“Life is difficult,” said Scott Peck in his popular book The Road Less Traveled. He spoke the truth, and that truth hit home with me a few years ago. During one weekend, two young women I had known died unexpectedly, one of them a suicide. I had known her since she was a child, and I had performed the wedding of the other woman. It was sad, tragic news, the kind of news for which you struggle to make sense of but can’t. Life is difficult.

On Sunday evening of that same weekend, I received a telephone call from a man who sounded very agitated and angry. He was from Michigan, he said, and was returning from Florida where the promise of a job had come up empty. He claimed to have hitch-hiked from Florida to Columbia, was in need of help, had called 57 churches and got nothing but the run-a-round.

Furthermore, he claimed to have an IQ of 185 and could type 100 words a minute (I do not exaggerate)! By the time he got hold of me, he was bitter, angry and lashing out at us “transparent, hypocritical Christians” (his words, not mine). He never was clear about what he wanted me to do, and when I told him that I didn’t know exactly how to help him, he launched into a verbal and abusive tirade, cursing me with the most obscene and foul words you’ve never heard. Then he slammed down the phone, but called back 3 more times to make sure I got the message.

Later, in reflection, it occurred to me that those two young women and that man all had something in common – life was difficult, so difficult that the pain of it clouded their ability to see a way through.

What do you do when life is difficult? Some people have the inner strength to take responsibility for their situation and work their way through it. Some people have the courage and humility to confess that their problems are beyond their capacity to deal with alone, and thus seek out a competent counselor or pastor. Others are able to cope with the love and support of family and friends.

Another way of coping which is right at hand, but few seem to know it, is through the community of faith, the church. Worship, prayer and the communion of the saints are all a source of strength when life is difficult. Paul, in the letter to the Romans, said, we are “members one another” (5:12). And in Galatians, he writes: “Bear one another’s burdens….” (6:2). What Paul reminds us of is that our strength is in community, a community that surrounds us with love and care. In community, we matter to each other. Faith is not primarily a private, individual thing, but is a communal affair.

In the community of faith we strive to do what that old hymn says: “we share each other’s woes, our mutual burdens bear” (“Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” No. 557, UM Hymnal). And in doing this, we hope to reduce the difficultly of life. There is an old saying that “misery loves company.” A new take on that old proverb is that “misery demands company.”

John Donne was a great English preacher and poet. In one of his famous poems he wrote, “every man’s death diminishes me, therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” I was involved in the lives of those two young women, and their death diminishes me. And that angry, bitter man reminds me that I cannot be indifferent to his pain and suffering. Our lives are tied together whether we know it or not. But the hope of life is in a community where “we are members one another.”

Don

This entry was posted on 08/01/09 and is filed under General. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.