Have you ever been in a state where it feels like everything is lining up against you? You stumble, whether in word, thought or deed; someone does something that absolutely aggravates you; maybe a bunch of things beyond your control keep you from doing what you had set out to do. Gather ‘round, while I tell you a Tale of Two Unfortunate Situations.
Situation #1: the pandemic. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not making light of a worldwide outbreak that’s killed close to seven million people – and devastated their families and others around them. This Unfortunate Situation is the ban on public gatherings and the closing of churches. With churches closed, we at The Mustard Seed Street Church had to make some quick changes. The Food Bank and meal service moved outdoors, and even though people weren’t able to come indoors for many months and church services were pre-recorded and posted online, we were able to keep operating and serve our community.
Then, about a year after we were able to re-open, there was this fire. You probably heard about it. Without missing a beat, our Hospitality Team went back into “COVID Mode”, and after a one-day shutdown to regroup, we were back in action.
If I need to hammer this home, because of one unfortunate situation -- COVID, another unfortunate situation – the fire -- did not shut us down.
Situation #2: a passenger train leaves Los Angeles for Seattle an hour behind schedule. Along the trip, it gets progressively later, since it has to pull onto sidings every so often to let freight trains go by.
I’m on that train. We were supposed to leave on a Saturday morning, and theoretically, I should be able to be back at work on Monday; but by Sunday, we were still in Oregon.
Not only that, but in Eugene, Oregon police come on-board and remove a passenger. Then, we sit in the station for another ten minutes while the cop talks on a cell phone with the passenger standing next to him. Suddenly, he hangs up the call, gives the phone to the woman, and motions to the baggage handler to put her stuff back on the train.
It took about an hour for me to realize what was going on. For religious types like me, I would say the Lord spoke to me, once I finally settled down. “Drew,” He said, “this is not about you. This is about that little girl.”
By “little girl,” He meant the woman on the platform.
I talked to some people who knew the situation, and this is what I learned.
She was 17, pregnant, and running away from home because her mother wanted her to have an abortion. She was heading to Albany to stay with some friends who would help her through the pregnancy and have the baby.
The girl was travelling with a church youth group going to Seattle. They had taken over the back half of the last car, and since it was Sunday, they were praying and singing and taking turns giving mini-sermons. When the police came on-board, they didn’t try to interfere, but prayed over the girl as she left.
The cop on the platform was talking with the girl’s mother, and, it appears, discerned that the woman was – to use the medical, psychological term – a real piece of work. He hung up on her and determined that it was not in the girl’s best interest to force her to go back to L.A.
So what did those train delays have to do with her? Do the math: each delay ensured that, by the time she got to Eugene, the right policeman was in the right place at the right time. And all the while, she had prayerful support from peers – including that extra twenty minutes just outside Albany, before she got off.
This is called “God at work”, taking unfortunate situations and turning them positive.
In the Gospel of Matthew, the first sixteen verses are taken up with the genealogy leading up to Joseph, “the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus ….”. Many people say they get turned off by all those “begots” (or “begats”, depending on which version you’re reading), but if you look at that list, you’ll find something surprising.
Among those people, whose lives led to Jesus’ “dad”, are a number of people who should not have been born, under the Law. There’s Perez, who was born to Tamar and Judah: Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law, so they could have been stoned to death for adultery and incest.
The list includes Obed, who was King David’s grandfather, who was born to Boaz and Ruth. That marriage went against the laws against marrying an outsider, since Ruth was from Moab. Then there’s Solomon, who was a son of David and Bathsheba: their marriage was founded in adultery and murder, since David sent Bethsheba’s husband, Uriah, to the front lines in battle to make sure he got killed and he could comfort (and possess) the grieving widow. Both could have been stoned for that.
There are many other examples in that passage, and I could bore for Canada on that, but the point here is that that lineage could have been broken at any point, but it wasn’t. God’s plan was bigger than any of the Laws.
Many things we perceive as “bad things” can actually lead to “good things” if we allow God into the equation. As the Apostle Paul writes, “judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts.” (1 Corinthians 4:5 NKJV)
In other words, when we hit a rough patch, we can wail and gnash our teeth because of a fire at our workplace or our plans getting screwed-up because a train is late, and wind up in the same place. Or, we can say to ourselves, “OK, what is God doing here?” When we open our eyes and minds to that, we will find that the going much easier.
The evangelist, Clarence Vickers, once said, “When you are down to nothing, God is up to something”. Or, to quote the comedian Gracie Allen, “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.”
Situations, whether they’re fortunate or unfortunate, are just commas in our lives. When things look “fortunate”, it helps to look back and see where unfortunate situations happened along the way. If a situation looks “unfortunate”, we should consider it more as a stepping-stone, rather than a brick wall; at worst, a semicolon, but not a period.
Drew Snider is a pastor at the Mustard Seed Street Church in Downtown Victoria. He has also written an e-book, "A Very Convenient Truth - or, Jesus Warned Us There'd Be Days Like These, so Stop Worrying About the Planet and Get With His Program!”
You can read more articles on our blog, Spiritually Speaking at https://www.timescolonist.com/blogs/spiritually-speaking
