Hope for Life Blog

My wife and I were watching television the other night and the show was set in a hospital.  It had a strong storyline; the doctors were all very caring and even good looking.  But something just did not seem real to me.  It wasn’t that I have never been in a hospital.  I have had lots of family and friends who have been in the hospital and the sets looked real enough.  It was not that I do not know caring Doctors.  I do.  I know lots of them in fact.  I even know some good looking Doctors, though not as many as the show had.

I watched the television doctors speak to the lonely family member sitting by themselves in the waiting room.  I saw them be the one their patient turned to when they were scared and emotionally vulnerable.  I even watched while these actors sit in the room with a patient because they had no one else.  And that’s when it hit me.  That was what seemed so unreal to me.  I did not relate to the loneliness or the pain of having no one with you in a time of crisis.

My experience has always been one of waiting rooms full of family and friends; of visitor sign-in sheets full of names, and lots of support.  I see many people asking what they can do, baby sitting children, bringing food when people are released, crying together, holding hands, praying together.  But I know there are people who are alone in those times.  They do not have the support groups I am used to seeing.  So I began to wonder why.

It is not that I or my friends are nicer or more popular than other people.  It is that I am part of a community of faith that believes we are family.  So we show up for each other.  We help each other.  We care for each other.  I am there for them.  And they are there for me.

So it leads to the question:  who will be at the hospital with you? 

Blessings,

steve

I like people who take in strays.  I recently preached a funeral for a friend who loved stray dogs.  He was drawn to dogs that had been abandoned and hurt.  He liked to love them, heal them, and make them into functioning pets.  My children had that same heart for stray animals, especially my daughter.  She would bring home every stray dog and cat she came across.  She thought all they needed was a good home with lots of love.  Everything else could be fixed.

Of course, every stray dog cannot be healed.  Some were too far gone physically, while others never could function in a healthy environment.  It was as if they did not want anything better. But they got a chance at a new and different life … a life where they were valued and loved.  And some of them did make it.  They lived a long time as healthy pets.  Loved by a family, and loving their family. 

It makes me think about Jesus and people – you and me.  I think in many ways we are like stray dogs in this world.  Some of us feel unloved, beat down by life, unworthy to belong to a family.  Others of us function well in this world, but realize that we are not worthy enough – good enough – to be part of God’s world.  God is perfect and holy.  We are not.  Spiritually we are unlovable, hungry, mangy, and slinking through life with our tail between our legs. 

But God sent His Son into this world to bring strays like us into His family.  God loves us, offers us a home and a family, and gives us value.  Jesus, God’s own Son, died on the cross so we could become part of God’s family.  He makes the stray part of the family.  It seems too good to be true.  Maybe that is what some stray dogs think when they are rescued.  Why would someone love them, feed them, pet them, and give them a home?  It is because people like my friend and my daughter have a heart for strays.

Why would God send His Son into this dark world to find someone like me?  Why would He offer me a home and a family?  It is because He has a heart for stray people like I used to be.  And I love God and Jesus because they found me when I was not lovable.  They are looking for you.  It seemed too good to be true, but I believed it.  And it changed me forever.  You can make that choice too.

Blessings,

steve

I know what they felt like:

I understand how Abraham felt when he said “I am a foreigner and a visitor among you” in Genesis 23:4.

I have experienced the loneliness that is expressed by Moses when he names his first born, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land” in Exodus 2:22.

I know what it’s like to travel to someplace for the first time, not speaking the language, not understanding the customs, not recognizing the sign for the bathrooms, being alone.

I have been a stranger in a foreign land.

I know those feelings, that dread, fear, because that’s how I felt when I went to Cuba for the first time two years ago.

Let me tell you about that first trip:

The flight was 3 hours late, arriving at 12:30 in the morning. After going through customs and immigration we stepped outside and saw Tony Fernandez, who had been Herald of Truth’s representative in that island nation for 14 years, waiting for us. I recognized him from pictures taken by my colleagues Tim Archer and Steve Ridgell on their previous visits.

After a very short night’s sleep in Havana, the trip to Matanzas, about two hours northeast, is somewhat of a blur only highlighted by the people we met: Ammiel Perez who is the minister of the Havana Church, some radio listeners who had learned about Jesus from Tim’s daily program, the men who were rebuilding an old city bus to be used to pick up members of the congregation living in the surrounding country side, the visit to the farm where food is grown to give to church members, and meeting Tony’s wife Liudmila and his young daughter Susana.

Then we went to the church building. I had seen it in pictures, but being there reminded me that a courtyard of a home with a corrugated sheet metal roof is just as holy as any building we have in the United States. Suddenly, I felt at home. I sat down and just thought about all that God had done there. And that tomorrow, Sunday, I would worship here.

I was both anxious and eager that Sunday morning as Tony drove us the 20 minutes from our hotel in Varadero back to Matanzas. The closer we got the more anxious and less eager I got. How would they greet me, an old white haired Yankee?

That morning I was the last of our group to enter. I, the stranger in a foreign land, was greeted with smiles, hugs, kisses; I was a distant relative returning home. It didn’t matter that all I could say was “halo”, “gracias”; it didn’t matter that I was different.

I had felt like Abraham and Moses, a stranger in a foreign land, but I was and am family.

It’s the same thing that the apostle Paul talks about in Ephesians 2:19-22.

Now, Therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

They and I are no longer strangers or foreigners. And while we live far apart, we are family! We are part of the household of God. We are brothers and sisters because of Jesus.

This last March I again traveled back to Matanzas and again worshipped with my Cuban church family. We were united physically and spiritually.

And I thanked them for welcoming me home.

So here is the question for you: Are you a stranger in a foreign land?

And another: Do you want to be part of a family and will always care about you?

And then: How do you think you’ll find it?