A Year of Love and Support

I was asked to give devotions in one of my classes here at Calvin. I wrote this because it is one year ago today that we received the call that a donor had been found for my Dad. This past year has been amazing, seeing Dad as he continues to make progress in his recovery. Our family and friends have been amazing, we would not be here without your prayers, love and support. As this year has been happy for us, we also continue to pray for the donor family, that they feel God's presence and love as they continue to adjust their lives and remember their loved one. Organ donation is an amazing thing, the idea that so much can be given in such a time of sorrow.

“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.