God's goodness: the mass of humanity

Today my pastor gave an announcement that people should not be afraid to venture into the main hall at the church and see what God was doing in there. "It looks like one big mass of humanity," he said, "but don't be afraid to go into that chaos". The "chaos" he saw from the outside was an attempted order for 50 tables requested, hours of set up, and sign construction. After 12 long set-up hours on Friday, something clicked inside that fair ... voila, it was a well-oiled machine. People showed up to man each table and I sat back and watched it all happen. These silly mounted signs, blue tablecloths, clipboards and colored paper displays became something larger than our weak little paper pieces and broken bodies; they became something more powerful than the mass of humanity.

The Lord moved in a kind way toward me. He graciously drew thousands of people to this fair I was coordinating. This gift had nothing to do with me. Last year at this time I was rushing around trying to hold the world up on my shoulders. Today the grace of God fell upon me, and I cannot remember the last time I was so happy.

I don't know how God does this, but sometimes He lets me see certain people and certain times when they don't know that I am noticing them having a conversation, and He spills grace on me when I hear the good words, the mutual edification, the smiles and understanding that are being exchanged. For some reason God saw fit to show me all sorts of interactions like this today, so that almost everywhere I turned, I saw people interacting face to face, embracing one another, engaging in vision-sharing and prayer-informing and Christ-exalting talk. People were saying thank you and smiling and praying for me and giving me gifts like bagels and smiles and prayer and company. People were listening to little weak and imperfect me and being patient.

There were people I had never seen before, and their needs were being met. Their needs were not for colored paper or more masses of humanity or more schedules or paper. Their needs were for belonging and hope and connection and life-giving conversations and power. Their needs were for joy and for life out of death. We know the One who gives these things, and today the expansion of our joy led to the satisfaction of many people in Him. Today I publically declare that He is able to meet our needs and to accomplish His purposes and to give us more than we deserve. What holds me back from proclaiming this everyday? Do I need to have the gift of glimpsing into grace-filled conversations as sweet as I heard today in order to proclaim these promises? No, but they certainly have given way for me to burst into praise of the One who gives all good and perfect gifts.

Some days are not so, and many days I want to run home because of all the suffering I see, I want to be angry and to ponder it on my bed and be silent. I want to let the phone ring because I cannot bear another call, another task, another person calling to report that his or her needs are not being met or that I am late or behind or making more mistakes than I can keep track of. I want to bury my head and cry. This is the lot I expect and the lot that I ask the Savior in the morning to prepare me for. The inevitable waves of pain, the reminders that this world is not my home and nothing here satisfies, the aches that no matter how much work you put into a relationship, the next day the other person may get up and decide that they are hard and burdened and don't have any energy to love you or respond to your concern for them... this is laying your life down, this is the broken reality that we live in.

And today was different. Today was a burst of joy and a sweet kiss of the divine. I want to cry because I am so overwhelmed at the goodness and mercy of God. I want to rejoice as I remember the intimate brush with this great Christ I serve, and the One who gives us more than we ask or imagine.

Tomorrow I will go in to work and we will talk about how the main hall was too hot during the fair and how set-up times were mixed up and doors that should have been opened were locked and signs were lost and people were disappointed. I will find broken things and my disorganization will be revealed and I will be tired and confused and busy and anxious. And I will remember the God of my salvation. And I will sing.

trying to remember what you said

Whenever there is a network of relationships and acquaintances within a given area people are caught in this position where they hear something of consequence about another person, either joyous, or momentous, or out of the ordinary (what even is the ordinary?) and they want to celebrate it.

Adam got married... Carolyn had a baby... Amy's younger sister got married... My coworker's sister is engaged. How do we keep track of all these people and all these relationships, so that the moment the person calls and you are not prepared, you can suddenly chime into the conversation, "Hey! How was your sister's wedding?" Or "I haven't talked with you in ages... how is your beautiful baby - GIRL - that you were writing about in your last e-mail?"

The nature of community life is that some relations will be closer than others and some things we will make a point to recall easier than others. We will put things into categories in our minds so that we can somehow sort the thousands of secondary connections we have in our everyday lives into some sort of conscious understandable order. I think that this is inevitable and not necessarily negative.

But then there is that awkward moment when the person who heard something is trying to impress the person he runs into, and suddenly makes a fool of himself. A man that I know, my friend's father, came up to me the other day saying "How is married life?" All he wanted to do was be happy for me and be recognized as being perceptive! Little did he know he had been perceptive about my coworker's sister's upcoming marriage, and confused me as the bride! Or, when being reunited with a friend, I say "How was your sister's wedding?" when in fact it was Amy's sister who got married and I am talking to Catherine, who doesn't even know Amy, and whose sister has been married for years.

Things like this seem to happen often in my conversations. I am on both ends at different times. People ask me when I'm moving. "I'm not moving." "Oh." I asked my coworker the other day when he was going to visit his dad. "I visited him four months ago." "Oh."

Perhaps it is not even important to remember the occasion as much as it is to care about the person so that when you see them you can just say "How are you?!" "It is so good to hear your voice" "What's New?" "Tell me about..." More than that, what place grace does play in these conversations, when it is shared between two people who are prone to forgetfulness.

In my work, I answer hundreds of e-mails, many of which are very involved conversations with people I will never meet on earth. Then I also meet many people briefly at work or on the weekends and evenings and have limited conversations about the events of their lives. When I see them again I often find myself having to say, "Excuse me, could you remind me of your name again?" Instead of "You're Annie, right?" "No, I'm Emily". "Whoops. Emily. right - Hello." Does it cross the line to ask someone her name a third time if you can't remember? What if someone calls you the wrong name three times in a row - would you correct him? Is it better to risk calling a person by the wrong name because of the slight chance you may get it right and make her day by remembering?

Why do we risk the closed questions and risk being wrong? Maybe we don’t venture in that direction because it is difficult to think of good open-ended questions. Especially when we love the other person so much and all we want to do is just hear their voice and share their joy and we can't keep all the facts straight. It's easier just to get nervous and ask something that is plain as day. "So, um, you're working right now?" even when we know the answer.

Why is it so difficult for us to listen? What do we treasure more than the sound of other's voices and the space they have to reflect with our receptive care? Do I value more the sound of my own voice? Have you ever met someone that listened so well that you felt humbled? Someone who took all the jumbled things that came out of your mouth and made sense of them in a brief sentence that was freeing for you to see what you had just explained understood and reworded to sound beautiful and sensible? Can someone teach me how? I think that I missed the day in school where they taught how to do that.