A truly amazing book

I've been reading a little more of this book. It requires taking small bites rather than swallowing great slabs because every paragraph of every page is so full of treasures.

Sittser is in the unenviable position of having lost his wife, mother and daughter in one car accident. A Grace Disguised tells some of his journey of faith through the hard years following his loss. I was moved by the story he tells about moving through his pain.

Immediately following the funeral, Sittser fell into a despairing darkness. At the time he thought he would never emerge from it. A few nights later he had a dream where he was alone on a vast plain. The sun was setting - going further and further west, and he could see that however far he ran, he would never be able to reach the light. He felt that the darkness would swallow him up.

He talked about the dream to his brother, a pastor and poet. For him, it called to mind a poem by John Donne, where west meets east. His sister in law then told him that the quickest way to reach light is apparently not to run west, chasing it, but to run east, into the darkness.

Sittser took a decision to 'run east' and accept and embrace his loss rather than deny it. It didn't make it easier for him to bear it, but it helped him to know that he would see the strains of daylight sooner.

Makes you think

I read this modern day 'parable' yesterday*.


The man lay in the street, bleeding, the hit and run driver gone. He needed medical help immediately but he kept pleading, "don't take me to the hospital please".

Surprised, everyone around asked "why not?"

"I'm on the staff at the hospital," he said. "It would be embarrassing for them to see me like this. They have never seen me bleeding and dirty. They know me as clean and healthy."

"But hospital is just the place for you. Can't we call an ambulance?" they answered.

"No, please don't. I took a pedestrian safety course and the instructor would criticise me for getting hit," he said.

"Who cares what the instructor thinks? You need medical attention," they said.

"Well, the administration clerk would be upset too," the man answered. "She always gets upset if anyone who's being admitted doesn't have all the details they need to fill out the records. I didn't see who hit me, and I don't know the make of car or licence number. She wouldn't understand. She's a real stickler for records. Worse than that, I don't have my medical insurance card."

"Why is that such a problem?" they asked.

"Well, they won't recognise me in this state, and they wouldn't let me in if I don't have the card. They must be sure it's not going to cost them anything. They protect the institution. Look, just pull me over to the curb. I'll make it some way. It's my fault I got hit. Why should the nurses get their clean uniforms dirty with me? They would criticise me."

With that, he pulled himself up and stumbled to the curb, trying to stem his own bleeding.

The question for us is this. The church is the place for healing for sinners and the sinned-against in this world. But will we help or criticise?


*quoted in a book called Healing Memories by David Seamands, but originally by Fred Smith of Dallas, Texas.

Do I have to like everybody?

Here's a question people ask a lot when they think about friendship.

"I have to love everyone... but do I have to like everyone? ...And what’s the difference?"

Sometimes this question means: do I have to treat everyone like my best friend?

Well, no. Different people will fall into different spaces - public, social, personal and intimate. It's a matter of loving them where they are.

When Jesus was asked the question ‘what is the greatest commandment’ he said love God and love your neighbour as yourself. On one level you could understand that to mean you should be best friends with the whole world. Which is completely exhausting and unfeasible.

But then he told the story about the Good Samaritan. What space did that story happen in? Public space, primarily.

Loving your neighbour doesn’t necessarily mean being personally or intimately close to everyone you come across. But it does mean treating everyone with respect, generosity and love appropriate to the space you find yourself in.

You may not like someone in your social space... but that’s no excuse for being cruel or rude, or ignoring them, or paying them out, or gossiping about them.

And if you find yourself in a position to help the person that you don’t like, loving your neighbour requires that you do just that!

So the answer is: no, you don’t have to like everybody. But you do have to love them. And there is a difference.

Love... and safety

More research on friendship. And now I'm turning to CS Lewis' The Four Loves. (I was mesmerised by his chapters on friendship and affection, but embarrassed to say I understood only 40 per cent of his writing on romantic love.)

I was taken by this section on love, safety and self-protection.

Lewis tells of St Augustine, who lost his best friend and wrote about how devastated he was.

“This is what comes of giving ones heart to anything but God," said Augustine. "All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.”

It would be nice to always agree with the ancient Christian greats, but Lewis takes issue with his sentiments.

Instead he argues that Augustine's position is the safe option.

Lewis writes: “Of all the arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘careful, this might lead you to suffering!’ "

"But when I respond to that appeal I seem to be a thousand miles from Christ. If I am sure of anything, I am sure that his teaching was never meant to confirm my preference for safety.... God himself doesn’t have insurance against heartbreak."

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness."

"But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken, but it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy (or the risk or tragedy) is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers nad perturbations of love is Hell."

Real love

I have recently met a very special couple. They are very ordinary, normal sort of people, but I don't think I've seen people demonstrate real love quite so movingly for a while.

They have no biological children of their own, but adopted many years ago two children with profound intellectual and physical disabilities. The children are now teenagers, and will be unable to live independently as adults.

Every week the parents bring these two beautiful teenagers to church, guide them in to the pew and make them part of the congregation. Their care and love for their children is warm, obvious and constant.

And it is care and love that is chosen as well.

That's where I find myself challenged. I have a child with difficulties, but I feel sorry for myself. I say, "I didn't choose this. Why didn't I get to do what I choose?"

These parents chose their children with all the years of work and effort and persistence that they knew taking them must involve. And they are loving, caring, kind and patient by choice.

In my all too infrequent moments of humility I thank God for giving me a challenging child because he knows that I need to learn to love deeply, persistently and patiently.

If I could choose things for myself, they would be the things I want: glamour, success, self-fulfillment, money and health. They wouldn't be the things I desperately need: love, patience, joy, kindness, self-control, perseverence...

Thank God that he gets to choose - not me.