doubting God – Page 2

Farther along

August 22, 2011 by Billy Coffey 24 Comments

She and her husband were in the back row. That was the accustomed place for my family and in-laws, as we are numerous enough to require an entire pew unto ourselves. We scrunched in, the seven of us seated at her and her husband’s left, careful not to bump her wheelchair.

“I love you,” she said, first to my wife and then my daughter. Her words were muffled and childlike, as if spoken in surprise and through a mouth filled with marbles.

“I love you,” she said to the couple who approached her. They placed their hands on her shoulders and spoke in calm and deliberate words. They asked how she was feeling, how she was. “I love you,” she said again, and the smile on her face said more than her faded vocabulary could.

The preacher—“I love you”—said he loved her right back. He tucked his worn leather Bible under his left arm and took her hand in both of his. I watched as the muscles in his forearm flexed, giving her fingers a light squeeze, praising God.

“I love you.”

The congregation settled into the Sunday morning ritual of greeting/prayer/announcement. The pianist then began the opening of the first hymn—“To God be the Glory”—and all but she stood to praise the Lord in song.

To God be the glory, great things He hath done…

The slow movement to my left was hers. She placed one frail hand upon her husband’s and bid him to help her stand. He placed his arms around her and hefted her up, steadying her against the gravity that pushed down on her and the mind that worked to make sense of it all. I wondered if this too was the glory of God, a great thing He hath done.

I watched her as she sang, her voice too soft to stand with the others but her lips moving free, mouthing not O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood, but I love you I love you I love you I love.

I watched her, and what I saw was the woman she once was rather than the woman she was now. The Sunday school teacher, the choir member, the woman who organized Bible School in the summer and the Christmas program in the winter, the woman who at the young age of barely fifty had suffered a stroke that erased much of who she’d been and replaced it with a child imprisoned in a cell of flesh and blood. A child who needed help to move and wash and eat and whose vocabulary was condensed to three words.

I love you.

Act II of the Sunday morning ritual contained further announcements and a brief presentation by the church’s youngsters. Do not ask me what was said, I don’t know. I suppose I should have been listening, but I was watching her. Watching as she eased back into her wheelchair and looked out with bright but confused eyes. Watching as she said I love you to her husband.

We rose for the offertory hymn, this “Worthy of Worship,” a congregational favorite. She remained seated this time—she’s so tired now, not like before—but mouthed her own translation nonetheless, mouthing

I love you I love, you I love you

where we sang

Worthy of rev’rence, worthy of fear

And I wondered upon looking at her—God help me, but I did—that her sight made me fear God but also tempted me not to reverence Him. What God was worthy of reverence who could allow such a thing to one of His own? To pardon the darkness of this world and allow it to strip this woman down? To leave her a husk of what she once was and call it good?

For much the same reasons I missed the children’s presentation, I missed the sermon. The congregation rose. I joined them when I saw that she and I were the only people not standing. Three men stood behind the podium, songbooks in their hands, as the piano began the closing hymn, Farther Along.

I did not sing. Could not. I was watching her instead, still not knowing the Why—it’s always the Why that trips me up—but knowing that the fears and worries that once upon a time defined her living did no more. Like her body, her life had been reduced to the most fundamental level, one where Hello and Goodbye and Thank you and Praise the Lord all mean I love you, and perhaps that is what it should mean for all of us.

I joined in on the last refrain:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why.

Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it all by and by.

Go out in the world and live

March 28, 2011 by Billy Coffey 17 Comments

Taylor Lane Anderson, a fellow Virginian, became last Monday the first known American to have died in Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The twenty-four-year-old had spent the last two and a half years fulfilling what had become her dream—to teach English in Japan.

The story in the newspaper was accompanied by a photo of the street on which she was last seen. It was that eerie time just after the earthquake and before the wave hit. Taylor was riding her bicycle home from an elementary school in the city of Ishinoma-ki.

Use your imagination, and you will see houses and storefronts and perhaps children playing on the street corners. You will see that strange combination of resistance and joy that defines human life everywhere, that sort that makes you feel melancholy but happy to be alive.

That’s not the picture the photograph displays, however. All you see is death and destruction.

Though I do my best not to, all I can think of is her last thoughts as that wall of water came rushing toward her. I like to think it was fast. I like to think it was over before she knew it was upon her and that she didn’t suffer.

Derek Kannemeyer is a French and English teacher at St. Catherine’s, the school which Taylor once attended. In the article, he described his former student’s philosophy of life this way:

“You’ve got to go out in the world and live.”

This is the first time I’ve written about the events in Japan. I’ve wanted to ever since it happened, but I just…couldn’t. There are a great many things in this world meant to be written about by better writers than I, and what happened in Japan is one of those things. It raises questions in me about the things I believe and why I believe them. I’ve done my fair share of questioning God and shaking my fist at Him.

You should know better, I tell Him. Why didn’t You do something?

People smarter than me have been asking that question for a very, very long time. I suppose they always will.

Me, I have no answers. There is a lot in Christianity that must be accepted on faith. It is a rock you can break yourself against, that can tear you to pieces, unless you realize there are answers only God can know and you never will.

I still struggle with that.

But today I am thinking of Taylor Lane Anderson, whose life was cut short by shaking earth and raging ocean, but who still chased and managed to grab hold of her dreams. Her death was a sad tragedy, but knowing she died doing what she loved somehow takes a bit of the sting away. In the end, death that comes out of fulfilling our purpose is something to which we should all aspire.

I still question God. I doubt neither His existence nor His love, but I do His ways. They are higher than my ways, Isaiah said, as His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I believe that. But believing that also brings a mixture of calm and fear, and I don’t believe I’m the only one to feel such things.

It is a scary time to be alive. There just seems to be so much going on—so much bad. There are days when I feel as though a black cloud hangs over this world, rumbling and swirling and ready to dump catastrophe upon us all. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What’s next?”

I’m sure I’ll wonder what’s next again, sure I’ll look up hoping to see the light and instead see that black, swirling cloud. When I do, I’m going to remember Taylor Lane Anderson. I’m going to remember the way she lived her life.

Because no matter what happens, no matter what fear entangles us, we’ve got to go out in the world and live.

Not only survive. Not just get by.

Live.

The Ebb and Flow of Faith

May 21, 2009 by Billy Coffey 41 Comments

My post last Thursday about my college friend and her professor seemed to touch a lot of people in much the same way it touched me: a mix of shock and confusion for the professor, and much love and encouragement for my friend. A lot of you wrote and said to make sure I passed along what sort of grade she received for her final exam. And since I’m not one to pass up a request from you wonderful people, that’s just what I’ll do.

I’ll recap in case you either missed the post or have forgotten about it:

I have a student worker who is a fantastic young lady and has managed the feat of maintaining her Christian faith through two years of college. She took a class titled Christian Scripture (New Testament) 102 this spring, thinking it would be an easy A. It wasn’t. Her professor, who is also the college chaplain and pastor of a local church, told her the class wouldn’t mention Jesus, since she didn’t consider Him to be an integral part of the New Testament. Worse, the professor/chaplain/pastor told the class that she had yet to reach the point in her life that she could accept the existence of God.

The class’s final exam consisted of writing an ethical will. The question: which of your traits would you leave to your friends and family?

My friend left her love to her mother, her strength to her father, her hope to her brother.

And her faith to her professor.

I wrote that God had given her an A, and she agreed with me. But she also said that unfortunately what God says doesn’t usually apply when it comes to higher education nowadays, and she was nervous about her grade.

She got her grade three days ago. It was an A.

The only comment the professor gave was that she had spelled a word wrong. Which word wasn’t specified. I suggested that maybe it was “faith” and she had actually spelled it right, but it was such a foreign word to her professor that she marked it as misspelled.

I’m not trying to be hard on this professor. I just think that if you’re going to accept the positions of college chaplain and pastor, you should probably be pretty straight on what you believe and what you don’t. But I understand her questions. I do.

I have some myself.

It’s hard to look at this world and not wonder about what God is doing and why. Hard sometimes not to have a sneaky suspicion that He’s either not paying attention or doesn’t want to.

I don’t mind saying that.

And I’m not alone in sometimes feeling it, either.

Want proof? Someone once said this: “The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.”

Mother Theresa said that.

We all struggle with the big questions sometimes. And sometimes that struggle is never-ending. It ebbs and it flows, but never dissipates. Mother Theresa fought that struggle for nearly fifty years. It was always there, churning and bubbling and tossing her back and forth.

Always there. But for a reason. Those dark nights of the soul bring a new day of faith. Holiness springs from the seeds of doubt, growing and flowering so that the weary may rest in its shade.

As for my friend the college student, she’d like to thank you all for the comments you left and the prayers you promised her. She was stunned that so many people from so many places would take the time to stop what they were doing and offer a few words of encouragement and thanks.

And I’d like to do the same. Because I’m stunned that you do that for me, too.

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