake from the surgery, I saw one thing VERY clearly. I saw nothing else, but a large screen with one word written on it in capital letters – “SERVE”! It captured my attention and I have striven to follow that admonition since – not always well, not as much as I should, but I continue to try.

Psalm 83 “O God, be neither silent nor still.”

by: Bob Henderson

Few endeavors are more beautiful than a winter hike, especially across a snow-hushed landscape. People who dwell in snow country often remark how after winter thunder and a blowing storm, utter silence can pall the snowscape. Poets call this preternatural, because it seems to exist so eerily beyond nature. No bird song, no whistle of the wind, no rodents rustling in the underbrush; it’s the sound of sheer silence. Yet in the silence I sometimes hear a whispered invitation to escape the tumult of busy-ness, to be still, to relax, and to embrace the bleak winter beauty of God’s creation.

Such invitations are sporadic – almost holy – as more often we need a sense that someone is near, that companionship and presence is available. This search for company is strongest when we fear isolation or feel danger. When people long ago feared the stalking of their enemies, they cried to God to break the silence. So do people now; so it is with us now.

Whole seasons, like winter, or Lent, bring with them associated experiences. When we most crave the direct voice of God, it can be most difficult to hear. When we most desire company, we feel most alone. In these times, stillness does not produce solitude but isolation. These experiences are best interrupted by an earnest cry: “O God!” and followed by practices that usher in God’s shaping presence. Prayer, acts of humble service, worship, intentional community work together to transform isolation into solitude, busy-ness into community.

Paul Tillich, one of our country’s greatest theologians, knew something of this dynamic. In his seminal work, The Shaking of the Foundation, he wrote, “Sometimes a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as if a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted . . . sometimes it happens that we receive the power to say ‘yes’ to ourselves, that peace enters into us and makes us whole, that self-hate, and self-contempt disappear and that our self is reunited with itself.”

Prayer: Gracious God, when you seem long absent from my disturbed heart, provide me with a sign of your presence, giving me the quiet and peace that I seek. Amen.

When Life is Hard

by: Kandy Cosper

Nobody tells you how hard life is going to be.

You grow up learning about the horrors of the Holocaust, starving children, war, disease, car wrecks, natural disasters, people living in violence, genocide and old people wasting away. You feel sad for your friends whose parents are divorcing or whose mothers lose their hair during chemo. You cry about the hatred that sends planes crashing into tall buildings.
You will, of course, struggle personally, too. You will be hurt by people. You will have to put your pet to sleep. You or people you care about will have scary illnesses, eating disorders, job failures, autistic children, mounting debts and crippling accidents. You will suffer rejection and, at many points, wonder where God is in it all.

But for most of us reading this, in our early years, the good outweighs the bad. Even amid personal struggles and bad news, we have enough to eat, places to live, clothes to wear, people who love us, interesting things to do; laughing children and inspiring music, the color of trees in the fall and the sound of the ocean.

As we grow older, however, the accumulation and frequency of bad news becomes harder to bear. A parent with dementia doesn’t want to leave home. A child’s spouse is abusive. A friend has lost a job. We start reading the obituaries first. We can’t keep up with the cards and casseroles for friends in trouble.

As Christians, we are not immune from any of this. God created us in His image, but we live in a broken world. From the moment mankind left the Garden of Eden, we were never promised lives free of struggle and pain. What we are promised is that God is in the midst of the struggle with grace and love. Knowing this gives us comfort, hope and peace.

On April 12, 2013, my husband Harvey Cosper was a busy, productive attorney. Little did we suspect that was the last day he would ever work. On April 13, after cheering at a grandson’s baseball game, he awakened from a nap unable to walk or use his left hand. He would be fed through a tube for weeks, lose much of his vision, and live in medical institutions for a long time. He would never get to another game without a cane or a wheelchair.

And yet, the joys of life – especially our children, friends and church family – kept us going. There were still so many blessings. The nurses in ICU had to come in and quiet our family because we were disturbing other patients with our laughter, mostly at Harvey’s one-liners.

This is not heroic. We are not different or special or superhuman. We have been depressed, frustrated and sad. We have felt angry at the situation, cried and wanted to give up. We would have wished for a different future. It’s just that the life-changing difficulties did not alter our view of who God is or how he works in this world. We have never been angry with God, because we know that he did not send the blood clot to Harvey’s brain. We don’t ask “Why me?” because life is hard for everyone, especially as we get older. We don’t think “everything happens for a reason,” because a loving God would not give cancer to children or cause mothers to die in car accidents or send soldiers to step on land mines. There is pain in this world, and evil and suffering. We know that from the Cross.

What we also know from the Cross, and what we have learned from our own experience, is that God is here with us every step of the way. During the hardest times, we can either push him away or seize the opportunity to come closer to him. Something good can come out of even the worst circumstances if we look for it - the light out of darkness that we are promised. Harvey and I forget this sometimes and start to lose hope. But then God reminds us of his promises through his Word, through the endless kindness of other people, in prayer and the invisible healing of the soul. In a thousand ways, we have seen and felt his love.

If we were to list all the bad things in life in one column and all the good things in another, the “good” column would always weigh more, because the gifts of God are on the good side.
No one told us life would be this hard. We wish fervently that it weren’t. But Someone promised us that we would have company on the journey. And that has been more than enough to get us through.

Peace in the Darkness

by: Caroline Hosseini

“ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7 ESV

It started in the darkness of early morning. My husband drove frantically to the hospital. This was not what we had planned. It was three months too soon for our twin boys to arrive. Out of the darkness of an anesthesia haze I awoke to find my family looking down at me. The concern and fear in their eyes was evident. They smiled as I awoke and said I was ok. I did not care about me. Where are my babies?

The boys had been taken swiftly to the neonatal intensive care unit and hooked to numerous machines so that their 29-week bodies could stay alive. I had to see them.

Hooked to lines and machines myself, I was not yet allowed to go see my boys. While lying in the hospital bed, I called friends, family, and my church family to let them know what happened. They encouraged me with words of support and hope and offered prayers. Eager to get free of my lines, I made the nurse promise me I could see my boys that first night.

My husband took my hand and guided me to the small isolettes in the dark nursery. Nothing can prepare someone for seeing his or her children so tiny and vulnerable. Although I should have broken down, something guided me with strength and determination to be strong and have faith.

The timing of the boys’ birth fell during Lent. In the week leading up to Easter, the boys began to stabilize and we were told that we would get to hold them soon. We went each day to see our boys and provide what care we could, changing diapers the size made for dolls. On Easter Sunday, we went after church. The nurse asked if I wanted to hold my boys. She tucked each one in close to me like a kangaroo. Tears streamed down my face. I rocked slowly and sang softly “Jesus Loves Me.” In that moment, I knew that while they were “weak, He is strong.” Somewhere in the darkness, I found “ peace that surpassed all understanding.”

For A New Beginning

by John O’Donohue in To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 2008

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Something to Ponder: What new beginning might you embrace during Lent?  What could be your story of hope?

Finding Strength in Weakness

by: Dylan Welchman

Right now I am at one of my weakest points emotionally in my life. As I write this (December) I am going through a huge transition - transferring from NC State to UNCC. Half of my heart is drawn to UNCC so that I can keep studying engineering, but the other half is drawn to stay in Raleigh; to stay with the friends that I have made, one of whom I will embarrassingly admit I have fallen in love with and really don’t want to leave. The last month I have had my heart pulled in every direction with all kinds of emotions ranging from pure joy to deep sadness and doubt. Here is a prayer of mine from a few weeks ago that captures one of my lowest moments.

God, Right now I’m numb and confused. I just don’t know how to feel. I feel bad for ____, that she no longer is able to go to Africa; I also know that you are with her and will fulfill her in a beautifully unexpected way. ____ doesn’t feel the same way about me that I do about her; but I know that you are with me and that your plan is ultimately greater and more fulfilling than I could ever imagine. I can feel you with me now. The tears in my eyes aren’t those of sadness or joy, they are you speaking through me. But still, your presence in me leaves me wanting more. I want to know now if UNCC is the place for me, if ____ is the girl for me. I know you’re testing me, but this is one hell of a test. I can feel you breaking my heart into pieces, but I can’t feel you rebuilding it yet. I just read a quote saying that faith isn’t about you doing what we want, but that you do what is right. I fully believe that. You have shown me that your reasons are always the right ones and that only you could orchestrate events so perfectly. But, God, please ease my heart. Calm my mind, and help me focus on you and what your plan for me is rather than listening to what my mind thinks I want. Give me the strength to stay faithful to you and keep allowing me to be a source of strength to others.

Those tears that I shed, they are not tears of weakness. They are a physical sign to let me know that God is with me, watching over me, and at work in my life. The best possible thing that we can do when we are faced with a whirlwind of pain and suffering is to let ourselves be caught up in it. Let the whirlwind play with you, pull you in every direction. Let your heart be torn and broken, leaving gaps and questions. Let yourself be left battered and scarred not knowing which way is which because “We said in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.”(Psalm 33:21-22)

I believe that God sends pain and suffering our way in order to strengthen us. He breaks our hearts so that he can rebuild them and touch our lives in extraordinary ways. So my hope is that you allow yourself to be broken by God so that he can rebuild you and open your eyes to a side of yourself that you didn’t see before.

The Parable of Mike

by: Paul Hanneman; Program Director at Urban Ministry Center

He’d probably meet most folks’ stereotypes of people who are homeless – old, wild hair and beard, shambling steps, really bad smell, eyes casting about. If you saw him coming toward you, you’d be tempted to cross the street. Or at least hold onto your wallet. Alcoholic, or an addict - you’d figure.

But there’s a good deal more to Mike than that – and it took me a long while to get to the point where I was open enough to find out.

I’ve known him for years. He gets a Social Security check and he has come to the Center to pick it up from me. He’s done it for as long as I can recall. He didn’t talk to anyone much, if any. People gave him wide birth because he smelled so bad. He lived in motels mostly. He’d been taken to the hospital for multiple physical issues – couldn’t walk; couldn’t function hardly at all. I visited him in the hospital; he’d been cleaned up, and we had a decent conversation about what was going to happen next for him. But he checked himself out to go get his check cashed, and that was that.

Once I took his check out to him because he was about to be kicked out and he had no money to hire a cab to come get it. He met me out front and asked me if I could take him to a place where he could get it cashed. I couldn’t – simply could not bring myself to let him in my car. I drove away leaving him shuffling down the street. I can’t get that scene out of my mind…or my sense of failure – as a staff member at the Urban Ministry Center… as a Christian…as a human being. There had been plenty of other compassionate things I’ve been able to do for others, but not this time. I tried to go the second mile-wanted to - but simply couldn’t. I’d hit a brick wall.

Then a couple of weeks back he showed up for Room In The Inn (one of the Center’s housing programs)– he’d either lost his wallet or had it stolen. No money, no ID, nowhere to go, no mental clarity. I was the only one he knew there. “I need help,” he said. He knew he couldn’t manage on his own any more, even with his generous Social Security retirement check, because he couldn’t remember much, couldn’t walk hardly at all any more. He knew he couldn’t control his bodily functions. He wasn’t asking; that’s not his way. But this time I could say yes.

He was surprised and grateful for my assistance - said so in a quiet, courteous, gentle voice - looked me in the eye. It was almost as if I’d been given another chance to turn toward him instead of turning away. We got him into the shower, washed his clothes, and provided some adult diapers. We got him into Room In The Inn, and called adult protective services - a social worker came to the Center to interview him. There are options for assisted living for him that are being explored.

We’ve talked a bit. He’s friendly, though a man of few words. He’s 70. Turns out he’d been a West Virginia coal miner for nearly 30 years. Came down to Charlotte a number of years ago and worked odd jobs. You get the sense that things went sour in West Virginia, and he’d been a drinker, though he’d stopped drinking three months ago. No family – “a couple of kids in West Virginia, but no, hadn’t heard from them in years.” No friends here. A self-sufficient loner who’d come to the end of his rope - and was smart enough to know it.

I’ve learned something about dignity from Mike. And something about accepting my own limitations and need for help beyond what I can give myself. And about being forgiven and serendipitously offered another chance by God. I wonder how many times I’ll have to re-learn that lesson…

Maybe not so many times. After all, I have Mike, who has been Christ for me.

Hope from the Hills

by: Lucy Crain

Hope is a tough word…. To me it is something that goes hand in hand with waiting – we hope for a desired outcome or result. Think back with me….you are 6 years old and Christmas seems like it will never get here and you wish the days away and hope for that most desired gift to be under the tree. Fast forward a few years….we wait and wait for those braces to come off, with any luck in time for the big dance, and we secretly hope that our new look will attract that special someone we have been sending signals to all semester. A few more years…. we wait desperately at the mailbox for the letters to come and we hope and pray to get a big envelope from that one university and not the thin kind that means rejection. Still more years ahead…. another special someone comes into our life and we wait as a newly engaged couple for a ceremony that will hopefully mean the start of our lives together as one instead of two. Thinking we have discovered the meaning of true love, we have no idea until we wait yet again…This time for the birth that will turn our couple into a family. Nine months later (give or take)…. we wait so impatiently to welcome a child and we hope like we never have before that this new life will be healthy and whole.

With each new wait and each new hope, the one before becomes less significant. How could we have hoped and prayed for the perfect college when it was really our first job that is so critical? How could we have worried about a healthy baby when it is now test results that seem so vital? Perspective comes with each new time of waiting and ours came most clearly when our teenage son was in a terrible car accident. Waiting and hoping was taken to an entirely new level as we prayed over the days for him to emerge from a coma. Thomas’ accident occurred the morning following Ash Wednesday and we spent the season of Lent that year hoping. We didn’t think of “giving up” something, we just wanted something back. We wanted back his smile, his laughter and his loving spirit.

We were facing some frightening odds as a family when we were told Thomas had a less than 10% chance of ever waking and even less than that of ever living a normal life if he did. Hope seemed at times just beyond our grasp but there was an incredible thing going on just up the road. The Psalmist writes, “I lift mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help” and I am certain he didn’t mean Morehead Street at the time. However, from CMC Covenant is literally up the hill and I thought of that verse many times in the weeks to come. For “from the hill” came cards, letters, visits, meals, music and so many prayers. At times those prayers felt like a tangible presence – perhaps the arms of Christ surrounding us and lifting us up and hoping for us when hope itself seemed so very distant.

The incredible thing about a family of faith is that they can act as intercessors on your behalf when you cannot quite see your way to hope. There are times when life seems too much and hope too far away. That is when God sends his angels that “you might not strike your foot upon a stone.” Not that we will be protected from trials, but that we will not face them alone. During that time in the hospital a friend gave me quote by Mother Theresa that says, “There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.” This force or spirit that emerges through God’s people is hope. Not always hope that all will be perfect or as it was before, but hope that we can make it through the waiting. Hope that with the love and support of others we can get to the other side of whatever struggles may be put in our path. Some people have said that we got an Easter miracle that year as Thomas began walking and talking on Good Friday after many days of being still and silent. However, our Easter miracle may have been working through us all along throughout Lent. During our season of waiting, God sent his angels to minister to us, to pray for us, to love us, to give us hope.

Meaning from Mardi Gras

by Grady Moseley

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” -Mark 1: 35

Today is the first day of Lent.

Growing up in New Orleans I knew this day simply as “the day after Mardi Gras.” It was also the first day of the rest of the school year - except if you were Roman Catholic.

The Catholic kids from St. Paul’s got one more day out of school - to go to church to have ashes finger-painted on their foreheads. I remember the injustice I felt that the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptist and Lutherans didn’t get Wednesday off, too. Not that I wanted smeared ashes between my eyebrows. I just wanted the more “laissez les bons temps rouler”.

Truth be told, we Protestants did not have anything to complain about. There had been plenty “good times” stretching all the way back to the excitement of Halloween in the fall. Then there was no school the week of Thanksgiving because the teachers’ local convention. Advent and Christmas followed. The Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Eve was a mere week later. And after that, every three or four years, the Super Bowl was held in New Orleans. And entwined with all this, weeks of Mardi Gras parades and carnival balls, which reached its zenith on Mardi Gras day.

For roughly four months we “let the good times roll”.

And then came Lent. As a kid, sitting at my desk until the last day of school was an unrelished reality. It is hard to just sit.

As an adult with a job and a family, I welcome times when I make time to just sit – contemplate, pray and reflect. Or read something that nourishes my soul…..that takes care of the inner man-child of God in me. No longer do I seek the stimulation of a child, but time to contemplate the meaning of the life I am living – with myself and with God, with the members of my family, friends and fellow faithful, customers, subcontractors and suppliers alike. (See 1 Corinthians 13:11.)

I feel a bit of an odd ball, though. The journal Science reported last summer that in test subjects, a quarter of women and two thirds of men would rather give themselves an electric shock than “sit and do nothing but think” for 15 minutes…… I don’t think that if they had told the participants to “pray” instead of “think” it would have made any difference.

“All the unhappiness of men,” the 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal noted, “arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.” It seems that withdrawing somewhere and within has been a problem for people for some time, no matter where they’ve grown up.

We have become “data and information” oriented people. The amount of data that is created and exchanged in a mere hour worldwide exceeds the amount of data contained in the Library of Congress – by five times! We can obtain the temperature in Antarctica in 3 seconds……but many of us do not know ourselves. Or God. Or Jesus as our Savior. Yes, we’ve read some of the Bible. But have we spent time with them?

“Be still and know that I am God” records the Psalmist.

If the next time you read any of the Gospels, pay attention about the times that Jesus slips away to pray, to be by himself, to be with God! Often early in the morning or in the evening hours. Solitude seems to be on his schedule as he went about the divine imperative to proclaiming the Good News.

Is anything you do today half as important as the responsibilities our Lord and Savior had during His brief time on earth?

Be still today and know yourself. Be still today and know God.

“For everything there is a time under heaven”, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes tells us. There is a time to “let the good times roll” as we say in South Louisiana. But there is also a time to sit still and get to know yourself and to know God as your Maker, and Jesus as your Savior and the Holy Spirit as your Sustainer.

May Lent be a time for you to learn new things about yourself and about God’s love of you in Christ.
Amen.

Introduction: Stories of Struggle and Hope – A Journey to the Cross

Lent is the season of our life together when we reflect and take stock of our lives. We prepare for the celebration of Easter by spending a season intentionally sifting through our hearts and seeking for the things that seem beyond our hearts. We do some soul-searching and we repent. Lent is a time of waiting and struggling – a time that doesn’t readily bring resolve – yet Lent is also a time of immense hope as we look toward what is before us – the hope that lies beyond the cross.

This year’s Lenten devotional is a conglomeration of stories and thoughts that reflect the range of emotions that people experience when they take stock of their lives.  In this devotional, there are stories of struggle and hope written by church members, church staff, and community non-profit leaders, as they seek to see where God has been, and how they have found hope in the darkness.  This is the voice crying out from our church, our city and our world – these are testaments to a living God.  Additionally, every devotional on a Sunday is a poem, psalm or prayer to help you reflect on your own life, so that you might add your own story to the ones within this publication.

We hope that as you journey through Lent that you can see where God has been, where you want God to be, and where you might seek God more fully.  God promises to be with us in the darkness as well as the light – we hope these stories help you find God in the midst of all life.