reflections on a Christian life

Calvin deployed to Afghanistan last month.  It is his third deployment in the past 5 years.  Soon Janet will resume her weekly trips to the post office with supplies of coffee, peanut butter and magazines.    We once again go about our daily routine shadowed by a nagging uncertainty.  Each phone call home is a marker that declares, “so far, so good.”  But it doesn’t bring any assurance of the future.

Calvin is unmarried and unattached.  At the drop off on base, there were fiancés, wives and children lingering, wanting to stretch the departure and shorten the separation.  We said our goodbyes and he turned his attention to the last minute details necessary to ensure his company was ready.  He leaves behind his parents, sisters, aunts & uncles, cousins and friends.  He has been larger than life and filled our homes with his passion, enthusiasm, generosity and friendship.  We’d gladly exchange the pride in knowing he is serving in harm’s way for his presence in our living room, sleeping on our couch or taking in a NY Giants game.

We might consider ourselves singled out for some special burden- but that would assume too much.   I’ve come to understand that the cocoon that encases us has stunted our understanding of this world and the harsh realities of life.

There is a climactic exchange in Stephen King’s novel, Desperation.  The young boy in the story, David, having already lost his sister and mother in a battle against evil, has just seen his father die.  Johnny is a washed up writer about to redeem himself through an act of final self-sacrifice:

“Is God in you?” David asked.  “Can you feel him in there, Johnny? Like a hand?  Or a fire?”

“Yes,” Johnny said.

“Then you won’t take this wrong.”  David spit into his face.  It was warm on the skin below Johnny’s eyes, like tears.

Johnny made no effort to wipe away the boy’s spittle.  “Listen to me David.  I’m going to tell you something you didn’t hear from your minister or your Bible.  For all I know it’s a message from God himself.  Are you listening?”

David only looked at him, saying nothing.

“You said ’God is cruel’ the way a person who’s lived his whole life on Tahiti might say ‘Snow is cold.’  You knew, but you didn’t understand.”  He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy’s cold cheeks.  “Do you know how cruel your God can be, David?  How fantastically cruel?”

David waited saying nothing.  Maybe listening, maybe not.  Johnny couldn’t tell.

“Sometimes he makes you live.”

I expect every soldier has struggled with the question, “why him and not me?”  I know Calvin has seen enough tragedy.   The fresh troops greeted by a mortar on their arrival at the FOB, his bunkmate who left behind his grieving bride to be and parents.  Perhaps the bitterest experience was returning to his room to see his NY Giants blanket returned by his buddy that morning prior to going out on patrol.  Their playful trash talk was escalating in anticipation of the weekend NY/Washington game.  News had come in during the day that Randy’s lower half was blown away while following orders on an ill planned mission.  He wouldn’t be taking his young son to any Redskin’s game after the tour

Is this God’s cruelty?   Or are we trapped in our own expectations of what ought to be?  What kind of God walked this earth during the Roman occupation of Israel and did not confront tyranny?  Instead of raising John the Baptist to life, Jesus merely wept at the news of his beheading.  Although he overturned the tables in the temple square, he did not return to ensure that they were not back in business the next day.  Christ didn’t fix the world.  He left a band of followers who would experience persecution and death and his apostles would invite us to share in his suffering even as they called us to know his peace.  To identify with Christ is to experience a fallen world and to be a source of redemption.  It is not to barricade oneself in a fortress of safety, skirting risk and exposure until our deliverance.

Singing the hymn “How Great Thou Art” used to transport me to the Adirondack wilderness by the upper Hudson River where I spent many nights alone with God.  I saw God’s greatness in his creation.  It was a refuge from the intrusion of cares and the inconvenience of real people who might break the mood.  Lately, the same hymn brings visuals of dusty scenes from Iraq and Afghanistan and my son moving through the grind of another day on patrol, pouring over target images and maps, slogging through mud on a primitive FOB, grieving over a buddy who will not be coming home.  Yes, God is great and that greatness is so much more than the created world.  His greatness takes in the full sweep of mankind, of good and evil, of kindness and treachery.   His goodness is better and his power is greater than any has yet understood.  It is not just in the extremes of the beauty of creation or the tragedy of war.  It also envelops my simple world of commuting, meetings, conference calls, encounters in the neighborhood and occasional escapes on my surfboard.   This reality is to be comprehended by those who live in him whether they experience wealth or poverty, oppression or liberty.  To live in him is to comprehend the desperation of a world in need of Christ and to walk in that world bathed in Christ’s goodness.

God’s fantastic cruelty is love.  I tremble at the thought of fully experiencing that love.  I’d rather keep my fond memories and cherished comforts.  But the history of God’s people is one of his sustaining love through all of human experience, transcending death itself.

Another deployment

Another time of waiting

“I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning…for with the Lord is unfailing love”