Dangling

 

 

 

It's not going to end well

 

This graceless flailing about in mid-air

 

But I, after all, begged to fall

 

So when I go splat

 

Let that be that.

 

I have no one to blame but myself.

 

 

 

Then again, I could blame you.

 

Can I?  Please?

 

I think that might warm the cockles of my heart ---

 

Because I never knew it would be so bitter and cold up here

and so far down below.

--- Darrell Arnold

Depression (Psalm 88)

I asked the patient if she was anxious about her upcoming operation.  “No”, she replied.  “I never worry.   Don’t you know that worry is a slap to the face of God.”  I agreed in small measure, but I found it odd that “patient anxiety” was the reason the nurse had requested a chaplain in the first place.   As we conversed and later held hands to pray, I realized this tough-taking lady perceived any admission of weakness, especially spiritual weakness, as a betrayal of her faith.

The woman seemed to be saying, “I am impervious to pain because I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.”  I don’t doubt that faith helps her embrace life in its uncertainty.   She seemed to have a time-weathered temperament, and I know her generation is made of sterner stuff than mine, but something about this woman’s chirpy defensiveness made me question if she really believed she could entrust herself --- her real human fear --- to God.   

I don’t know.  I do know that emotional honesty makes us vulnerable in ways that can be uncomfortable --- not to mention exploited by others.  The reality of the human struggle, fear and doubt and loneliness, proves common to us all.  That’s why I love the psalms.   I appreciate the openness with which King David and others poured out their heart to God.

Buckle up and pull down that safety bar because the psalms are a roller-coaster ride through the gamut of human emotion --- joy and sorrow, spiritual desire and despair.  God’s most beautiful poetry is written upon the wounds of human flesh.

We have all been wounded, bruised by life, in one way or another.  And no doubt we’ve crushed the spirit of some fellow sojourner, with malice aforethought or not. 

 

 

 

 

Psalm 88 is a song I never wish to sing.  In fact, upon my first, second, even third reading of the thing I had to ask, “Why in the world is this poem even in the Bible?”  Does it bring me comfort?  No.  Does it make my spirit soar with intimations of God's goodness?  No.  Psalm 88 is the darkest, loneliest cry you’ll find in the Hebrew Scriptures. The words flow from a place of pain that only a few will be able to relate to.

Now I’m no stranger to worry or doubt, but when push comes to shove I’m fairly chirpy in my belief that “the sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow” they’ll be a heaviness hanging over your soul that you can’t shake or bear one day more.   Take it away.  Take me away.   I can’t go on, and I don’t want to.

Psalm 88 is an unrelenting, discomfortingly honest psalm about depression and despair.  There is no happy --- praise God and pass the apple pie --- ending.  We want --- we demand --- our happy endings.  But sometimes we do not get them --- not in this life.  We pray, we plea, we cajole, we beg to hear the comforting voice of God --- and nothing echoes in the ear but silence.

All the other psalms, even psalms of lamentation and grief, end with the author’s eye firmly focused upon God, or evidence of God's faithfulness.   Not Psalm 88.  Psalm 88 pretty much concludes with the phrase, “Hello darkness my old friend, you’ve come to haunt me once again.”

Do we dare read it?   And why is Psalm 88, now officially my most disliked section of Scripture, even in the Bible?   Did some faithless, sad-sack slip it in before the censors of all things encouraging could snip it out?  I don’t know.  Sometimes in life that’s the best you get --- hard ground upon which true spirituality must blossom. Sometimes we must be brave, stand tall, and find God in the absence of God. 

PSALM 88


A song.  A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

 1 LORD, you are the God who saves me;

   day and night I cry out to you.

2 May my prayer come before you;

   turn your ear to my cry.

 3 I am overwhelmed with troubles

   and my life draws near to death.

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;

   I am like one without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead,

   like the slain who lie in the grave,

whom you remember no more,

   who are cut off from your care.

 6 You have put me in the lowest pit,

   in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;

   you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

8 You have taken from me my closest friends

   and have made me repulsive to them.

I am confined and cannot escape;

 9 my eyes are dim with grief.

   I call to you, LORD, every day;

   I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?

   Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

11 Is your love declared in the grave,

   your faithfulness in Destruction?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,

   or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

 13 But I cry to you for help, LORD;

   in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14 Why, LORD, do you reject me

   and hide your face from me?

 15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;

   I have borne your terrors and am in despair.

16 Your wrath has swept over me;

   your terrors have destroyed me.

17 All day long they surround me like a flood;

   they have completely engulfed me.

18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—

   darkness is my closest friend.

It’s just like they used to sing on Hee-Haw --- “Gloom, despair and agony on me.  Deep, dark depression excessive misery.  If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.  Gloom, despair and agony on me." So, why IS this psalm included in Scripture?


Why is the author of Psalm 88 so wounded?  It’s not like he’s blaming God really, he’s just stating the facts, ma’am. 

 

Some would say that Psalm 88 gives us an example not to follow.  The man’s affliction, some sort of sickness experienced since childhood, the loss of his friends, his obsession with death, especially the pit or the underworld, literally “Sheol”, a gloomy afterlife reminiscent of the New Testament’s version of hell, must have resulted from sin in Heman’s life.  There is no despair like the despair of someone out of sync with the will of God.   If Heman were a true believer then he would end his lament by acknowledging the faithfulness of God.  Bottom line:  Heman’s darkness is the consequence of rejecting the light. 

OK.  I think such a judgment is conditioned by a craven need to always assign a cause to an effect, and a dangerous desire to squeeze all the scary mystery right out of life because we want to control God and others.  I also think it’s wrong. 

Other’s would say that we really shouldn’t try to understand this psalm apart from the rest of Scripture, particularly the New Testament.  You must read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament.  Christians understand that the only reason the hell of that first Good Friday can be called “good” is because of the triumph of Sunday, resurrection day. 

The reality of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection give redemptive value to suffering, those light and momentary trials as well as what may seem like years of agony.  Ultimately, every happy, horrible, or heinous situation, as well as every Christian sermon comes down to whether the gospel is true --- or not.  You know, as in “we are convinced (are you?) that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I wouldn’t disagree with Paul, but I don’t think Psalm 88 can only be understand in the light of the gospel, and I don’t think that’s why it’s in the book.  The knowledge of our future hope does not take away the reality of our present pain.  And there’s something about your present pain in and of itself that is spiritual, even redemptive, in nature. 

By way of application, we really need to be careful before we rush in to slap the happy face of God’s love on the forehead of someone in physical or mental anguish.   Chirpy platitudes --- no matter how true --- ring hollow if the bearer of that good news isn’t willing to enter the fire of the other’s suffering. Don’t tell him what his illness means, don’t presume to understand God’s will in a matter than might be perfectly clear to you but makes no sense to her at all --- until you yourself have learned what it like to crawl on your knees through the jagged shards of a shattered world.   

Thankfully, Jesus did just that.  That’s why a few scholars view this psalm as Messianic in nature.  In other words, like Psalm 22, elements of this poem capture the spiritual torment Jesus, the man from Nazareth, endured when he was crushed by the weight of human sin.  

 Psalm 88 vividly describes feelings of despair and unjust condemnation.   Psalm 88 also vividly conveys the essence of that horrible, horrible cry Jesus uttered from the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”   Certainly we can find comfort in the fact that there is no experience common to human-kind, emotional or otherwise, to which Jesus could not relate.   But Psalm 88 is seldom, if ever, listed among the Messianic Psalms.   And I don’t think that’s why it’s in the book.

What is it?  Why can’t we stand to have our spiritual truths end on a minor chord?  We just have to interpret this bleak, little psalm in a way that makes sense to us.  We have to redeem, rewrite, re-configure the song to match our expectations.  We demand our happy ending.  But sometimes people don’t get it or can’t see through the reality of their present experience to perceive it.  So, why can’t we just let this psalm be what it is?

OK.  What is it?  Well, on one level it’s an encouragement to anyone who has ever battled depression.  You might think depression is a spiritual or emotional issue --- and it can be --- but it’s also physiologically and chemically based.  For the person going through clinical depression it can be an absolute hell on earth. In many ways, this confession reads like that of a man struggling with depression.

Obviously, the ancient Israelites didn’t have an understanding of depression as disease, like we do.  And yet the Hebrew title of this psalm, “according to mahalath leannoth” apparently means something like “concerning afflictive sickness”   Someone's fallen and can’t get up.  He’s in a hole and he doesn’t know how to crawl out.  She knows and believes enough to cry out to God, but she literally can’t discern anything but her own internal alienation.  While all the other Christians are praising God at the pep rally for Jesus down the street, all she/he can muster is a “Hello darkness my old friend, you’ve come to haunt me once again.”

I’ve never personally struggled with depression.  I’m kind of unipolar --- as in mostly manic – and I’m seldom down for too long. I also tend to be impatience with folks I might perceive as killjoys.   Wake up and smell the coffee.  God is good.  It’s a beautiful Sunday in November.  The air is brisk.  The sun will come out tomorrow – but not always and not for everyone. 

Like the television commercial says, “Where does depression hurt?  Everywhere."  "And who does depression hurt?  Everyone.”  You see, the psalms speak to every condition of the human experience, and I think that someone dealing with depression might find a lot of comfort in the fact that at least one of the biblical writers --- gets it. 

Maybe you’re old school and think depression is a spiritual problem.  Maybe you’re new school and think it can be cured with a pill.  The fact remains it is what it is.  Which brings me to the real reason I think Psalm 88 is included in the canon of Scripture --- because it is what it is --- a reminder that life doesn’t always turn out like we thought it would --- that difficult problems don’t always respond to easy answers --- that our prayers often seem to go unanswered, and that whether you’re clinically depressed or not --- whether we know better in our head or not, our practical experience of life’s pain can trump our theology so that we break under the weight of what we can no longer carry.

 

God will never give you more than you can bear.  I suppose so.  Then again, maybe you should ask the author of this psalm.

I'm actually glad that Psalm 88 has been included in the Scripture.  Please understand this is not I’m having a bad day at work kind of psalm.  This is not I’m scared to go to the doctor psalm, but I know God will watch over me.  This is I’m not sure of anything right now psalm. This is a psalm for the persecuted and alienated --- the lonely and all alone.

 In fact, some modern day Jewish commentators call it "The Psalm of the Holocaust".   Because there are some horrors in life that just really don’t make sense and to try and tidy-it-all- up theologically insults common sense as well as God. Some cuts are too deep, some wounds too infected from which to recover. 

And in our rush to make it all right, to take away the sting, we often shut the door on the work, the quiet, indiscernible, holy work God wants to do within our soul.   

There are moments in our lives when the hell of good Friday feels like the hell of an entire bad decade, because we don’t know that Sunday’s coming, we can’t see (because of our own misdeeds, or someone else’s misdeeds --- or that fact that things just are what they are) --- and we don’t know what it is we’re supposed to do --- except maybe pray.

Ultimately,  I think Psalm 88 is included in the Hebrew Scripture because Psalm 88 is included in the Hebrew Scripture.  What? What I mean is that even though by all biblical norms the psalmist's faith seems small, his perspective seems short-sighted, his confidence in God seems almost non-existent, and he ends his plea in a darker place than where he started --- he still knows and believes enough to direct his fears and worries and doubts towards God.



Someone has said I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.  Sometimes you simply have to endure the darkness.  Look it’s a beautiful Sunday morning in November.  God is good, and I am glad to be alive.  I trust you are as well.  Besides, the sun will come out tomorrow.  Then again, maybe not. 

I’m glad Psalm 88 is in the songbook.  It’s possible during some truly dark season of life, this gloomy little ode might become your personal favorite.  I hope not.  I hope and trust that you will never experience the equivalent of a personal or corporate holocaust, the kind of horror, emotional or concrete, conveyed in Psalm 88.

But if we do, we can at the very least take that pain, that confusion, all of our wounded-ness to God, and maybe we can even resist the need to rah-rah for Jesus or to numb away the hurt with at that particular moment meaningless platitude, but instead we can embrace the pain and listen to the silence , silence that echoes loud with the absence of God, because by doing so we might discover our souls, the connection we share with our fellow man, and the preciousness of genuine faith. 

     

         

     

 

The Pastor's Apocalypse

(I wrote the following story as an exercise in theological reflection.  I didn't really know how else to make sense of Isaiah 24 - 27.)

Journal Entry:  March 4^th, 2018

          I had another dream last night.  Or at least I think it was a dream.  I can’t tell anymore.  

 My life is like that short-lived television series from back in 2012, you know, that program where the main character existed in one reality, then fell asleep, only to wake up in another world altogether?  He bounced back and forth between his two worlds until he couldn’t tell whether he was dreaming or awake.  I feel like that every day now.

  Some days my sky is blue and the rain makes the flowers grow.  Other days smoke obscures the sun and rain poisons the crops.  Sometimes life is like a poem, truer and finer than the worst sort of prose that can pass for religion, and my small congregation here in the mountains of North Carolina hungers to understand the metaphors and the images that help us cope with life.  Other days I seem trapped in one of those “Left Behind” end-of-the-world-type-novels I once likened to theological Cheese-Whiz.  In my dream last night, I would have gladly drunk Cheese-Whiz from out of the can --- if I could have found any.

You see, I was walking through the glass-strewn aisles of our local Wynn Dixie.  The store had been looted.  The shelves were empty.  I had to step over several dead bodies, bloated by the endless summer, in my search for FOOD.  I was so hungry, so desperately hungry.  Finally, I found a nearly empty jar of Peanut Butter near the Pharmacy Department.  A rancid finger-full of "Jiffy" made me giddy, and I almost forgot that the world (at least as I had known it) had ended.  Even little Lenior, North Carolina had been laid waste.  The whole earth lay devastated. By God?  By man?  By sin?  I didn’t know.  And I was too hungry to care.

Though I do remember hoping within my non-dream-like dream that my family was OK, that they had made it safely to Theresa’s parent’s log cabin up in Maine, that they were eating wild blueberries and drinking cow’s milk, that those mountainous clouds of radiation would blow into the Pacific and that the sweet, fresh air of the Pine Tree State would stay sweet and fresh, and that cousin John’s store house of artillery would keep the marauding gangs at bay.  In my nightmarish apocalyptic world Theresa and our daughter, Kate, headed north in December of 2017, and I’d like to think --- I need to think --- they made it across the border before the wars began.

    But then I woke up this morning --- and my wife was lying right beside me in our own bed.  Asleep.  And alive. The cancer scare of 2015 has passed, and even though the smash-up on I-26 still feels fresh --- too fresh to go there.  I can’t go there.   I almost prefer the nightmares to my reality.  At least in that world I can still believe that Kate is alive, and I don’t have to stand behind any pulpit proclaiming the goodness and glory of a God who has clearly abandoned ----

 OK.  I don’t believe that.  It’s just so difficult to know what to believe or who to hold onto in these terrible days --- or nights.   And that’s why last night’s dream, if it were a dream, felt so different.

Anyway, I walked out of Wynn Dixie and headed towards Walgren’s.  I once found some aspirin and a bottle of Pediolyte in their dumpster.  You know, sometimes I am at peace with the hunger and the thirst --- the waste, the plunder, the curse, the ruined cities lying desolate, the entrance to every house barred shut.  I guess the prophet Isaiah told it true.  Amen and Amen.  But I don’t care anymore.   I live only to eat.  I pray only to die.

  I knew on some level that I am witnessing God’s judgment upon human rebellion, and I wonder if all those other preachers were right --- if God has raptured God's holy people?  If such is true I am glad for Theresa and Kate, but I am not broken by this devastation.  I don’t know if I can or if I even wish to join with the ends of the earth to sing, “Glory to the Righteous One.”  Where are the ends of the earth, anyway?

Sometimes I don’t see God’s glory in either of my realities.  I can’t apprehend God's righteousness.  I did see myself in my dream, if it was a dream --- in a broken mirror at Walgrens.   Boy, I looked like a bag-of-bones.  I also caught a glimpse of a man, kind of scruffy, watching me as I counted my ribs.

  “Hey, Hey --- who are you?” I yelled. 

 I thought for sure he would run away. He didn’t.  Strange.  I hadn’t seen another human being for days.  Stranger still, the man walked over and handed me a flyer. 

The pamphlet read, “You are Cordially Invited to The Feast of Fat Things”. “What?” I laughed.  “Buddy, what the heck is this? Is this some sort of joke?”  But Buddy was gone. 

"You are Cordially Invited to The Feast of Fat Things.   When:  Now.  Where:  In Sue Mayberry’s basement.  Come one, come all and partake freely of wine on the lees and of fat things full of marrow."  I thought about throwing this odd invitation away, but wine on the lees sounded good to me --- because I was really thirsty and desperate to numb my pain.  But what pray tell is wine on the lees?

 It rang a bell within.  I thought it might be a biblical phrase.  In fact, the phrase originated from the prophet Isaiah. I preached a sermon series on Isaiah --- just before the Great Tsunami hit the east coast in May of 2014.

 If I remembered correctly wine on the lees is undiluted, unpolluted wine, wine in which the sediment has settled to the bottom --- as in the good, expensive stuff. And marrow --- the thought of eating bone marrow might have turned my stomach back in my vegetarian phase --- every gourmet chef to the ends of the earth (wherever that may be) knows that marrow is God’s butter.   And while I didn’t give a whit about God at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to devour a stick of butter like a Popsicle.    

And Sue Mayberry?  I knew Sue Mayberry.  Sue had pastored the only church in town that had actually opposed the war.  She was a liberal kook.  I suspect she thought I was a conservative crank.  Perhaps it was the other way around?  I couldn’t really remember.  I simply knew I didn’t relish the thought of feasting with Sue Mayberry.  But the gnawing in my stomach changed my mind.  So, in my dream that may not have been a dream I walked straight to Sue Mayberry’s burnt-out mountain cottage. No barbed wire on her windows.  I also discovered the front door was open, so I made a B-line for the basement. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

 A banquet table forty or fifty feet long, decked out with linen and fine china and tall-stemmed crystal goblets and fresh cut flowers and fat things like buttered popcorn and chicken gizzards fried with pancetta and cookie dough ice cream and bottle after bottle of Pinot Noir filled the room.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Seriously, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  I think it was some sort of mirage within my dream that might not have been a dream because when I rubbed my eyes the food and the drink disappeared, and all I saw were twenty or so shabby looking folks standing in a circle singing, “Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his Word.”  At first, when I thought I heard sirloin spitting on the grill, I literally reckoned I had died and gone to heaven. Obviously, I had wandered into hell instead.

“Where is the food?” I hollered.  "You invited me to a feast.  I want my wine.  And I don’t want any of that watered-down Presbyterian stuff either. I want me some Episcopalian wine, and I want it now.”  But the small group of tattered misfits just kept on holding hands and singing. 

“Feeding on the husks around us,

 Till our strength was almost gone,

 Longed our souls for something better,

 Only still to hunger on.”

“Stop it”, I screamed.  And they did.  Everyone stopped and looked at me.  Ed Jones from the AME Zion Church.  Patricia Kelly from that Missionary Baptist lot.  A few elderly nuns.  And even Joseph Rivers, who was the most crooked small town politician I had ever known, was there.  I guess once the bombs started dropping he found Jesus. How convenient.

Then, I heard a high pitched voice.

"Look, everyone, it’s Brother Tim Adams.  Welcome."

 "Oh, Heavens",  I thought.   It was insufferable Sue herself.

" I’m so glad you came.  Join us.  Please."

"No thank you.  I came for the food."

"Food?  I’m afraid we don’t have much food, but you’re welcome to share in what we have."

"What about the Feast of Fat Things?" I demanded.

"Oh, that’s a reference to a passage of Scripture found in Isaiah 25: 6 - 9. Right in the middle of this horrible description of worldwide devastation the prophet says:

“On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,

a banquet of aged wine—

   the best of meats and the finest of wines.

 On this mountain he will destroy

   the shroud that enfolds all peoples,

the sheet that covers all nations;

  he will swallow up death forever.

The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears

   from all faces;

he will remove his people’s disgrace

   from all the earth.

            The LORD has spoken.

  In that day they will say,

   'Surely this is our God;

   we trusted in him, and he saved us.

This is the LORD, we trusted in him;

   let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.'”

OK. I was deeply, deeply offended that this woman dared to preach to me. 

"Sue", I said in a polite but clipped tone, “I preached a very fine series on Isaiah at Shady Grove Presbyterian back in 2014, and I don’t need you to tell me what the prophet was seeking to convey."  Actually, I did --- but I was too proud to ask.

That didn’t stop Sue from volunteering. 

"So then, you must see that the mountain of the LORD is Mount Zion and that Mount Zion is the Church of Jesus Christ!  The psalmist wrote in Psalm 132: 13: 

 

'For the LORD has chosen Zion,

he has desired it for his dwelling, saying,

This is my resting place for ever and ever;

here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it.

I will bless her with abundant provisions;

and her poor I will satisfy with food.'

And in the New Testament the apostle Paul makes it clear that the church of our Lord Jesus Christ is that habitation, the very dwelling place of God through the Spirit.  We are the Ark of safety for those in need.  We are the ones called out to bless the world with the truth of God in Christ. Isn’t it wonderful, Tim?"

“No, Sue. It’s not wonderful”, I countered.  "The world is going to hell in a hand-basket.  In case you haven’t noticed.  We’re living through a nuclear holocaust.   I don’t know if my wife and daughter are alive.  And I’m hungry, Sue.  I’m really hungry."

"I’m sorry.  I know it’s hard.  My son lives --- lived --- in Los Angeles --- or what used to be Los Angeles. It’s hard for us all, Tim.  But all we have to hold on to right now is each other."

I wanted to say something snarky. But my head hurt.

 

"Are we dead, Sue?" I asked.

 

"I don’t think so."

"Is this heaven?"

"Not quite."

"Has everyone else been raptured? Have we been left behind?"

"I hope not",  Sue smiled.

 

"And don’t a lot of people take those promises, like the one you read from Isaiah, literally?  I mean, I didn’t go to the hoity-toity seminary you attended, but doesn’t that passage refer to Christ’s literal thousand year reign on earth --- or better yet to the New Heaven and the New Earth that God will establish at the end of the age when we’ll get to eat real food at a real table with a real resurrected Savior?  I was kind of counting on some real food --- Beaujolais, filet mignon, hot buttered rolls.  You get the picture."

"I get the picture.  I love the picture, Tim.  I live for that picture.  So, come LORD Jesus, come.  I can‘t wait.  But I also know that in the good times and the bad times --- even these worst of times --- the Church has been commissioned to show the world that the richness of God’s blessings, all the good things of God, have been revealed through Jesus.  I believe the very heart of Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus came the first time.  And I believe his prophecy continues to be fulfilled through his Church.   We’re spiritually alive right now Tim, and until that day when the death shroud wrapped around this world is fully and finally ripped away and the power of our Savior’s resurrection is revealed the best we can do is keep the Feast."

"What feast?  I don’t want to feast on a bunch of hymns with the likes of you.  Mayor Rivers is the most corrupt man I’ve ever known.  Ms. Kelly over there has slept with half the school board, and you --- you’re a squeaky-voiced woman educated beyond all sense --- and you’re not fit to teach the Holy Scripture much less lecture me about what it means."

          "Tim, we’re all sinners --- saved by grace.  Come, let’s partake of the Feast together." 

          "What feast!?!"  I shouted.

         " Well, the feast of fellowship, the feast of love, the feast of forgiveness, the feast of unity, the feast of hope, the feast of reconciliation, the feast of our salvation, the feast of our holy communion with one another and God our Savior." 

          That’s when Sue stepped aside, and I finally saw the small card table, upon which sat a loaf of bread and a small cup of wine. 

          "This is Jesus’ body broken for us.  This is the new covenant in his blood poured out for us."  And on and on Sue Mayberry spoke those words I was once so familiar with speaking myself.  But I couldn’t stay.  I didn’t want to.  I needed to find real food.

         Yet as I headed up the stairs, I heard Sue recite the words of the ancient creed,

          “This is the day of resurrection.

          Let us be illumined by the feast.

          Let us embrace one another.

          Let us call brothers even those who hate us,

          And forgive all by the resurrection."

So, I sat down --- because I was tired --- and listened as the motley crew of Christ-followers from little Lenior, North Carolina sang:

“Well of water, ever springing,

 Bread of life so rich and free,

 Untold wealth that never faileth,

 My Redeemer is to me.

Hallelujah! we have found Him

 Whom our souls so long have craved!

 Jesus satisfies our longings,

 Through His blood we now are saved.”

And as I listened, I cried.  I couldn’t stop crying.  In fact, I woke up crying --- in my own  clean, crisp-sheeted bed. Theresa was awakened by my sobs as well.  “What’s wrong?" she asked.

"I’m angry", I answered.  "I’m so angry at God.  I’m so angry that our daughter is dead.  I’m so angry at the people in my life who have disappointed me."  My wife didn’t say anything.  She just wiped the tears from my eyes and gave me a good morning kiss.

Later, as I smelled the coffee and the bacon announcing breakfast, my wife yelled from the kitchen, “Tim, you better hurry up --- it’s almost time for church."

          I looked in the mirror to straighten my tie --- and replied, “Yeah, I know."