I've always felt sorry for children of preachers. I can't imagine the humiliation and embarrassment that must come from hearing stories of your childhood told time after time. And it's rarely the good stories. Most of the time, it's the most embarrassing moments that you wish you could rewind and do over. Those are the ones that usually make it to the pulpit. While they might be great examples for the lesson at hand and the entire congregation finds great joy in your misfortune, silliness, or ignorance, these same stories often bring great shame to their subjects! Luckily, I've never been on the receiving end of such an illustration, at least not in my presence! I am thankful God called my dad to an area of ministry that DID NOT involve preaching!
Sunday morning, during the children's sermon at church, however, I felt the shame of our Associate Pastor's youngest child. It was sanctity of human life Sunday, and he was sharing with the children what a baby in its mother's womb looked like and could do at 11 weeks old. His five year old daughter, Caroline, was sitting right next to him, cuddled up under his arm. He went down a long list of things that an 11 week old fetus is able to do, a list that included sucking its thumb. He then asked the question that set the whole ball of embarrassment rolling.
"Do any of you still suck your thumb?"
It wasn't the question really, but his actions that took him off the path of safety and falling into the pit of Humiliation by Daddy! He looked over at Caroline, raised his eyebrows and smiled, and in one simple motion, let the entire church know that his five year old daughter (who incidentally turns six in about a month and is surely focused on being a BIG GIRL) still sucks her thumb. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming because I could see the look on her face. I was sitting in the choir loft behind her, and I could still see the look on her face. I could see that look because my face has shared that look before!
***I could share countless stories about myself here, but I will limit this aside to just one! When I was about nine years old, I had to tag along with my parents who were chaperoning the Winter Youth Ski Retreat. No one was really happy about my presence there, especially my older sister who was in the 7th grade and embarking on one of her first trips as a member of the youth group! Tagging along meant I had to attend sessions with my mom and dad, too. Boring sessions meant for adults! In one of the sessions, there were probably 25-30 people in a room and the speaker was talking about the challenges in trying to get children and youth to sit still, be quiet, and pay attention. Coincidentally, as he was speaking these words, I, as my nine year old bored self, was leaning back in my "metal folding chair" and balancing it against the wall. Yes, that's right. Metal folding chairs and two hind legs usually don't mix. My chair folded up, falling to the floor with a loud bang and depositing me on the floor beside it. Needless to say, I was the perfect illustration for his point! So what's my point...I was totally embarrassed. The laughter in the room was so loud I needed ear plugs! Every eye in the place was on me. I'm sure my mom was embarrassed, too, but she wasn't the one laying on the floor. I wanted to disappear. I probably prayed at that moment that God would open up a hole in the floor so that I could escape the eyes and the laughter. I remember getting up, looking straight down at the floor (because after all if I couldn't see the eyes, I was invisible!), and walking over to my mom in search of comfort. I probably even sat on her lap for the remainder of the session, perfectly still and quiet (right Mom! wink wink)
So I understood how Caroline felt. However, her situation was different. She couldn't run to her daddy for comfort. Her daddy, her white knight, had effectively knocked her off the white horse they were riding and under the hooves to be trampled upon. (Okay, I didn't come up with that analogy. Julie, Caroline's mom, did and she said it much more effectively than me, but it's the best I can do!)
All Caroline could do was hide her face in her lap from the hundreds of eyes and hope that putting her head down would drown out some of the laughter. I looked back at Julie to see her reaction. She had a torn look on her face. She wanted to leave the choir loft and run to her little girl, picking her up and pulling her close with one hand, and slapping Jarrett with the other! But she couldn't. She just had to sit there and watch the entire thing play out. Humiliation. Embarrassment. Shame. Hurt. All over sucking one's thumb!
And then, the most precious thing happened. Little Joanna was sitting right next to Caroline. She saw Caroline's pain and leaned over, tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, "It's okay. I do too sometimes." And in that moment, some of Caroline's pain and humiliation was relieved. She wasn't alone. Someone else sucked their thumb, too! Most people missed it. Most of the congregation missed this precious exchange between friends. And in missing it, they missed a precious lesson from our Heavenly Father.
Lately, the Holy Spirit has been giving me flashes of words. I don't know how to adequately explain this. I will witness a situation, see something, or just hear something and it's almost as if a word plainly flashes across the air in front of my eyes, like it's the word of the day on Sesame Street or something. It's usually a single word, and it usually comes with a desire to stop whatever I am doing at the time and dive into God's word in search of what He has to say about that word.
The word I got in that instant was
comfort. Joanna was a source of
comfort for Caroline. She said exactly what needed to be said. She saw a need, and met it! (They are five years old people!!!!!! Five!)
Comfort had been on my mind I suppose. And this instance led me back to a verse that I had just learned.
Psalm 119:50 says, "My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life." This verse was the focal verse for the latest Karen Kingsbury novel,
This Side of Heaven. (Side note: If you have not read any of Karen Kingsbury's books, go, run, fly to the store right now and get one! She calls it Life Changing Fiction, and it truly is! She is such a woman of faith who's works of fiction have strengthened my personal spiritual walk so much!).
In the midst of our suffering, our shame, our embarrassment, our pain, we can find
comfort. We can find
comfort in the fact that the promise of God is true! The promise of God brings salvation. The promise of God breathes hope! The promise of God is essentially a life preserver in the midst of our struggle.
I quickly looked up
comfort in my Bible's concordance and found these verses from 2 Corinthians.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:4Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 2 Corinthians 13:11 (ESV)We are commanded to
comfort others! God is our
comfort, and we are to share the
comfort we have, the life preserving
comfort, with those in need. Just like Joanna did for Caroline. God will use our willingness to be used and our obedience to
comfort others. Just like Joanna did for Caroline.
Just after the children's sermon yesterday we sang the song Draw Me Close. Here are the lyrics to the last chorus of the song:
You're all I want
You're all I ever needed
You're all I want
Help me know You are here
Help me know You are near.
Those last two lines were different for me yesterday. You see, I had just witnessed God showing himself to be here and to be near to His children in time of need. God provided his comfort to a five year old through a five year old. If anyone ever questioned whether or not a human life in the womb was created by God for a reason, the exchange I witnessed between those two children is reason enough!
God has a purpose for us all each and every day. It doesn't matter if we are five or 50, if we are embarrassed because someone just outed us for sucking our thumb or because we walk out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to our shoe, God is our
comfort. God commands us to
comfort one another.
The God of all
comfort is HERE and He is NEAR!
The back of the house...which is really more like the front of the house since they closed the road, but anyway!
As you can see, I live in right field of our baseball field! I guess it was too early for the students to be up and sliding down those hills in the distance. I'm sure it won't be long!
The view from the back door!
Looking up towards the campus. Have I mentioned I love snow????
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