What a friend we have in Jesus...and in the friends He sends us

Below is the note I just sent to my friend Wanda. Everyone should have a friend like Wanda. The term "stalwart" comes to mind which means marked by outstanding strength and vigor of body, mind or spirit. That's Wanda and being my friend often requires being stalwart. She is also an "anam cara" or "soul friend"...I need to write more about that relationship of soul friends. It is amazing the bond that is built and grows between women who pray with each other and for each other. I wonder if it's the same for men.

This past Sunday as I was leaving the parish hall, I came up to Wanda while she was washing up after the ice cream social and lunch and talking to someone (as usual). I interupted (as usual) as I asked her to hold out her hand. I placed in her hand from my mine my invisible faith and told her, "Here is my faith, I am giving it to you for safe-keeping. Please hold it close to you and protect it for me while I cannot. You'll know when you can give it back to me."

I have learned that sometimes our brothers and sisters in Christ, must keep faith for another whose trials and tribulations are so overwhelming they threaten to swamp someone's faith. In better days I have prayed for others going through grief, sorrow and trouble. Now, for several months, for nearly two years, other people have been praying for us. If I judge by my latest circumstances, which is my current state of mind, it would seem that so many prayers for us have gone unanswered, or worse yet, been given an unloving NO. When you are drowning in a sea of bitter tears, it's so easy to let go and no longer believe that there is even Someone to hear all those prayers.

In better days, I would know that those prayers are answered in the person of Wanda, my anam cara, who holds my hand on a Sunday morning while I weep more bitter tears. She listens and lets me say all the horrible, black things about my life and even God, and gives me a hug. She promises not to be like one of Job's friends and try to explain why all of these horrible things have been happening in my life. There is no explanation and she agrees that they are horrible, but the few things that she does say are worth chewing on. One of them is that I am in the crucible, which is a common metaphor for the Christian life. It reminds me of a portion of a favorite hymn.

...the flame shall not harm thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. The problem is from the gold's point of view, being in the crucible is very painful. There is even a point in time that the gold must feel disintegrated. I am at such a point. Mercifully, my faith is in Wanda's safe keeping.

Here is my note of thank you to her.

Just wanted to drop you a note and say thank you for being my friend and a sister in Christ. I also wanted to share a couple of things with you that I think you might appreciate, which both happen on Sunday after church.

The second one first. Sunday evening I caught a portion of the movie "The Return of the King".
It was leading up to the climax of the saga, the final ascent on Mount Doom. Sam looks at his dear friend Frodo, who is collapsed in a bloody, burdened and wounded heap, after Gollum has attacked him for the next to the last time. Frodo knows what he must do, but his strength and will are spent. Sam tells his friend: "I cannot carry It, but I can carry you." and he grabs Frodo and slings him over his shoulders and the two make that final assent together. At this juncture in time, for me you are Sam to my Frodo. You are carrying me while I must bear this burden and I know that I am safe in entrusting my "faith" to you to hold for me.

The first incident happened on the drive back. I was looking at the clouds and the sky and I felt the Lord speak to me in my spirit. He told me that's it's okay to beat my fists against Him because He's big enough to take it. Then He promised me that He wouldn't let go of me, but hold me all the closer while I was so hurt and angry, yet not too close so that I would be free enough to beat my fists against Him. Now when I start to slip into despair I see myself as a child sitting on Jesus' lap beating my little fists against His big, strong chest. And then, I fall into it and cry, while He puts His arms around me and rocks me tenderly.

May God bless you and keep you, as you have blessed and kept me.

Faith in the worst of times

Gentle readers, please forgive me for starting off on such a down note. I suspect that I am not alone, so let me tell you about this section of the road.

2009. It has been a very difficult year from the beginning, and in these dog days of summer not very hopeful. We have both been unemployed for several months and that's not the worst of it. We will probably survive, but day by day it becomes a greater uncertainty. All of our present circumstances just reinforce the fact that our earthly lives are uncertain and capricious, even for the Christian.

I am fond of telling others that God is sovereign, but I am actually telling myself. I have heard many sermons that have told me in one way or another, God is never surprised. One of my favorite passages in Romans tell us that all things work together for good for those love God and are called according to His purposes. I can still say and believe that God loves me, even at times like these when it is so easy to cry--"Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"--our Lord's cry from the cross. I draw comfort from the fact that my beloved Savior knows in Himself, in the very Godhead, the very human feeling of being abandoned by God. Romans 8 may be the most sublime chapter in the entire Bible. Yes, I do cry "Abba, Father!", and I will trust that this cry is the Holy Spirit bearing witness with me that I am a child of God.

I haven't always been able to speak this way, which is scary. The deeper my faith becomes, the more and more I view the world in a very black or white perspective. Either all that Holy Scripture teaches us is utterly true or the strict secularists are right and we are utterly alone. If the latter is the case, then everything about us is just some random accident and our lives, no matter how good or bad, have no meaning. There are only two honest alternatives: Christianity or nihilism--all other philosophies or belief systems are man-made and delusional.

I cannot, not believe. Even when my doubts are strongest and part of me longs to surrender to the Nothing, I still believe, I still pray. It's easy to wonder, to honestly question whether our Faith, all faith isn't just the human psyche screaming at the Long Night. If compassion and charity are human constructs, and this is the age of deconstructionism, then they are subject to discard the very moment they get in the way of living one's life in the most self-serving and hedonistic manner. I don't understand why a true atheist would live a moral or ethical life. If I truly believed there was absolutely no God, then I would live whatever life I could in order to achieve the maximum amount of pleasure and endure the minimal amount of pain. When I had enough, I would check out at the time of my own choosing and on my own terms. Whether it's 17 years or 70, in the end you're still dead. Show me an atheist who is genuinely compassionate and charitable and I'll show you someone who is very superficial and shallow with themselves. They are a conundrum of self-delusion.

So, here I am, in the midst of the worst time of my entire life, looking at the only two cosmic world views that an honest, thinking human being can assent to, and again I say: I cannot, not believe. Even doing my best to factor in the sound notion that we human beings have invented God to make sense out of a senseless, meaningless universe, I still cannot, not believe.....and believe me I have tried. I spent the first 15 years of my adult life in connecting the dots from an agnostic point of view to the notion of some type of "higher power". Once you get to the point that there is a creator, One Creator, whose attribute is to disclose his/her/itself to his/her/its creation, then the dots start lining up and pointing in one direction. The fact that millions, billions of human being have believed and believe other faith systems or other philosophies is in the end irrelevant to me.

I have sought Truth all my life, I have always been a Truthseeker. I have always capitalized "Truth"; I believe in the very core of my being, my essence that there is an Absolute Truth that rules our lives and the cosmos. And that is why I cannot, not believe. I have come to a place where I know and believe that Truth has a name, that He is a person. I have put my faith, my hope and my trust in Jesus and His word that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. As St. Peter once said, there is no one else to whom we can go. For it is in Jesus' words that we find the words of eternal life.

So here I sit, at this juncture in my life, confused and doubting. Yet, I believe in God and I believe that God loves me and all things in scripture teach us what it means when we are loved by God. My emotional state is bordering on hopelessness and depression. I feel overwhelmed with all that is happening to me, to my husband, to my family and to a beloved child in mind, body and estate. I do cry--Eli, Eli....which is the same as crying "Abba, Father!" Almighty Father, protect your servants from the evil of this day. O Lord, make speed to save us, O God make haste to help us. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be, world without end. Amen.