Keep It Up!
“I will call upon you, O God, for you will answer me.” (Psalm 17:6)
And from our closing hymn:
“Be not dismayed whate’er betide
God will take care of you.
Beneath His wings of love abide;
God will take care of you.”
(Lift Every Voice and Sing hymnal #344)
Good morning! What a delight to be back among you this fair day and especially at Good Shepherd, where things are today as they should be! While language remains something of a barrier, just being together in worship of a God who brought us here and loves us fully, is sufficient subject for a celebration and gathering like this.
And I want to share with you this morning a down-home, sure-as-shootin’ example of trust, trusting in the power of God, or, if you wish, the power of life, love and acceptance in just getting us through. This personal example is not about my physical health or finances, I’m pleased to say, but about just a hectic set of circumstances, and how this love that will not let us go, if we trust it, showed itself to me in such a lovely way.
Coming home early the other evening, the rain was pouring cats and a lot of dogs, and going through an iffy water puddle, I must have hit a particularly deep patch, and the front license plate of my car popped off. I didn’t stop to retrieve it and continued driving home. Concerned about not having this license plate any longer, I set out the next morning to replace it. I’m lucky to have a New Jersey DMV just a few blocks from my home. And, of course, they don’t replace license plates at that agency, so I was directed to go to Jesey City. You must make an appointment, so I went home and found an appointment was available that same morning at 9:30. So I got back in my car and headed to Summit Avenue in Jersey City. GPS devices are great, except when they’re not! This time I headed for Secaucus and wondered why I went west instead of south 30 minutes later. Eventually, taking much too long, I wound up in Jersey City. The DMV had no sign on the building where it was located. It turns out the entrance was way in the back of the big high rise. I noticed other lost souls, so I just followed them in. There must have been a hundred people there. The receptionist noted that my reservation was for a week later than I had read, and I was walking out the door when a nice security guard said that if I was there to get a license replacement, I could do a license replacement right away! So, I did so, after filling out a form that looked like a tax return with at least a thousand things to fill in and boxes to check. So, instead of being able to get the same license as the one I had lost, I was issued a new set of license plates. Ok, great. I can’t wait to inform the hundred places I need to inform. It’ll give me something to do, right?
So, I was scheduled to meet a friend for
lunch and a movie. I mistakenly thought our meeting was to be in Secaucus. So, I went through another wayward GPS setting and finally pulled up to the movie theater. My friend wasn’t there. Where was she? Where we were supposed to meet, in Paramus. I was tempted to cancel our rendezvous, but she talked me in to taking the twenty-four-minute journey up the Garden State, which I proceeded to do. I finally arrived at the Garden State Plaza mall and cinema (have you noticed how New Jersey traffic has increased dramatically this year?) I was a few minutes late for the movie, a Live at the Met film of Franz Lehar’s “The Merry Widow” with Renée Fleming. The moment I sat down, the screen was flooded with the most beautiful costumes, dancing, singing, acting that I believe I about ever saw and heard. I must have been physically and psychologically ready for it. I was immediately at peace. It was a gift.
And looking back, I realize that I was in, whether I wanted to be or not, a position of acceptance and peace throughout the whole long morning, which to all appearances was a comical series of events of the highest order. And not just was at peace, I pretty much never swore during the entire morning. And that security guard in the DMV who allowed me to stay? There was a friend. What, me worry?
When I got home in the late afternoon, a friend said he checked out the spot where I supposedly had lost my license plate, and he said that he’d found it! So…that whole morning was unnecessary. What could I do but laugh?
Wouldn’t it be great if I had that level of acceptance and trust over really, really serious things? A very close friend of mine, whose name many of you would know (he worked in Cathedral House two or three decades ago) woke recently with the sudden onset of arthritis, going from no pain one day to excruciating, unbearable pain the next. Life is nothing if it isn’t a set of surprises, many of which we have no way of avoiding.
So, every day teaches me the value of trust. And the gifts and support come, of course, always from the ultimate source, but I need to remain aware of friends, strangers, circumstances, a beautiful opera, that can be the vehicle for God’s bounty of resources. The less I whine for not getting what I want or losing something I have, the less I am distracted from the blaze of glory of what is right in front of me. And another benefit is the calm I experienced throughout. This peace gave me an inner freedom that made the whole day a learning experience. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens next time!
And we Christians are lucky in having the Cross front and center of our lives and worship. For our God knows what inconveniences, loss, pain, separations and death all are about, for our Christ experiences all this. There is nothing, therefore, that can separate us from this intimate reality. Silly excursions into time, like my experience this past Wednesday, and, of course, the serious interruptions in my insistence to “keep it up, the good times,” God is that which is there. After all, where did we come from? It must be from the land of love. And this land of love is where we belong. We know in our whole being that we are held.
Amen.