Waiting In The Parenthesis

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

“You are silence and song, you are plain as the day, but you have hidden your face--For how long? How long?” ---Andrew Peterson, The Reckoning

It’s been a year of waiting. Waiting for mom’s healthy return from the hospital. The return home in hospice.  Hospice by its definition is a waiting. The final ‘home-free’. Then a parenthesis.

Open-parenthesis; the memorial service. Margaret’s’ waiting is over. Now the children wait. Our son married in March. The wedding is both an end to waiting and the beginning of a process of marriage. Returning home, the waiting continues.

The house is up for sale. We must move. Searching for a rental. We Zillow countless houses, make calls to realtors, open-houses after work. Hoping to find the right one; making an offer, waiting for acceptance. In all the waiting there is tension.

The wife is looking for work. They want her for interviews. Anxiously she pursues the process. Again the waiting. The tension. We want the waiting to end. But what if she doesn’t get the job?  What if we don’t find a house? Pressure is walking through the process. Hope is that the outcome will satisfy.

Easter is a time of waiting. We taste the disciples last week with Jesus. This “walking with’ as we celebrate passion. Holding on while hosannas rattle windows and high-priests. The confusion of that first communion; Roman soldiers, kangaroo court, crucifixion. Taut and heart wrenching the same question asked; the same cry ascends, “How long?” 

The resurrection doesn’t end our longing. It affirms the answer. In the parenthesis we live as aliens aching for a place to settle. We all seek security. Afflicted and needy we want the pain to stop. The resurrection assures us we will be satisfied. There will be a final celebration, final homecoming, final reunion. The waiting will be over.  Close parenthesis.

This Ache For Home (This Is A Far Country)

You might say it was just a house. I saw it as hope for life-long connection; for community. We bought it with the hope of first marriage; the efflorescence of daughter. I put in sprinklers and planted a little lawn. Walked to school with the five-year old. Got a dog; black and white Australian Shepherd, Collie mutt. The neighbors from around the corner brought over cookies.  The neighbor next door complained about the dog. The grass grew; daughter too.

We had birthday parties in the backyard; Spongebob Squarepants and reptile themed. Invited the cookie-givers children; all three. The daughter played with two boys from down the street that brought their parents. Summer days we’d pull up the cheap plastic chairs and chat in each other’s backyards.  In my heart I thought I’d found it---constancy, Americana, neighborhood, a place of permanence.  I was wrong.

It all frayed at once.  The threadbare marriage showed jagged tears.  The two boys houses down moved North with their parents. A kindred had formed with the cookie clan but job loss here meant a new job elsewhere. With the marriage barely intact Providence thrust us out of the house, out of the area and into a place we did not know.

So it goes. This hunger for permanence and place remains. A perceptible ache that is always there below the surface.  This ache for home; for that far country. For we wander “in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground,” til we finally, God willing, come home.

Cancer And Hope

My sister in law has cancer. Note I did not say she is dying of cancer though that is the usual outcome. This is the tension we live in. As family most of us are followers of Christ. As Christ followers we believe in the efficacy of prayer and the healing power of God who counts the stars by number and knows each one by name. Still cancer is a strong enemy which is why we celebrate survivors. For though we know God can heal we assume that the cancer will end life. This last is what frustrates me.

I do not believe in a positive outcome because I have no experience. My dear cousin Jeff died in his twenties of Leukemia as did my uncle. I’ve lost an aunt and my mother to cancer. I had two college friends, both named Eric, that succumbed to cancer of the brain. I have been down this road before.

Everyone I’ve talked to expects near and certain death. I understand the tension and the reality. I think what frustrates me is that we don’t fight for the possibility that God will heal. I want to be sensitive to the day to day reality that is cancer and to the statistics. In some way we strain between the realities that God is able and that the statistics are negative.

I keep coming back to Matt Chandler. He is a husband and father and pastor to over 10,000 in the Dallas area. In 2010 he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He just finished a book and today has a thriving ministry. God can heal.

We need not be Pollyanna Christians wearing fake smiles and claiming everything will be all right. In the midst of the reality we mustn’t give up in our hope or our belief. God is not bound by statistics. As E.V. Hill said, “Doctors are only practicing medicine.” So we live out our faith day by day in the context of Hebrews 11; “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” and, “All of these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”