Can the Father be trusted!

I just got off the phone with a very dear friend that has just been told that this week is his last week at work.  This guy has endured the collapse of his company, bankruptcy, foreclosure, surgery, the specter of cancer in his beloved wife and now his new job is done.  With hollow voice he asks why.  No kidding!

As a shepherd of souls, do I have the right to remind him the the Father will care for him, in light of the seeming mountain of evidence to the contrary that is piling up in his life?  I ask myself if these are just “christian happy words” that we say to one another to make us feel better that we have said something in response to overwhelming questions.   I have to say good bye because worship practice is just 30 min. away and our leader hates it when the bass player is late, so I hang up and head out the door, wondering what just happened to my joy.

In our new little church, we have endured a landslide of economic bad news in the lives of our people.  It’s a wonder that we continue to survive and move forward in the wreckage that is the Auto Industry  It is apparent that the latest news has made the rounds when I arrive at worship practice, a hollowness is in the eyes of the worship leaders face, he too has endured the downturn of his business partnership.  He is a good friend of my friend. 

We pray and ask the Father to meet us! We start practice.  We are mostly contemporary in our style, but lately I have felt the leading to include ancient faith hymns to our worship repertory, so we are practicing “Be Thou my Vision” as well as “Open the Eyes of My Heart” and God begins to remind me, thru the music, that He can be trusted.  Over the course of the next hour, the Spirit is coming along my spirit, whispering scenes of past provision and future promise, taking me down paths of fulfilled dreams and hopes that have been seen.  I have begun to experience the Kingdom of God in this fallen world and it has been sweet in the midst of the destruction.  God the Father has been and is “the lily of our valleys”, and once again He is giving me “songs in the night”.

It is not well but it will be, because the Father can be trusted! …..and since He can be trusted, He will be trusted now! …….and it is well, after all!

Overwhelmed

This morning I hit the wall!  It actually felt that way, I hit the wall and fell to a crumpled mess on the floor of Michael’s coffee shop!  Of course no one around knew this happened because I was sitting there enjoying his greatest blend ever, working on my computer, catching up on what was happening in this tired world.  At a casual glance, I would appear as every other patron that comes in and out of that place but internally there I was, a crumpled mess.  What precipitated this collapse? 

I happened upon a story from my home town in Michigan.  Nothing ever happens in my home town except the normal living of lives, so it was a great curiosity that something happening there would actually grab national headlines.  A 93 year old man(veteran of WWII) FROZE to death IN HIS HOME because his electricity was reduced and soon to be shut off due to an over-due bill of around $1000.   When they found him, they also found the money clipped to the bill, apparently prepared to pay off the debt.  What sent me over the edge was the interview with the city official, where he claimed the city (which owns the utility) did nothing wrong.  An old hero died over a measly $1000!   Something  went terribly wrong, you moron!   This official’s feeble attempt to deflect blame for a truly irresponsible procedure to collect a debt was all I needed to push me into the wall.  It was the proverbial straw that broke my back! 

For the last year and a half I have had a steady and increasing stream of people coming to me with sad and hard stories of their pain, suffering and loss of daily bread.  The troubles have become a cacophony of pain that cannot be ignored.  I care for these people, they are mine and life is kicking them in the teeth.  This is one shepherd of souls that truly practices that you weep with those who weep.  I have done a lot of weeping this year.  Last week alone, six families discovered that thier lively-hood would be no more, and one little girl discovered she will never hear out of her ear again, some strange physical anomaly has taken her inner ear, destroying it.  I sat at the University of Michigan hospital with her parents, dear friends of mine, and wept together over the loss.  Add  the endless complaints that people lodge with their pastors to all the real troubles that people have and I was filled right up to the top, then I read that story.  Things gone wrong in so many wrong ways, and people blaming everyone but themselves for everything.  AARRGGHH.

Then, as is my habit, I came to the Throne of Grace.  I cried out to the Father and poured my heart out to Him.  In an unusual act of grace, others joined me, spontaneously directed to pray for me by the Spirit.  The Father heard my prayer and made good on His promise to be found by those who seek dilegently for Him.  The Father reminded me of His grace and ability, that I must cast all my care on HIM, because I had come to the end of me.  He reminded me again that it is good to come to the end of yourself: otherwise, you never truly know the beginning of His power, of His grace.   He made me to lie down by still waters, He restored my soul!

Overwhelmed? yes!  Overshadowed by His Grace? Even more! 

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.  Psalm 42  

My Name is Michael

I have been waiting for a coffee shop to open here in our town.  We have several but this one was strategically located between our home and almost every place I go.  The one that was formerly open in that location closed several months ago but the coffee equipment did not move.  This raised all sorts of speculation as to why the store was not cleaned out and rented to someone else for something else.  Then one Sunday morning a sign appeared on the locked door declaring that coffee aroma would be wafting from that location again, soon!  More waiting, more speculating.

Then, it happened.  The open sign was lit, the door unlocked, the lights on.  Wonderbar!  I walked in and was warmly greeted by a pleasant man, the owner.  “My name is Michael”, he said as he greeted me.  Not Mike, Michael.  I noticed that his name tag bore out the same information, in bold script – MICHAEL.  This distinction was not lost on me, I too have a name that is easy to shorten, and people love easy so they shorten my name as well.  Problem is, I don’t care too much for the popular shorter version of my name.  It really doesn’t matter why, does it?  I just don’t.  I have a quick thought “Do unto others…….”.  Michael it is!

As a shepherd of souls, there is another name that I get called all the time, unfortunatly it isn’t even a name, it’s my job description in one word, Pastor.  I had little idea that my name would change the day I accepted the call to become a shepherd of souls.  I grieves me abit that this has happened because I actually love my given name, it was well thought out by my parents and I was named after a character that I would be honored to follow in his footsteps.  People call me by my new name, Pastor, even though I have asked them to use my actual name. It’s not that I don’t want to be known as a pastor, I just don’t want my name to be lost in my job.  

The people who persist in using my title for my name have several reasons why they do it, the most frequent reason given is that they want to be sure I know that they respect me.  I accept it because I want to be a gracious person, but down deep inside a notion creeps up and surfaces to the front of my mind, every time it happens.  I don’t say that notion but I am coming to see that it is true.  That notion is this – If they really respected me, wouldn’t they do what I want? particularly when it comes to something as personal and important to me as my name!  Wouldn’t they at least try?  That people will change thier ways to honor your wishes, particularly when it comes to something as important as a name, is a true mark of respect, isn’t it? 

Then it hits me, almost every time it happens.  This is what Jesus meant when He said “If you love me, you will do what I request”  Convicting!  I’m making a big deal about my name but the REAL big deal is how important to me is the requests of the One I claim to love, I claim to worship, I claim to respect.  Do I respect Jesus enough to humbly modify my living to do what He says because He said it.  Wouldn’t I at the least, try?  Do I cry out for grace from the Spirit so I can actually live out the respect my words say I have for the Lover of my soul.  I make all sorts of claims to my love and respect for my Lord.  When the feet hit the road, does my willingness to obey prove my words.  Lord knows, I want it to be so!

Michael and I are becoming friends…….. and by God’s grace, my actual respect is building for my Lord.