Friday, July 26, 2013
"Job Description............"
Our waiter at Bob Evans last night was a young fellow with whom we’ve had no complaints on previous occasions. He’s always been friendly, attentive, good at what he does, and this time was no exception other than conversation opening some insight into his personal life. His job there is due to a need for a regular schedule, plus the location being near enough to his mother’s house, a DUI arrest a few months ago resulting in the loss of his driver’s license for a year. Only one beer consumed along with some pain medicine accounted for the incident. Twenty-seven years old, he has two daughters resulting from a seven-year live-in relationship with a woman whose behavior is presently threatening to end his recent offer to marry her. We listened as he told us all this, his demeanor indicating such problems were merely part of everyone’s existence. You “go with the flow”, deal with it as it comes to you, tomorrow is another day. My heart wanted so much to talk with him of Christ, but wisdom said that this moment was not the place, better to take him with me into a prayer closet and let God work out the details… Earlier I had stood with a neighbor in his backyard, listening as he shared the details of his middle-aged son having committed suicide Wednesday. His eyes gave evidence of an inner sorrow that penetrated my own being, the two of us joined in the story of a man who clearly battled an inability to face the journey as he perceived it to be. There are those whose faith would not allow grace in such tragedy, other than proposing a possibility of last-minute conversion, but my Bible never seemed to me a Heaven-or Hell, one-or-the-other decision given for us to determine. Judgment will come. Jesus, however, is a grace extended to all, a resurrected re-connection with our Creator willing to walk with us through our humanity, meet us in our mess if we are but willing to meet with Him. I believe that, in the end, He, alone, knows the struggle endured, our weakness, our strengths, all the elements of both who were and the road as it came to us. My job, then, as His witness, is not to condemn, but to be that vessel through which He can work, a testimony of hope rather than a declaration of damnation. I find that true for all, me as well as the guy in front of me……
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Even when I have no connection whatsoever with the people involved, I feel a horrible sadness whenever I hear of someone's death by suicide. Without a doubt, everyone involved is suffering unimaginably. Actually, I can imagine enough to feel the sadness even at this distance. Poor family.
ReplyDeleteI can certainly understand walking in a void in such a time and for some time to come.
Suicide is one of those subjects that often bring forth from Christians more than just the question "why?" Some of the tenets we claim to believe are easy to preach until it comes down to dealing with a loved one standing in the line of fire. In this post, however, I was merely musing on two different doors of witness opened unto me, the one not utilized because of what seemed to be wisdom and the other undertaken, but not in accordance with what most in Pentecost profess to be truth....
DeleteWell, bottom line, God alone is privy to all that brought the individual to such a point. And to paraphrase what you pointed out, God alone will be the one to judge us all. In the meantime, we mourn with those who mourn like Rachel crying for her children.
ReplyDeleteWhen we hear about suicide or serious illness, I think that our minds automatically start to calculate the odds of such a thing happening to us or to our loved ones. Judgment appears to be a way of creating a false sense of security that it can't happen in our inner circle because we follow the rules so well.
"Some of the tenets we claim to believe are easy to preach until it comes down to dealing with a loved one standing in the line of fire."
How right you are, my friend.