Breakdowns & Breakthroughs: Notes from Busy Days with God

At any given moment, the individuals who make up a church include some who are suffering and some who are celebrating. It is easy for most of us to forget the drama in the “ordinary” life of fellow churchgoers; but one person who sees it every day is the pastor. What follows are glimpses of the real church, outside Sunday’s sanctuary, as seen by a particularly insightful minister.

Surprise

My friend said, “My wife came after me with a butcher knife. My son decked her. She tried to drown the baby when it was nine months old. She kidnaped the two smallest children. I didn’t know where they were for eight months. One day they appeared on my doorstep.”

My friend is asking for a blessing. He wants to be able to see God in the horror of his life. I am the one he has come to. I pray before he comes and after he leaves. Although I may not feel up to it, I know it is up to me.

People seek out their pastors because of a need for God. They want the transcendent to interdict the spiral of their lives. My friend’s life is off course. He knows that. And he knows, unconsciously if not consciously, that he needs something as powerful as God to get him back on track.

The question then becomes how best to discover God in the dialogue. The answer is for both of us to be sensitive enough in the moment to be surprised by God, and then to share our surprise. Either of us could make the discovery first. It is the priesthood of all believers.

In this instance, the discovery does not come easily. We will meet many times. And we may never discover God. That is the risk we take. It is a risk worth running, however. As Blanche says in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, “Sometimes there is God—so quickly.” We are counting on that.

Senior “Punk” Highs

Bob—

We spent a lot of time trying to clean your office but every time we moved it just got worse—well do it again if you want us to!

Love, the Senior “Punk” Highs

P.S.—Your office is cleaner than it’s ever been except it’s a little bit glittery.

The note was on my desk after the Wednesday night “Bob Talk.” Twenty or so senior highers gather in my office during Youth Club, and we talk about whatever comes into our heads. On this particular night they had festooned themselves in “punk” glitter, and after our time together was over, the evidence of their presence was everywhere. Several stayed behind to clean up while I went on to a board meeting.

I love them. I know, it sounds mawkish, but there it is. Our meetings each week are bedlam, but something seems to happen. Like the time we all prayed for one of the group who was going to have an operation. Like the time we listened to another one tell of a home conflict that seemed irreconcilable. It grew quiet. No one who was there will forget those moments, or the happy chaos either.

Two of my glittering friends are at the moment in the jungles of Panama. A third is in Paraguay. One wrote me that a deadly snake had just been killed in front of his hut. Another that the food was so bad and the climate so hot and the accommodations so miserable that one or another of the group might not make it. The group is called Amigos (“Friends”). They dig latrines and teach people how to clean their teeth and other matters of basic hygiene.

What impresses me is not only that they are there but that they are there, in part, because of the Senior “Punk” Highs. They are getting something there they don’t get anywhere else. Yes, it’s a social life that cuts across the usual cliques in high schools. Yes, it’s a lot of fun, as they do everything from amusement parks to lock-ins. Yes, they have fine, young professional leadership.

But none of that quite says it. None of that quite describes what you can get in a church youth group that you don’t get anywhere else. Maybe it’s the Holy Spirit.

The kids would be “blown away” if you told them they were there because of the Holy Spirit. There’d be that happy chaos for a moment. But then it would get strangely quiet. It just might be one of those moments they wouldn’t forget. The Holy Spirit is why one of the boys in Panama could write: “I miss the church and the youth group a lot.” And then he signed his letter, “Love.”

Coma

“Are you his father?” the nurse asked as I looked down on his prostrate form. He stared blankly ahead, seeing no one, hearing nothing. He had been in a coma for months, and the doctors had said there was no hope. But every day someone was there from the church praying beside him. Would he ever wake up?

His parents came from another state to be with him as long as they could. His wife, who had just had their third child, was with him each day. His children came. They were just old enough to realize what was happening, and it scared them.

Every week in church we would pray. People would come up to his wife after worship. Food was brought into the home. Babysitters appeared.

The church is the people who pray for each other. “Pray for one another,” wrote the author of James, “that you may be healed.”

So often prayer is the last resort when it should be the first. The mystery of faith is that we often do not come to Christ until we have been through an upheaval. An even greater mystery is that we can come close to Christ through someone else’s upheaval. Her reports to the congregation on her husband’s progress and regress were remarkable. She was soft-spoken, radiant. She was being used to communicate a faith that is stronger than death.

If it were my son, as it once was God’s son, I would hope that I, too, could be used to brighten lives with such faith. As the pastor of Saint Augustine’s mother said of him as she wept and prayed, at the lowest point in Augustine’s life, long before he became a Christian: “It is impossible that the child of such prayers and tears should perish.”

On the day she told us he woke up, the congregation burst into applause.

Whistler

We have a church secretary who whistles.

“Who is that who just answered the phone?” I have been asked. It is our whistler. Sales people and repair people love her. She treats them as equals. Church people love her. She treats them as equals, too. Everyone gets a joke, an offer of coffee, often a hug.

She dances. Yes, I have “caught” her doing a jig in the middle of the hall. And for what reason? No reason. She doesn’t need “reasons.” It was a beautiful day? Perhaps. It was a terrible day? Why not? She had more work than she could possibly get done that day? Of course, time for a jig.

Imagine my surprise, then, when my whistler announced she was leaving. She had accepted a call to mission work. She would go to be with the poor wherever her church needed her. Needless to say, I was devastated.

But could I not be a whistler, too? Could I not dance with delight at this greater call to service? Could I not hum her on her way? It was hard, but eventually, after she gave me a severe talking to, I was able. Whistlers are contagious.

Serene

She fell on the basement stairs. It took her an hour to get to the phone. She had broken her hip and her wrist. It is now two weeks and two operations later. Her husband calls to thank the church. “She will be fine,” he says.

It is hard to believe such resilience. She was 12 hours in the emergency room, much of it just waiting for attention. Then they set the wrist wrong, and it had to be broken again. She laughs as she tells me.

It was three years ago that she first called. We would get together from time to time. Out of one of those times came the idea of a prayer group. She has been meeting with a dozen or so women every week since. It is impossible to say how many lives she has touched. She has her anxieties, which she shares with the others, but she is also, if you can believe such a paradox, serene. Not even her Parkinson’s does her in.

Some day I will ask her to what she attributes her tranquility. But she will not be able to tell me. It is the nature of faith that it cannot explain itself.

Nor is that necessary. What we have in the hospital bed is someone at peace. The nurses sense it. Small wonder that when I arrived one day she was insisting they take some of her flowers. Small wonder that she had so many flowers in the first place. When the nurses know that the spirit is healing the body, you can sense it. There is a lift to the hospital air.

So good night, good lady. You are fine, all right.

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary

Dear Bob,

I’m sure you don’t remember us after so many years. On this date, 25 years ago, you married us under the grape arbor at my parents’ home. I believe ours was the first wedding you performed after your ordination.

We wanted to write you, on the occasion of our 25th anniversary, to thank you for starting it all. We also thought you might be gratified to know that the first couple you married is still married, and looking forward to the next 25 years.

We have five sons, ages 16 to 24. John is a research physicist. I went to law school in 1976 and have been practicing now for five years.

We assume that you recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of your ordination, and we offer our congratulations.

Sincerely,

Robert K. Hudnut is pastor of the Winnetka (Ill.) Presbyterian Church. His latest book is This People, This Parish (Zondervan, 1986), from which the above passages are excerpted with permission.

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