Eventful Half-Weekend
Well, it's Saturday night, I ought to be in bed, and I must say, I've had a very eventful weekend. First, I went to a retreat put on by my church. This involved rushing around all over the place on Friday; taking a superfast shower, followed by a superfast supper, followed by a moderatly fast entering-my-room-while-the-key-is-locked-in-thanks-to-the-shower-and-the-rush. Then, I was able to meet the rest of my group, and pick a ride to the retreat. The ride was a convertible, excellent for traveling through swarms of raindrops, and nothing short of perfect for snow. I entertained myself by navigating, while the driver entertained himself by trying to see through a windshield obscured with ever-changing raindrop patterns. We got to the camp safe and sound, and gave up the pleasant games of driving mazes through torrents of rain for the gray and trying drudgery of having a good time with God and our friends.
The retreat itself had three talks and a lot of time for worship through music. The first talk served to remind us that we are in a battle, that Satan is after us and wants bring us down if he can. The speaker used several examples. With appropriate anonymity, he shared about several pastors he had worked with who had fallen in sexual sin. In one case, he found out and was able to play a useful role in stopping what was going on before it went too far. In the other case, an entire church was devastated by the affair that their founding pastor had; the pastor went to a center fighting addictions. That pastor was a good friend of the speaker, who was shocked when he found out. He did not tell us these stories to discredit the church, of course, but to show us that even though we are Christians and try to do what is right, we are still under attack. It can be easy to get comfortable and trust that all is well, but complacency is dangerous.
The second talk was about how to fight back. One thing to be aware of is the importance of our emotions. In our speaker's opinion, many Evangelical Christians come to believe that they need to always act happy, and keep from expressing their real feelings. It may seem obvious when it's written out like that, but that is a really unhealthy thing to do, at least if you never deal with the emotions. He described separate occasions when he and an experienced friend fell under great emotional overload and had no idea how to deal with it. The Psalms provide many examples of our volitile human emotions being expressed openly to God. I think it's freeing to see David writing Psalms that say things that we know theologically aren't true: "Have you abandoned me God?" "Do you even care about me?" When we cry out to God, some caution may be necessary, but we don't need to filter what we're expressing based on what we've been taught is true. It's OK to cry out something emotionally even when you know in your head that it really can't be true; it helps you get it out and deal with it in the open.
However, a larger part of resisting the devil's schemes is remembering that we must depend on God to help us fight sin, that we cannot do it without help, and we cannot do it by sheer willpower. Also, by confessing our sins, and by being honest about our own weaknesses, we gain some protection from the devil's schemes. If we pose, putting up a false and polished self, then we will be in great danger indeed. I really hope I'm not doing that, and if I am, somebody'd better tell me. :-) But I did realize there were plenty of problems I could stand to share with someone. After that talk, I confided a nice long list of sins and stuggles to one of my close friends; we were at it for twenty minutes during an "appropriate" time, and then continued during the entirety of the next worship session. Quite refreshing.
The third talk was entitled "Where are the workers?" The first two talks were given by a guest speaker, but this one was given by New Life's own Jon Shah. He speculated most convincingly that many people do not work the fields of evangelism because they are dangerous. As Jesus says in Luke 10, we are sent out as sheep among wolves. We should approach it as something that will take perseverence and much trust in God; we should not be surprised when the going gets rough. And why bother? Well first, because Jesus tells us to. But it may be more inspiring to consider what happens later in Luke 10, when the 72 that Jesus sent return. Great things have taken place, and Jesus tells them that many kings and prophets have longed to see these events, but they never got to. By taking up the mission that Christ lays out for us, we can be part of events of epic proportions, serving Good in noble and valuable ways.
And after that, we all went home, picking up Arby's on the way. I wasn't navigator this time around, so I slept some of the time. However, I also found my chest hurting near the end of the trip. When I got back to my dorm room, the pain was still there. While I suspected it might just be my torso's musculoskeletal system showing yet again that it wasn't in shape after my back surgery, I couldn't tell for sure. There's this annoying thing about chest pains; if you can't tell what they are, there's some fairly good reasons to play it cautious and get them checked out, because they're also the main indicator of heart attacks, and heart attack symptoms are fairly subtle, from what I've learned. If you ignore heart attack systems, you can do some really bad damage before anything obvious happens. I would have checked it out with my doctor, but that doesn't work so well on Saturday nights. Instead, I called 911 and told them what was happening. I didn't want to cause a lot of trouble over nothing, but the 911 lady assured me that she could give me no medical advice about whether I should look into the thing further. Instead, a little while later, I found myself riding an ambulance to the ER. All of the medical staff seem perfectly comfortable with this reaction to chest pains, and they brushed aside my attempts at apology. It was kind of strange getting the invalid treatment though. They rolled me from my room to the ambulance on a stretcher, then put me in a wheelchair in the ER. Part of me wanted to protest that I could still walk fine, but it seemed like they would just keep rolling me around anyway, so I didn't bother. Why not just trust the experts?
At any rate, once the doctors had the reassurance of a variety of tests, they decided that the musculoskeletal idea was a pretty good one, and let me go. Overall, I think I spent about 6 hours in the ER, mostly waiting for tests to be performed. Fortunately, my father demonstrated his love for me by coming to keep me company and drive me home, and I also had had the sense to pack water, snacks, and a good book. I was tempted to ask the paramedics if I could bring my laptop, but I laughed so hard when I thought of it that I could see there was no sense in doing it.
The retreat itself had three talks and a lot of time for worship through music. The first talk served to remind us that we are in a battle, that Satan is after us and wants bring us down if he can. The speaker used several examples. With appropriate anonymity, he shared about several pastors he had worked with who had fallen in sexual sin. In one case, he found out and was able to play a useful role in stopping what was going on before it went too far. In the other case, an entire church was devastated by the affair that their founding pastor had; the pastor went to a center fighting addictions. That pastor was a good friend of the speaker, who was shocked when he found out. He did not tell us these stories to discredit the church, of course, but to show us that even though we are Christians and try to do what is right, we are still under attack. It can be easy to get comfortable and trust that all is well, but complacency is dangerous.
The second talk was about how to fight back. One thing to be aware of is the importance of our emotions. In our speaker's opinion, many Evangelical Christians come to believe that they need to always act happy, and keep from expressing their real feelings. It may seem obvious when it's written out like that, but that is a really unhealthy thing to do, at least if you never deal with the emotions. He described separate occasions when he and an experienced friend fell under great emotional overload and had no idea how to deal with it. The Psalms provide many examples of our volitile human emotions being expressed openly to God. I think it's freeing to see David writing Psalms that say things that we know theologically aren't true: "Have you abandoned me God?" "Do you even care about me?" When we cry out to God, some caution may be necessary, but we don't need to filter what we're expressing based on what we've been taught is true. It's OK to cry out something emotionally even when you know in your head that it really can't be true; it helps you get it out and deal with it in the open.
However, a larger part of resisting the devil's schemes is remembering that we must depend on God to help us fight sin, that we cannot do it without help, and we cannot do it by sheer willpower. Also, by confessing our sins, and by being honest about our own weaknesses, we gain some protection from the devil's schemes. If we pose, putting up a false and polished self, then we will be in great danger indeed. I really hope I'm not doing that, and if I am, somebody'd better tell me. :-) But I did realize there were plenty of problems I could stand to share with someone. After that talk, I confided a nice long list of sins and stuggles to one of my close friends; we were at it for twenty minutes during an "appropriate" time, and then continued during the entirety of the next worship session. Quite refreshing.
The third talk was entitled "Where are the workers?" The first two talks were given by a guest speaker, but this one was given by New Life's own Jon Shah. He speculated most convincingly that many people do not work the fields of evangelism because they are dangerous. As Jesus says in Luke 10, we are sent out as sheep among wolves. We should approach it as something that will take perseverence and much trust in God; we should not be surprised when the going gets rough. And why bother? Well first, because Jesus tells us to. But it may be more inspiring to consider what happens later in Luke 10, when the 72 that Jesus sent return. Great things have taken place, and Jesus tells them that many kings and prophets have longed to see these events, but they never got to. By taking up the mission that Christ lays out for us, we can be part of events of epic proportions, serving Good in noble and valuable ways.
And after that, we all went home, picking up Arby's on the way. I wasn't navigator this time around, so I slept some of the time. However, I also found my chest hurting near the end of the trip. When I got back to my dorm room, the pain was still there. While I suspected it might just be my torso's musculoskeletal system showing yet again that it wasn't in shape after my back surgery, I couldn't tell for sure. There's this annoying thing about chest pains; if you can't tell what they are, there's some fairly good reasons to play it cautious and get them checked out, because they're also the main indicator of heart attacks, and heart attack symptoms are fairly subtle, from what I've learned. If you ignore heart attack systems, you can do some really bad damage before anything obvious happens. I would have checked it out with my doctor, but that doesn't work so well on Saturday nights. Instead, I called 911 and told them what was happening. I didn't want to cause a lot of trouble over nothing, but the 911 lady assured me that she could give me no medical advice about whether I should look into the thing further. Instead, a little while later, I found myself riding an ambulance to the ER. All of the medical staff seem perfectly comfortable with this reaction to chest pains, and they brushed aside my attempts at apology. It was kind of strange getting the invalid treatment though. They rolled me from my room to the ambulance on a stretcher, then put me in a wheelchair in the ER. Part of me wanted to protest that I could still walk fine, but it seemed like they would just keep rolling me around anyway, so I didn't bother. Why not just trust the experts?
At any rate, once the doctors had the reassurance of a variety of tests, they decided that the musculoskeletal idea was a pretty good one, and let me go. Overall, I think I spent about 6 hours in the ER, mostly waiting for tests to be performed. Fortunately, my father demonstrated his love for me by coming to keep me company and drive me home, and I also had had the sense to pack water, snacks, and a good book. I was tempted to ask the paramedics if I could bring my laptop, but I laughed so hard when I thought of it that I could see there was no sense in doing it.
posted by Soaring Gryphon | 11:24 PM
1 Comments:
Well, I'm glad you're okay! Thanks for the summary of the retreat talks. Everyone needs a refresher now and then.
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