This past weekend I did what Thomas Wolfe said one couldn’t do—I tried to go back “home” again. I went to Miami, my “home” for so many years and the place I think of when I think of “home.” I spent a couple of days with a group of pastors and then, on Sunday, preached at the church where my former associate (Kent Keller) is pastor.
I discovered that Thomas Wolfe was half right and half wrong.
I don’t do nostalgia very well and don’t much want to do it well. It’s sort of like going into a bakery when you’re on a diet. Why do it? You can’t eat anything there anyway. I always thought that it was best to wait on nostalgia until retirement or closer to death. Then you can remember. Until then, it’s best to keep moving.
Not only that. We have a “selective” remembering process. We remember the good stuff and filter out the bad, so that the girl one dated in high school looked like Marilyn Monroe, one’s prowess in sports was astounding, and the music and fun never stopped…when in reality, the girlfriend looked like your ugly aunt, you couldn’t make the team, and there was more confusion and pain than music and fun.
But sometimes it’s good to remember. (“Drink this in remembrance of me.”) Sometimes you stop, look back and remember God’s faithfulness. Sometimes you “pile the rocks in the river,” look at the “memorial” and rejoice. Sometimes God gives you accurate memories of the fact that he was there and wrote the story.
That happened to me this weekend.
At the worship service where I preached on Sunday morning, there was a “full house.” No, I wasn’t playing poker. However, that full house was as positive to me as a full house was back in the days when I played poker.
(Oh yes, just so you know, if this preaching thing doesn’t work out, I can always play poker for a living. I was quite good at it, thank you very much. I even thought I might do it for a living and would have if Jesus had let me. He wasn’t altogether happy with my idea.)
No, this was a house full of memories…memories of people I loved and love, of battles we fought, and of the dark places we walked through together. In the front row was a man who almost died of cancer and in his cancer, found God. Behind him was the widow whose husband died in the hospital as I held his hand. There was the couple headed for divorce court when Jesus came and restored their marriage. There were so many who had found Christ at the church where I served for so many years. A bunch of people hugged me and whispered in my ear some memory that we shared of God’s faithfulness. I saw the couple whose son was killed and remembered the tears we shed together, the young man I had baptized who is now serving Christ in some hard places, and the many couples for whom I had “officiated” their weddings. As I looked out over the congregation, I was overwhelmed with memories of supernatural answers to prayer when the doctor had given up, the counselor didn’t know what to do, and friends were without hope.
Okay, okay. There were some twits there too. I haven’t lost my mind or allowed the good memories to cause me to forget those for whom I prayed…that they get the hives!
Do you know what I thought as I drove back to Orlando? I thought that there is no better job on the face of the earth than being a pastor. I know the hard places, the discouragement, the loneliness and the feelings of inadequacy. I have all those T-shirts.
But when I was a pastor, I also had a “front row seat” to the drama of God in the lives of his people. Nobody but pastors get to see so much of God in so many places. We get to go places where nobody else goes, share secrets that nobody else shares, and rejoice in the victories and weep at the failures that nobody else can even imagine. We are called to “walk with Jesus” and to see through his eyes the reality behind the reality of his people.
My poet friend from Dallas, Bruce Fogerty (“The Birdbath Poet”), sent me a great poem the other day.
Grace Masquerading
The darkest hour of some lives
Often yield the big surprise-
Grace masquerading once again
Who would have thunk it; Oh my friend!
For grace attends life’s costume balls:
In prison cells and funeral halls!
Unfriendly courts and ugly falls!
Hospital rooms and midnight calls!
Grace masquerading once again;
Who would have thunk it; Oh my friend!
Eternal epilogue will bring
Perspective to all happenings,
Both the good, and seemingly bad
For those who call the Father-
Dad…
Grace was there. And as I drove back to Orlando from Miami, I was thankful that I was there too.
Does that make me want to be a pastor again?
Not quite…but almost!
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on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Read, Steve Brown.
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