The Church of the Human Heart

      Fifty2 Sunday's ~ Listening for God

        

        I did not attend church Easter Sunday.  It had been my intention to do so; I had taken a dress and shoes with me for the occasion when I went to Ohio to visit my elderly parents for the weekend.  I could have gone to the church I attended when I lived in the area-but I did not.  Instead I went to visit someone I used to know-someone I hadn't seen in more than twenty years, someone who's now living in a nursing home because they have memory issues.  This person has lived a hard life, a life of turmoil and strife, a life of just getting by.  Much of the difficulty they have experienced they brought on themselves through poor choices and bad habits.  However, like some people, they were in many ways disadvantaged even before they were born and the circumstances of their life never seemed to allow them to rise above the chaos and calamity that characterized their life.

         It is hard to see God in such a life that has gone like this.  I have a friend who chart's people's "core story", a means to identify how God has been present in one's life - light in the darkness.  I wonder if he would have been able to find any 'stars' in this person's life-those people whom God used to bear witness to his (God's) love for them.  What I know is that this person was born in a time when their unmarried parents felt they could not keep and raise the child, so they were put up for adoption and fortunately were adopted by a couple who could not have children by the age of 4 months.  

        During adolescence, this person experienced some positive opportunities in sports and later when they joined the air force after high school, but ended up being given an honorable discharge because of a health condition.  This was a significant disappointment and initiated a series of decisions that caused them to become involved in activities and with people that would have lasting and detrimental effects.  Their life became a cascade of unfortunate circumstances that picked up speed involving recurrent problems with drugs and alcohol, underemployment, unemployment, multiple arrests for petty crimes, living conditions that included occupying condemned houses and declining health.  Today this person is a shell of the person I once knew - appearing older than their age, their face scarred, many teeth missing and those still present decayed, leaving a dark hole where once had been a charming smile.  The light in their eyes is gone and the posture is bowed and when sitting they rock back and forth - evidence of the medications they are likely on.

        Sitting there, I asked about their faith, did they still believe in God and what about Jesus?  Initially it seemed like they might have forgotten that once nearly forty years ago, professing a faith in Jesus and baptized before a church full of witnesses.  I was there-I saw it.  It was close to the same time I too came to Christ - but soon after this- our paths diverged and contact was lost.  My questions seemed to awaken buried memories, brought forth confessions, and verbalized regrets about how they had lived their life.  Before my visit ended, I read some scripture, and asked them if they recalled John 3:16-which I started to recite it and they finished it.  I reminded them that as we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness - God is quick to forgive (I John 1:9) and that the hard work is forgiving ourselves.  Before I left I prayed aloud for us both. 

        When I got back to my parent's that afternoon, I did not feel like I had been to church-but I did feel like I had attended to the heart of another who needed to be reminded of God's love and that Jesus' death and resurrection atoned for their sins and the strains, stains and scars of this life.  This is the true meaning of Easter; those who place their faith in Jesus can look forward to eternal life; when the perishable is made imperishable (I Corinthians 15:50-56).  I hope our time together encouraged them - this what 'church' is supposed to be about (Hebrews 10:25) - and why I say, I attended the church of the human heart on Easter Sunday.