Some Real Good News

Guest blogger Mary Rhodes writes today.

I had lunch last Friday with a Northfield friend who grew up across the street from me. We’ve known each other about 65 years. Kathy was a brilliant student, and she enjoyed a thriving career as an investment advisor. She is well-traveled, well-read and has lots of friends. Although she lost her husband a few years ago, she’s been filling her calendar again and reclaiming her life.

But there is one big area where she is still stuck, she admitted, and it’s getting worse.

It’s the news. “I just find it so overwhelming, everything that’s happening in our world,” she said. “It’s getting harder and harder for me to handle. I literally cannot take all the bad news.”

What could I say? My friend is not an avid churchgoer. I managed to empathize with her sense that the world seems more and more out of control. So we left it at that and moved on. But it bothered me. My friend was sharing something so raw and honest and I just didn’t know what to do or say.

But now I do, and it’s this: “Come to church with me on Confirmation Sunday.”

If you want hope, that’s where to find it. Just think, each Sunday we immerse ourselves in scripture, sacred music and inspired preaching. But once a year, we get to see it all through the eyes of young people who are inheriting this increasingly baffling and confused world. What I saw this past Sunday was a revelation. Every testimony was so inspiring. I know my friend would have felt it, too.

Several of the young people who spoke said they were lucky to have grown up in our Church where they always felt comfortable and loved. But I was especially moved by Carter Ryan and his sister Ramona who said they started coming to Church when they were older, and it wasn’t a quick or easy fit. They didn’t feel an instant connection. It took time.

To you, Carter and Ramona: there are millions of adults out there who feel the same way you do. Coming to Church for the first time and finding a place where you fit and feel comfortable can be hard. You’ve done what so many adults have never learned to do: you stuck with it, you found a real inner life with Christ and deep, authentic relationships that will be your ballast in this world. If only all the adults not willing to risk that first step through the door could learn from you. You’ve found out it’s okay to feel some discomfort and to question. The rich reward you’ve gained in your struggle is clear.

And to you, Makeda Hausman: thank you for sharing with us your heart for a multi-cultural understanding of the world. So much of the chaos and confusion we read about each day stems from a lack of this understanding. You shined a light in your own creative way on a critical issue, and we are grateful.

And one more thing I want to say to all three of you and to Mark Bouwman, Tessa Bowen, Fritz Gerster and Sonja Johnson, from the class of 2023:you are the Covid kids who felt the brunt of isolation and confusion these past few years. But look at you now! I suspect faith will play an even more critical role in your lives because you don’t take the freedom you have for granted. You have all become so much more resilient in this fast-changing world.

And finally, to your parents: you who out-maneuvered every conflict — sports, homework, social calendars and lessons — to ferry your kids to youth group and confirmation, this was a big day for you, too. Your kids are staring high school with the one thing every person in this chaotic world needs, and it was hard-won. We are so grateful to you. These young people with their burgeoning faith will build a better world.

I know my childhood friend, if she’d been sitting with me last Sunday, would have seen it. Maybe the difficulties of these lean Covid years helped make what I witnessed more clear. You’ll never read a news story about what’s happening each Sunday afternoon or Wednesday evening with Lynnea Miller at Winnetka Covenant Church. But it’s just as powerful and real as any news story from the New York Times or CNN. How lucky we are as a Church community to have had a glimpse of some real good news last Sunday!

Mary Rhodes

Some Real Good News

Guest blogger Mary Rhodes writes today.

I had lunch last Friday with a Northfield friend who grew up across the street from me. We’ve known each other about 65 years. Kathy was a brilliant student, and she enjoyed a thriving career as an investment advisor. She is well-traveled, well-read and has lots of friends. Although she lost her husband a few years ago, she’s been filling her calendar again and reclaiming her life.

But there is one big area where she is still stuck, she admitted, and it’s getting worse.

It’s the news. “I just find it so overwhelming, everything that’s happening in our world,” she said. “It’s getting harder and harder for me to handle. I literally cannot take all the bad news.”

What could I say? My friend is not an avid churchgoer. I managed to empathize with her sense that the world seems more and more out of control. So we left it at that and moved on. But it bothered me. My friend was sharing something so raw and honest and I just didn’t know what to do or say.

But now I do, and it’s this: “Come to church with me on Confirmation Sunday.”

If you want hope, that’s where to find it. Just think, each Sunday we immerse ourselves in scripture, sacred music and inspired preaching. But once a year, we get to see it all through the eyes of young people who are inheriting this increasingly baffling and confused world. What I saw this past Sunday was a revelation. Every testimony was so inspiring. I know my friend would have felt it, too.

Several of the young people who spoke said they were lucky to have grown up in our Church where they always felt comfortable and loved. But I was especially moved by Carter Ryan and his sister Ramona who said they started coming to Church when they were older, and it wasn’t a quick or easy fit. They didn’t feel an instant connection. It took time.

To you, Carter and Ramona: there are millions of adults out there who feel the same way you do. Coming to Church for the first time and finding a place where you fit and feel comfortable can be hard. You’ve done what so many adults have never learned to do: you stuck with it, you found a real inner life with Christ and deep, authentic relationships that will be your ballast in this world. If only all the adults not willing to risk that first step through the door could learn from you. You’ve found out it’s okay to feel some discomfort and to question. The rich reward you’ve gained in your struggle is clear.

And to you, Makeda Hausman: thank you for sharing with us your heart for a multi-cultural understanding of the world. So much of the chaos and confusion we read about each day stems from a lack of this understanding. You shined a light in your own creative way on a critical issue, and we are grateful.

And one more thing I want to say to all three of you and to Mark Bouwman, Tessa Bowen, Fritz Gerster and Sonja Johnson, from the class of 2023:you are the Covid kids who felt the brunt of isolation and confusion these past few years. But look at you now! I suspect faith will play an even more critical role in your lives because you don’t take the freedom you have for granted. You have all become so much more resilient in this fast-changing world.

And finally, to your parents: you who out-maneuvered every conflict — sports, homework, social calendars and lessons — to ferry your kids to youth group and confirmation, this was a big day for you, too. Your kids are staring high school with the one thing every person in this chaotic world needs, and it was hard-won. We are so grateful to you. These young people with their burgeoning faith will build a better world.

I know my childhood friend, if she’d been sitting with me last Sunday, would have seen it. Maybe the difficulties of these lean Covid years helped make what I witnessed more clear. You’ll never read a news story about what’s happening each Sunday afternoon or Wednesday evening with Lynnea Miller at Winnetka Covenant Church. But it’s just as powerful and real as any news story from the New York Times or CNN. How lucky we are as a Church community to have had a glimpse of some real good news last Sunday!

Mary Rhodes

The Limp

It happens at least once a week that someone will ask me, “are you limping?” And for thirty years or more I’ve been denying it. “Just a lazy gait” I say, and it’s really what I think. But recently I’ve started to feel that arthritic pain in my left hip, that’s surely the one over the years causing folks to wonder about my funky way of walking. Could it be that I am actually limping after all?

Recently I read a blog post on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog forum that causes me to wonder. Pastor Jeremy Berg reflects on the story of Jacob wrestling with God, and acquiring a limp (Gen 32). he says, “What is the sign that one has been touched and blessed by an encounter with the Living God? They get a big house, much wealth, and an easy, carefree life? Nope! The tell tale sign that someone has brushed up against God’s awesome presence is often this: they walk with a spiritual limp.” He goes on to reflect about a God who invites us to embrace a comfort-crushing brand of faith that leaves us winded and wounded as long-held beliefs and cultural values are at times broadsided by a sermon that reveals the radical and countercultural teachings of Jesus and His Kingdom.”

It’s quite a story we find there. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, which means “One who struggles with God”. That’s quite a name God chooses! Chosen and beloved people shall be those who wrestle with Yahweh. And Jacob, their patron saint, lives forever forward with a limp, as if to always be a visual reminder that a life of engaged faith is vigorous, often uncomfortable and leaves scars.

Isn’t that the way life really is after all? In my case, my guess is that all the years of basketball, of pounding the pavement at Hollywood Park and Loyola Park, left me with some hip trauma that is beginning to talk to me now decades later. And it’s most certainly true that the older we get, the more we limp through life. And that metaphor might follow in terms of our faith journey with God also, even, even at God’s own bidding!

It’s almost as if God says, “I love you, you are mine, I bless you, now let’s have at it! Be honest with me. Engage the struggle of making sense of life. What is it that you want to talk about?”

In this sense, an honest and engaged journey of faith that moves with the journey of life opens up to more of the questions and struggles and mysteries as time passes. Like the Psalms. Where are you, God? Why is this or that happening? I cry out for your presence because my enemies surround me, I lament because injustice prevails. I pray but can’t overcome this addiction. Act, God! Do something!

In Jacob’s own case, he was coming to grips with his deception and thievery way back when with his brother Esau, who’s waiting for a reunion with four hundred friends on the other side of the river. In his brokenness he wrestles with God and lives to tell about it. But he leaves that encounter with a limp. A strange and wonderful blessing.

Jeremy Berg goes on to say, “I want to be a pastor who leads with a limp and I want to lead a community of people who would rather be uncomfortable in the awesome presence of God than comfortable in our own self-made world where Jesus’ meddling presence is kept safely at a distance.”

Any faith journey with the Living God is always both comforting and challenging. We are blessed, but also called always into new ways of being, doing, living. Courage and honesty are essential, and the calendar of best laid plans written in pencil as those plans may well change. To wrestle, to grapple with the Living Presence and often elusive God we know, will leave us limping but also more alive.

This early Wednesday morning my hip is more sore than normal, because I spent the night on a cot up in the prayer room supporting our family promise ministry. And it’s time, I think, to come clean. No more excuses. I think I have a slight limp. There, I said it! And I’m sure the limp will grow until the day when it’s time for a new one.

What I’m hoping too is that as my journey with faith grows old, there will be more of a limp too, leftover from close encounters with my Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Love From Here!

Peter Hawkinson

https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2021/january/wrestling-with-god-acquiring-limp.html