Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

7 Takes About the Providence and Mercy of God

Happy All Saints Day!

File:The Rider on a White Horse - Queen Mary Apocalypse (early 14th C), f.37 - BL Royal MS 19 B XV.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

My living room is strewn with the remnants of various costumes from all the festivities of our Halloween/Reformation/Birthday Extravaganza. By the end of yesterday I was so full of cheese I was unable to eat any chocolate, by the grace of God. Furthermore, and brilliantly, only one of my children devoted herself to the collection of candy and then hid it away so that I will not be tempted to indulge myself. All the other ones walked the neighborhood and enjoyed the balmy evening singing Christmas carols on the thresholds of those who seemed amenable. I guess they are bringing to life this particular thought:

Anyway, it’s Friday. Let’s see about one take divided into seven.

One

Today is the day the final payment on our church mortgage is being made. Some fifteen years ago, in the depths of the coldest January that I can remember, the whole congregation of God’s faithful Good Shepherd people turned out to pack us and our four little children up and move us to the house adjacent to our current church. This was a very gracious thing to do, and yet I was so humiliated, because I had been an overwhelmed young mother and hadn’t thrown anything away for about seven years. I had boxes and boxes of stuff that needed sorting through and yet had had no will or means to accomplish the task. So there everyone came on a Monday morning to pack us up. There was no time to sort. No time to think. No time to do anything but be helpless before God’s providence. Everything we had accumulated since moving to Binghamton was carried the two miles down the road and stacked along the hallways of a strange, but mercifully warm house where we hunkered down and tried to get out bearings.

Two

For, 2009 was the end of a long struggle. In 2003, only a year after arriving at this job, the Episcopal Church decided to consecrate and bless a man in a sexual relationship with another man as bishop. Before that moment there had been a lot of bad behavior and bad belief in the church, but none of it had been institutionalized, none of it had required the assent of all those whose one job was guarding the flock—the bishops. From 2003 to 2007 congregations like ours began the laborious and anxious work of first admonishing the denomination to turn around in repentance, gradually giving up hope, and finally leaving, only to be sued for all the property—church, rectory, and assets. We defended ourselves for the better part of a year and then lost in that cold, cold January.

Three

Meanwhile, various Roman Catholic congregations in our region were merging and one large—again, very warm—building was suddenly left vacant at the end of December 2008. When the priest of that church read in the Newspaper (shows how long ago this was) that we had lost our lawsuit, he called Matt and implored him to accept the use of the rectory, and ultimately the church building, free of charge. Both were going up on the market, but there was some time and we were homeless. Between the Thursday we lost, and the Thursday we moved in—one week—we had said goodbye to a beloved, century old place of worship, a bright and cheerful schoolroom, a big picture window, and the beginnings of a garden. The next Saturday found me trying to figure out how to make bulletins on my laptop and print them on a little copier. We were also very worried about our cat whom we had lost in all the chaos., thinking he had run away.

Four

A few months later the Catholic diocese sold us the church, the house, and the school which has allowed us to pay down the mortgage in record time. If you drive by here, you will see a cheerful day-care across the parking lot and a lot of well-worn play equipment. Somewhere in all the tribulations, Matt had to have some teeth pulled and I cut my hair short in a frenzy of angst.

A little bit later we got a call from a local priest in the Episcopal Church whose job was to make our old rectory ready to put on the market. As he had been wandering around, he had heard some faint noises from inside the very bowls of the house. Knowing of the loss of our cat, he wondered if that benighted creature was lurking within. Sure enough, he was. We tore down part of the basement wall and I climbed part way in and drug that sorry beastie out. We brought him home and he never fully recovered his coping mechanisms, being always an anxious and wary creature.

Five

Of course, the really exciting part of the story is that The Episcopal Church, from whom we had tried so hard to buy the old Good Shepherd (as we still call it) categorically refused to deal with us and ultimately sold it to a local group of Muslims who have called it The Islamic Awareness Center. They carefully removed the cross and painted the beautiful red doors green. A few years ago there were free tours through historic buildings throughout the town and our four older kids went over and discovered that what had been the nursery has been transformed into a room for anointing the bodies of the dead, and the parish hall, where the children used to ride a pink plastic bike around and around in the winter has been divided in half, one side for the women, one for the men. The sanctuary is full of huge rugs reoriented away from the original chancel, of course.

Six

So, as of today, we own the New Good Shepherd free and clear, and we are so so grateful to God for his providence, love, care, and mercy.

And the thing that’s so astonishing, looking back at what I remember as a stressful and, in many senses, bitter-tasting time, is how you cannot arrange what God will give and what he will take away. Though you pray and ask for one thing, yet all the time he is preparing another. Though you cannot imagine that he knows what he is doing, yet he is good and his mercy endures forever.

And isn’t that what I, and I imagine the whole world, is most particularly keen to control? What God will give and what he will take away? I’d love to be able to control the big things in life—who is in charge of the government, who are the bishops in the church, who will live and who will die. And I’d also love to control the small things that seem monumentally huge—where I live, what I eat, the happiness and health of my children and family and friends. I hate living on the knife’s edge of uncertainty.

Mercifully, it isn’t very often that you wake up one day and don’t know where you will be living seven mornings later. Most of the time I am able to go from one task to the next with the settling belief that I am able to arrange the world according to my inclinations. And how bad that is for me, in the long run. Better that I have, occasionally, to declare, with Job, the blessedness of God, to understand in every facet of life that he is good.

Seven

And here, for all of you wonderful people who are financially supporting this blog, is a long overdue Read The Comments Pod. I am kind of hoping that I’ll be able to do a livestream today or tomorrow, but I know not what the future holdeth. The Bishop is coming to celebrate with us this weekend and to dedicate our building. It may be the most restful thing ever, or I may be running laps trying to keep my head on. Have a nice day!