Billy Coffey

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An Easter Like One Other

April 10, 2020 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

image courtesy of google images

Nobody’s ever had to live through an Easter like this.

That’s what I keep hearing. In some small but important ways, that’s true.

Everything feels like it’s shrinking. Our lives are now confined to only the necessary places — home, the store, work — and the necessary people — those we live with. All those other facets of our lives have been stripped away, and in their places are holes we can’t seem to fill.

I’ve noticed that time has shrunk as well. Before all of this happened, it was nothing for me to live my life a week or so in advance. Always planning things, always so focused on what was ahead that I often lost sight of what was right in front of me. But no more. Now there’s really no point in living a week in advance because weeks don’t feel like they exist anymore. Everything could change by next Friday, or maybe nothing will. We just don’t know. So what’s the point in planning anything?

Days, too — they’ve changed in a fundamental way. Sunday through Saturday doesn’t carry the same weight as it once did. There were once seven days, and those seven days made a week, and 52 of those weeks made a year, and that was the basis by which we all measured our progress through this life. But now those seven days have been whittled down to the only three that maybe have ever really counted:

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Yesterday, back when the world was as normal as any of us could expect and we were living as though our lives were as solid as the mountains outside my window. Change would come, we all somehow knew that, but it would come slowly, gradually, and from a distance long enough that we could see it well in advance.

Tomorrow, which is so filled with uncertainty and fear right now that most of us try to avoid thinking much about it at all.

And today, this moment we’re all trying not to sink inside, where so much of what we think and do is spent just trying to keep safe without losing our hope.

So yes, it sounds right on the surface. Nobody’s ever had to live through an Easter like this.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that’s not true. Surely down through the ages there have been other Easters when so much went wrong in such a hurry. Moments in history when everything felt broken to the point that people wondered if it could all be put back together again. I could maybe dig out some of my wife’s old college history textbooks and find some examples, but I don’t need to. One Easter has stood out in my mind all week as the perfect parallel to what we’re all facing right now.

That first one. 

Of the three days that make up the holiest weekend of the Christian calendar, two of them are given the due they deserve. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are so ingrained in our hearts and (believe it or not) our culture that it’s easy to miss what exactly they mean for all of us. But that day in between — that’s the day I’ve spent so much time thinking about lately, because that’s the one that describes exactly where we are at the moment.

Not Good Friday or Easter Sunday, but Holy Saturday.

I only know it’s called that because I looked it up, thinking that day had to have some sort of adjective attached to it. And it’s the perfect one, don’t you think? Holy.

“Venerated as or as if sacred; having a divine quality.”

Yes.

We know the story of Good Friday. We celebrate the events of Easter Sunday. But the Bible is strangely silent about the Saturday in between, leaving us to only imagine what that day was like for the disciples Christ left behind. Men and women who were suffering from the so much that went wrong in such a hurry. Who were facing their own shrunken world of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Yesterday their world lay drenched in beauty. They spent their days at the feet of their Lord, watching in wonder as the sick were healed the poor were given hope, astonished at every turn that God could be so loving, so gentle and kind.

Tomorrow was an unbearable thought. So much was made unknown now, their hopes dashed by the memory of the dead man hanging from a cross. What comfort could tomorrow bring? What meaning could the coming years provide when life itself felt so meaningless?

Which left them only with today, that first Holy Saturday. They woke from an uneasy sleep heartbroken by the feeling that life as they knew it had come to an end. Everything they had believed had come to nothing. Far from beautiful, their world had become a place of danger, leaving them to hide indoors for fear of the same death suffered by their savior.

Sounds familiar in a way, doesn’t it?

That’s where we are right now, you and I. We’re living out our own Holy Saturday, only ours will last months instead of hours. Caught between a yesterday that aches upon its recollection like pressing on a bruise, and a tomorrow that only offers more of the same.

Like every other Christian with any common sense, my family will spend this weekend at home. We’ve never had to go through an Easter like this. That’s why it will be so special.

Because we know what those men and women on that first Holy Saturday did not — there is a power beyond all sickness and death, a certainty that can tame any doubt, and a hope that transcends anything that threatens to befall us.

That is why even in these days we can yet laugh. That is why we can stand strong. And that is why if I could somehow find those few men and women hiding in fear on that first Holy Saturday nearly two thousand years ago, I would tell them the same as I tell you:

Hang on, because joy comes in the morning.

Filed Under: Christianity, COVID19, Easter, encouragement, God, Jesus, living, perspective, trials

God’s name

May 11, 2017 by Billy Coffey 5 Comments

MountainMist1
I was six when I learned God’s first name was Andy.

It fit in that special way you can’t put to words but only feel. On most days back then I would get home from school in time to make a peanut butter sandwich and watch a few reruns on the TV. My favorite was an old black and white about this sheriff and his deputy who lived in a town called Mayberry. That sheriff’s name was Andy just like God’s, and I thought it a fine thing because the Andy on TV was always so kind.

It was funny because I didn’t learn all of this at home. My mother and grandmother served as my spiritual guides growing up, as is common in the South. Most everything I learned about God came from them. But not God’s name. At the time, I could only conclude they never said because they never knew. To them, God was only that. God. Which must have made Him like Mister Howerton down the street or Mister Snyder next door, nice enough old men but never ones you’d feel comfortable spending some time with. Not a God fit to play some catch or gig some frogs or go exploring in the cornfields.

That was the sort of God I’d always wanted. Still do.

No, instead I learned God’s first name in the most unlikely of places—church. More specifically, the Mennonite place out on Route 608 where the tombstones were all old and haunted and where you went inside the sanctuary and didn’t say a word because that’s where God was, Him being so Big and Other and us being so Small and Plain. The church had no piano, no baptismal pool, no adornments of any kind except for the wooden cross hanging on the wall behind the pulpit. But you could always feel Something lingering along those plain white walls, and some part of you always felt that Thing was watching to see what you did.

We sang our hymns a capella. I mostly mouthed them and nothing more. But then one Sunday we sang a hymn I hadn’t heard before, and in those words was God’s first name—Andy. I still remember how that felt. The sudden realization, like two pieces of a puzzle you’ve never quite figured out suddenly fitting together with such perfection. Andy—yes. At that moment, God became someone I knew rather than feared. He’d always known my name and now I knew His, and that made us friends.

And it was all so plain. That’s what got me. All this time there was this profound bit of information just sitting there, right in the chorus of that song, and I could not for the life of me understand why no one else reacted the way I did. Everyone else merely kept on what they were doing, eyes down and voices straining and tired, wanting to just get on with things. It was as if they didn’t even know what they were singing. I remember nudging my mother and father, trying to make them see. They didn’t. If my memory is right, all Dad did was tell me to hold still for just one hour. I went away from church that Sunday thinking the only thing I could—I’d been given some secret meant for no one else.

For months I sprinkled my prayers with God’s real name. “Dear Andy” and “Thank you, Andy,” and “Hey Andy.” You wouldn’t believe the difference it made. There were times as a kid when I’d catch myself thinking all I did was talk to the ceiling. Now, it felt like there was actually somebody there. Someone listening just like the Andy on the TV, looking at your mouth and your eyes and nodding his head with a grin.

Of course, none of this was bound to last. At a certain point I learned to read a little better and pay attention a little more, at which point I stumbled upon the truth of that song.

Not: “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am His own.”

But: “And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own.”

He. God.

Not Andy.

It was a tough thing to figure out. Like a lot of things you discover as you grow up, knowing I’d been wrong didn’t make me feel nearly as stupid as it did sad. The God I learned about at church was someone so completely different, so utterly powerful and holy, that He scared me. But Andy? That was a God I knew loved me and a God I knew I loved.

You can take anything you want from this. I’m not going to try to get overly theological. I’ll only say that there have been many times over the years when the world goes gray and the burdens pile up and everything gets so tired and utterly lost that I feel much more as the boy I was rather than the man I am. Maybe that’s true for all of us. Could be our bodies and minds grow old but our souls never do, that deep down we’re all just scared little kids. But it’s in those times when I’ll go for a walk or stare up to a darkened ceiling, and I’ll say much the same at forty-four as I did at six.

I’ll say, “Dear Andy,” because that’s still God to me.

Filed Under: Christianity, faith, God

The God of Mayberry

February 23, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Andy GriffithI’ve spent the better part of my life trying to figure out God in one way or another. I don’t have a conversion story; I’ve always believed. It’s what I do with that belief that has at times become problematic. I’ve strayed (oh, friend, how I’ve strayed) but always come back, and with a deeper appreciation of the One whom I worship. Still, the truth remains inescapable after all these years—the One I worship is a mystery. One I will forever try to solve but will forever remain unsolvable. On this side of heaven, anyway.

Who He is and what, why He does the things He does. Ask me those things and I’ll give you an answer, though that answer may be more in the form of a question than anything else. Maybe that’s the point. God’s ways aren’t our ways, the Book says. His thoughts are not our thoughts.

There was a time though, the summer I turned six, when I very nearly had God figured out. That’s the year I discovered God was Andy Griffith.

You know Andy, right? Had a TV show back in the 60s. Played a sheriff in the town of Mayberry? Boy named Opie and an aunt named Bea. Deputy Barney Fife? Sure you do. You read this blog, you just about have to be an Andy Griffith kind of person.

That summer my dad and I had a standing appointment to watch Andy Griffith every weekday afternoon on channel 3. To my memory, we never missed a single one. I loved Andy, I truly did. If he would’ve chewed Red Man and cussed a lot more and kept a jar of moonshine in the freezer, he could’ve been just like my own father.

Round about July was when I learned Andy was God (or God was Andy, whichever you’d prefer). I was sitting in church and tugging at my collar one Sunday when hymn time came. I could read some of the words in the hymnal but not all, so I had to follow along with the singing. When the congregation reached the chorus, I had a revelation.

“Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am His own.”

I can honestly say I’d never felt so happy.

Of course, that didn’t last very long. School started again a few months later. I learned to read and more and better. Didn’t take me long to realize ANDY was in face AND HE. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. That day, Andy turned back into all the things that had come before. Back to God, to He, to Yahweh and I AM. Back to all those names that sounded small in my head but too big for me to figure in my heart.

I’m forty-two now, a long way from six. But I’ll say there are still times when I think of God like Andy Griffith. Hard times, dark ones, those long stretches when life doesn’t seem to make much sense. I’ll think about all those times when Andy showed drunk Otis mercy and clumsy Barney grace. When Opie had problems and his dad was there with some words of advice and a lap to sit on and an “I love you, son.” In the end, that’s just about all I need.

Just about all any of us needs.

Filed Under: Christianity, faith, God

Have a God Day

October 27, 2014 by Billy Coffey 8 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 10.00.46 AMMy son is of the age when toys are no longer toys as much as they are necessities. That’s how he approaches me with whatever new trinket has caught his eye—“It’s not just that I want this, Dad. I NEED it.”

Rarely works, of course. No ten-year-old boy NEEDS a basketball hoop, not when there’s one on the street just next door for anyone to use, or a new video game, or a Nerf gun that will end up in the grass by the creek, forgotten.

For the past month, it’s been a cell phone. His reasoning has been strong—I’m not home right after school some days, you might need to call or check in, that sort of thing. He’s wise enough to leave out the real reason (all of his friends have one; they look like cyborgs, faces always stuck in some sort of screen). But his sister has a phone, and, well, every kid comes born with an instinctual knowledge that if you can’t convince your parents, you can always wear them down.

So: a cell phone. He carried it home from the store last week with all the care and love as a father would bring his firstborn. Not a smartphone (he couldn’t wear us down that much), but the sort that can only call and text, the kind my son associates with the uncool and the elderly.

Thus far, all has gone well. The phone hasn’t gone lost, hasn’t ended up in the grass by the creek. He hasn’t used it to call Brazil or Kuala Lumpur. But my son does text. My son texts a lot. And, for whatever reason, mostly to me.

They come in the mornings especially, when I’m on my way to work. A steady stream of smiley faces and winks that always end with HAVE A GOD DAY. Great kid, my boy, even if he is a little spelling-challenged. He says he’s still getting the hang of typing with his thumbs. But his texts to me? He says he reads those twice before he hits send, making sure every letter and word is right. Which means my son doesn’t want me to have a GOOD day at all. He wants me to have a GOD one.

I told him that sounded just fine but that I didn’t know what a God day was. Turns out, he has them all the time.

My son says a God day usually starts out like any other, meaning you still don’t want to get out of bed. But then you do, you get up and get dressed and have breakfast, and that’s when the God day starts—when you go out—because my son says you need God in your bed but you need Him in the world especially.

On a God day, you pay more attention to how the sun is coming up over the mountains than you do all the traffic. And when you have to stop for the train, you don’t mumble things you’re not supposed to near as much as you wave to the engineer and the people you’re stuck there with.

On a God day, you say hi to everyone and ask them how they are, because that’s what people need.

On a God day, you always do your best no matter what it is. That doesn’t mean you’ll always succeed (“This isn’t a fairy tale, Dad,” my son says), but failing doesn’t hurt near as bad if you know you tried.

On a God day, you pray. A lot.

On a God day, you always laugh at least five times, because even if the world is full of sadness, that doesn’t mean your heart has to be that way, too.

On a God day, you come home and hug the ones you love, because they’re the best things God has given you and that’s why you need to take care of them.

I like that. I think my son’s onto something. So no matter who and where you are and what’s going on in your life, I hope you have a God day.

Filed Under: children, choice, encouragement, God

The prayer of Jabez

August 11, 2014 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I was at the book fair the other day and found a copy of The Prayer of Jabez for $2.99. I’d completely forgotten about that book. Which is odd considering how popular it was ten years ago. Seemed like everyone had a copy of that book. Or the Bible study. Or the journal. Or the workbook or the copy for teens or women.

It was quite the industry really, and the reasons for it were pretty apparent. Say a little prayer, and God will bless you in abundance. It almost seemed too good to be true, but there it was. There was even a verse to back it up.

I never bought a copy. Didn’t even buy the $2.99 copy at the book fair. Not because I didn’t (and still do) want to be blessed in abundance, but because once upon a time I said my own version of Jabez’s prayer without knowing it. The answer I got was a little different than his. And though that prayer was uttered at years ago, I still remember that conversation between God and me.

It was like this:

“You there, God?”

I’m always here.

“Can I tell You something?”

Of course you can.

“I have dreams.”

Wonderful! Everyone should have dreams.

“They’re great dreams. Really great.”

I should hope so.

“Yeah. So, I was wondering if, You know, You could make those dreams come true.”

Of course I can. Why else would I give them to you?

“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of reasons, I guess. Wait. You gave my dreams to me?”

Where else would they come from?

“I don’t know…me?”

I give you the desire. You do the work. Life is a partnership between you and Me. Not 50/50, though. More like 100/100. You give your all, I give Mine.

“Great! So I can have my dreams?”

If you work and you believe, yes. But certain things have to be done first.

“Like what?”

Great dreams require great people. So first, I must make you great.

“Now I like the sound of that. So I’ll be popular and rich?”

Popular and rich doesn’t equal greatness.

“Then what does?”

Love and kindness, faith and trust. Trust especially. You need to understand that it’s not your happiness I want, it’s your trust.

“Okay.”

Are you sure? This isn’t going to be easy for you.

“Sure it will. I can be that sort of person if it means I’ll have my dreams.”

You don’t become that sort of person to get your dreams, you get your dreams because you’re that sort of person. There’s a difference.

(Silence.)

You think your dreams will bring you success, but some of the most miserable people in the world are the ones who’ve gotten everything they’ve always wanted. Stuff doesn’t bring joy. Only I do.

“Oh. So maybe my dreams aren’t all that good for me?”

Parts are. Not all. But that’s okay. I can give you better things than those.

“When I become great.”

You don’t have to be great for Me to bless you. But for your dreams, yes. You must be great.

“I still want to be great, even without the dreams. But the dreams would be nice.”

Wonderful!

“So…when can we start?”

We can start now.

“I was hoping You’d say that. Then I pray You’ll give me love and kindness and faith and trust and make me great.”

Good. But remember, there are two things that I must give to everyone in order to make them great and realize the dreams I have for them.

“Grace and blessing?”

No. Time and trial.

Filed Under: career, choice, control, dreams, God

In the name of Jayzus!

July 21, 2014 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I was winning.

Nothing too strange about that. The backyard baseball games with my son are usually close on purpose, which is much more important than who wins or loses. Sometimes I let him win in an effort to teach him how to be a gracious victor. And sometimes I makes sure he loses, because being a gracious failure is equally important. He’s going to face both triumph and setback in life. Best to teach him about both now, when he’s young.

This time, though, I was going to leave the end result to him. He would win or lose on his own, and it all came down to one pitch.

So.

Tie game, two outs, last inning. A homerun (in our backyard, homeruns are anything that passes the maple tree in the air) wins. Anything else, and he’d have to wait until the next evening to try again. Mother and sister were on the porch, watching and cheering. He took his stance, glared, and tapped on the rock we used for home plate.

I had already started my windup when he called time. Rather than take another practice swing or spit, he raised his hands in the air, looked to the heavens, and said, “In the name of Jayzus, lemme hit a homer!”

Laughter from the porch. I wrinkled my brow. Said, “What are you doing?”

“Heard it on the radio,” he told me. “Preacher said God gives me anythin’ if I ask in the name of Jayzus.”

Oh. Jayzus = Jesus. Okay then.

He stepped back in, tapped the bat on the rock. Glared. I threw. He hit.

Over the maple tree. Homerun.

That’s how it started.

Since then, the name of Jayzus has been bandied about quite often in our house. I heard it the next evening when my son lost the Lego spaceship he’d built—“In the name of Jayzus, come back to me!” Heard it again a few hours later—“In the name of Jayzus, save me from the bathtub!”

And then this morning—“In the name of Jayzus, let me at a Pop-Tart and not eggs!”

Comical, yes. And I suppose it’s even more comical that in all those instances, things worked out just the way he wanted. He did find his Lego spaceship. And since he’d stayed indoors all day because it was about a million degrees outside, we allowed him to forgo his bath. And we were out of eggs this morning, out of everything really. Except for Pop-Tarts.

My son thinks he has quite a thing going on here. He believes he’s just stumbled on the secret to life, that he’s won some sort of supernatural lottery. You should see him strutting around.

Me, I say nothing. Sometimes it’s best to let these things play out on their own. Sticking my Daddy Nose into it, telling him he’s really kind of wrong about the whole thing, won’t work. The big things in life tend to be the ones you have to learn on your own.

Besides, I really don’t think I’m qualified to add any wisdom. Not with this. Because I pretty much do the same thing.

I use God as a rabbit’s foot. I tend to keep him around in my pocket and pull Him out whenever there’s trouble. Not so much when I lose a Lego spaceship, but definitely when I want something bad to go away. Or when I want something good to get a little closer.

Or just when I want.

Truth is, I’m no better than my son.

Maybe what’s best is that I talk to him about this after all. Just be honest and say that yes, he’s doing something wrong, but so am I. And maybe we can figure out this thing together.

Because God wants us all to love Him for who He is, not for what He can give.

Filed Under: children, faith, God

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