Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!

“It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.They are new every morning” - Lamentations 3:22-23

(The following is a reflection penned the night my mother died after I found out how a nurse’s aide had stayed by her bedside in the final hour or so of her life. This unsung stranger talked calm words and read the Scripture to my mom who could neither hear nor respond except in some unknown way. And so I paused to think of how our lives are marked by mercy from beginning to end, how we are defined and molded by mercy, and how it flows from a thousand unacknowledged sources to fill the hours of our days. May we marvel at its mighty and majestic work and be the willing agents of its spread.)

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to each individual human soul,
God’s rain to quench the drought,
That stretches back to Adam’s folly,
Falling patchwork style,
Upon garden hearts that look to unseen skies,
And wait precariously on mystic clouds,
Grown dark with promises of grace,
While mercy drops kick up the dust of our loose-lived lives,
With the portent of showers and floods to come.

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to each human heart,
From birth’s first cry for human touch,
To childhood needs too plentiful to count,
Where mother’s love and father’s care,
Sustain the fine thin line between,
The fruitful life or blasted barrenness,
And even in the grown-up land,
Grace must do its daily work,
Pulling sap to dizzying heights,
To keep the hillsides green and winter in its place.

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to each human end,
When houses, lands lie fallen by the way,
And life is narrowed to a single bed,
One closet with a week’s apparel,
And one small board stuck with colored pins,
That hold some frames of a life gone by;
Grace descends three times a day,
Where crusts of bread become as prized,
As bags of gold or grandpa’s watch,
And a dear one’s voice is gift enough,To keep alive the will to live, if only one more day

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to all human-kind,
Where total strangers mingle in,
And leave their mark in gentle ways,
They stop by bedsides, filling gaps,
In final vigils, or with simple acts,
They guide the floating bark as it departs;
One wipes a brow, one changes sheets,
One for pay, another just because,
Grace compels which no logic can explain,
To speak soft words, to read the Book of Books,
And thereby spend, the final hour in dark of night, alone,To keep an appointment set 93 years before.

Suffering

To every thing there is a season, ...A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; Ecc. 3:1-4

It is part of my job to keep in touch with the families in our Co-op. As such, I partake in your joys and sorrows. Right now, the tide is washing up a good deal of sorrow on our shores. Though it would be folly to hope to treat the subject of suffering fully in one page or less, nevertheless, your experiences of the present and past month have occasioned more than a little reflection on the issue on my part. That, coupled with a reading of some of the work of Mother Theresa among the miserable warrens of Calcutta, makes me ponder the whole problem of pain and suffering in God’s creation.

Ultimately, suffering is the price we pay for dwelling outside the Garden where we must live by our wits and the sweat of our brow, all at the mercy of the elements. It was a choice we made, and in so doing, we took all creation with us. The dark of the night brings with it a thousand fears of what can happen, a place where beast devours beast and man does his worst. But suffering is endemic to all creation even apart from the evil deeds of men. Cancers devour, defects cripple, and accidents maim the innocent and guilty alike. Rational creatures that we are, we would love to see some rhyme or reason to it all. C.S. Lewis wrote that pain was “God’s megaphone.” Yet, this seems heartless in watching the young and the innocent die who don’t even have language of the heart to hear or understand. The poet William Blake offers another view:

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine;

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

And when this we rightly know,

Through the world we safely go.

Is it true that man was made for sorrow and woe, mixed also with joy? It seems so when we consider that we are able to experience joy because of being made in the very image of God, and equally so with sorrow when we consider the far reaching effects of the fall upon man and all creation. Fallen-ness and the image of God, all wrapped up in one frail creature. What a recipe for ‘angst’, that dark turmoil of the soul.

Many demand that suffering just should not be so and spend much of their lives trying to insulate themselves against it in any form; some with money and others with distance. Others blame and rail against God, turning their hearts to stone. Or there is always the ploy of flight, to run from it whenever it appears. But in fleeing from the pain, we invariably multiply the damage like some wounded bull run amok. Marriages are shattered, children discarded, and promises broken all to renounce the reality of the pain. I rather like what Malcom Muggeridge has said and must quote directly: “One can dimly see and humbly say that suffering is an integral and essential part of our human drama. That it falls upon one and all in differing degrees and forms whose comparison lies beyond our competence. That it belongs to God’s purpose for us here on earth, so that, in the end, all the experience of living has to teach us is to say: Thy will be done.” That is a tall order for any of us. Yet God himself identifies with our suffering through His own Son. At the cross, “God suffered in the person of a man but brought redemption for man in the person of God.” In this, we see “the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy co-existing on Golgotha.”*

I take great comfort knowing that God knows our frame, that we are but dust, and that Jesus was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. I also take comfort in knowing that when one of us suffers, it brings out the best in those who are willing to share in that pain and help bear the burden. This dance of suffering and joy literally defines what it is to be human. May we embrace our humanity with courage and resolve.

*Something Beautiful for God, Malcom Muggeridge, p. 106

No Regrets

“But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people” -Deut. 3:28

I do intend to finish my series on “callings” but life keeps interrupting. This time it is the death of an old friend. I wrote an article last year telling about my friend, Glenn, who I had known since second grade. We were an odd couple; me, the child from Sunday school and he, the wild child. Our odyssey of friendship continued over the years to the point where he called about 15 months ago and told me of his bout with cancer and new found faith in Jesus. It must have been difficult for this life-long atheist to acknowledge his error, but he stumbled his way to faith as best he could. I supported him in that as best I could. It was a topic of frequent conversation in my house as to when I should visit him up in Illinois once more before something happened. But busy schedules and hopeful remission reports always managed to put it on the back burner.

Last month, another friend sent me a newspaper clipping telling about the sale of the bulk of Glenn’s 70 acre, non-descript farm to a parks conservancy for $1.2 million dollars. He had bought the property years before when no one wanted it. I was now the friend of a millionaire. I knew it would not change his lifestyle any. He did not even own a TV. I just had to call him and kid him about being the first millionaire on our old block. His voice was weak from another dose of radiation. The cancer was back. Nevertheless, I congratulated him, and he told me it was already spent. He had set it all up in trust funds for his children. The irony was rich. Average working man struggles whole life to make do and get ahead. Gains million dollar windfall and faces death in same month. It was the kind of picture that jars the conscience of anyone nursing even the whiff of material values. So what is the really important legacy we leave? What are we striving for? What goals have we fixed our hearts upon? Glenn always appreciated the humor of situations like that. I know he must have had a good laugh signing over the checks. His gallows sense of humor had never left him … until last week.

In finishing up our phone conversation a couple of weeks ago, he confessed he didn’t know how much longer he could hang on. His goals were largely accomplished, and the struggle was intensifying. I told him to persist a little longer; that I wanted to see him one more time before he died. He agreed. I hung up the phone and started to make plans to travel north over spring break. I wrote him to tell him so on one of those sarcastic get well cards, the kind he would have liked. I enclosed a CD with a song I wanted him to hear. It was a call to praise God every morning, in the bad times and the good. Getting a small package in the mail is always clumsy for me for it meant a trip to the post office. And then there was the holiday. So finally, last Wednesday, it started on its way north. It must have arrived on Saturday. His caretaker picked up his mail for him and found his body Sunday morning. He had ended his struggle by his own hand. My package had gone unopened.

My mind went back to a Bible study just last Friday evening. “So how do you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit?” Not very well, I guess. The promptings, the delays, the slackness of hand, all haunt me now. Hours lost when hope hung by a thread. Another reminder in my life to listen to those quiet leadings now instead of later. Flowers for the living, “I love you’s” while we can, simple touches when we are led, and encouragement rendered out of instant obedience all contribute to a life of no regrets. I’m sorry, Glenn.