Reflections ...

Last night reading Elie Wiesel's book "The Town Beyond the Wall" I encountered the following prayer: "Oh God, be with me when I have need of you, but above all do not leave me when I deny you..."

It struck me as a remarkably apt prayer ... Too often we forget, or even deny God in the very moments when we need God's Grace and Presence and Strength the most ...

As I read the prayer I began to think about the Biblical character of Job, not as a religious figure, but as an ordinary person who too many of us can relate to personally ...

Job, sitting outside the city gates in sackcloth and ashes, scratching his skin disorder with the shard of a broken pot, was being encouraged by his friends and family to roll over and die, to give up, to move on, to abandon the lest vestiges of his faith, and to curse God and DIE ... Beyond being the quintessential model for ministry in the modern church, Job offers us a touch of reality in the midst of our life's journey ...

Things had gone bad - very very very bad for Job. His loses kept mounting, he felt abandoned and alone, his friends came not to comfort him, but to encourage him to just give up once and for all ... but the book ends with God breaking through and saying "Job ... this is the way the world is ..." and Like Lord Krishna appearing before Arjuna in the midst of the Battle field in the Hindu Holy Text ... God spells it ALL out for his awestruck follower ...

Today as I considered Job, I realized that over the last two year over and over I have counted loss after loss after loss ... people I thought friends have turned ... people I respected have abandoned me ... and my life slowly began a downward spiral ... conflicts got out of hand ... I over reacted ... cries for help went unheeded ... and the spiral intensified and continued ...

Unlike Job, I am not simply a passive and blameless observer of the events unfolding around me ... I am too often my own worst enemy. (I won't blame ADD, but understanding ADD better has helped me understand the elusive WHY? in many cases ...I'm still to blame for MY mistakes and mis-steps, but I better understand how to avoid them in the future ...)

But like Job, I have found myself in a place where I have felt abandoned, alone, and abused ... some of it has been the hypersensitivity of ADD and the inability to see what was really happening around me ... but some of it has been the simple reality of the journey I've walked ... I've heard many of the things people have said ... I've read too many hate-filled comments left anonymously on my blog ... I know what has been spread about me in town ... BUT, even in that ... even when things were at their darkest ... the glimmer of faith guided me forward ...

The funny thing for me, in a sad way, is simply this ... many people believe I am arrogant, that I believe that I am always right, that I have a 'I don't give a damned' approach to things, and that nothing they say ever bothers me ... the truth is THEY ARE WRONG ON ALL COUNTS!!!

I am far from arrogant ... I seldom believe I am right, but I do reflect on things rapidly and offer my thoughts in a way that is too often viewed as aggressive ... I may carry a facade of not giving a damned, but deep down, down where very few people have been allowed to glimpse, I am left devestated and wrecked ... and to say that nothing ever bothers me is a complete and utter fallacy ... One of the traits of ADD is hypersensitivity ... I've got it in a big way ... my facade has been effective ...

Far from crafting a pity party here, I instead have come in recent weeks, to realize the places in my life that required, and even demanded change ... It hasn't been easy, but it has been a rewarding journey ...

Job stands as an example to me, and to all of us who are in places of struggle, transition, uncertainty and even pain ... in this moment when it may seem bleak - we are firmly in the hands of God ... and the glimmer of faith will see us through ...

It's all about patience ... time ... and caring for and about ourselves, because at the end of the day the ONLY sanctuary we possess is the one we live within ... Job taught us that much ... the question is whether we're willing to take the time to enter fully that sanctuary and spend time there on our way to wholeness ??

Thankfully, where ever we go God will NOT abandon us ... Job reminds us of that if we have the courage to listen ...