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| (courtesy of my storyblocks.com account) |
Romans
12:15 “15Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
Phil had me read a short, powerful scripture the
other morning during our Zoom Men’s Meeting. The impact on me was immediate and
many-faceted and continues to expand for me as I write this post. Let me lay
the foundation that I would have hoped would have been known to me a bit more
than twenty years ago but, as it turns out, was laid down in the beginning, as
in ‘In the beginning was the Word…’
It was an earlyish Mission Arizona (MAZ) and when
the senior high students were doing a project on one part of the reservation
(Gila River Indian Community) and I was off with Julia, James, and the junior
high students painting the interior of the Sacaton Presbyterian Church. Earlier in the week Julia and I were talking about things and a subject came up where
she wanted to know what was in store for her and a tad frustrated at the
progress in the area under discussion. In my hubris, I told her I would pray
about it and come back to her with something. Nothing seemed forthcoming as the
week rolled on.
Thursday is generally the last day of major work
during MAZ with Friday the day we clean up and put the final wrappings on our
projects so that we can enjoy a fun evening before trekking home on Saturday.
Our painting wore on deep into the night while our paint supplies ran short. So
we instructed the students that only an adult was to pour paint from the
5-gallon bucket into the individual cans and roller pans to make sure we didn’t
waste any.
It was somewhere around one a.m. Friday morning
when I went outside to pour paint for someone and found a good quart had been
spilled on the sidewalk thus wasting the paint and making a mess that needed to
be cleaned up. I probably said some inappropriate things as I went down on my
knees to scrub the paint up as best I could. I know I mumbled things like, ‘those
thrashers!’. I love those kids but junior boys and girls are thrashers.
Everybody stayed clear of me while I worked out the week’s frustrations on the
sidewalk.
A coyote jogged through the parking lot, stopped,
and stared at me while cocking his head to the side to help him figure out what
he was seeing. I sat up from my scrubbing and had to laugh with him and that is
when I heard as clearly as I hear His voice, “It is not for you to know or
determine. It is for you to laugh with her when she laughs and the cry with her
when she cries.”
Reading that scripture on this Wednesday morning for
me was like jumping off the rocks into a cold alpine lake. It was shocking and it awakened me to more of God's. When I was spoken to it was directly out of
scripture and for twenty-three, twenty-four years, I had never realized it.
The implication is plain to me – if I want to
hear God speak to me, I need to read the Bible. While I’m reading it, He will
speak to me. While I’m praying or being silent, the Lord will speak to me from
the Word. Homer Simpson said it very well for me, “D’oh!”
A more timely aspect of this passage from Romans
is how much need the world has for us to pick it up this scripture and live
it. We need to grab hold of this and in Christian empathy and concern weep with
those who are in mourning for the loss of family and friends and their way of
life. And we need to laugh and celebrate with those who overcome and persevere
and find accomplishments in spite of a world gone sideways.
We must resist those who live in the ‘me-first’
moment. You know, the attitude that led to the ‘America First’ movement and the
continued and ever deepening of America’s isolation from a world shrinking in on itself in misery and international effects? That is not of God and never will be. We
are to be in the world. Not of it, no. But in it and among those who weep and
laugh, celebrate and mourn. If we are to be Christ’s ambassadors in the world,
we need to become really good at heeding this short verse.
Find someone and mourn or laugh with them as
required.
In His grip
jerry
