Everyday a Miracle

I know it has been over a year since I posted anything here. Get over it. That's how I roll.

After over two years as a chaplain, I have been absolutely amazed at how God gives people experiences to shape them and stretch them. I can definately say that about myself. I look back at the journey I have already made and am amazed at how much I have been pushed, pulled, stretched, refined, tried, tested, humbled and sustained. But it is not just me. I see it in the lives of those I am helping as a chaplain. I'm not saying they are always miraculously healed, but it is amazing to see how the Lord is working in their lives, just as he is in mine.

When I was a new chaplain, I had a young man come see me who was depressed. He wasn't really religious and he didn't really want to talk religion. He wasn't really willing to open up much about what was really going on with him, so I just let him talk, gave him a little advice, then asked if he wanted me to pray with him or give him a special blessing. After I explained to him what that was, he surprised me by requesting a blessing. So I placed my hands on his head and blessed him according to my faith tradition. When I was done he was holding his hand over his heart and he said, "Hot damn, chaplain! That was amazing." He said it made him feel good, but again he didn't talk about it much and left.

He came back into my office a few months later and said, "Chaplain, what did you do to me? I can't enjoy myself anymore." He went on to explain how, though he was feeling much less depressed, ever since he received that blessing he had not had the same desire for nor enjoyment from the things he had been participating in. He then went on to tell me all about his selfish, immoral party lifestyle. I could tell that he was beginning to feel the Spirit in his life, and that the Spirit was pushing out those things that were not good for him. Over the next several months he began to transform as he stopped fighting the spiritual feelings he was having. I invite him to pray, and he came back and told me of a struggle he had one night in prayer when it felt like something dark and horrible was being ripped out of him. He said it was an awful experience that he felt like a completely different clean person afterward. He then started attending my Bible study class and would occassionally come back with some insight he had gained from the spirit on something in his life that needed to change. He decided to quit drinking and having casual sex. Occasionally he would stop by my office to get extra strength when he was going on a vacation with friends who would be doing that stuff. I often expected him to come back with bad news, but he never did. The last time he came into my office he told me of a trip he took to Miami with some friends. He said they went out to party, and he had no desire to go into that kind of atmosphere, so he went for a walk on the beach to think and pray. As he was walking he looked down and saw a seashell that was deteriorating and deformed. He had the feeling that that was what his soul had looked like. He kept walking and praying and as he did the seashells he would find were in better and better condition. As he sat there in my office telling me the story he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of perfect white seashells and said, "Chaplain, this is what God is helping me become."

The last time I saw him he had been clean of alcohol and illicit sex for over a year and was still working at improving his life and his walk with God. There are so many stories like this and I feel very privileged to be a part of them.

I have come to believe that God doesn't use the same standard for measuring righteousness that we do. We think that righteousness is about being perfect...or at least as close to it as we can. Things likegoing to church, keeping the commandments, being involved in organizations and groups at church, visiting the poor, being on the PTA, baking all your from scratch, and raising perfectly obedient children seem to us like evidence that we must be doing pretty good. But I deal with people who seem to have everything stacked against them. Perhaps they grew up in an abusive home, or a home where Dad was a preacher who appeared to everyone else to be perfect, but at home cheated on his wife and neglected his kids. Or another person who goes through life and seems to lose everyone who they love through adoption, death, divorce, or freak occurances. To such people it can be really hard to believe in God, especially if they were never taught how to embrace spirituality from the beginning. And then you have mental illness. We know how severe mental illness can make people do crazy things, but what if it is more common that we realize to have just enough mental instability that it makes it hard to make good decisions. Or maybe we all go through times in our lives when, because of chemical changes in our brain, we are driven to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't. Look at how much adolesence changes us, for example. I believe that this is one of the reasons it is so important to understand the fall of Adam in order to understand the sacrifice of Christ. We all live in a fallen world and it affects us all in different ways. That is why we cannot judge. We don't know the burdens people have been given to carry as we climb the mountain of life. Some people may climb up the mountain as if it presented no challenge at all. The may pass others who are struggling to make any progress and assume that they are doing better than others. Those who seem to make little or no progress often get discouraged and assume that they aren't cut out for heaven. Fortunately, that is not how God judges.

I think that one of the most important stories in the Bible is often misunderstood. When we read the story of the widow's mite, we often assume Christ is talking about tithing or giving to charity. But I think that it is really teaching us about the way the Father judges our good works. For some people living a life of discipleship comes easy. They, like the rich men in the story are able to poor buckets of good works into the pot. But for some it is not so easy. For some their offer may seem to be insignificant, but God knows that it is worth more than the others. It is not about how much we give compared to others, it is about the nature of our offering. It is about the sacrifice.

That is one of the great things about my job. I see God make bad men good, and good men better. Regardless of what their offering is, He multiplies it.

Okay, sorry for the sermon...but what did you expect? I'm a chaplain.

More stories to come.

(Sure, thats what I always say...I'll finish later).