Help Me, God, I’m a Mess
Jer. 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19
I was out running the other morning when I glanced down and found this button on the sidewalk. It reads, “I’M A MESS.”
At that particular moment, it spoke to me. I was thinking about call – both the program we’re launching this evening and the deeper questions of call and vocation: the “who am I and why am I here?” questions.
I suspect that there are times in each of our lives when we feel like we’ve got a good grip on that – those moments when we feel as if God is in heaven and all is right with the world. Then there’s the rest of the time.
That time when it feels like we’re in streams of constant whitewater, struggling to keep our heads above water, looking for something to grab on to, trying to find a calm place if only for a while.
I don’t know about you, but life feels like that to me much of the time.
Then I come across stories like the ones we’ve just read. Strangers in a foreign land, buying homes and trying to settle down, lepers looking for a healing hand.
I read these stories and think, “what have I got to complain about?” After all, I’ve got a house and a healthy family; I’ve got a job and so does my wife; we’re not exiles and we’re not lepers.
Sure, we’ve been out of work and, but for the grace of family, technically homeless for a while less than a decade ago, and sure, I know a bit of what it feels like to have a close family member treated like a leper due to mental illness, and yes, we’ve been exiled from the church at times. But removed from our homes, counted among the least of the least, complete social outcasts? Not hardly.
So I read these stories, and I consider the streams of whitewater that form the undertow of my life and find myself drawn in two radically different directions.
Split thus between feeling completely stressed out by the whitewater and then guilty for feeling that way when my life is so privileged, I find myself with just one thought: “help me, God, I’m a mess.”
So I’m wondering this morning: am I alone in this? Is it just me, or do any of the rest of you ever feel this way?
Perhaps I ought to underscore again the privilege I enjoy. I try to be thankful, ever day, for what I have been given, and I try – not always successfully – to avoid that particular form of American idolatry that wants me to believe that I’ve earned what I have.
I believe Jesus anticipates this idolatry when he observes that only one of the ten healed lepers comes back to say, “thanks,” and wonders, “what’s up with those other guys? Do they think this happens every day? Or, what’s worse, do they think they did it all by themselves?”
All he asks of the one who returns is gratitude and that God be praised. That seems to be the full extent of religious practice here. Give thanks! Praise God!
That small, but not insignificant, insight can get you through quite a bit of seemingly constant whitewater. Give thanks! Praise God!
The simple act of naming one’s blessings can slow the stream for a while. Praising God for a while can make the water stand still – not forever, mind you, but for a while.
That’s one of the reasons we gather here on Sunday: to offer some words, prayers, songs of praise and rest in still waters – or, if you’d rather stay dry, beside the still waters.
Naming one’s blessings can sometimes do more than stem the tide. Sometimes, naming blessings provides clues to those big questions with which we began: who am I and why am I here.
When I name my blessings, name those times that make me feel most blessed, I gain some insight into who I am and why I’m here.
I am most grateful for my children and for the times I get to spend with them – one on one or as a gaggle. That time fills me up, and makes me believe that maybe one of the reasons I’m here is to be a Dad.
Of course, I also spend a fair amount of time wondering just what emotional scars I’m leaving on their psyches, and what they’ll be in therapy for 10 years from now. But I set those fears aside with the assurance that perhaps I’m also here to keep some good therapists employed.
What we are thankful for speaks volumes about our values. Are we thankful, at the break of day, for the opportunities we will have this day to serve others? Do we offer gratitude at night’s fall for chances we had to help someone along the way?
To the extent that we are grateful for such opportunities, we can call ourselves followers of Jesus; to the extent that we are not, we can see the distance yet to travel in our efforts to follow and be disciples.
Sometimes, though, it’s tempting to fold up on ourselves and seek escape from the world. Surely the exiles in Babylon must have felt that desire – to withdraw from an alien society, to escape from exile. Yet the word of the Lord comes to them: build here, in the very midst of what seems so foreign. Do not withdraw, do not slip into escapism. Instead, buy land, plant crops, build homes.
The word of the Lord is not “give in to the exile and trade your God for theirs.” Rather, it is to become resident aliens – to live in the world but not be of the world, and to find the capacity for praise and thanksgiving in the midst of it all.
“I’m a mess” … well, why would I expect it to be otherwise? We’re invited to live as resident aliens in our time and place, and to find within ourselves, the capacity for praise and thanksgiving. And, well, we live in difficult days.
Sometimes it is awfully difficult to find the capacity for praise and thanksgiving within ourselves. We do live in constant whitewater, and often feel like we’re slipping beneath the waves.
When I was much younger, I loved whitewater. I did a lot of canoeing, and I loved playing in whitewater. Of course, it can get tiring.
I recall being on a river in North Carolina once, in an inflatable kayak. I was playing in a standing wave, surfing it, when the front end of my boat went under the wave. I leaned hard downstream to keep from being flipped under the wave and risk getting caught there. I could maintain that position, but I could not pull free from the water. For a while it was fun – the struggle to paddle out from the water, the delicate balancing act to avoid tipping, the wonderful feeling of being in the midst of all that powerful water. For several minutes, it was a rush. But then I began to get tired, and for one of few times in whitewater, I felt a brief but unmistakable brief rush of cold fear. One could get hurt here.
Fortunately, I was with a group – although they were all sitting on the bank downstream eating lunch. But I waved my paddle – indicating distress – and someone threw me a rescue line that provided the extra leverage I needed to pull out of the wave.
You can learn a lot about life on a river.
Being in the midst of the whitewater of life can be a rush. I’d always rather be busy than bored. But sometimes you find yourself overwhelmed, and exhausted from the effort.
At such points, you can give in to the fear that creeps in, and turn in on yourself. Or, you can reach out to others.
When I was a kid at summer camp years ago, I took on a craft project: I was going to carve a canoe. I’m no artist, and after a week of work I was distressed that my efforts had not produced a thing of great beauty. I was giving up on it, and, in fact, took a chisel and hammer and tried to drive the chisel straight through the wood to crack it. I would break it and be done with it. But the artist who was the craft leader, came up and gently asked me what I was working on and what I wanted it to turn out like. She encouraged me to continue the work and not give up. So I did. Now I’ll not kid you. My 10-year-old talents did not produce any great art – although, to be honest, that was probably the height of my artistic output! But I’ve kept this canoe for more than 35 years as a reminder both to keep on keeping on, and of the importance of opening oneself to the encouragement of others.
You can seek escape – turning in on yourself, self-medicating with drugs or drink or less harmful but no more helpful turns to mindlessness – surf the net, tune out to TV, head to the mall to shop.
Or, you can choose mindfulness: deep awareness of oneself, of one’s community, of one’s God. Such mindfulness involves planting oneself, rooting in community and in the lives of others – for the way out of our own suffering is always through the suffering of others. Engage. Be mindful. Be connected. Be open to the moving of the spirit in your life calling you to plant, to build even when it feels like you ought to be running away.
And offer thanks and praise, for the wonder of whitewater, and for the community that gathers along the banks to pull us free when we find ourselves saying, “help me, God, I’m a mess.”
I was out running the other morning when I glanced down and found this button on the sidewalk. It reads, “I’M A MESS.”
At that particular moment, it spoke to me. I was thinking about call – both the program we’re launching this evening and the deeper questions of call and vocation: the “who am I and why am I here?” questions.
I suspect that there are times in each of our lives when we feel like we’ve got a good grip on that – those moments when we feel as if God is in heaven and all is right with the world. Then there’s the rest of the time.
That time when it feels like we’re in streams of constant whitewater, struggling to keep our heads above water, looking for something to grab on to, trying to find a calm place if only for a while.
I don’t know about you, but life feels like that to me much of the time.
Then I come across stories like the ones we’ve just read. Strangers in a foreign land, buying homes and trying to settle down, lepers looking for a healing hand.
I read these stories and think, “what have I got to complain about?” After all, I’ve got a house and a healthy family; I’ve got a job and so does my wife; we’re not exiles and we’re not lepers.
Sure, we’ve been out of work and, but for the grace of family, technically homeless for a while less than a decade ago, and sure, I know a bit of what it feels like to have a close family member treated like a leper due to mental illness, and yes, we’ve been exiled from the church at times. But removed from our homes, counted among the least of the least, complete social outcasts? Not hardly.
So I read these stories, and I consider the streams of whitewater that form the undertow of my life and find myself drawn in two radically different directions.
Split thus between feeling completely stressed out by the whitewater and then guilty for feeling that way when my life is so privileged, I find myself with just one thought: “help me, God, I’m a mess.”
So I’m wondering this morning: am I alone in this? Is it just me, or do any of the rest of you ever feel this way?
Perhaps I ought to underscore again the privilege I enjoy. I try to be thankful, ever day, for what I have been given, and I try – not always successfully – to avoid that particular form of American idolatry that wants me to believe that I’ve earned what I have.
I believe Jesus anticipates this idolatry when he observes that only one of the ten healed lepers comes back to say, “thanks,” and wonders, “what’s up with those other guys? Do they think this happens every day? Or, what’s worse, do they think they did it all by themselves?”
All he asks of the one who returns is gratitude and that God be praised. That seems to be the full extent of religious practice here. Give thanks! Praise God!
That small, but not insignificant, insight can get you through quite a bit of seemingly constant whitewater. Give thanks! Praise God!
The simple act of naming one’s blessings can slow the stream for a while. Praising God for a while can make the water stand still – not forever, mind you, but for a while.
That’s one of the reasons we gather here on Sunday: to offer some words, prayers, songs of praise and rest in still waters – or, if you’d rather stay dry, beside the still waters.
Naming one’s blessings can sometimes do more than stem the tide. Sometimes, naming blessings provides clues to those big questions with which we began: who am I and why am I here.
When I name my blessings, name those times that make me feel most blessed, I gain some insight into who I am and why I’m here.
I am most grateful for my children and for the times I get to spend with them – one on one or as a gaggle. That time fills me up, and makes me believe that maybe one of the reasons I’m here is to be a Dad.
Of course, I also spend a fair amount of time wondering just what emotional scars I’m leaving on their psyches, and what they’ll be in therapy for 10 years from now. But I set those fears aside with the assurance that perhaps I’m also here to keep some good therapists employed.
What we are thankful for speaks volumes about our values. Are we thankful, at the break of day, for the opportunities we will have this day to serve others? Do we offer gratitude at night’s fall for chances we had to help someone along the way?
To the extent that we are grateful for such opportunities, we can call ourselves followers of Jesus; to the extent that we are not, we can see the distance yet to travel in our efforts to follow and be disciples.
Sometimes, though, it’s tempting to fold up on ourselves and seek escape from the world. Surely the exiles in Babylon must have felt that desire – to withdraw from an alien society, to escape from exile. Yet the word of the Lord comes to them: build here, in the very midst of what seems so foreign. Do not withdraw, do not slip into escapism. Instead, buy land, plant crops, build homes.
The word of the Lord is not “give in to the exile and trade your God for theirs.” Rather, it is to become resident aliens – to live in the world but not be of the world, and to find the capacity for praise and thanksgiving in the midst of it all.
“I’m a mess” … well, why would I expect it to be otherwise? We’re invited to live as resident aliens in our time and place, and to find within ourselves, the capacity for praise and thanksgiving. And, well, we live in difficult days.
Sometimes it is awfully difficult to find the capacity for praise and thanksgiving within ourselves. We do live in constant whitewater, and often feel like we’re slipping beneath the waves.
When I was much younger, I loved whitewater. I did a lot of canoeing, and I loved playing in whitewater. Of course, it can get tiring.
I recall being on a river in North Carolina once, in an inflatable kayak. I was playing in a standing wave, surfing it, when the front end of my boat went under the wave. I leaned hard downstream to keep from being flipped under the wave and risk getting caught there. I could maintain that position, but I could not pull free from the water. For a while it was fun – the struggle to paddle out from the water, the delicate balancing act to avoid tipping, the wonderful feeling of being in the midst of all that powerful water. For several minutes, it was a rush. But then I began to get tired, and for one of few times in whitewater, I felt a brief but unmistakable brief rush of cold fear. One could get hurt here.
Fortunately, I was with a group – although they were all sitting on the bank downstream eating lunch. But I waved my paddle – indicating distress – and someone threw me a rescue line that provided the extra leverage I needed to pull out of the wave.
You can learn a lot about life on a river.
Being in the midst of the whitewater of life can be a rush. I’d always rather be busy than bored. But sometimes you find yourself overwhelmed, and exhausted from the effort.
At such points, you can give in to the fear that creeps in, and turn in on yourself. Or, you can reach out to others.
When I was a kid at summer camp years ago, I took on a craft project: I was going to carve a canoe. I’m no artist, and after a week of work I was distressed that my efforts had not produced a thing of great beauty. I was giving up on it, and, in fact, took a chisel and hammer and tried to drive the chisel straight through the wood to crack it. I would break it and be done with it. But the artist who was the craft leader, came up and gently asked me what I was working on and what I wanted it to turn out like. She encouraged me to continue the work and not give up. So I did. Now I’ll not kid you. My 10-year-old talents did not produce any great art – although, to be honest, that was probably the height of my artistic output! But I’ve kept this canoe for more than 35 years as a reminder both to keep on keeping on, and of the importance of opening oneself to the encouragement of others.
You can seek escape – turning in on yourself, self-medicating with drugs or drink or less harmful but no more helpful turns to mindlessness – surf the net, tune out to TV, head to the mall to shop.
Or, you can choose mindfulness: deep awareness of oneself, of one’s community, of one’s God. Such mindfulness involves planting oneself, rooting in community and in the lives of others – for the way out of our own suffering is always through the suffering of others. Engage. Be mindful. Be connected. Be open to the moving of the spirit in your life calling you to plant, to build even when it feels like you ought to be running away.
And offer thanks and praise, for the wonder of whitewater, and for the community that gathers along the banks to pull us free when we find ourselves saying, “help me, God, I’m a mess.”
posted by David Ensign at
11:29 AM
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