Being on the children’s ministry team, especially during recruiting season, is an effective way to find out a lot of otherwise-classified information.
This struck me anew at our last team meeting when we were discussing different people we could ask to volunteer, and one team member said No, she can’t do it because…shhhhhh…..she’s pregnant!!
Besides secret-but-happy news, I also become reluctantly privy to such things as who’s leaving the church, whose marriage is on the rocks, who has chronic illness, who can’t stand to work with whom.
In other words, sometimes I’m burdened with additional secret sorrows.
This past weekend our family attended the memorial service of a dear woman hardly older than I am who is finally at rest after a twenty-year battle with cancer. And at church a friend of mine confessed that she couldn’t make herself go to the memorial because she just couldn’t handle any more death—after one after another after another of her family members have passed away recently.
Sometimes I’m burdened with additional public sorrows.
I think of another family enveloped in difficulty whose sorrows I don’t even know the specifics of. And another friend rushed to the hospital just last night with unexpected, debilitating, serious health failure, leaving a passel of kids at home and a wife torn between sick husband and dependent children.
How to bear up in the storms of this age? How to survive sorrow upon sorrow? Sometimes it seems like demons are swarming up from hell itself to maim, blind, and destroy those I love.
O Church of Christ in sorrow now,
Where evil lies in wait,
When trials and persecutions come
This light will never fade.
For though the hordes of hell may rage,
Their pow’r will not endure;
Our times are in the Father’s hand,
Our anchor is secure.
Matt Boswell & Stuart Townend, “O Church of Christ Invincible”
This no-matter-what security in Christ is what I’ve been working with the elementary students on for months. I’ve taught them to memorize Question and Answer 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which they finally recited last week in front of the whole congregation.
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| Me—shaking with nerves—leading the kids, after reminding myself that I can get up in front of everyone because I am not my own. |
Q: What is your only comfort in life and death?
A: That I am not my own, but belong
—body and soul, in life and in death—
to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven;
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to Him,
Christ, by His Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for Him.
The memorial service we attended was almost just incidentally about the dearly departed one. It was really much more about the Lord she loved until the end—and now loves face to face!
How do you bear up under raging cancer and steady loss of ability year after year? How do you face life without your mom when you’re only just emerging into adulthood? How do you cope with the loss of a most beloved spouse?
The memorial service gave a resounding answer to these questions and reminded me again of my reason for hope in life and in death.
Here and now and age to age
My grateful song will be the same
Thank you, thank you, I’ve been saved!
I’m tethered to the cross.
Danny O’Callaghan, “Tethered to the Cross”
