Dear Good Shepherd and friends,
I have another car story. This one's from a friend of mine, though. The same friend, actually, who helped us out with our car troubles a couple weeks ago.
He and his family were headed to Ledges State Park about a week ago. Somewhere along the way, near Madrid, their minivan began to act up. Long story short, the car began smoking and they had to slow down and pull off to the side of the road. In fact they were sort of in the middle of nowhere Iowa, between Boone and Madrid, and they had to pull off onto some obscure gravel road. It was something to do with the car overheating. But why was still a mystery.
It was unfortunate timing. They were near an hour from home with four kids in the car. And on top of that, they probably felt like isolated strangers on an empty farm road and nowhere near any obvious help. Unlike our episode a few weeks prior, there was no auto store or friend nearby.
It wasn't long before a car of teenage girls came up offering some help. It turns out they happened to be on a road not far from a house where apparently a family with teenage girls lived.
My friend said he did not even know where to begin. It was clear that there was overheating going on by the smoke from the engine. One of the girls recognized what was going on and said they had coolant up in their house up the road. Then they offered for my friend's wife and kids to use their house up the road to relax while they wait for help. Unexpected help from unexpected people.
They did not fix the problem. But they stopped. They offered what they had. It made a difference.
While they were waiting to put some coolant in the car that was offered to them by this kind family, another car pulled up. It was a middle-aged gentleman. He had a towel, a flashlight, and a couple tools. He recognized what was going on because his car had overheated just a few days before. He had a story to tell of his experience. He didn't actually do a whole lot to fix the problem. He had an old rag to help clean up and a flashlight to look into the engine.
What was more helpful was the man's story. He had been where they had been. Isolation on the side of a county road turned into something a little more refreshing and encouraging, and even helpful even if the car didn't get fixed right there.
They finally got some coolant in -- enough to drive a few miles to nearby Madrid and get more help.
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There's much to understand about our lives from this story. We are not isolated individuals in this life. In fact, according to the story of Scripture, God made us to be interdepedent. We are made to be sharers. Sharers of life, sharers of stories, sharers of experiences.
Paul says this in Second Corinthians 1:3-4:
Blessed is the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and God of all comfort, the one who comforts us in all of our experiences of distress so that we are able to comfort those experiencing any distress through the same comfort with which we have been comforted by God.
There are a few things that strike me that connect with stories like this in our lives.
First, we will have troubles. If you've lived ten minutes, you know that life is not absent of troubles, of distress. It might be a car breakdown. It might be financial trouble, family struggle, health troubles, loss of a loved one, uncertainty about a job, questions raising kids. We all have troubles in this life. And most of our experiences of distress are not unusual. They are more likely common, experiences shared by others.
Second, God does not necessarily always make the problems go away. God comforts. God encourages. This, I know, is not all that comforting for some. We often want a "fix-it" God. But this just isn't how God seems to work in Scripture. Now, this is not a cop-out for why God doesn't make our problems go away, either. I suspect there's something much more profound to learn here by the fact that God is not a cosmic fix-it handyman who just fixes things when they break. God comforts and encourages.
Third, we comfort others because God has comforted us. There's a chain of things here that Paul is getting at. God doesn't just comfort us so we can feel better. God comforts us so that we can comfort others. God's comfort and encouragement aren't just for us to receive, it's for us to pass on. You and I play a vital role in how the comfort of God passes on into the lives of people in this world. This was the case for our friends and the two cars who stopped. Their stopping brought comfort and encouragement on the side of the road, even if they couldn't fix the problem.
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We all have stories, experiences, and things that have happened to us. Often it seems we'd like to move on from many of our experiences. We'd like to forget, to get past it. Or sometimes we just internalize it all. We keep it to ourselves. The story of our experience never gets told.
Don't move on too quickly. Don't bury your story.
God thinks otherwise. It's your story, your shared experience that might just be the best help.
I'm reminded of our recurring experiences of other parents who sometimes have trouble or bad days with their kids. It's not unusual for Laura or I to be actually encouraged by stories of other parents whose struggles are like ours. "It's so good to know that we're not the only ones," we often say.
Duh. Of course we're not the only ones. But when we don't pull off on the side of the road and share our story like the man who pulled over for our friends, it makes it easy to forget that our experiences might be helpful, comforting, or encouraging to someone else. When we don't share our stories, we end up contributing to a world where people feel isolated and forgotten, and we also forget that you don't need to be able to fix the problem to actually have something to offer.
Jesus was God among us. Interesting that he didn't fix the problems of his world the way we'd probably have liked if we were around then. He did not overthrow the bad government of the Roman empire. He didn't really blow up the system of injustice in his world. Yes, he offered and lived an alternative way, as I call it a "third way" of living, and he called people to follow him in his way of living. And yes, his way of living subverted the common ways of living. But he never completely did away with the evil and injustice in the world. He offered something else. And yes he healed people, but they did not live the rest of their lives disease and sickness free, and they all still died. His healings and miracles were signs of hope.
Yes, Jesus' life and death and resurrection overcomes our old dead humanity and offers us new life. But we still must live life in this world. God did not pull us out of living lives amid trouble and distress. Jesus did not fix the problem of broken humanity and a broken world by taking us out of it.
As God among us, Jesus' way of living that turns out to be the way of salvation is the pull-over-by-the-side-of-the-road kind, the kind that came into our humanity to redeem us by walking in our shoes and sharing our stories and our experiences. Jesus even still died a human death. He didn't ditch at the last minute and avoid dying because he could have. He died right alongside other people. And because God raised him from the dead, he still lives among us to come alongside us by his Spirit to share his story with us, "Hey, I've been there. I've been where you are. I've seen the worst and I've been through death. I came through it, though."
Take the Jesus way and pull off the road more often. There are friends and family around you right now who are broken down: family trouble, financial trouble, job insecurity, illness, death, frustration and loss. You don't need to fix things to be helpful. You don't need to feel like you're throwing a pity party. Just stop and say you've been there, too. Be present. You probably have a story to tell. In fact, I'll tell you now: you do have a story to share. Someone probably could benefit from that. Your story might be the comfort and encouragement someone might need today, or tomorrow, or the next day.
Who will hear and be comforted by your story today? Bring the hope of resurrection by sharing your life.
In defiant hope,
Pastor Kyle
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