Hurricane Sandy: An Opportunity For Trust

I was away in Houston this weekend as it became increasingly clear that a storm developing in the Atlantic would impact my home community in Washington, DC - not to mention virtually the entire northeastern seaboard! As more information came in, predictions grew increasingly dire. I began to receive a steady stream of emails and phone calls from my mother in Wichita. Her anxiety was coming to a boil as she sat for hours, watching the Weather Channel. She wanted to know: Were we getting ready? Did we have batteries? Bottled water? Had we topped off the car's gas tank?

Of course, I was a thousand miles away out in Texas, so what could I do? Nothing but worry. Faith was still back home, so she spent her weekend running around town, collecting supplies, filling gas tanks, and biting her fingernails. By the time my flight touched down at National, we were both a bit of wreck.

I have never worried about a storm like this. But, then, I have never been a homeowner in the path of a hurricane before. Add to all this that our house has some serious drainage issues that we have been trying to resolve for the last several months, but which still require some serious work. A perfect storm for anxiety.

As I write this, the long-awaited weather is just beginning to arrive. Rain has begun to fall, and the sump pump is running once every few minutes. The streets near our house have been transformed into creeks, with gentle waves flowing down into the nearby thoroughfare. I suspect that these waves will not stay gentle for too much longer. I am praying that the electricity will stay on, that the basement will not flood, and that no trees will fall on our house or car.

I am also reminded of those who live along coastal areas - particularly in southern New Jersey - many of whom are being forced to evacuate ahead of the storm. My worries are pretty minor compared to the immanent threat to life and property that they are facing. So what if our basement floods and we lose power for a week? We will still likely have our home, more or less intact, at the end of the day.

Yet, whether our home is destroyed or left in one piece; whether we are comfortable throughout the storm or plunged into darkness and wet and cold; regardless of what happens to us in the coming days, I believe that we are being given an opportunity to trust in God's loving care and sovereignty.

The uncontrollable strength of this storm serves as a reminder to me that the whole earth belongs to the Lord. I cannot exempt my house, property, or even my life, from God's disposal. The truth is, I own nothing. The more I attempt to cling to the human fiction of ownership, the more desperately I seek to control a world that I have neither the right nor ability to govern.

For me, this hurricane is an opportunity to trust in the sovereign God who speaks out of the whirlwind. This unstoppable force of nature is a sign to me that no matter what human contrivances we may develop to create an illusion of self-sufficiency and control, we are profoundly at the mercy of a wild universe that is created and sustained by a fearsome and mighty God.

This is terrifying. It is also liberating. When I accept that God is truly in control, I can let go. I can relax into humble acceptance and trust in the ultimate resolution of all things. I am free to perform the work that the Lord has given me to do. I am empowered to love those whom the Spirit has commended to my care. And I can rest, leaving the results in God's hands.

When my focus shifts away from myself and onto Christ, I encounter true yieldedness and peace. I turn away from those things that I insist must happen, the demands that I make of God, as if I could dictate terms to the Creator! Instead, I am drawn into the truth, life and power that is being revealed by the indwelling Word. Releasing my need to control outcomes, I am brought into the easy yoke of Christ.

Let the words of the old hymn be my prayer today, and always:

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Letting Go

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? - Matthew 6:25-27

What would it look like to really have confidence in Jesus' promise that God watches over us, providing for our needs? Nowhere in the scriptural witness is there any indication that we need to justify our own existence. The whole of the cosmos, down to my silly little life, is a pure gift. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks - and God's heart is nothing if not abundant. The word of the Lord is joy and peace and fullness of life. The Spirit blows where it will; and the trees grow.

Yet how often I try to control the flow of this everlasting life! I constantly reveal how little I trust God, seething with anxiety about the future. When God provides me what I need for today, I cannot help asking, "but what about tomorrow?" I am like the Hebrew children who wasted their time and energy gathering up extra manna only to see it rot the next day. God's gifts are not meant for hoarding. Love is for sharing. Right now.

More often than I would care to admit, I am like those that Jeremiah railed against, who trusted in their own anxious ways rather than in God's selfless giving. Instead of putting my faith in the spring of living water, I build my own broken cisterns that cannot hold water. I fool myself into believing that I can make myself secure by saving up enough of God's goodness so that I will never have to be vulnerable again. Jesus tells me to wait on the Lord day by day for the things I need - but I want guarantees!

Jesus does not give guarantees, but he does make promises. Long ago, he promised that he would be with us always, even to the end of the age. He teaches us to forgive our debtors and trust in his Father to provide for our daily needs. His word is one of radical trust and generosity. I have seen the way Jesus fulfills his promise in my own life, and in the lives of others. He walks with us, guides us and cares for our needs. Why is it so hard to trust this?

One stumbling block is my own future orientation. His promise is here now, but I want to know what is going to happen six months from now, a decade from now. Seriously, Jesus: What does your retirement plan look like? I want details.

The root of my refusal to trust in God's abundant love and care is my own need to control. Truth be told, I want more than my daily bread. I want barns and cisterns - insurance and retirement plans. I want to feel like I am in charge of my life. I want to be the one behind the wheel.

But control is overrated. Who really wants to control the sunrise? Who would dictate the laughter of a child? What would we gain if we could control the autumn leaves and the mysterious power of human love? When we encounter real beauty, when we stand in awe, caught up in connection with the whole of God's creation, the need for control falls away.

What if I could allow myself to encounter life as one long sunrise? To receive each moment as a precious, inexplicable gift? How might my life be different if my primary experience were awe and wonder? How cheap and petty my need for control would seem then!

Who Are We Called To Serve?

Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. - Hebrews 13:12-14

There are up-sides to being in crisis, not the least of which is the way that desperation focuses one's prayer life. If you have been following this blog recently, you know that we at Capitol Hill Friends are wrestling with how to move forward in the face of low energy and the apparent lack of the critical mass necessary to become a self-sustaining community. As you might imagine, God and I have been having some serious conversations lately!

I am learning that I should never underestimate the power of desperate prayer. God truly does draw near to those who are humbled and broken, and coming to the end of my rope has done wonders for my willingness to rely more fully on the Lord's guidance. In the midst of this soul-searching, I have been amazed at how clearly the Spirit has responded to my prayers. I have asked for direction, and God is providing it.

For years now, one member of Capitol Hill Friends has always been asking, "Who are we called to serve?" Virtually every time we have met together, John has raised this question, to the point that it has become almost a joke among us.

To be quite honest, the question has often annoyed me. I never felt I had a good answer for it, except to say that Capitol Hill Friends is a community for anyone who wants to go deeper in their walk with Christ. I do not not like the idea of picking out a specific market demographic and "selling" God to them. Would we try to be a hipster church for urban twenty-somethings? A family church for couples with small children? A white, middle class church? A multi-racial, inter-class church? To me, "Who are we called to serve?" sounded a lot like, "What is our market niche?"

I am not very interested in viewing the church from a marketing perspective. I do not believe that faith communities are a commodity to be bought and sold. While I understand the need to present the gospel in a way that is culturally appropriate to the place we live, I do not want to pre-determine what demographic our fellowship is aimed at. This commodification cheapens the very idea of the Church. Instead of aspiring to be the body of Christ, our fellowships risk being transformed into little more than social clubs where people of similar class, race and subculture can talk about Jesus.

And yet, the question has nagged at me. Who are we called to serve? What is our particular mission here in the city? There are thousands of local congregations spread out across our region; what use does God have for one more? These questions are not ones of sales pitches and market analysis. These are basic issues of call and spiritual gifts. What is are the specific ways that God wants to use our particular fellowship to reflect the love of Jesus?

As I have prayed about the future of Capitol Hill Friends, God has shown me that there is indeed a particular people that we are called to serve. This people is not a demographic group in any traditional sense. It is not a group bounded by class, ethnicity, sub-culture or political persuasion. Rather, our common experience at Capitol Hill Friends is that we do not match the expectations that the wider culture has of us. In some profound way, we do not quite fit in. We are looking for the city that is to come, not this present one where we reside as sojourners.

In a city that worships power and thrives on appearances, we feel God calling us into friendship with those who are marginal, unimpressive in the eyes of the world. In a culture that glorifies displays of wealth and consumption, we sense God's invitation to lead lives of simplicity and creativity. In a society that values facts, figures and formal education, we long for God's true wisdom, which seems like foolishness to the world. In a nation that places a very high value on strength and self-sufficiency, we know that we are weak and in need of God's help.

Capitol Hill Friends stands in solidarity with those who do not fit into this world's conceptions of wisdom and power and wealth. We are called to serve those who stand outside the gate of the city, rejected by polite society. Rather than playing dress-up and pretending to be successful, God calls us to stand with the misfits. Because the truth is, we are misfits, too.