Rummaging Around for God | Dr. Rev. Carol Kerr | 01/31/2010

Jeremiah 1:4-8

The Jesuit priest, Dennis Hamm, was living in New Haven CT with five other Jesuits. He was sitting in the kitchen one morning, reading the New York Times, when another priest came in and said, “I had the weirdest dream just before I woke up. It was a liturgical dream. The lector had just read the first reading and proceeded to announce that the ‘The refrain for today is, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ Whereupon the congregation soberly repeated, ‘If first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’” They both thought this was enormously funny. As do I. Maybe you do too, it might be a minister/priest kind of joke….

But there is a point to it. A few days later Father Hamm stumbled on another phrase from Psalm 95, which we read in our call to worship. The phrase is the last sentence we read, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Both these sentences sound the same in a way. Both start with an if clause and end in an imperative. Both have seven beats. The try-try-again statement sounds like the harden-not-your-hearts refrain, yet it is so different. The first statement might sound like it comes from tbe Bible but it does not. It is true enough, as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. There is nothing of faith in it, no sense of God. The sentiment of the line from Psalm 95, however, expresses a conviction central to our Christian faith. We live in a constant dialog with God. We are to listen to the voice of God and keep our hearts open to what we hear.

But, how do we do that? Well, traditionally there are four ways 1.) Listen for the voice of God in nature. 2.) Listen to the voice of God in Scriptures. 3.) Listen to the voice of God by coming to church. Finally, 4.) We listen to the voice of God by paying attention to our life experiences and searching through them for the divine light.

It is this last way of listening to God that I want to talk about today. One of the ancient practices of prayer that the church has is called the examen. Now, the best kind of prayer are the simplest kinds of prayers. The examen is really very simple. I like to think of it as rummaging through the stuff of your life and lifting up to God whatever you find.

How does it work? This week I decided to do some early spring cleaning. So I decided to clean our, Dave’s and mine, bedroom. We live in a very long old farmhouse. Our bedroom is a small gabled room that is at the end of the hall at the end of the very long old house. We especially like it because the kids have to walk a long way to get to it. All the action happens at the complete opposite end of the house. However, we also have to walk a long way to get to it, and so we tend to let things pile up in it., instead of putting things away. There are three or four stacks of books by each side of our bed. Magazines carpet the carpet.. Dust builds up under the bed because it is a hassle getting our big vacuum cleaner up there. Then there is the old funky closet where we store things. Or, should I say stuff things and forget about them.

Monday was a cold stormy winter day. There was nothing better to do so I decided to clean our room. I had tried cleaning it a couple weeks ago, but ended up grocery shopping instead. I said to myself, “At first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” As soon as I said that to myself, I got really tired. I didn’t want to try, try again. I just wanted to take a nap. I wondered maybe I need more sleep. I had gotten up earlier than usual, I had gone to be later than usual. I thought I am getting older, after all….. Then I said No! You’ll feel better if you do it. “At first if you don’t succeed try try again.”

So I lugged the vacuum cleaner up our 18th century skinny and tall stairways. You know the kind that are small horizontally and very tall vertically. They might be quaint to look at but there are back breakers for lugging up vacuums. By try trying and bang banging into a couple of walls, I got it to the bedroom. Then the vacuum cleaner bag needed to be changed, and so I had to go all the way down back to the kitchen on the other side of the house and get it. After I changed it, I couldn’t vacuum because I had to pick up all the magazines under the bed. I looked under the bed at these magazines and noticed that they had served the purpose of catching black dog hair like fences on the prairie catch snow drifts . I hate reaching under the bed and picking up dusty old magazines. I imagine a web of spiders crawling up my arm. But I mustered up my “Try, try again” refrain and picked up all the old magazines from under the bed. Then I had to lug them all, several arm loads, to the recycle bin down past the kitchen and into our barn.

“No wonder I don’t clean this room often!” I thought to myself. But, the refrained “At first you don’t succeed try, try again.” I decided I needed to stop and have a cup of tea.

The prophet Jeremiah tells us, “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you….” That sounds poetic. I am O.K. with God knowing me in the womb. I find the thought comforting. But the real question I had that morning was, does God know the stuff in my room? More to the point, does God know the book of mind that slid down behind my bookcase? Does God remember the book I had forgotten all about?

Well, after my cup of tea, I resumed my trying and found the book that in fact had slid behind my bookcase. It was The Life and Death of Crazy Horse, about the American Indian Chief, Crazy Horse. I sat on my bed, brushed off the dust and read the inside cover:

Born on the great plains during the mid 1800s, Crazy Horse was a shy, sensitive youth who rose to fame as the greatest of all Teton Sioux warriors. He grew up at a time of fierce struggle, when the Sioux, pressed on all sides by growing numbers of invading whites, fought desperately so save their hunting grounds and their way of life. Called “Our Strange One” by his own people he was different from other warriors. He wore no war paint, took no scalps, and refused to boast about his brave deeds. He was the leading warrior in the battle against General Custer in the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

I was glad I found the book. I don’t think God forgot Crazy Horse at all. I don’t think God forgot the trip out west that we took as a family and read the book out loud either.

Something shifted in me after I found a place on the top shelf for the Crazy Horse book. Cleaning my room wasn’t about try trying again, but more like a journey into my life. Things that had not been important to me and I had forgotten about came alive again. Things that I thought were important earlier suddenly weren’t. The refrain, “If at first you don’t succeed try, try again.” Began to fade away. Another thought began to take its place. Something akin to the words of Psalm 95, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

I blew off the dust from a birds nest I had found one spring. I found a corner for it and placed a little ceramic chickadee perched on a shelf above it looking down.

I have to admit that on Monday I never got the least bit nostalgic about the dust under my bed. But, I did find a good joke about dust under a bed on Tuesday.

A little boy came home from Sunday school and went into his room to change his clothes. When he emerged, he asked his mother, “Is it true we come from dust?”

“Yes dear,” she replied.

“Is it true that when we die, we go back to the dust?” the boy asked.

“Yes, dear, that’s right.” The little boy ran into his room and came out all excited, “Mom, I just looked under my bed, and there’s someone either coming or going!”

Did God have anything to do with the fact that I found this joke about dust under the bed right after I vacuumed the dust under my bed? Did God know I was going to even write my sermon for Sunday about cleaning my room on Monday when I had no clue I was going to write about this until Thursday?

The point I am trying to make is that cleaning my room really became a kind of prayer, the kind that has been traditionally called the examin, but is really just rummaging around for God. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Rummaging for God and finding God speaking to you through the things you pick up and bother to take a look at.

It was no longer about just getting the job done, but about listening to my life. I noticed feelings that came up with the things that I happened to pick up. I paid attention to any and all those feelings as the surfaced. It could be a whole range of feelings: delight, boredom, fear, anticipation, resentment, anger, peace, hope, regret…. God knows us in the womb. God is also knows the junk in our bedrooms.

O.K. But what about the junk in the closet? Do you know what I found in the closet? I found yellow and white quilt, a blue and white quilt, and a flower print quilt. We acquired them for different seasons and different decorating and paint schemes. Together they made a kind of quilt garden, and I washed them and hung them over out banister going up the bedroom. Then I found an old down pillow which someone must have used for a sleep over and stuffed back into the closet with one of the quilts. I washed that and it fluffed right up and I am using it now. Then I found a garbage bag full of Gavin’s clothes. I have no idea how they got there but there were some t-shirts and jackets that I know he likes. I will have to tell him.

Then at the bottom I found and old poca-dot, green, yellow, red, purple, blue flannel sheet that the kids use to have on their beds when they were little.

The last step in the practice of examine is to choose one of the many feelings and events that happened in your day and which for some reason, somehow caught your attention, the feeling is sign that something important is going on. Then after you choose that one thing, you simply express spontaneously the prayer that surfaces as you attend to the source of the feeling – praise, petition, cry for help, healing, whatever. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

It was this poka-dot sheet at the bottom of my closet that I chose. God knew that sheet was lying there all along, even though I had completely forgotten about it. I lifted it up, and remembered all the times I sat in bed with Ian and Gavin and read children’s stories with them. The Blue Balloon, a magic balloon that did wonderful things like turn the color or rainbow and make a the shape of a square. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrob” where children encounter Aslan the Lion who made winter turn to spring Good Night Moo” that got us saying good night to the stars, our feet, the desk, table lamp, the dogs, and cat (who use to hide under the bed pretty much all day). The Very Hungry Caterpillar which turned into a wonderful monarch butterfly.

The poka-dot sheet was stained and ripped, and way to babyish for the boys to ever want to use. But, after holding it, and thinking about the stories, I was able to throw it out to make room for the crisp 200 count cotton L.L. bean blue and green ticking sheets that the boys now use.

God said to Jeremiah, “…before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nation.” Then Jeremiah said,

“Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the Lord said to him,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy for you shall go to all to whom I send you, … do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,…”

I do not think my boys are sent as a prophet to the nations, but I like the part “do not be afraid for I am with you to deliver you…”

This is how the prayer of examin workds. Often we go through the day throwing one thing after another into the closet, slamming the door shut and forgetting about most of the day. That is, at least until the closet bursts open. The prayer of examin is like rummaging around the closet, finding one or two things that seem to speak to you, lifting them in prayer to God. Take time each day, sort through the events of the day, one after another, and listen for your feelings and where you feel God has been with you through these events. I suggest rummaging around your life once a day, or once a week, or once a month. I am not going to tell you how long it had been since I picked up our room. I’ll just say, it was before Christmas.

You never know what is going to turn up and there is always something. For a person who does this kind of prayer there is never a question: What should I talk to God about? Rummage around, see what catches your attention and go with it.

There is no other way to be present to God, of course, but we often fool ourselves into thinking we have “to put on our best face” before we address our God. It is like waiting to clean up the whole house before you let God through the door. But, the point is, God is already in our house. God is in every nook and cranny of our house. God is in the dust under the bed and the stuff in the closet, whatever feel behind the bookcase.

We learn to respect our feelings and our day because we bother to leistn to them. We also become liberated from our feelings and our day. Praying about things we gain strength and perspective. We no longer are slaves to our emotions. God is with us, and helps carry the load out to the barn, or wherever we need it to go.

Our room is pretty much clean now, although I haven’t taken the vacuum cleaner down the stairs yet. My room is much more welcoming than it was when I began. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” It is a good place to lay down my head.

Using Your Gifts for God’s Plan | Keys to Happiness Series #3 | Dr. Rev Carol Kerr | 01.24.2010

1 Corinthians 12

This is the third sermon in the series “Keys to Happiness.” The first I gave on positive thinking, faith being believing in that which is not yet seen. The second sermon was on gratitude. I suggested you write five things for which you are grateful each day. This third sermon is on finding your calling and gifts. It is to discover our work, our condition of life, we may find a way to praise God . This is the path to happiness. You can see how the sermons are beginning how in to build on each other – living by faith, being grateful, using your gifts for God. These are the way to happiness.

Harry Potter is the hero of the wildly popular children’s books by J.K. Rowling. The books have broken world wide record sales in numbers of copies published and languages translated. Harry Potter is fiction. But there is something in the story that captures the imagination of millions and millions of people, young and old. Harry Potter is an ordinary boy by all outward appearances. Yet, there is something hidden in him that is truly extraordinary which he doesn’t really understand. The seven books of the series revolves around the unfolding of this mysterious something embedded in the boy. Up to his 12th birthday Harry is raised by his aunt and uncle, the Dursley’s, because both his parents are dead. They live at four Privet Drive. They are the last people in the world who would have anything to do with strange and mysterious. “They didn’t hold to such nonsense, thank you very much.”

Then on his 12th birthday amazing things start happening. He finds out that he is a wizard and his parents were wizards. Furthermore, there is something exceptional about him even for wizards. When Harry was one year old his parents were killed by the evil Voldemort. Voldemort turned to kill Harry too. He zapped him with his most evil and powerful death spell. Yet, it didn’t kill him. It should have killed him but it didn’t. In fact it backfired onto Voldemort. No one knows why it didn’t kill Harry. The only thing that remained of the encounter was a zig-zag scar on his forehead. Ordinary Harry turns out to be extraordinary. This specialness is hidden and slowly becomes revealed through the series of books. It is this basic plot that captures the hearts of millions. It is because there is something in every human being that resonates with it. The ugly duckling turns into a swan. The orphan finds his true inheritance.

Christianity gets this. Christianity affirms that there is something special inside of each one of us. We are all Harry Potters trying to discover just exactly what it means. By that I mean, what is it for Carol Kerr to be Carol Kerr? Or for Amy Kaplan to be Amy Kaplan. Or Bill Daley to be Bill Daley? We don’t have Hogwarts, the school of Wizardry to educate us. However, we do have the church. Christianity believes that even though we are all ordinary there is something extraordinary about us. These are the gifts God has given to us to use to build up the church. Harry Potter had a zig-zag scar on his head where Voldemort tried to kill him but failed. We too have a place like that. It is the place of giftedness where God has secretly anointed each one of us.

Let me stop here and clarify something. In the Falmouth school system they have a class for the “gifted” students. These are students who have an IQ over 130 and are “specially” talented. There is a special testing process that each child undergoes in the 3rd grade. Then a select few are accepted or not. You can imagine how competitive it can be in Falmouth schools. In the church in Corinth that Paul was writing to, it was equally competitive. Only, they weren’t interested in people’s IQ’s rather they were interested in who had the special spiritual gifts. Things like speaking in tongues and prophecy. One could say Voldemort/evil was insinuating its way into the heart of the church at Corinth. The weapon was not a wand but a phrase, “I’m more important than you!” People in the church were saying that to each other and the church was breaking apart. Speaking in tongues is better than praying lot. Praying a lot is better than wisdom. Etc. But, Paul insisted in his letter to the church that God gave everyone gifts and everyone was important not because of the uniqueness of these gifts but only when these gifts are used to build up the body of the church.

The question of God’s calling us, and how to use our gifts for God, is a question of vocation for us all. In everyday language the word usually just means our “job” or what we do to make a money. But, the word “vocation” comes from Latin word for summons or call. In religious life it still has the meaning of hearing an inner calling to do something with your life and your gifts that is important. . What does that zig-zag scar on Harry Potter’s forehead mean about who he truly is? Harry is restless and unsatisfied until he encounters that truth. Likewise, we must ask ourselves in what kind of place in life, may I find my true self, the person I am meant to be? If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find that place we will never be truly happy.

Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), who began his life as a decadent French cavalry officer, later found his own way living as a hermit in Algeria. As Foucauld put it, “God calls all the souls he has created to love him with their whole being, here and thereafter, which means that he calls all of them to holiness, to perfection, to a close following of him and obedience to his will. But he does not ask all souls to show their love by the same works, to climb to heaven by the same ladder, to achieve goodness in the same way. What sort of work, then, must I do? Which is my road to heaven? What kind of life am I to sanctify myself?”

Dorothy Day’s life was marked by loneliness and a kind of moral confusion until she found the church and her mission within the church. She founded the Catholic Worker newspaper and a movement throughout the nation of working with the inner city poor. By her own account there was always a yearning for transcendence that distinguished her from her companions. One of them later remarked that she was “too religious’ to make a good Communist. She herself remarked, “All my life I have been haunted by God.”

The signs of vocation are usually “hidden in plain sight.” Usually a good way to get on the trail of what our true calling is, is through the simple equation, Values + Talents = Calling. I am preaching this particular sermon on this particular Sunday because today is our Annual meeting. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our ministry was driving by the working of the Spirit in and through our different callings and gifts? It would be fulfilling because we will feel we are doing exactly what we are meant to be doing. It will spill over not into just our church work, but into everything we do because we will be aware of who we are. We will be fired up. We will tap into the place of our anointing. Instead of “What’s in it for me?” We will be asking “Lord, what would You have me do at this time? God how could my life best honor You? Lord in what way can I make a difference today?”

Here is a quick way of getting you to think about your calling. In the bulletin I have put an insert with two columns. On one column is possible issues you may feel strongly about (this is not a complete list…) HAVE PEOPLE CALL OUT A FEW THINGS. On the other side is a list of talents and gifts you might have (this is not a complete list either…) HAVE PEOPLE CALL OUT A FEW THINGS.

You can see what is going on here. This is a simplification, but you can start to connect the dots and draw lines from the left side to the right. So, if a person feels strongly about child care and they are gifted in teaching…. Or if their passion is hunger and they are good at leadership then they could work in a non-profit organization Bread for the world. Or put a newsletter together on hunger if their talent is writing….. Your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet….

Matching up our values and our gifts is one way to find what our calling is. But, there is another way. That is is to make our work, whatever that work may be, prayer. There is a book called the Practice of the Presence of God. It was drawn form letters and conversations with a French Carmelite lay brother in the seventeenth century. This man known as Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, entered a monastery in Paris in midlife, after retiring from the army. Because of his lack of education he was assigned to kitchen work. There he spent 40 years among the pots and pans until he died at the age of 80. In his life he accomplished no great deeds. But, what he did do was that at all times he cultivated a consciousness of the presence of God. As such, no matter what we were doing, even washing dishes, the work would be holy work. He wrote: The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and tin the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Sacrament.

The point here is that finding our calling is not just about matching up talents with issues, but also with our own interior disposition and the way we go about doing our work. He says changing what we do is not the important thing rather “doing for the sake of God that which we commonly do for our own.” Doing it for love.

What made Harry Potter special and able to thwart the curse of death that Voldemort projected upon him? It was that his mother sacrificed her life for him. She threw herself between Voldemort and the baby Harry and so she was killed. It was this self sacrifice that protected Harry from the strongest curse. Likewise, Paul in chapter 12 of his letter to the Corinthians lists out the various gifts that each member of the church has that will contribute to the building up the body of the church. But in chapter 13 he tells us what the greatest gift of all is.: Love.

But let me show you a way of life that is best of all….prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless. … all that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever, faith, hope and live and the greatest of these is love.

Love is the gift within our gifts. Love actualizes whatever our calling may be. When Harry Potter discovered that what made him special was love, in this case the love of his mother, he was able to find his strength and use his gift. What made Harry Potter special? He was an ordinary boy who was loved in extraordinary ways. The plot of Christianity is this: we are all loved by God who sacrificed his life for us.

What are the keys to happiness? Live life filled with faith. Be grateful always. Find your special calling by matching your values with your gifts. Then do whatever you do, do it with love.

Faith Stuck Between Two Slabs of Cement | Questions of Suffering and Haiti | Dr. Rev. Carol Kerr | 01.17.2010

John 9:1-8

Of all the reports flooding out of tragic earthquake, 7.0 on the Richter scale, in Port au Prince Haiti there is one that sticks out in my mind. A 21 year old man had been stuck under a huge slab of cement for over 48 hours. He was lying on his side, with the slab laying over him, just like a sandwich. If the slab had fallen 2 inches more his bones would have been crushed. Yet, incredibly his only problem was that he was stuck, nothing was crushed, no terrible wounds. Some local people found him and were trying to rescue him with a blow torch, and a car jack. A news reporter stumbled upon the situation, and of all things, handed the microphone to the man lying on his side, stuck under a half of ton cement slab. “What are you saying to yourself?” the reporter asked him. He heard the question, and with a calm and tranquil voice he replied, “As I am a Christian, I say Jesus you know my life in your hand.”

Atheists world wide watching this man’s testimony must be boggled by his denial to see the apparent contradiction and bitter irony of the situation he was in. For many atheists in the world suffering is the great killer of faith. Barbara Brown Taylor knew of a nurse who lost her faith working in the emergency room of a hospital where she laid her hand on every kind of tragedy – the two nineteen-year-old girls killed in a car wreck, the little boy who mother has broken his arm, the young man with AIDS whose parents say they are not taking him back home with them. The nurse says that she is tired of cleaning up God’s messes. Certainly the earthquake in Haiti killing over 40,000 people, injuring and rendering homeless another 2,000,000 people in a country already the poorest in the western hemisphere, makes a person wonder where is God? It’s a hell of a mess we have to clean up. And, if anyone can find God, let’s fire God for failure to act, and/or for acting capriciously and cruelly.

So, do we believe the man stuck between a slab of cement? “As I am a Christian, I say Jesus you know my life in your hand.” Or do we side with the atheists and say, “God does not exist.”

Of course there is Pat Robinson’s approach. Pat Robinson claims on national TV that the reason this cataclysmic tragedy happened to Haiti was that a couple centuries ago Haitians made a pact with the devil in order to gain their independence from imperialist rule of France. He claims that ever since then this is the reason God has rained down so many calamities on the people such as category 5 hurricanes, famine, AIDS, etc. After all, God needs a site for apocalyptic research and development and it might as well be on Haiti because of that pact they made with the devil.

Frankly, I would rather not believe in God at all than believe in Pat Robinson’s God. Pat Robinson seems OK with a God that would punish and a two-year old girl by killing her centuries after the alleged guilty pact was perpetrated by past generations. I am not OK with that kind of God.

But, before I completely kick out Pat Robinson, I have to admit that we all try in our own various ways a slight of hand similar to his. That is, we all try to find some reason for suffering by blaming the victim. In the United States our vast wealth and resources have allowed us to relieve much suffering (lets put hurricane Katrina to the side) and we begin to believe that suffering shouldn’t exist at all. Where it does we believe that if we just work harder and try harder we can get rid of it. And so, we begin to sweep all suffering into the category it of “somebody’s own damned fault.” We are relieved to say that in fact. Because it makes us feel deep down like we have control over tragedy. Bad things can’t happen to us if we conform to an unwritten code something like – eat the right food, live in the right places, get the right job, mind your business, exercise.

Then Haiti happens.

However, let’s look at what Jesus said about suffering. Jesus was walking along and saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents sins?” Now, we know what Pat Robinson’s answer would be, “It was his parent’s sins.” Pat seems to go for sins of previous generations. Pat would not be alone at the time. In the Old Testament they struggled with the question, if there is only one God, and God is all powerful, and God is a good God, then why is there suffering? They determined that the only answer is, it must be the fault of the victim, and if not that person’s fault then it was the fault of his parents, or his parents parents, on down the line.

But, Pat Robinson is not Jesus and Jesus said something different. Jesus said, “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. “ After this Jesus spit on the ground, made mud, spread it on his eyes, and told him to wash his eyes. He went and did it and could see! Jesus’ point was this: We do not know why this man was born blind, but God does not want him to be blind, God wants him to be healed. God is not a God of punishment but a God of healing.

There is suffering all over the world. In parts of Africa, women expect to bury half their children before they are two years old. In Rural China, people with cataracts go blind. In Nepal, lepers live on the steps of temples, begging alms from the faithful who pass by. Through our One Great Our of Sharing offering which we take each spring, some of our money goes to support an orphanage in Haiti called “House of Hope.” The orphanage has a school to which children will walk three hours a day in order to attend. Two missionaries walked up into the mountain villages from where the children come. There the families are so poor they have nothing. Their families were subsistence farmers with no hope for the future. In these communities if the parents cannot take care of their children, which they often cannot do, they abandon them or sell them as “servants” in Port-au-Prince, where they often face abuse and neglect.

Despite suffering around the world faith persists. Despite all their suffering the Haitians are not a nation of atheists. They are deeply religious. In the news reports if you noticed, there are people camped out in tents by night with absolutely nothing, singing hymns. The Bishop of Haiti is dead, crushed as his cathedral collapsed on him, still Haitians are marching through the streets by day singing hymns. Why do Haitians still believe in God despite all their suffering? Perhaps the words of one Haitian who now lives in Montreal Quebec will shed light on this questions: “When you feel you are somebody, a child of God, that you are important, that your voice matters, then you can do something about your situation. We come together to pray, reflect and work together to build the kingdom of god on earth… Often, one has the impression that the poor ask incessantly, but suddenly someone asks you to contribute, because you have something to give too. Things change when suddenly I see I have something to give.”

Prayer breaks our isolation from one another. Prayer leads to social action. Suffering threatens all meaning if we suffer alone. But if we reach out to each other, and bind together, together we will transcend even the worse.

This answer this Haitian woman gives is much more like the answer Jesus gave his disciples than the answer Pat Robinson gave the nation, or the answer atheists give to each other

Let me explain it in this way, as a minister, I have heard many stories of loss and grief. Stories that would break your heart. I wondered, why, I always felt that at the same time when I heard these stories that I was walking on holy ground? Then one day I realized it was because of love. Whenever there is loss and death, love will come forcefully and surely. It comes from mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. As we see in Haiti and the donations and services that are flooding in from around the world, love comes from strangers and people profoundly moved as fellow human beings. Love is a force in the universe. Love is as real as electricity, or microwaves, or the speed of light, or megaton reactions at the center of supernovas. For Christianity, love is not a subcategory of anything. It is not just an emotion among other emotions. Rather, love is God’s self communication to the universe.

When Jesus was healing the blind man he also said, “We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.”

It is true for Jesus, and it is also true for us. We are the light of the world and we must carry out the tasks assigned to us before the night comes.

The 21 year old man stuck under the cement slab reminds me of another story of Jesus. There was a man named Lazarus who was the brother of Martha and Mary. When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. … Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die….” After meeting Mary, people showed him the tomb of Lazarus and he wept. The people standing near Jesus said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed the blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”

Jesus told them to roll the stone aside. Martha protested because of the smell. But Jesus said, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father thank you for hearing me. You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of al these pope standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.” Then Jesus shouted “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man came out, his ands and feet bound in grave clothes.

In Haiti the CNN reporter handed the 21 year old man pinned under the slab of cement “What are you saying to yourself?” And he calmly replies, “As I am a Christian, I say Jesus you know my life in your hand.”

The report cut to about an hour later where you heard the screams of the man when his friends and jacked up the cement some and took the blow torch to free one last section which was burning his skin as they did it. These reports are hard to watch. But, they poured water on him as they proceeded. Shortly after he was freed. And his rescuers carried him off whole and in tact.

We might never be caught in an earthquake, but our turn will come where we have to submit ourselves to the unknown and to step into the darkness without understanding what it is all about. When that happens I think we should remember not what the atheists conclude, and not what Pat Robinson asserts. Rather we should remember, burn the image of this man and what he said into our minds, remember how this man made it through. I think it is the best advice we will ever get. We should remember what told the reporter and the world, “As I am a Christian, I say Jesus you know my life in your hand.”