“6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little
while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have
come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though
refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and
honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love
him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled
with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are
receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:6-9
If you were at LOFT this past week, you remember that Pastor
Mary talked about suffering. She pointed out that when we suffer, we may not be
able to answer why. We may not be able to see how the little chapter that is
our lives explains God’s plan, his big story. We can however remember that God
is fully human and fully divine. Since God is fully human he weeps with us, he
feels our pain. Since God is also fully divine, he moves creation from death to
life. As followers of Christ, it is important to that we walk in the will of
God, daylight. This daylight can, however, go through dark places, but we need
to trust and believe that this is part of God’s plan.
I bring these things up because today is a very important day
for me. A year ago today, April, 11, 2013 at 3:30 in the afternoon, my family
got an important phone call, a kidney and pancreas donor had been found for my
Dad. Before this my Dad had been a type 1 diabetic for 31 years and had failing
kidneys because of it. My brothers and I had never known him as being healthy,
as feeling good. The past year has been amazing to see the change in my Dad,
but this year I know has also been painful for the family that lost their loved
one. Lots of questions, wondering why this happened? Or how do we move on from
here? The donor family’s “chapter” which involved suffering through death,
helped to write the next page in my family’s “chapter” and the “chapters” of
other transplant recipients, and those are only a few of the “chapters” they
influenced in God’s big story. How they responded to God’s will of their loved
one dying and what they did to keep the memory alive.
I know that this is more of a major example of how someone’s
chapter affects another chapter in God’s story, but there are also smaller
things that we sometimes forget about. Whether it’s how we walk on the paths
here at Calvin. When you debate whether or not to say hi or smile at that boy
that you think you had a class with, but can’t remember if you did, you may
find out that that little action that took less than half a second made him
feel loved and in turn he passed that on to another person who kept doing the
same thing to other people. The little actions you do, both now as a student, and
possibly someday as you fill other roles like teacher, friend, spouse, and
parent affect those around you. How do you handle the suffering that has been
written into your “chapter” and how may that affect the people around you? As
someone whose life has been changed by little actions like saying hello, and
big actions like organ transplants, I can tell you that your actions, like how
you react to suffering, do affect others.
