It's One Thing...But It's Another Thing...
Just wanted to share what I shared with our congregation on Sunday...
Journey.
It’s a word that probably means a lot of different things to each one of us.
Some of you have immediately thought of the rock band that brought us hits like “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Some of you may be thinking “ROAD TRIP!” or something like that. Maybe it’s things like Lord of the Rings that come to mind-overcoming impossible odds on a trek to a far-off land to reach the goal at the end.
Maybe you think immediately of the fact that we’re all on a journey of some sort. To you, “journey” is somewhat synonymous with “living”-with being alive.
And still, for others, our mission to “journey with the people of Rutland” will be a quick association.
(How many of you still have “Don’t Stop Believin’” stuck in your head? How many of you probably won’t hear another word that’s said this morning because of it? Don’t worry-it’s stuck in my head, too)
Regardless of what runs through your head when you hear the word “journey”, I think it’s safe to assume that all of us have found ourselves on a journey of some kind at one point or another in our lives. It’s kinda what life’s about, isn’t it? It’s a journey, growth, change, shaping, discipleship…
…where we end up is never the same as where we started.
For me, my journeys often look like this: (pic of stack of books)…on this particular pile, there should be about six or seven more books-but I don’t own them, so I couldn’t add them to the pile… For you, your journeys may look different. God may lead you on a journey through music (stack of cd’s), nature (stack of pinecones), or even through other people (stack of people). It may be that it doesn’t take any really defined medium, but rather comes at you from all areas of life. However it looks, though, one thing’s for certain:
God doesn’t call us to stay put where we are and never change. He doesn’t call us to a life of spiritual and emotional dwarfism-a life where we don’t grow.
Instead, he calls us to constant change and growth-to discipleship… to become more and more like Jesus Christ with every passing day. It’s a process-a journey… but he’s with us every step of the way.
Now, what kinda sparked the message this morning is something that feels (right now) like the culmination of a particular part of my journey-something that God’s really been whacking me over the head with lately…but really, if I’m honest and look at that stack of books (pic of books), it’s been a journey that started at least 7 years ago, with seeds that had been planted long before that.
What this particular part boils down to is this: (and I believe that every Christ-follower needs to wrestle with this at one level or another)
It is one thing to say “God, break my heart for the things that break yours”. It’s another thing to allow him to do it, and then go out and do something about it.
It’s one thing for us to stand here on a Sunday morning and sing songs like we just sang, to pray that God will provide opportunities to meet with the people of our community wherever they’re at, to talk about how we can best serve those in need, to ask God to bring us closer to him and make us more like Christ…
But it’s quite another to allow him to do it…
And still another to respond to that by doing something about it…
John Burke, in his book “No Perfect People Allowed”, states that “the postmodern mind thinks: ‘you say this is the truth…but what does this truth of yours produce in a life?’”
Our culture is waiting and watching to see if our words are backed up by our attitudes and actions.
Our God is calling us to back up our words with our attitude and actions.
We need to ask ourselves: are we backing up our words by our attitudes and actions?
What does this truth of ours; this gospel-this good news-produce in our lives?
Burke continues by saying: “It is not the visible, but the invisible that needs attention. It’s not candles, but community, not art, but attitude, not liturgy, but love that makes a difference in our broken world”.
It’s about what we’ve allowed God to teach us and grow in us. It’s not ultimately about anything that we can do or create on our own.
We spent our advent season here talking about the injustice and violence that we see in the world around us-everything from the injustice we see in straight-out war to the injustice found in the way corporations treat their employees, the way certain materials are acquired, and way we handle the decisions of what we buy on a day-to-day basis. We talked a lot about social justice and how Jesus Christ might handle Christmas shopping if he were here today.
What we need to realize is that all of that ties in with this. This injustice and social breakdown that we talked about-that we see in our culture-this breaks God’s heart.
Throughout scripture, God continually calls his people on the carpet regarding the injustice that he sees in creation. We can see it particularly in the prophets, which are basically most of the books in the Old Testament found after the Psalms.
They’re books written by men who had been called by God to speak out to the people of Israel about the wrong things they had been doing. All throughout the beginning of the Old Testament, we see God laying out his laws for his people-telling them what it means and looks like to live a life pursuing him. By living the way that God laid out for them, the Israelites would be blessed.
However, God tells them in no uncertain terms that if they turn away from him and disobey, there will be consequences. When they DO turn away, the Israelites are invaded by other nations, and carried off into captivity. Most of the prophets were sent to speak to the Israelites about how they could right the wrongs they had done and be restored to their land and homes.
What’s interesting to see, though, is that most of the prophet’s warnings center not around a long list of do’s and don’ts, but around a couple key topics: proper worship, and social injustice. God says very clearly that the two of these are tied together, and that they are the important things to him-the key elements in Israel putting themselves right with him.
I’m going to use part of a chapter from Isaiah as an example-in many ways, it sums up what most of the prophets are talking about (I’d encourage you to read through the prophets sometime… it’s a very interesting collection of books, and really gives you a neat insight into the heart of God the Father.) You might find it familiar, because Ron actually used some of these verses throughout our advent season leading up to Christmas here.
Isaiah 58
True Fasting (or True Worship)
1 “Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
2 For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.
3 ‘Why have we fasted (worshipped),’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ “Yet on the day of your fasting (worship), you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
4 Your fasting (worship) ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast (worship) as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is this the kind of fast (worship) I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call (worship)a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting (worship) I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Reading through this again, as I wrote this message, I was struck with how much this fits for this morning. Look at what God says in verses 2, 9, 10, and 11:
…For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right & has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions & seem eager for God to come near them…
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger & malicious talk, & if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry & satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then…the LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs…& will strengthen your frame. You will be like… a spring whose waters never fail.
Basically, God is telling Israel, “You come to me asking to be right with me… asking to be like me…but you don’t change. However, if you DO come to me, and you DO mean it, then I will bless you.”
God is saying to Israel the same thing he’s been whacking me over the head with lately, the same thing I’ve been learning on this journey so far, the same thing that I think he wants to say to each of us this morning:
It’s one thing to say “God, break my heart for the things that break yours”. It’s another thing entirely to allow him to do it, and then go and do something about it.
It’s one thing to say you’re eager to come near to God… eager to learn from him and know his ways… but are you ready and willing for him to actually do it? And even more than that… are you ready and willing to put it into action?
What God’s calling Israel on here is their tendency to say “God, break my heart for the things that break yours” with their mouths, while with their actions, they’re saying “but leave me here, comfortably, where I don’t have to get my hands dirty or do anything that I don’t really feel like doing”.
Unfortunately, the same rings true for far too many of us at far too many times in our lives. I know if I’m really honest, I have been guilty of the same thing more times than I can count. Sure, I try to assuage my conscience by telling myself that I help out here and there… “Oh, I bought that one homeless guy some lunch”, or something like that… but if I’m really real about it, some of those times, I’m simply doing it because I know it’s the right thing-not because I actually care about it…
…not because my heart is truly broken for the things that break God’s…
…not because my will and desires are in line with his.
See, we can have all the knowledge in the world… we can KNOW everything… but if we don’t do anything with that knowledge… if it doesn’t take root in our lives and make a tangible, practical difference, what good is it? If we don’t MEAN the things we say and do…aren’t they just a waste of time and breath?
I think of when I was growing up and my siblings and I would get in a fight with each other. We’d get all heated and probably end up yelling and screaming at each other, and when Mom and Dad stepped in to break it all up, they’d sit us down and talk us through it and then ask us to apologize. Often, one of us wouldn’t be ready to apologize, but would anyway, simply because it was the “right thing to do”. Mom and Dad were always quick to catch on to this, and tell whoever it was that they needed to mean it-because if they didn’t mean it, it was an empty word-an empty action.
Think about how many times in your own life you’ve “apologized” emptily? Like I said earlier, our attitudes and actions are extremely important. Not only are they what the world sees and defines us on the basis of-they’re what God sees and weeps or rejoices with.
I was trying to think of a personal example to share from my own life, and realized a couple weeks back that I had one staring me in the face. Some of you will remember back in September or so when Elizabeth (our service worship coordinator) was looking for team leaders to head up the projects for this year. I remember receiving the email and figuring that I’d just stay as a “floater”-just be stuck wherever I was needed on any given morning, like I always had been. I was happy with my decision.
However, it seems that God had different plans. About a month later, I was at a meeting, where Elizabeth was talking about how many team leaders she had found, and basically saying that there was a possibility that we’d be looking into cutting or changing one or two of our normal projects because there hadn’t been any response in those areas… one of those projects was Sunpointe-a senior’s facility where we go and sing hymns with two wards of tenants who suffer from various stages of dementia.
She told us all in the meeting that if she didn’t have someone soon, there was a very real possibility that we might not go to Sunpointe as often, or maybe not at all, which of course, would have been a sad thing for the people living there.
The next week I ended up going to Sunpointe on the Service Sunday, because that’s where they needed me. I had been on several weeks previously, so it wasn’t a new thing for me… but it was an uncomfortable thing.
For me, senior’s facilities are a hard place to hang out. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I can feel my own mortality, or the fact that the people are all just really old… but I’m NOT comfortable there. In fact, if it really boiled down to it, this would have been the one project that I would have asked to be switched from… except that they needed someone that morning.
SO I took my guitar and some chord charts and went with the group to Sunpointe. While we were there, the residents engaged so wholeheartedly in the singing-more so than I had ever seen before.
As I looked around the circle in the one ward, where people are SO advanced in their illness that they can’t talk to you anymore, I saw faces lighting up at the songs we were singing. I saw tears of joy as certain verses were sung. I heard people trying with all their strength to sing along, even though they usually don’t or can’t make much sound at all…and God whacked me.
Sometimes I think we set ourselves up in such a place that the only way God CAN break our hearts is by whacking us. And it kinda hurts to be convicted like that, but it’s good… as long as we learn from it.
As I sat there, I realized, and heard God quite clearly telling me “Sam, these people NEED this.” So I kept playing and tried to ignore it. But God doesn’t give up easily. He kept dogging me with the thought that “Sam, these people need this”… until I began to respond to it.
SO I’m sitting here, playing and singing these hymns, and all the while, this exchange is going on in my head:
“Sam, these people need this.”
“But God, I don’t even like it here”
“But Sam, these people need this”
“God, you know I’m not comfortable in this place”
“Sam, it doesn’t matter. These people need this, and I want you to do it”
“Oh. Shoot. Okay. I guess.”
I thought that was the end of the conversation… but then the kicker came…
“Oh, and Sam? I want you to do it cheerfully”
Busted.
It was in that week that I realized that these people at Sunpointe, some of whom are literally just waiting to die…these people break God’s heart. And God wanted mine to be broken for them as well. He wanted me to care about them. He wanted me to step beyond the things that I was comfortable with, and into something that would grow and challenge and stretch me…to become more like him.
Once I was willing to allow God to break my heart like that-to tear down the box that I had allowed myself to operate in for so long…it’s been an awesome experience going to Sunpointe. It’s actually fun now-because I see these people differently. I see their situation differently. And suddenly my own comfort or discomfort doesn’t really matter anymore.
That’s ultimately what it’s all about.
Allowing God to break our hearts for the things that break his is ultimately about becoming more like Christ. It’s about God stripping away piece by piece the things in our lives that we shut ourselves away from, and replacing them piece by piece with the things that he desires for us to open ourselves to.
God may not be calling you to go sing at Sunpointe. But take a serious look at your life. What is your Sunpointe?
What is the thing that God has placed in front of you that he’s asking your heart to be broken for?
Is it a next door neighbour?
A friend down the street?
That organization across town that is struggling to make ends meet, but plays a key role in our community?
That homeless guy you see every day on your way to work?
The single mom that works in the office alongside you?
What is your Sunpointe?
Where is God asking to break your heart for the things that break his?
I think too often we’re not willing to see past our discomfort. We want things to be neat, tidy, and clean. But that’s not the point. God may be calling you to something that is not comfortable for you… Sunpointe wasn’t comfortable for me, either. Following Christ is (and should be) messy. Look at Christ…his ministry was far from neat and tidy. He encountered opposition at every turn, hung out with the people that society didn’t want, and in the end, was killed for it all. That’s pretty messy if you ask me.
But are we willing to look past the dirt and the grime and see the gems that are hidden underneath? Are we willing to look past the mud and see the masterpiece? Under these dirty, messy situations are people that God is desperately in love with. People that he took the time and effort to create, just like you and me. Works of art-works of his hand. Beautiful reflections of who he is…if we’re willing to allow ourselves to be broken and see past our own boxes and preconceived notions.
If God’s willing to take the risk, shouldn’t we?
Journey.
It’s a word that probably means a lot of different things to each one of us.
Some of you have immediately thought of the rock band that brought us hits like “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Some of you may be thinking “ROAD TRIP!” or something like that. Maybe it’s things like Lord of the Rings that come to mind-overcoming impossible odds on a trek to a far-off land to reach the goal at the end.
Maybe you think immediately of the fact that we’re all on a journey of some sort. To you, “journey” is somewhat synonymous with “living”-with being alive.
And still, for others, our mission to “journey with the people of Rutland” will be a quick association.
(How many of you still have “Don’t Stop Believin’” stuck in your head? How many of you probably won’t hear another word that’s said this morning because of it? Don’t worry-it’s stuck in my head, too)
Regardless of what runs through your head when you hear the word “journey”, I think it’s safe to assume that all of us have found ourselves on a journey of some kind at one point or another in our lives. It’s kinda what life’s about, isn’t it? It’s a journey, growth, change, shaping, discipleship…
…where we end up is never the same as where we started.
For me, my journeys often look like this: (pic of stack of books)…on this particular pile, there should be about six or seven more books-but I don’t own them, so I couldn’t add them to the pile… For you, your journeys may look different. God may lead you on a journey through music (stack of cd’s), nature (stack of pinecones), or even through other people (stack of people). It may be that it doesn’t take any really defined medium, but rather comes at you from all areas of life. However it looks, though, one thing’s for certain:
God doesn’t call us to stay put where we are and never change. He doesn’t call us to a life of spiritual and emotional dwarfism-a life where we don’t grow.
Instead, he calls us to constant change and growth-to discipleship… to become more and more like Jesus Christ with every passing day. It’s a process-a journey… but he’s with us every step of the way.
Now, what kinda sparked the message this morning is something that feels (right now) like the culmination of a particular part of my journey-something that God’s really been whacking me over the head with lately…but really, if I’m honest and look at that stack of books (pic of books), it’s been a journey that started at least 7 years ago, with seeds that had been planted long before that.
What this particular part boils down to is this: (and I believe that every Christ-follower needs to wrestle with this at one level or another)
It is one thing to say “God, break my heart for the things that break yours”. It’s another thing to allow him to do it, and then go out and do something about it.
It’s one thing for us to stand here on a Sunday morning and sing songs like we just sang, to pray that God will provide opportunities to meet with the people of our community wherever they’re at, to talk about how we can best serve those in need, to ask God to bring us closer to him and make us more like Christ…
But it’s quite another to allow him to do it…
And still another to respond to that by doing something about it…
John Burke, in his book “No Perfect People Allowed”, states that “the postmodern mind thinks: ‘you say this is the truth…but what does this truth of yours produce in a life?’”
Our culture is waiting and watching to see if our words are backed up by our attitudes and actions.
Our God is calling us to back up our words with our attitude and actions.
We need to ask ourselves: are we backing up our words by our attitudes and actions?
What does this truth of ours; this gospel-this good news-produce in our lives?
Burke continues by saying: “It is not the visible, but the invisible that needs attention. It’s not candles, but community, not art, but attitude, not liturgy, but love that makes a difference in our broken world”.
It’s about what we’ve allowed God to teach us and grow in us. It’s not ultimately about anything that we can do or create on our own.
We spent our advent season here talking about the injustice and violence that we see in the world around us-everything from the injustice we see in straight-out war to the injustice found in the way corporations treat their employees, the way certain materials are acquired, and way we handle the decisions of what we buy on a day-to-day basis. We talked a lot about social justice and how Jesus Christ might handle Christmas shopping if he were here today.
What we need to realize is that all of that ties in with this. This injustice and social breakdown that we talked about-that we see in our culture-this breaks God’s heart.
Throughout scripture, God continually calls his people on the carpet regarding the injustice that he sees in creation. We can see it particularly in the prophets, which are basically most of the books in the Old Testament found after the Psalms.
They’re books written by men who had been called by God to speak out to the people of Israel about the wrong things they had been doing. All throughout the beginning of the Old Testament, we see God laying out his laws for his people-telling them what it means and looks like to live a life pursuing him. By living the way that God laid out for them, the Israelites would be blessed.
However, God tells them in no uncertain terms that if they turn away from him and disobey, there will be consequences. When they DO turn away, the Israelites are invaded by other nations, and carried off into captivity. Most of the prophets were sent to speak to the Israelites about how they could right the wrongs they had done and be restored to their land and homes.
What’s interesting to see, though, is that most of the prophet’s warnings center not around a long list of do’s and don’ts, but around a couple key topics: proper worship, and social injustice. God says very clearly that the two of these are tied together, and that they are the important things to him-the key elements in Israel putting themselves right with him.
I’m going to use part of a chapter from Isaiah as an example-in many ways, it sums up what most of the prophets are talking about (I’d encourage you to read through the prophets sometime… it’s a very interesting collection of books, and really gives you a neat insight into the heart of God the Father.) You might find it familiar, because Ron actually used some of these verses throughout our advent season leading up to Christmas here.
Isaiah 58
True Fasting (or True Worship)
1 “Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
2 For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.
3 ‘Why have we fasted (worshipped),’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ “Yet on the day of your fasting (worship), you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
4 Your fasting (worship) ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast (worship) as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is this the kind of fast (worship) I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call (worship)a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting (worship) I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Reading through this again, as I wrote this message, I was struck with how much this fits for this morning. Look at what God says in verses 2, 9, 10, and 11:
…For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right & has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions & seem eager for God to come near them…
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger & malicious talk, & if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry & satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then…the LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs…& will strengthen your frame. You will be like… a spring whose waters never fail.
Basically, God is telling Israel, “You come to me asking to be right with me… asking to be like me…but you don’t change. However, if you DO come to me, and you DO mean it, then I will bless you.”
God is saying to Israel the same thing he’s been whacking me over the head with lately, the same thing I’ve been learning on this journey so far, the same thing that I think he wants to say to each of us this morning:
It’s one thing to say “God, break my heart for the things that break yours”. It’s another thing entirely to allow him to do it, and then go and do something about it.
It’s one thing to say you’re eager to come near to God… eager to learn from him and know his ways… but are you ready and willing for him to actually do it? And even more than that… are you ready and willing to put it into action?
What God’s calling Israel on here is their tendency to say “God, break my heart for the things that break yours” with their mouths, while with their actions, they’re saying “but leave me here, comfortably, where I don’t have to get my hands dirty or do anything that I don’t really feel like doing”.
Unfortunately, the same rings true for far too many of us at far too many times in our lives. I know if I’m really honest, I have been guilty of the same thing more times than I can count. Sure, I try to assuage my conscience by telling myself that I help out here and there… “Oh, I bought that one homeless guy some lunch”, or something like that… but if I’m really real about it, some of those times, I’m simply doing it because I know it’s the right thing-not because I actually care about it…
…not because my heart is truly broken for the things that break God’s…
…not because my will and desires are in line with his.
See, we can have all the knowledge in the world… we can KNOW everything… but if we don’t do anything with that knowledge… if it doesn’t take root in our lives and make a tangible, practical difference, what good is it? If we don’t MEAN the things we say and do…aren’t they just a waste of time and breath?
I think of when I was growing up and my siblings and I would get in a fight with each other. We’d get all heated and probably end up yelling and screaming at each other, and when Mom and Dad stepped in to break it all up, they’d sit us down and talk us through it and then ask us to apologize. Often, one of us wouldn’t be ready to apologize, but would anyway, simply because it was the “right thing to do”. Mom and Dad were always quick to catch on to this, and tell whoever it was that they needed to mean it-because if they didn’t mean it, it was an empty word-an empty action.
Think about how many times in your own life you’ve “apologized” emptily? Like I said earlier, our attitudes and actions are extremely important. Not only are they what the world sees and defines us on the basis of-they’re what God sees and weeps or rejoices with.
I was trying to think of a personal example to share from my own life, and realized a couple weeks back that I had one staring me in the face. Some of you will remember back in September or so when Elizabeth (our service worship coordinator) was looking for team leaders to head up the projects for this year. I remember receiving the email and figuring that I’d just stay as a “floater”-just be stuck wherever I was needed on any given morning, like I always had been. I was happy with my decision.
However, it seems that God had different plans. About a month later, I was at a meeting, where Elizabeth was talking about how many team leaders she had found, and basically saying that there was a possibility that we’d be looking into cutting or changing one or two of our normal projects because there hadn’t been any response in those areas… one of those projects was Sunpointe-a senior’s facility where we go and sing hymns with two wards of tenants who suffer from various stages of dementia.
She told us all in the meeting that if she didn’t have someone soon, there was a very real possibility that we might not go to Sunpointe as often, or maybe not at all, which of course, would have been a sad thing for the people living there.
The next week I ended up going to Sunpointe on the Service Sunday, because that’s where they needed me. I had been on several weeks previously, so it wasn’t a new thing for me… but it was an uncomfortable thing.
For me, senior’s facilities are a hard place to hang out. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I can feel my own mortality, or the fact that the people are all just really old… but I’m NOT comfortable there. In fact, if it really boiled down to it, this would have been the one project that I would have asked to be switched from… except that they needed someone that morning.
SO I took my guitar and some chord charts and went with the group to Sunpointe. While we were there, the residents engaged so wholeheartedly in the singing-more so than I had ever seen before.
As I looked around the circle in the one ward, where people are SO advanced in their illness that they can’t talk to you anymore, I saw faces lighting up at the songs we were singing. I saw tears of joy as certain verses were sung. I heard people trying with all their strength to sing along, even though they usually don’t or can’t make much sound at all…and God whacked me.
Sometimes I think we set ourselves up in such a place that the only way God CAN break our hearts is by whacking us. And it kinda hurts to be convicted like that, but it’s good… as long as we learn from it.
As I sat there, I realized, and heard God quite clearly telling me “Sam, these people NEED this.” So I kept playing and tried to ignore it. But God doesn’t give up easily. He kept dogging me with the thought that “Sam, these people need this”… until I began to respond to it.
SO I’m sitting here, playing and singing these hymns, and all the while, this exchange is going on in my head:
“Sam, these people need this.”
“But God, I don’t even like it here”
“But Sam, these people need this”
“God, you know I’m not comfortable in this place”
“Sam, it doesn’t matter. These people need this, and I want you to do it”
“Oh. Shoot. Okay. I guess.”
I thought that was the end of the conversation… but then the kicker came…
“Oh, and Sam? I want you to do it cheerfully”
Busted.
It was in that week that I realized that these people at Sunpointe, some of whom are literally just waiting to die…these people break God’s heart. And God wanted mine to be broken for them as well. He wanted me to care about them. He wanted me to step beyond the things that I was comfortable with, and into something that would grow and challenge and stretch me…to become more like him.
Once I was willing to allow God to break my heart like that-to tear down the box that I had allowed myself to operate in for so long…it’s been an awesome experience going to Sunpointe. It’s actually fun now-because I see these people differently. I see their situation differently. And suddenly my own comfort or discomfort doesn’t really matter anymore.
That’s ultimately what it’s all about.
Allowing God to break our hearts for the things that break his is ultimately about becoming more like Christ. It’s about God stripping away piece by piece the things in our lives that we shut ourselves away from, and replacing them piece by piece with the things that he desires for us to open ourselves to.
God may not be calling you to go sing at Sunpointe. But take a serious look at your life. What is your Sunpointe?
What is the thing that God has placed in front of you that he’s asking your heart to be broken for?
Is it a next door neighbour?
A friend down the street?
That organization across town that is struggling to make ends meet, but plays a key role in our community?
That homeless guy you see every day on your way to work?
The single mom that works in the office alongside you?
What is your Sunpointe?
Where is God asking to break your heart for the things that break his?
I think too often we’re not willing to see past our discomfort. We want things to be neat, tidy, and clean. But that’s not the point. God may be calling you to something that is not comfortable for you… Sunpointe wasn’t comfortable for me, either. Following Christ is (and should be) messy. Look at Christ…his ministry was far from neat and tidy. He encountered opposition at every turn, hung out with the people that society didn’t want, and in the end, was killed for it all. That’s pretty messy if you ask me.
But are we willing to look past the dirt and the grime and see the gems that are hidden underneath? Are we willing to look past the mud and see the masterpiece? Under these dirty, messy situations are people that God is desperately in love with. People that he took the time and effort to create, just like you and me. Works of art-works of his hand. Beautiful reflections of who he is…if we’re willing to allow ourselves to be broken and see past our own boxes and preconceived notions.
If God’s willing to take the risk, shouldn’t we?