Time has stood still for the past few days on Lopez Island. A tragic accident occurred Sunday afternoon (http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090727/bc_Paul_Jaholkowsky_lopez_090727/20090727/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome) which sent a shock-wave of grief and horror through our island community, and through the victim’s hometown of Abbotsford, British Columbia.
It was hard enough hearing that the two teenagers in the vehicle were local islanders who I knew fairly well; even more gut-wrenching when I learned that the victim, Paul, was visiting the island for the weekend along with several other Canadians, two of whom are friends of mine from college. I was pleasantly surprised to see these two friends at my home church on Sunday and tried to arrange a hang-out time in the afternoon and offered to pick them up from their cabin on Lopez Sound Road, wher the accident occured. I almost drove down that road to find these friends at the time of the wreck because I hadn’t received a call from them.
It could just as easily have been me.
While I did not know Paul, the connection to both sides of the accident left me in a constant state of trying to place myself in the shoes of every person involved. The driver. The passenger.The family members. The friends. The family of bikers. The eye-witnesses. Each day I have tried to distract myself by thinking of other things but to no avail. Yet if I, who wasn’t even personally involved with the accident, am having this hard of a time processing the recent events, how much more difficult can it be for those who were involved and who are still processing?
The pain just does not make sense.
I find myself coming back to a book by Philip Yancey called “Where Is God When It Hurts?” which is aptly titled for times like these. The description on the back of the book reads as follows: “Philip Yancey reveals a God who is neither capricious nor unconcerned. Where Is God When It Hurts? will speak to those for whom life just sometimes doesn’t make sense. And it will help equip anyone who wants to reach out to someone in pain but just doesn’t know what to say.” I definitely fall into the latter description; this note is my attempt at reaching out to those affected by Sunday’s disaster.
I hope that the following excerpts will offer some glimpse of hope and/or perspective.
“What can God use to get our attention? What will convince human beings, we who started the rebellion, that creation is not running the way God intended?
“C.S. Lewis introduced the phrase ‘pain, the megaphone of God.’ ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains,’ he said; ‘it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’ The existence of suffering on this earth is, I believe, a scream to all of us that something is wrong. It halts us in our tracks and forces us to consider other values.
“It’s hard to believe the purpose of life is to feel good, when I see teenagers smashed on the freeway. If I try to escape towards hedonism, suffering and death lurk nearby, haunting me, reminding me of how hollow life would be if this world were all I’d ever know.
“Sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting, suffering is a ‘rumor of transcendence’ that the entire human condition is out of whack. Something is wrong with a life of war and violence and human tragedy. He who wants to be satisfied with this world, who wants to believe the only purpose of life is enjoyment, must go around with cotton in his ears, for the megaphone of death is a loud one.”
Yancey later transitions into describing how horrific suffering (such as that which resulted from Sunday’s accident) can be transformed into greatness, all through the mysterious workings of God.
“We rejoice not in the fact that we are suffering, but in our confidence that the pain can be transformed. The value lies not in the pain itself, but in what we can make of it. The pain is not meaningless, and therefore we rejoice in the object of our faith, a God who can effect that transformation.
“My anger about pain has melted mostly for one reason: I have come to know God. Knowing Him is worth all enduring. Where is God when it hurts? He has been there from the beginning, designing a pain system that, even in the midst of a fallen world, still bears the stamp of His genius and equips us for life on this planet. He transforms pain, using it to teach and strengthen us, if we allow it to turn us toward Him. He lets us cry out, like Job, in loud fits of anger against Him, blaming Him for a world we spoiled. He promises supernatural help to nourish the spirit, even if our physical suffering goes unrelieved. He has joined us. He has hurt and bled and cried and suffered. He has dignified for all time those who suffer, by sharing their pain. He is with us now, ministering to us through His Spirit and through members of His body who are commissioned to bear us up and relieve our suffering for the sake of the Head. Then, God will create for us a new, incredible world. And pain shall be no more.”
So what are we to do in the mean time? I only have one thing to cling to: faith. And faith, Yancey writes, “means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Lessons from Gram - R.I.P. [from May, '09]
Gram taught me a lot during the 14 years she lived in her little blue house on Lopez Island. Sometimes she taught me directly, and other times I simply observed.
My earliest memories come from her home: weekend cookouts on her old brick barbecue; Fourth of July celebrations in the back yard; endless discoveries of new forts and hang-outs along the beach. The list goes on.
Brett and Erica and I always rode our bikes the two-mile stretch from our house to hers, often with our visits unexpected. Yet we never put her out with our arrival. Gram kept a fully stocked cupboard of fruit-roll-ups and chips, which we would enjoy while she dipped Nutter Butter cookies in peanut butter. She taught us how to snack, and to enjoy our treats to the max. After the first time I saw her eat peanut butter by the spoon out of the jar, I returned home and told mom, “Gram eats peanut butter RAW!” I still eat it by the spoon to this day, and enjoy every bite of it.
Gram knew how to snack, but she also knew how to dance. I would sometimes go with her to her senior citizens exercise class. There I witnessed my grandmother burn away her peanut butter sessions. She danced along with several friends as they watched their ridiculous work-out video, two-pound dumbbells in hand. This was the same lady who hosted sophisticated tea parties and Bible studies and could conquer an entire jar of peanut butter in a single sitting without ever showing any sign of the calories.
When the weather didn’t allow me to venture out to her beach, Gram would pop in a video for me. Through these movies she introduced me to a wide array of characters who became my friends. Daffy Duck. Felix the Cat. Betty Boop. Mighty Mouse. Bugs Bunny. Larry the Cucumber. Bob the Tomato. Her home was a place of discovery for me, and to this day I still dream of the house, each time going from room to room and reliving those memories, always so excited that I was actually back in the house and not dreaming, only to wake up in disappointment that it was, after all, just a dream.
Yet Gram’s legacy transcends that house.
Gram lived. Gram loved. Gram taught.
She taught me about Papa Strigas, my shepherd of a grandfather who went to be with his Savior just two weeks before I was born. Every time I sat with Gram in her green rocking chair, she would affirm my birth as a small light of hope during that difficult time in her life.
She taught me to pray, to always give glory and thanks to God for His provisions, and to trust that the storm will always pass.
She taught me to live life passionately, to discover any potential I might have and to exercise it to the highest possibility. She was a multifaceted woman who encouraged us all to live a full and dynamic existence; we owe it to her legacy to live as such.
Gram may have slowed down in her final years, but now she’s dancing in the presence of her God, with no need of an exercise video or her dumbbells. She’s enjoying things far greater than peanut butter, and her many days as homemaker are over as she is finally living in the residence her Father has been preparing for her.
Welcome home, Gram, and thank you.
My earliest memories come from her home: weekend cookouts on her old brick barbecue; Fourth of July celebrations in the back yard; endless discoveries of new forts and hang-outs along the beach. The list goes on.
Brett and Erica and I always rode our bikes the two-mile stretch from our house to hers, often with our visits unexpected. Yet we never put her out with our arrival. Gram kept a fully stocked cupboard of fruit-roll-ups and chips, which we would enjoy while she dipped Nutter Butter cookies in peanut butter. She taught us how to snack, and to enjoy our treats to the max. After the first time I saw her eat peanut butter by the spoon out of the jar, I returned home and told mom, “Gram eats peanut butter RAW!” I still eat it by the spoon to this day, and enjoy every bite of it.
Gram knew how to snack, but she also knew how to dance. I would sometimes go with her to her senior citizens exercise class. There I witnessed my grandmother burn away her peanut butter sessions. She danced along with several friends as they watched their ridiculous work-out video, two-pound dumbbells in hand. This was the same lady who hosted sophisticated tea parties and Bible studies and could conquer an entire jar of peanut butter in a single sitting without ever showing any sign of the calories.
When the weather didn’t allow me to venture out to her beach, Gram would pop in a video for me. Through these movies she introduced me to a wide array of characters who became my friends. Daffy Duck. Felix the Cat. Betty Boop. Mighty Mouse. Bugs Bunny. Larry the Cucumber. Bob the Tomato. Her home was a place of discovery for me, and to this day I still dream of the house, each time going from room to room and reliving those memories, always so excited that I was actually back in the house and not dreaming, only to wake up in disappointment that it was, after all, just a dream.
Yet Gram’s legacy transcends that house.
Gram lived. Gram loved. Gram taught.
She taught me about Papa Strigas, my shepherd of a grandfather who went to be with his Savior just two weeks before I was born. Every time I sat with Gram in her green rocking chair, she would affirm my birth as a small light of hope during that difficult time in her life.
She taught me to pray, to always give glory and thanks to God for His provisions, and to trust that the storm will always pass.
She taught me to live life passionately, to discover any potential I might have and to exercise it to the highest possibility. She was a multifaceted woman who encouraged us all to live a full and dynamic existence; we owe it to her legacy to live as such.
Gram may have slowed down in her final years, but now she’s dancing in the presence of her God, with no need of an exercise video or her dumbbells. She’s enjoying things far greater than peanut butter, and her many days as homemaker are over as she is finally living in the residence her Father has been preparing for her.
Welcome home, Gram, and thank you.
Monday, January 19, 2009
"Red-Letter Christians"
I walked into the classroom for my first and only class today, pulled out a spiral notebook, and got ready for the guest speaker, Dr. Tony Campolo of Eastern University in Pennsylvania. The lecture was all about Christians' role in economic development, but what stuck out to me the most was a single phrase.
"There's a big difference between a believer and a disciple."
I've been thinking about these words for the past 12 hours or so, wrestling and trying to make some sense of it. But every time I attempted to make a more complicated interpretation, its simplicity spoke louder and louder.
Dr. Campolo later shared another anecdote from a sermon he once gave. He spoke to a tired congregation about statistics of countless people dying of starvation. Then he said, "And most of you don't even give a sh*t about it!"
Immediately every face in the audience shot shocked stares in his direction, to which he said, "It bothered you more that I just said 'sh*t' than when I shared the number of innocent people dying from hunger." That, he said, is how Christians are getting the Gospel wrong, because our hearts should break for what makes Jesus' heart break.
Dr. Campolo used the term "Red-Letter Christians" to describe the younger generation of Western Christians, Christians who put their faith in the radically counter-cultural words of Christ rather than in the letters of Paul. I firmly believe in the Bible's divine inspiration, but I know I too forget that the core of my faith comes from those red letters.
I know there should be some grand resolution to wrap up this entry, but energy escapes me. Just a scattered attempt at reflecting on today's thoughts.
...to be continued.
"There's a big difference between a believer and a disciple."
I've been thinking about these words for the past 12 hours or so, wrestling and trying to make some sense of it. But every time I attempted to make a more complicated interpretation, its simplicity spoke louder and louder.
Dr. Campolo later shared another anecdote from a sermon he once gave. He spoke to a tired congregation about statistics of countless people dying of starvation. Then he said, "And most of you don't even give a sh*t about it!"
Immediately every face in the audience shot shocked stares in his direction, to which he said, "It bothered you more that I just said 'sh*t' than when I shared the number of innocent people dying from hunger." That, he said, is how Christians are getting the Gospel wrong, because our hearts should break for what makes Jesus' heart break.
Dr. Campolo used the term "Red-Letter Christians" to describe the younger generation of Western Christians, Christians who put their faith in the radically counter-cultural words of Christ rather than in the letters of Paul. I firmly believe in the Bible's divine inspiration, but I know I too forget that the core of my faith comes from those red letters.
I know there should be some grand resolution to wrap up this entry, but energy escapes me. Just a scattered attempt at reflecting on today's thoughts.
...to be continued.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Crossroads
If memory serves me right, the last time I started a blog was during my senior year of high school. I was 17, working towards meeting graduation requirements, applying to colleges, and preparing to move for the first time in my life to an entirely different atmosphere from that which I grew up in. I was at the first major transition of my life.And now I'm resurrecting my blogging habit in my last semester of university. Where these last four years have gone, I ask myself every day. What I do know is that my years at school have been the most definitive time I have ever experienced. Relationally, spiritually, and academically. That sounds like a phrase you'd find on a keychain at a Christian gift store, but it's true.
The nagging voice in the back of my head, though, keeps reminding me of a frightening reality: life starts soon! Too soon. I truly am approaching a huge crossroads (no, not in reference to the Britney Spears movie).
In less than four months I will have completed 15 years of education, and will be on to discovering what comes next.
Where will I live?
What will I do?
Who will I be around?
What kind of insanely complex world will I be entering?
In case it isn't evident enough, I do over-analyze everything and spend too much time pondering the past, present and future. Then again, that's why I decided to start blogging again. I know I'll have a plethora of questions over the course of this final semester, reflecting on the upcoming crossroad as it gets closer and closer.
Speaking of which, I recently heard a very interesting perspective from a professor about time. Time is typically thought of as existing in three parts: past, present and future. However, look at it this way: the future is some weird concept of which we have no understanding, and the past is merely a collection of events that we somehow chronicle in our memories through visual and verbal cues. Which means that the future is constantly turned into the past every second of the day. Aka, we exist in the moment where the future meets the past; there is no present. We are in the "eternal now." Ha, how's that for a tangent! Welcome to my extremely a.d.d. mindset :P
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