Billy Coffey's Blog

November 4

A lot’s happened in my tiny lit­tle life over the past months, not the least of which is that  I’ve be­come in­ter­im pas­tor at the Bap­tist church here in town. Long sto­ry, and I do  plan to get to that here in this space, but I thought it best for now to share my ser­mon  from last Sun­day with a few mi­nor ed­its. Be­cause re­al­ly, we could all use a lit­tle perspec­tive today?  Yeah?  

Yeah.

Every­one ready for to­day?

Every­one dread­ing to­day?

Every­one just pray­ing to­day  will hur­ry up and be over with?

Yeah, me too.  

I like to keep up with what’s hap­pen­ing in our na­tion and in our world. I think that’s  part of be­ing a good cit­i­zen. But it’s so much, isn’t it? There’s just so much in­for­ma­tion  com­ing at us from so many di­rec­tions. And be­cause of that, two things can hap­pen.

One is that with so much in­for­ma­tion com­ing from so many sources, it can get  hard to know what’s re­al­ly true and what’s re­al­ly not.

The oth­er is that we can get sucked right into mid­dle of this riv­er of in­for­ma­tion  and start con­fus­ing what’s im­por­tant in the Chris­t­ian life with what isn’t.  If you lis­ten to the news, if you turn on your TV or your ra­dio or take that phone  out of your pock­et, what you’re go­ing to hear is that it all comes down to Tues­day.  Tues­day is the most im­por­tant day in our his­to­ry. Tues­day de­fines the fu­ture. Tues­day  de­cides every­thing.

There’s a great risk in­volved any­ time a preach­er starts talk­ing about pol­i­tics. The prob­lem with preach­ing about pol­i­tics from the same pul­pit that you preach God’s truth is that it gets aw­ful­ly easy to cheap­en the Bible by bring­ing it down to the same  lev­el as pol­i­tics, or it gets aw­ful­ly easy to make an idol of pol­i­tics by el­e­vat­ing it to the  same lev­el as the Bible. So it’s best to just not talk about pol­i­tics at all, and call it off  lim­its.

But. 

The prob­lem I found with keep­ing silent about what’s on every­one’s mind to­day is  just that — it’s on every­one’s mind today. And let me tell you, I tried find­ing some­thing  else to preach about. Some­thing nice like one of Je­sus’s mir­a­cles, or a Psalm. But it  just didn’t feel right. Not this time. Any preach­er worth his salt should ad­dress what’s  hap­pen­ing in the world. Hon­est­ly, what good is a preach­er who doesn’t ap­ply the Bible to what’s go­ing on in life?

I’ve vot­ed in every elec­tion since George Bush, Sr., and I’ll vote in every elec­tion  for the rest of my life. Vot­ing’s im­por­tant. Vot­ing is a priv­i­lege. But none of you will  ever know who I vote for. Ever. That’s none of your busi­ness.

And un­less you flat-out tell me who you vote for, I won’t ever know that. Be­cause  that’s none of my busi­ness, and be­cause it doesn’t mat­ter any­way. Who you vote for  would nev­er change how much I love you as per­son and as a broth­er or sis­ter in Christ. Pe­ri­od.

The Bible is God’s word to us and for us so that we can know Him and have a blue print for the way we live our lives. But many times, the Bible gives us prin­ci­ples in­stead of an­swers. The Bible is a guide, and all of its wis­dom from Gen­e­sis to Rev­e­la­tion should help form our de­ci­sions per­son­al­ly, so­cial­ly, and po­lit­i­cal­ly. But the Bible nev­er  says vote for this person or that per­son. It just doesn’t.

God says, “Here’s my book. This book is the truth. You read it. You take every­thing that’s there and ap­ply it to your life with the help of My Holy Spir­it. You let this book shape your view of the world, and you pray to Me when you step outside your door, into your work, or into the vot­ing booth, and you’ll al­ways know what to do.”

So I’m not go­ing to talk about to­day be­cause that doesn’t mat­ter.

I don’t care who  you vote for. I only care that you vote. No­vember 3 doesn’t con­cern me at all.

November 4 does.  

Be­cause some­one is go­ing to win this elec­tion, right?

We might not know who that per­son is tonight, but chances are we’ll have a pret­ty  good idea. And if that’s your per­son, you’re go­ing to feel great. You’re go­ing to feel  like a huge bur­den has just been lift­ed off your shoul­ders. You’re go­ing to think that now, fi­nal­ly, we can start putting this hor­ri­ble year be­hind us.

But what if that doesn’t hap­pen? What if the guy you thought was the right choice,  the one who had the wis­dom to guide our coun­try for­ward, the one you knew be­yond  any doubt that God want­ed to lead our na­tion, what if that guy los­es?

What if on No­vember 4 you wake up to the re­al­i­ty that you prayed and prayed wouldn’t hap­pen? 

I looked all through the Bible to find an an­swer to that ques­tion, and there it was  in Joshua. We talked about Joshua a while back, and how God wants us all to cross  our own Jor­dan Rivers. This time we’re go­ing to fo­cus on a mo­ment in his life af­ter that  cross­ing.

Let’s read now to­day’s scrip­ture, Joshua chap­ter 5, vers­es 13-15:

When Joshua was by Jeri­cho, he lift­ed up his eyes and looked, and be­hold, a man  was stand­ing be­fore him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him  and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our ad­ver­saries?”

And he said, “No; but I am the com­man­der of the army of the LORD. Now I have  come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and wor­shiped and said to him, “What  does my lord say to his ser­vant?” And the com­man­der of the LORD’S army said to  Joshua, “Take off your san­dals from your feet, for the place where you are stand­ing is  holy.” And Joshua did so.

And this is God’s holy word.

So, where are we? Joshua has led the Is­raelites into their fu­ture home — a home  that would be de­liv­ered to them by the very hand of God. All the men of Is­rael have been cir­cum­cised. It’s the first time that Joshua’s gen­er­a­tion has been so ded­i­cat­ed  and so unit­ed to God’s pur­pos­es. They’ve cel­e­brat­ed Passover for the first time in the Promised Land. And now they’re ready to face their first chal­lenge — tak­ing the city of  Jeri­cho. There’s go­ing to be a fight here. It’ll be a fight un­like any the world has seen,  but it’s still go­ing to be a fight. A bat­tle.

But be­fore this bat­tle takes place, we get these few vers­es here where Joshua  learns the very same per­spec­tive that some of us are go­ing to need in the com­ing  week. Be­cause Joshua kind of makes a mis­take here, and it’s one we all make. But  then he’s re­mind­ed of the truth, and he re­acts to that truth in a way that both hon­ors God and ce­ments Joshua’s place as Is­rael’s leader.

Let this pas­sage be your guide if come No­vember 4 you think every­thing’s lost and this coun­try is dam­aged be­yond repair. Be­cause if your vote isn’t for the win­ner, we see in these three vers­es how we should re­act, what we should remem­ber, and  what we should do.

First, how we should re­act. 

The Is­raelites are on the plains of Jeri­cho, and they can see those thick, tall city  walls ris­ing into the sky. Those walls were built about 10,000 years ago. Jeri­cho was built on a mound and sur­round­ed by a huge dirt em­bank­ment. At the bot­tom of that  em­bank­ment was a re­tain­ing wall about 15 feet high. On top of that was an­oth­er wall of bricks and mud that were six feet thick and 26 feet high. And at the top of the embank­ment was an­oth­er brick wall with a base that was 46 feet above the ground.  It is the ear­li­est tech­nol­o­gy that sci­en­tists have found for some­thing built pure­ly for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Those walls were there for a rea­son — to keep in­vaders out. This was the city that Joshua had to take. And right now, he doesn’t know how he’s go­ing to do it. So he does what a lot of us do when we’re try­ing to fig­ure out the impos­si­ble — he goes for a walk to think about it. That’s what Joshua is do­ing. He’s walking and think­ing. And we know this be­cause at the be­gin­ning of verse 13, we learn  that Joshua lifts up his eyes and looks, and there’s a man stand­ing be­fore him. But not just any man. Verse 13 doesn’t come right out and say it, but it has to be  pret­ty ob­vi­ous to Joshua that the per­son stand­ing be­fore him was more than a man.  Be­cause for one, Joshua has grown up in the desert. He’s not a city boy. He’s a war­rior.  He’s a leader. It’s aw­ful­ly hard to sneak up on some­one like that, but that’s what this  man has done.

And more, this man has a weapon. He has a sword. No­tice the po­si­tion of his  sword. The blade’s not in the scab­bard. It’s drawn. And in those days, a drawn sword had only one pur­pose. The only time you drew your sword was when you were go­ing  to fight.

We get a glimpse into Joshua’s char­ac­ter here. What does he not do? He doesn’t run, doesn’t back down. He stands there like he’s say­ing, “Okay, if you want to fight, I’ll  fight.”

We don’t get a de­scrip­tion of the man stand­ing be­fore him. We’ve seen this person be­fore though, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but there has to be some­thing about him that throws Joshua off. He’s a man in ap­pear­ance, but some­thing more.  Some­thing pow­er­ful. Some­thing dan­ger­ous. So Joshua stands ready. Maybe he puts  his hand on his sword, ready to draw if he has to.

And he asks a ques­tion that’s as old as hu­man­i­ty it­self and as rel­e­vant to the year  2020 as any ques­tion in the Bible —

“Are you for us, or for our ad­ver­saries?”

Now on the face of it, this is a great ques­tion for Joshua to ask. Be­cause the question of whether or not he’s go­ing to fight is about to be solved by what­ev­er the man  an­swers. But it’s also the wrong ques­tion, be­cause even though the man hasn’t told  Joshua ex­act­ly who he is yet, Joshua has to know this is some­one dif­fer­ent, some­one  com­plete­ly un­like any­one he’s ever met. Some­one even not of this world. This is some­one to whom the nor­mal ways that hu­mans think don’t ap­ply.

Here’s ba­si­cal­ly what Joshua’s ask­ing — “Whose side are you on?” Wrong ques­tion. 

But isn’t that the same ques­tion that’s hid­ing un­der the sur­face of near­ly every  choice Amer­i­cans make these days?

Every­thing from the friend­ships we make to the peo­ple we choose to as­sociate with to the news chan­nels we watch and the web­sites we vis­it, it all comes down to that ques­tion, doesn’t it?

We no longer sep­a­rate peo­ple by whether they’re good and de­cent or whether  they’re just trou­ble wait­ing to hap­pen. It’s no longer about what kind of per­son they are, it’s about what kinds of opin­ions they have. And when we hear it like that, we think, “Well, okay, that sounds like a pret­ty un-Chris­t­ian thing to do.”

But we still do it, don’t we? We all do, to the ex­tent that we’re no longer one nation. We’re two sides liv­ing in one land. What’s hap­pened to make things like that? Pol­i­tics has al­ways been a big deal in our coun­try. If you think the past few elections have been bad, take a look at some of our ear­li­est elec­tions in the late 1700s  and ear­ly 1800s. They were terrible. But by and large, peo­ple still got along be­cause  even if they were di­vid­ed by pol­i­tics, they still had the com­mon foun­da­tion of re­li­gion.  Even then our coun­try con­tained many faiths, and even then there were many who  had no religious faith at all. But there re­mained a huge ma­jor­i­ty of the na­tion had at  least a ba­sic be­lief in God and un­der­stood the ba­sic doc­trines of Chris­t­ian faith.

Things be­gan to change af­ter WWII though, when it be­came clear ex­act­ly what  Hitler had done in the Holo­caust. Millions upon mil­lions of Jews slaugh­tered. The hate in­volved in that. The ut­ter dis­re­gard ab­sence of hu­man de­cen­cy. There was only one  word for it — evil.

Peo­ple start­ed won­der­ing how a good and lov­ing God could al­low some­thing like that to hap­pen. That led to a steep increase in athe­ism that took hold in Eu­rope and in Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, and by the 1960s, it was pret­ty much everywhere.

Re­li­gion in this coun­try be­gan to de­crease. By the 1990s, few­er peo­ple were going to church. By the 2000s, few­er peo­ple iden­ti­fied them­selves as Chris­tians. And it’s to the point now where re­li­gion in gen­er­al and Chris­tian­i­ty in par­tic­u­lar no longer has  a cen­tral place in Amer­i­can life. We’ve lost our foun­da­tion, the glue that once held our so­ci­ety to­geth­er.

All of us once had at least that ba­sic faith in com­mon. We don’t any more. 

But here’s the thing — even though re­li­gion is be­ing pushed aside in our coun­try,  we’re all still re­li­gious. As hu­man beings, we’re all built to wor­ship. We can’t help it. It’s  in our DNA. So as or­ga­nized faith de­creased in our coun­try, something had to take its place. And prob­a­bly since the mid-90s, peo­ple have turned to pol­i­tics to fill that gap.  So much so that now, pol­i­tics is re­al­ly our na­tion­al re­li­gion.

We got rid of God, but be­cause we’re made to wor­ship some­thing we still need­ed  a god, and the only thing that came close to the law of God are the laws of man.  The news­cast­ers on CNN and Fox are our prophets. The lead­ers of our politi­cal  par­ties are our mes­si­ahs. Their word is iron.

We can’t dis­agree with any­thing they say, be­cause that would mean be­ing dis­loy­al.

And we can’t be that, be­cause we all have to pick a side.  

When pol­i­tics be­comes re­li­gion, it has to get in every­where. That’s why every­thing is po­lit­i­cal to­day. Every­thing from our tele­vi­sion shows to our mu­sic. Even sports are po­lit­i­cal now. We’ve gone so over­board in mak­ing pol­i­tics our na­tion­al god that we’ve made even a dead­ly virus po­lit­i­cal.

And it’s not just the sec­u­lar folks who live this way. Many Chris­tians and many Chris­t­ian pas­tors make a god of pol­i­tics, too. They stand in their pul­pits and say, “This  is how you have to vote if you’re a be­liev­er in Christ. This is the par­ty you have to belong to, and this is the way you should feel about so­cial is­sues.”

And by do­ing this, what are they re­al­ly say­ing? That our real prob­lem isn’t spir­i­tu­al, it’s po­lit­i­cal, and so the real an­swer doesn’t lay in God, but in pol­i­tics. They say that the only ones who can save us are the ones who think like us, and those are the peo­ple who have to be in pow­er. Be­cause they are the ones who will pro­tect our rights. They are the ones who will keep our na­tion on track.

And why do we think that? Be­cause we be­lieve the peo­ple who need to be in  pow­er, the ones who think like we think, are the ones who think like God. And once  we start giv­ing our­selves over to that kind of think­ing, that’s when Joshua’s ques­tion  be­comes our own — “Who are you for? Us, or them?”

Are you on our side, the side of truth? Or are you on the oth­er side, the side of lies  and de­ceit?  

This is a com­plete­ly new way of see­ing the role of pol­i­tics in the life of a Chris­t­ian.  The New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers didn’t see pol­i­tics this way at all. The New Tes­ta­ment writers knew that if you give any hu­man be­ing enough pow­er, they’ll mur­der the Son of  God. So this idea that Chris­tian­i­ty can be im­proved in any way by a po­lit­i­cal par­ty or a politi­cian goes complete­ly against the grain of the New Tes­ta­ment.

So what’s our first step here if on No­vember 4 you wake up to find your guy has  lost?

It’s to start try­ing to sep­a­rate your­self from the kind of think­ing that made Joshua ask his ques­tion. We can­not sur­vive as a na­tion if we keep see­ing our neigh­bors as en­e­mies. We can­not bridge the di­vide be­tween us if we keep see­ing peo­ple in terms of their worldly opin­ions in­stead of their eter­nal souls. And the first step in get­ting away from that is  to pray.

Pray for our lead­ers, no mat­ter what par­ty they be­long to.  

Paul writes in 2 Tim­o­thy, “I urge, then, first of all, that pe­ti­tions, prayers, in­ter­cession, and thanks­giv­ing be made for all peo­ple, for kings and all those in au­thor­i­ty …  This is good, and pleas­es our God and Sav­ior.”

Get that? All peo­ple. Kings and all those in au­thor­i­ty. Pe­ti­tions, prayers, in­terces­sion, thanks­giv­ing — Paul uses just about every kind of word there is for prayer in say­ing how we should pray for our lead­ers.

And re­mem­ber, Paul wrote these words un­der the reign of Nero, and I prom­ise you that as a man and a politi­cian, Nero was a lot worse than Joe Biden or Don­ald  Trump.

Joshua, though, made an even big­ger mis­take with this ques­tion, be­cause he  didn’t ask, “Are you for us, or against us?” to sim­ply a per­son. He asked it to God. In verse 14, the man stand­ing be­fore Joshua of­fers his name. He’s the com­man­der  of the army of the Lord. There’s an­oth­er name for that — the an­gel of the Lord.  We’ve seen this per­son be­fore, haven’t we? Re­mem­ber Ja­cob all alone in that valley, wrestling with God? Wrestling with the an­gel of the Lord? What did we say about  the an­gel of the Lord? He’s Christ, right? He’s Je­sus be­fore com­ing into this world as a  man.

Joshua is stand­ing be­fore Christ. More than that, Christ is stand­ing be­tween Joshua — who rep­re­sents God’s cho­sen people set apart for the Lord’s own pur­pos­es  — and Jeri­cho, a pa­gan city filled with un­be­liev­ers.

Joshua asks Christ, “Whose side are you on? The good guys, or the bad guys? The ones who know you, or the ones who don’t?” And look at how Christ an­swers him — “No.”

There’s a bet­ter trans­la­tion for that word from the He­brew — “Nei­ther.” Whose side are you on, God? Nei­ther.

Take a minute and let that sink in. Not even Is­rael, God’s cho­sen na­tion, could claim God was com­plete­ly on their side when they were ap­proach­ing Jeri­cho. Why?

Be­cause God doesn’t take sides. 

The most hor­ri­ble pe­ri­od of our na­tion’s his­to­ry was the Civ­il War. If you think  things are bad in this coun­try now, think of 750,000 Amer­i­cans dead just be­cause they went to war against each oth­er. And even though half of our na­tion would have strong­ly dis­agreed at the time, there is no doubt that the man who served as Pres­i­dent dur­ing that war was placed there by God him­self.

There’s a sto­ry that of­ten told in books about Abra­ham Lin­coln. A man approached him dur­ing the height of the war and said, “Mr. Pres­i­dent, we trust dur­ing  this time of tri­al in which the na­tion is en­gaged, God is on our side, and will give us  vic­to­ry.”

Lin­coln, wise as he was, an­swered,

“Sir, my con­cern is not whether God is on our  side. My great­est con­cern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

Lin­coln re­fused to think of the North as en­tire­ly vir­tu­ous and the South en­tire­ly evil. In his sec­ond In­au­gur­al Ad­dress in 1865, he said, “Both North and South read the same Bible and pray to the same God … ” He knew the out­come of that war, what­ev­er  it would be, was in God’s hands. He knew God’s per­spec­tive is not al­ways out perspec­tive be­cause God sees every­thing, and we don’t.

But we don’t get that in this coun­try any­more. Our nat­ur­al ten­den­cy is al­ways to  ask, “Whose side is God on?” when the ques­tion we should be ask­ing is, “Who’s on God’s side?”

How many of us want to be on God’s side? Ra­tio­nal­ly, prob­a­bly all of us. But if  we’re hon­est emo­tion­al­ly, most of us want God to be on our side. We want God to back us up. We want God to think like we do. We want God’s will to line up with our own when we should be pray­ing for our will to line up with His.

So how should you re­act if on No­vember 4, your can­di­date los­es?

Start pray­ing for our pres­i­dent, who­ev­er that may be, and stop ask­ing Joshua’s ques­tion.

Stop ask­ing  that ques­tion about oth­ers, and nev­er, ever ask that ques­tion about God.

Now, what should you re­mem­ber? Look at the sec­ond half of verse 14:

“And  Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him, ‘What does my  lord say to his ser­vant.’”

There’s our an­swer. What should you re­mem­ber if the wrong per­son wins on Tuesday? That God still sits upon his throne. That you only have one Lord, and our pres­ident — who­ev­er it is — is not him. Your al­le­giance is to heav­en and heav­en alone. That  means you should be in this world but not of it.

Re­mem­ber what Je­sus says here — I’m  not on your side and I’m not on their side, I’m al­ways on my side.

What’s that also mean? Don’t dirty me with your pol­i­tics.  

God’s not a De­mo­c­rat. God’s not a Re­pub­li­can ei­ther. God’s not a lib­er­tar­i­an  or a so­cial­ist or a cap­i­tal­ist be­cause God doesn’t side with us. He ex­pects us to side  with him. 

No one is always right. No po­lit­i­cal par­ty, no ide­ol­o­gy. We’re all part­ly right and part­ly wrong, be­cause God will not fit into any box we try to put him in, and so nei­ther should His peo­ple.

The New Tes­ta­ment doesn’t lay out a de­tailed blue­print for a Chris­t­ian so­ci­ety,  whether a con­ser­v­a­tive one or a lib­er­al one. We only think it does be­cause we only  use those parts of the Bible that we agree with in­stead of us­ing it as a whole.  It does say all life is pre­cious, and we should pro­tect the in­no­cent. Does that mean abor­tion is mur­der and a ter­ri­ble sin? Ab­so­lu­te­ly.

So God says we should all be Repub­li­cans.  

But now hold on, it also says we are to care for the poor and seek jus­tice for the  op­pressed. And there are many places in Acts where the ear­ly church adopt­ed some thing very close to a vol­un­tary form of so­cial­ism.

So God says should all be De­mocrats?  

Conservative Christians say, “Love God”.

Secular liberals say, “Love people.”

God says to both, “You’re right.”

Nei­ther par­ty rep­re­sents the en­tire world­view by which we as Chris­tians should  live. No po­lit­i­cal par­ty only votes God’s way.

Do you see? Je­sus was too big to fit in ei­ther of those lit­tle box­es. He was al­ways moral, he was al­ways lov­ing, he al­ways revered hu­man life, and so he was al­ways in  trou­ble with both the left and the right.

Who were the con­ser­v­a­tive Re­pub­li­cans of Je­sus’s time? The Phar­isees.

Who were  the lib­er­al De­moc­rats? The Sad­ducees.

Those two groups could nev­er agree on any thing. Ex­cept hat­ing Christ.

Maybe that’s how politi­cians on both sides of this coun­try should see us, too. Ours is not a Chris­t­ian na­tion, though we should work to­ward be­ing a na­tion whose Chris­tians are ad­mired as good and true and kind cit­i­zens.  Amer­i­ca is not a shin­ing city on a hill, but we should let our free­dom be an ex­ample for the en­tire world.

The Unit­ed States is not the great­est bless­ing God gave mankind, but it is a na­tion  wor­thy of our sup­port and faith­ful­ness.

What should we re­mem­ber on No­vember 4? That we are cit­i­zens of the City of  God first and the City of Man sec­ond, and we should nev­er con­fuse that or­der.

Fi­nal­ly, what should we do on No­vember 4? It’s right there in the last verse. We  should take off our san­dals.

Look at verse 15.

“And the com­man­der of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off  your san­dals from your feet, for the place where you are stand­ing is holy.’ And Joshua  did so.”

As soon as Joshua re­al­izes who this per­son be­fore him is and that he wasn’t for either side, what’s he do?

He bows. Joshua takes a knee. That’s a sym­bol for sub­mis­sion. And what does Christ re­ply? Take off your san­dals. That’s an­oth­er sym­bol. Joshua stood on holy ground be­cause that was the ground where Christ stood.

This was Joshua’s burn­ing bush mo­ment, and to take off his san­dals was an outward way of show­ing what was go­ing on in­side his heart — Joshua was re­mov­ing all of  his world­ly thoughts, and every bit of pol­lu­tion in his soul.

Joshua bowed down be­fore Christ, be­cause Christ is the only per­son he should  bow down to.  

And Je­sus is the only per­son we should con­form our­selves to, not some po­lit­i­cal plat­form that says some things that, as Chris­tians, we should agree with, and oth­er  things that — ac­cord­ing to the Bible — we shouldn’t agree with but do anyway.

Be­cause that’s how it is, isn’t it? You have to be­lieve it all to be a Re­pub­li­can. You  have to be­lieve it all to be a De­mo­c­rat.

Je­sus says, “You sure about that? Be­cause I gave you two rules — love the Lord with all your heart, and love your neigh­bor as your­self.

That means you have to be  com­mit­ted to racial jus­tice and the poor. That means truth is some­thing that stands above what is true for just you. But one of those is a lib­er­al stance, and the oth­er is  con­ser­v­a­tive.”

Lis­ten to me. No mat­ter who wins on No­vember 3, our job as Chris­tians won’t change be­cause our hope doesn’t change.  

Our hope doesn’t lie in which par­ty has con­trol of our coun­try on Wednes­day, because no mat­ter what par­ty that is, we’re still go­ing to have bad gov­ern­ment, un­wise  gov­ern­ment, and in­ept gov­ern­ment.

That’s why God cares about who you vote for, but God cares a lot more about how you treat those who vote dif­fer­ent­ly than you do.  

COVID-19. Debt. Abortion. Ra­ci­sm. Gay rights. Cli­mate change. Fo­re­ign po­li­cy.  Gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. These are the is­sues that de­fine this year’s elec­tion. But these are is­sues that will still be with us on No­vember 4. They’re is­sues that nev­er go away,  be­cause they have their roots in the hu­man heart. The main is­sue we have in Amer­i­ca right now is the main is­sue that’s plagued hu­man­i­ty since the be­gin­ning of time. It’s  sin.

There’s only one per­son who has an an­swer for that, and that per­son will not be our pres­i­dent on Wednes­day.

The world doesn’t need po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tions, it needs Gospel so­lu­tions. We don’t  need the right can­di­date, we need the right Christ. And that’s where we come in.  That’s what we need to be do­ing as Chris­tians.

In the days of Ezra and Ne­hemi­ah, the peo­ple had the huge task of re­build­ing  Jerusalem’s walls. They’d been in ru­ins for over 70 years. And at first the peo­ple be came dis­cour­aged be­cause the job was just so big. It seemed im­pos­si­ble, but God showed them what to do.

He told each per­son to re­build the area just in front of their  house. Just con­cen­trate on what they were sup­posed to be do­ing.  

That’s what we should start do­ing now, no mat­ter who wins. Start do­ing what we  should have been do­ing all along. Start with what’s right in front of you. Quit putting  your faith in a per­son and put it in God. Start pray­ing that who­ev­er wins this elec­tion will fig­ure out how to do things right. Stop be­ing so wor­ried about what every­one else is do­ing, and start con­cen­trat­ing on what God wants you to do.

Be­cause no mat­ter what you hear on the news, no mat­ter what your Face­book feed says, no mat­ter what plays over your ra­dio, who­ev­er wins on Tues­day will not be  the sav­ior of this na­tion. And he won’t be the death of it ei­ther.

And be­cause when you stand be­fore God, his ques­tion to you won’t be who you vot­ed for or what par­ty you be­longed to, but what you did for Him and for those He made.

Longing for Just Us

image courtesy of photo bucket.com

We’ve just about had it all this year, haven’t we?

A pandemic; a recession; fires; earthquakes; murder hornets; murders of innocent men caught on camera; riots. Jobs have been lost. Families have been broken. Dreams have been put on hold at best, crushed at worst. We all hate each other. Everything is a lie unless it confirms what we knew all along, at which point it’s true, but it’s only true if the people saying it are people we agree with, people who look and talk and act like us. Conservatives are evil. Liberals are evil. The virus is fake. The virus is real. If you wear a mask when you go to the store, you’re doing your part to keep your family and your community safe. If you wear a mask when you go to the store, you’re bowing down to authoritarianism and yielding up your rights.

I’m sure I’ve missed something else, but I’ll stop there.

Adding to that list won’t do anything but add to our collective aggravation. You know what’s going on out there as well as I do. Much like the coronavirus itself, few of us are immune. There are days when it feels like we’re all being pushed right to the edge of something terrible, and we’re clawing at whatever we can to just hang on but we know we can’t hang on much longer. I’ll say that when this nationwide quarantine started, I compared it to 9/11 — a horrible thing we would endure but which would also bring us all together. I believed that. As painful as 9/11 was for those who experienced it, 9/12 was one of the best days in our country’s history. We mourned together. Set aside our differences. Saw one another as neighbors. For a few precious days we were not believers and atheists, right and left, pro-life or pro-choice.

We were just Us.

That hasn’t happened this time, has it? Far from bringing a broken nation together, these past months have only widened the gap between us. We can’t seem to agree on anything anymore.

I discovered this for myself last Sunday, when during the church service the pastor railed against President Trump. People left. Voices were raised. Sides were chosen. In the span of 30 minutes, I watched my church implode. People who had been through so much, who had endured weeks of isolation, who had lost their savings and their joy and their hope, people who were so starved for fellowship that they spaced their vehicles six feet apart in the parking lot just to be at church again, just to enjoy one another’s company again, suddenly found that their pastor was not like them, and in some cases their neighbors weren’t either. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. I’ll let you know.

I make it a point to keep this space somewhat light. Find out the big things hidden in the little things. Usually that means telling you about people I know or people I’ve met, ordinary folks who see life in extraordinary ways. Every writer faces a choice each time he or she sits down to a keyboard or a piece of paper: write something good about how we’re all different, or something great about how we’re all the same. Time and again, I steer myself toward the latter. Because I don’t care who you are or where you live or how you vote or how your skin is colored, you and I are the same in more ways than we’re not. That idea has always been foundational to the way I see the world. Sadly, it seems a lot of people don’t agree.

Somewhere along the line we quit seeing each other as human beings and started seeing them as their opinions.

We’ve forgot that people are precious, valuable not for what they believe but simply because they exist. 

I wish I had a story this week. Nothing would make me happier than to tell you of some good ol’ boy I ran into at the store, or share a story from my childhood, or relay what some of the kids are doing around the neighborhood. I don’t have any of that. All that’s left to me this week is mourn what we’ve become, and maybe that’s a good start.

Maybe mourning is the only way we’ll ever change.

The Hero’s Journey (aka If I would have spoken)

Our daughter would have celebrated her high school graduation last week.

Instead, what formal ceremonies to mark the occasion will be limited to a small service next week with family at the high school, and this past Sunday, when she donned her cap and gown to walk across the church parking lot during an outdoor service. There were horn honks instead of applause.

She is fine with all of this. Our little girl has been through quite a lot in her short life, resulting in a heart that is ever bent toward the hurts and needs of others. A pandemic? Doesn’t phase her.

But even as our daughter doesn’t considered herself cheated in any way by what’s taken place in the past two months, I can’t say the same for her father. Last year, the high school principal asked if I would be available to speak at their 2020 graduation. I told him the honor would be mine. Whether things would have worked out that way is something I’ll never know, but I like to think they would. After all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to speak on one of their child’s biggest days?

Since that day has come and gone in a way that’s wholly different than anyone imagined, I thought I’d post something here. Whether these would have been the words I gave to my daughter and her graduating class, I don’t know. Likely it would have been something completely different. Regardless, this is what I’m thinking about on this warm but cloudy May morning with the dog snoozing beside me and the creek singing past my upstairs window:

I had to wonder why when I was asked to give this speech.

Why me, considering that in my time here, I was little more than a jock with a C average. What could someone like me offer in the way of wisdom to the class of 2020?

I’ll admit that I don’t know that answer. I don’t know much, actually. But I do know what makes a good story, and I think that sort of knowledge is well-suited for the few minutes I have with each of you today. Because whether you believe it or not, whether you accept it or not, right now you are all living out your own story.

And my advice to you is simple: make your story a good one.

But how? I’ll tell you how.

Many novelists, myself included, hold to a theory called the hero’s journey, which was conceived in 1949 by a mythologist and literature professor named Joseph Campbell. The idea is a simple one on the surface: every great myth and every great hero, from Gilgamesh to Moses to Bilbo Baggins, no matter how different they are, follow the same steps along the same path of life.

Campbell named 17 stages of the hero’s journey. For the sake of time and your attention, I’m going to limit those to the high points. I want to give you a guide of sorts to go by, because your lives have changed dramatically over the past few months. In many ways, they’re going to change even more over the next few years. It’s going to be easy to get lost along the way. Easy to start doubting, whether it’s yourself or your place in the world. It’s important to know the dangers waiting for you out there, and the hurts that are coming. Most important of all, you have to know the rewards waiting if you endure.

The hero begins in what Campbell called the Ordinary World. It’s the world you’ve always known, the world of your everyday. You’re in that world right now, but you won’t be for long, because you are about to start your own journey by moving to the next step — the Call to Adventure.

That step for you begins right now. The diploma in your hand is a key to unlock a door moving you deeper into a world filled with as much fear as possibility. There are wonders out there beyond any you realize, and there are also terrors you cannot fathom.

These first two stages, the ordinary world and the call to adventure, are the same for everyone. Hero and coward, victor and vanquished, the remembered and the forgotten, all face these two phases of life. The difference between them begins at the next stage, which is the Refusal of the Call.

Along with the talents you possess and the dreams you have come worries that any of it matters in the end, and doubts that you can ever achieve the goals you’ve set. You think, “I can’t do this. It’ll never work. I’m nothing, and I’ll always be nothing.”

That inward battle between doubt and faith, despair and hope, is one you will fight for the rest of your life. And right here is where the hero’s journey ends for most.

But while the ordinary person allows him or herself to be consumed by doubt and fear, the hero understands that in order to do great things, doubt and fear must be fought with faith and courage.

The ordinary person refuses the call to adventure and remains forever an ordinary person. The hero, however, doesn’t let fear and doubt take hold. That means you have to answer the call to adventure laid out here this afternoon. It means you don’t take this piece of paper home and shove it into a drawer. Look at it. Cherish it. Understand what it means.

Do that, and you’ll enter the next stage, Crossing the Threshold. The hero moves from the ordinary world into a world that’s more beautiful but filled with more danger than anything known before.

You’ll find that world soon enough, when you trade high school for college. You’ll find that world again, when you trade college for adulthood. Like all heroes, what you do once you cross the threshold will determine the course of your life. It will not be

easy going. You’ve discovered that already. You will discover it again. The world has teeth, and those teeth will find you. But without that struggle, life turns meaningless and empty. Without that fight, the hero cannot be made into a hero.

You’ll meet people to help you along the way, the stage called Supernatural Aid, when you’ll find your own Gandalf and your own Obi-Wan. You’ll find friends. Enemies. You’ll find ordeals and trials so difficult that you don’t know how you’re going to come through it whole.

You’re going to want to turn back, give up. You’re going to discover that the greatest enemy you will ever meet is in the one living in your own thoughts, and you’re going to know just how weak you really are.

These, too, are all stages of the hero’s journey. These are the things you must struggle with in order to fulfill your destiny. The things that will nearly break you. The things that will become your own personal dragons.

But that act of becoming, of learning and growing and leading and suffering, leads to the stage called the Reward. The hero is transformed from an ordinary person into the person he or she is meant to become. It’s that degree you want. That job you dream of. It’s the climax, the final and harshest battle, the moment that defines a meaningful life and the worst death possible, the death of dreams, the death that leaves you alive but numb.

If you work hard, if you endure, you’ll find the very treasure that you left your ordinary world to discover.

I’m proof of that.

But then comes one of the most important steps of your hero’s journey: the Road Back. There will come a moment when you must make a choice between your own personal wants and a higher calling. And just like the refusal of the call, some will

choose selfishness and return to their lives as ordinary people. But the hero will always choose the higher calling of placing the good of others above the self.

The last stage is the Return, that day you finally present your changed self to the world. The day you step forward armed with all you’ve learned to bring hope to others. The day when you realize that nothing will ever be the same, when you understand that what is past does not have to define you, and that God put your eyes in front of you so you can see where you’re going, not where you’ve been.

That is the hero’s journey. That is your journey beginning right here. So embrace it. Take it seriously. You understand more than anyone that the world is a mess. The world has always been a mess. There has always been darkness crouching at the door. But in every generation, there have always been lights that shine outward to keep that darkness at bay.

Every one of you today has a decision to make. You can be one of those lights, or you can add to that darkness. Those are the only choices you have.

You can hold this diploma in your hands go back to your lives like nothing’s changed. You can refuse that call and let someone else do the hard work of making the world better. You can be ordinary. That’s fine. The world is filled with good, ordinary people.

Or you can start your own hero’s journey right here, right now. You can understand that you come this way only once. That you have a purpose no one else can fulfill.

There are dragons out there. Slay them. There are monsters in the dark. Stand up to them. There are hurts in the hearts of everyone you meet. Help heal them.

The world needs you. So shine your light. Starting right now.

Thank you.

Honor and Integrity

image courtesy of photobucket.com

I still talk to people.

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say people still talk to me, since I’m most often doing a greater amount of listening than speaking, which is where the ideas of most of these stories begin. It’s harder now, of course. Hard to have a conversation when you’re six feet away from the person you’re trying to communicate with. And I won’t even get into the difficulties involved in talking through a mask.

Still, it’s rare that I seek anybody out in order to write something. I’ve always just tried to keep my eyes and ears open and trust that a story will come to me. But that’s not the case this time. This time, I went out looking for somebody. I needed some answers.

Take a drive in my little town and you’ll likely get a very small picture of what’s going on most everywhere else. People are like that, I think — they grow up and live in one place or another, and I have no doubt that place shapes them like few things can, but at the bottom we’re all the same no matter where we call home.

And here in my little town, people are getting tired.

Tired of staying home. Tired of worrying every time they go to the store. Tired of not working, tired of having their lives on hold. Stop anywhere for even just a few minutes, and you’ll find that far from this virus bringing us together, it’s dividing us even more than we were a few months ago.

There are the folks who stay home because that’s what they call right, and the folks who go out because that’s what they call right. Ones who wear a mask every time they leave the house, and ones who say wearing a mask is about the worst thing you can do for a whole host of reasons. This whole mess is just one more flaw in a flawed world, or it’s a sign of something sinister in the flawed hearts of politicians.

If I scroll through my social media feeds (something I put strict limits on, by and way, especially now) the divide is even more apparent. We’re all gonna die if we’re not careful, or we’re all gonna die if we keep giving up our rights.

It’s true, it’s fake. I believe, I don’t believe. I’m right, you’re evil.

I read an article the other day that suggested a lot of this comes down to moral exhaustion. We’re all tired of not only thinking we’re going to get sick, but we’re going to somehow get the people we love sick, too. And if I’m honest, I’ll say I’m starting to worry about a whole lot more than a virus that can kill you. I’m starting to worry if we’ll ever be able to agree on anything again.

Which is why I drove out to the edge of town the other day to look for Eli. I’ve known Eli and his family for most of my life, sharing a common if distant ancestry. My mother was Amish growing up, and then Mennonite, which is kind of the same thing but not really. Eli has remained Amish, along with his wife, their six children, and enough grandchildren and great-grandchildren to fill up a church.

There are times when I’ll turn to my more earthly kin for a little perspective on things. Then there are times when only the Amish will do. Times like this one, when I needed someone who generally lived apart from society to tell me what in the world was going on with society. We sat on his back porch (six feet apart and masked) along with the birds and the sunshine. I asked Eli if he knew what was going on out there in the world. He did. He nodded and stroked his beard when I said it was getting a little hard to know what to do. Then he let out a quiet

“Mmmm” and held up one gnarled hand.

“Honor,” he said. He kept that one raised and lifted the other. “Integrity.”

I think Eli meant for that to be it. Lesson over. But I’ve never been a very good student.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Mmmm. Honor,” he said again, shaking his right hand. “Integrity,” again, shaking the other.

“You’re gonna have to help me out a little more here, Eli.”

“That’s your choice.”

“Always thought they were pretty much the same.”

He looked at me in a way that said if he was allowed to take the Lord’s name in vain, he would.

“We live by honor,” he told me. “Was a time when most others did as well. Not your father’s time. Your grandfather’s, maybe.

Now it is integrity. Everything is integrity.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Mmmm. Who am I?”

I sat there trying to figure if that was a trick question. “Eli.”

“What am I?”

“A man.”

“Mmmm.”

“That sound you keep making a sign of disgust, Eli?”

“What else am I?” He asked.

“A father. Grandfather. Great-grandfather.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. Farmer. Deacon. Amish.”

He waved his fingers at me like that was enough. “I am Eli,” he said. “I am a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. I am a farmer and a deacon. I am Amish. I am all of those things, but honor says I am all of those things before I am Eli. Honor says I tend to these needs before I tend to my own wants. Why? Because I am a part of something greater than me. A family, a community, a faith. See?”

Starting to.

“You,” he said, and then he pointed — at me, I guess, but also everyone like me, “you say I am a father and grandfather and great-grandfather. You say I am a farmer and a deacon and Amish, but you say I am Eli first. I am a person with rights that will not be taken and freedoms that will not be curtailed no matter the reason.

Because I am an individual, and only that matters — me, Eli. See?”

Yes.

“I wear this mask not to keep me safe, but my Sarah. We stay home not to keep ourselves safe, but our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We share food and what money we can to those who have less. We pray for them before we pray for ourselves, because that is what we do. Because I will die. Soon, I think.

And then I will stand before a Lord who will not say to me, ‘What did you do for Eli?’ but ‘What did you do for others?’”

That was two days ago. Normally when I come across a story, I’ll jot some notes down in my notebook, write it all up, and then throw those notes away. But those notes are still sitting here on my desk, and I think that’s where they’ll stay.

Honor or integrity. I think that’s the choice all of this comes down to.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m fearful of the choice we’re all about to make.

The crazy neighbor

I’m pretty sure the man down the street is losing his mind.

Let’s be honest, we’re all probably doing the same thing at this point in one way or another. But this guy is turning a special kind of crazy, to the point where I’m starting to worry about him.

His descent from Buttoned-Down Businessman to Something Completely Other is something I can’t seem to avoid, since his house sits on my daily walking route. I’ve walked more in the last six weeks than I probably did in the last six years. Our dog has gone from wagging her tail and yelping with joy every time I grab the leash to curling up in the corner and uttering a kind of not-this-again moan each time I tell her we’re taking yet another jaunt through the neighborhood. But it’s healthy and it gets us out, and everybody says that sunshine doesn’t just help beat back the invisible scourge, it helps beat back the blues as well.

Our route generally begins with a left out of our driveway and a straight shot about a quarter of a mile, where pavement yields to gravel and then a dirt trail leading into the woods. Our dog Lucy always heads there first. Like she’s telling me that if I’m going to drag her two and a half miles down one street and another, she’s going to get her fill of the woods first. And I always oblige her, because I like me some woods too. The problem — if I can call it that — is the man’s house sits right near the end of the street where the trail sits, meaning I get to watch him just about every day.

It began innocently enough. After all, I don’t think anyone goes crazy all at once.

It’s more a gradual thing, nice and easy and bit by bit until maybe it’s too late to turn back. I don’t know many of his particulars. Not his name (there’s just a number on his mailbox), or what he does for a living (though it’s a suit-and-briefcase kind of job; there were mornings before the quarantine when I would see him dashing from his door wearing one and carrying the other), or how much he makes (plenty, given that fancy car he drives). He does have a wife and at least one child. I’ve seen both, and first impressions told me they weren’t nearly as high strung as he seemed to be.

Like most everyone else, he’s either working from home or home and not working. Being stuck where you are in the midst of so much uncertainty tends to weigh on the mind and the heart. Tends to make us a little jittery sometimes. We’re all dealing with this as best we can. That’s what I told myself a few weeks ago when I passed by his house on my afternoon walk with Lucy and saw him lying in his front yard. I didn’t know what bothered me most as I passed, whether it was the fact that here was a grown man splayed out on his grass and staring at the clouds, or the fact that he was wearing a faded pair of jeans and a plain T shirt. It just didn’t seem to fit the picture I’d always had of him, you know? Like seeing a polka-dotted elephant.

Two days later he was out there again, this time in one of the rocking chairs on his porch. Different jeans and different shirt (both of them a little more ragged than before). Feet kicked up onto the railing. Glass of tea on the table beside. His jaw held a thin layer of scruff, and his hair had gotten long enough to touch the tops of his ears. I noticed some gray in there as well — the Food Lion was running out of everything at that point, and I figured that included Just for Men.

And you know what he did? He waved. At me.

I don’t think I can overstate the shock I felt. Even the dog looked at me like one more thing in the world had just fundamentally shifted. I was so thrown off guard that I don’t even remember if I waved back.

He was back the following Thursday. We heard him before we saw him. His garage door was open to catch an unusually warm April sun. Lucy pinned her ears back on her head as the first chords to Poison’s “Nothin’ but a Good Time” blared from somewhere inside. He didn’t wave that day. Too preoccupied, I guess. What with him playing air guitar and all. Seriously.

I’ll be honest — it all preyed on my mind. Lucy and I started taking our walks with the singular purpose of strolling past his house. Forget the sunshine. Forget the woods. I just wanted to see what that guy was doing, see how far he had fallen. Terrible, I know. I equated it with driving past a car accident and just having to look, if only to tell myself,

“Things might not be great, but at least I’m not that guy.”

Then came yesterday. Me and Lucy and a bag filled with her daily deposit, out enjoying the warmth. Mountains? Clear as a bell. Sky? Empty. Streets? Quiet. Crazy man down the road? Crawling around his front yard. Literally.

At this point, Lucy was just as interested in him as me. She held him up as just another example of how humans are bumbling idiots and only dogs can truly save the world. We slowed as he inched along on his belly, aiming for a rabbit munching on a bit of grass near a maple tree. There the both of us stood, watching him watch it. Lucy’s growl chased the rabbit around the house.

The man looked at us and shook his head, grinning like a kid on Christmas, and what he said convinced me that everything I’d thought about his mental state was dead on:

“Dude, wasn’t that GREAT?”

I said sure, thinking it was just a rabbit. This guy gets worked up over a rabbit? Has he never seen a rabbit before? What’s he going to do when he sees a coyote out here? Or a bear?

“Steve,” he said.

“Billy.” I waggled the leash. “Lucy.”

“You guys doing okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “You know, just waiting for things to get back to where they were.”

Steve shook his head then in that slow sad way that you often see parents do with their young children. “I keep hearing people say that,” he said. “But not me. No. Way. I don’t want to get back there to the before. Back there sucked. Why does anybody want to go back when we got this gift?”

I was sure then: nuts. Certifiably nuts.

“I mean, I know,” he said. “It’s terrible, all these sick people. All these people out of a job. I’m out of a job. You know that?”

I shook my head.

“But it’s okay, you know? All this is gonna be okay.”

I wanted to ask if the rabbit had told him that but didn’t.

“How many times does somebody get to start over?” he asked. “Fix things? Try something different, something better? How many times does somebody get to see how screwed up their life was and then get to do something about it? You know?”

I didn’t, not really. But as we said our goodbyes and Lucy and I left him lying in the grass and looking at the clouds again, I got to wondering. We’re all trying to get through this moment in our lives the best way we can. For some, it’s filled with fear and grief. For others, a kind of numbness. But for those like Steve, there is hope to be found even in so dark a time.

Happiness, even. Even joy. You just have to look for it.

If I’m honest, there were things in my life that I didn’t much like back before the world went wonky. Things I wished I would have done differently, things about me that I always wanted to change. We always seem to settle, don’t we? Always aim for just good enough. Always want to just go back.

That’s why I just got up from writing this to stand by the upstairs window and crane my neck down the street just to see if I can get a glimpse of Steve’s house. Get a glimpse of Steve. I wonder what he’s doing.

But I’m wondering even more which of us is really the crazy one.

Learning how to die

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“I seen this,” he told me, straightening his legs outward from the wooden bench as he hitched a thumb into the front pocket of his overalls. “Twiced, I did. Twiced was too many.”

He leaned forward and spit a runner of brown tobacco juice onto the pavement between us. Six feet, that’s where I kept it. That’s what they say is to keep six feet between you and anybody.

The little old lady at the register inside the 7-11 had reminded me of that just a few minutes before, and then she’d winked and said she didn’t like that six-feet rule, it being so hard to hug on anybody. Six feet, but I stepped back anyway when I saw that spit coming at me like a bullet.

I guess that’s how things are now.

“Twiced,” he said again.

I knew he was right, knowing him all my life. Daddy used to bring me here every Saturday morning. I’d ride with him to haul our trash to the dump, then we’d stop by the 7-11 for a Coke and a Zero bar.

Even then, all those years ago, that old man would be sitting on the bench in his overalls, chewing his tobacco as he looked out on the road and the houses and the mountains like it was all his own. Even then, all those years ago, he was old. Now he was older, with lines on his face like worn leather and a Dale Earnhardt hat that had seen too many sunny days under too many plowed fields. Weren’t no corona gonna keep him hid inside the house, he’d told me. Besides, it was just him out there on that bench.

He went quiet, no doubt thinking of the two times he had lived through a thing like this.

Sickness, he meant. The first time back in the early 60s or so, and then again going on a dozen years. Had it really been that long? I counted them off in my head and decided it was. Time truly does pass.

“Pammy,” he said. He smiled at the name the way a father will. And then he said “Rachel” in a quieter way with a mist in his eyes that showed in a brief tick of time the remnants of a heart torn in two, one half beating on an old wooden bench, the other half sunk in the ground across town at the cemetery beside the Church of the Brethren.

Anyone that old was bound to have seen death. Parents, siblings, friends, enemies. He had seen it closer than most, first holding his daughter Pammy as she took her last breath before the age of 10, struck down by scarlet fever. Then all those years later saying goodbye to his wife of nearly sixty years while the cancer wasted her away.

“I hear you old folk shouldn’t be about,” I said, wanting to steer his thoughts from sadness. And as I figured the best way to do so was to get him riled, I added, “Too frail, I reckon.”

He leaned forward and spat again, this time coming within an inch of my boot. Then he smirked at me. “Still whip you, boy.”

It was true. He could.

“Ain’t afraid a no germs,” he said. “Though I keep well enough away, for others more’n myself. Don’t nobody want to catch the death, but death’ll catch everybody in the end.”

I said, “Lord, Hubert, that’s a hell of a thing to say.”

He looked at me that way he always did, like I was the child and he was the wisened old man God kept around just to keep everybody in line, just to remind us all of the way things used to be back when the world made sense.

“You tellin me I’m wrong? That’s the problem. Folk forgot that. When’d folk forget that?”

I didn’t answer. Partly because I wasn’t sure what Hubert was asking. Also because I knew that was one of those questions he asked that required no answer, because he already had one.

“Come down here ever’day to sit on this bench,” he said. “Gets me away from the farm for a bit, and I like it. I like it here. Seein all these folk, talkin to them, seein how they gettin along.” He waved out toward the parking lot. “Now they don’t stop. Get out they cars with they masks and they gloves on, which ain’t no problem and I think is fine. Masks are, least ways. I wouldn’t be wearin no gloves myself.”

And he wasn’t. Not a mask, either. Hard to spit with a mask on.

“That don’t bother me, though. Know what bothers me? That look on’m all. They scared.”

“Reckon we should all be scared,” I said. “Scared means you’re careful.”

“Scared means scared,” he said, then waved out to all that pavement again. “That’s their problem. Half these people all worked up because up until a month ago, they all thought they was to live forever. Hear me? That’s what happens when folk get away from the land. They should come live with me a spell, spend some time on the farm. I see it all the time, death. My fields die every winter. Cows and pigs. Crop. Don’t nothin in this world last. Not even them mountains’ll last in the end. Ain’t supposed to. We all just passin through, man and woman and beast the same. Best thing you can do is keep that in mind. Think on it, like I do. You forget it, you got the biggest problem they is. Cause I seen it. Twiced.”

Hubert was right. Those old farmers usually are. I stood there with him a little while longer, keeping those six feet between us, chatting and watching those cars roll in and out. I saw people scared to death to go in and buy a gallon of milk, watched them sprint to the doors and back again like it was death itself chasing them. And it was, just like it chases us all.

I saw Hubert too, sitting on that bench and enjoying the sunshine like it was any other April in any other year. Laughing and joking and telling me of new calves born and that old tractor of his that was always acting up. Sitting there as calm and happy as he could be while to the rest of us it felt like the world was burning down.

All because we were the ones still learning how to live, and he was the one who’d spent his years learning how to die.

Turn the page (The grocery store, Part II)

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Last week I wrote about my trip to the grocery store, and the Amish woman in the checkout line who offered us all a little wisdom on how to approach everything that’s happening. But there’s a lot more to that story.

Consider this Part II.

To recap, I thought I’d be smart and get to the Food Lion out on Route 340 right when they opened. The problem was half the town had the same bright idea. You should have seen us all

— rednecks and farmers and factory workers, everybody trying to get what we could without getting too close. What struck me as I weaved in and out of the aisles were the many ways everyone approached the experience.

For the produce guy, that Tuesday morning was just another day.  It was business as usual. There’s not a finer human being than the produce guy at our Food Lion.

Always smiling, always talking, always ready to help. “How you doin?” he asked as we crossed paths. I was fine. “Great day, great day,” he said. “Everything’s beautiful.” Business as usual.

There was the woman who came in through the doors as if those were her final steps from a long trip home. Smiling, waving to everyone. Saying, “What y’all doin keepin yourselfs all the way over there?” before cackling at her own joke. Because who says humor has to die during a pandemic?

Workers coming off the graveyard shift at the Hershey plant, just trying to get a few things so they could go home and sleep before doing it all over again. For them, life hasn’t changed much at all.  That’s good in some ways, bad in others.

Farmers roaming the aisles for their wives, confused about where the flour and cooking oil were but not confused about some virus, because whether they get sick or not, the cows still need fed and the corn grown.

The business man in his suit and tie walking up front with a loaf of bread and a bag of coffee tucked under one arm, pausing only to nod at a stock boy who said, “Hope you sell some tractors today, Ed,” and to which he replied, “Hope I do too, because things is thin.”

But it was the man in the cereal aisle I remember most.

The one who looked as if he’d arrived at the Food Lion that morning prepared to enter the mouth of hell itself. Mask and gloves, along with a pair of thick overalls designed not only to repel dirt and mud, but any virus this nasty old world could throw at him. He held box of Cheerios in one hand and a box of Fruity Pebbles in the other. Lifted them up like to judge their quality by their weight. As I walked by, he flashed me a look of pure hate and even purer fear. Someone up front laughed. He turned his head that way. Beneath the cover of his mask, I heard:

“This ain’t no goddamned fairytale here.”

I kept going. None of it was particularly shocking. You hear a lot of cussing in the grocery store, mostly from men who are at the same time confronting their own ignorance along with why in the world the jelly isn’t stocked next to the peanut butter. But it did bother me in a way that only now I can describe. It wasn’t what he said, really, but how he said it. Sure, he was angry, but he was scared most of all. And who among us can blame him for that?

I’ve long lived by the notion that life’s big things are better understood when viewed through the little things.

That idea was proven true once more by that trip to the store. Every one of us can be found in one of the people I shared those fifteen minutes with. Some of us are trying to keep our heads up, trying to focus on the beauty and the good that this world still offers in spite of everything. Others are just trying to get by. Some are taking it one shift at a time. And there are a lot of us who are just plain scared.

It’s true that we’re all in the same boat, but it’s also true that we’re all given a different view of the dark waters around us.

We’re all asking the same things right now. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to think? What’s going to happen? Anyone who claims to have an answer is either fooling themselves or hasn’t thought about it enough. Because there is no answer, or at least no answer that we could ever understand.

It’s easy for people like me to say “We just need to keep our heads up, do what we’re supposed to do, support each other, and we’ll all get back to living soon.”

But for millions of people around the world, that advice simply doesn’t apply. They can’t keep their heads up because their burdens are too great. They did what they were supposed to do but still lost loved ones. They’ll say, How can I support other people when I can’t even support myself now? And how can I get back to living when the life I’ll find once this is over will be so different, so much less, than the life I’ve always known?

Try answering that in a supermarket aisle.

But I have thought about it since then. I’ve thought about it a lot. And if I could meet that man again (adhering to the six-feet rule, of course), I’d tell him he was wrong. Because I think a fairytale is exactly what we’re living, or at least something very close to it.

There are those who think life is best thought of as an equation. It’s something that should be approached logically and methodically, and every truth will reveal itself through careful poking and prodding. What is Real constitutes only those things that can be seen, studied, manipulated, or understood; all else is deemed Unreal.

Then there are those who think that every life is less an equation to solve than a narrative being written. We are all in a great story being told by a power infinitely greater than ourselves. And while we know a little about that story’s beginning and a little more about its end, those chapters in between are being written one day and one sentence at a time. It’s a story that tells the truth about us, and what it means to be human., and that truth isn’t timeless like a formula, but timely in the sense that it “comes true,” little by little with every breath we draw.

That’s what I would tell that man in the cereal aisle. That’s what I’ll tell you. Our days aren’t like a formula that needs solving, they’re a tale that needs living.

So don’t put your book down just yet.

Don’t throw up your hands and say you can’t bear another page.

The story’s not done, and the best part is yet to come.

An Easter Like One Other

image courtesy of google images

Nobody’s ever had to live through an Easter like this.

That’s what I keep hearing. In some small but important ways, that’s true.

Everything feels like it’s shrinking. Our lives are now confined to only the necessary places — home, the store, work — and the necessary people — those we live with. All those other facets of our lives have been stripped away, and in their places are holes we can’t seem to fill.

I’ve noticed that time has shrunk as well. Before all of this happened, it was nothing for me to live my life a week or so in advance. Always planning things, always so focused on what was ahead that I often lost sight of what was right in front of me. But no more. Now there’s really no point in living a week in advance because weeks don’t feel like they exist anymore. Everything could change by next Friday, or maybe nothing will. We just don’t know. So what’s the point in planning anything?

Days, too — they’ve changed in a fundamental way. Sunday through Saturday doesn’t carry the same weight as it once did. There were once seven days, and those seven days made a week, and 52 of those weeks made a year, and that was the basis by which we all measured our progress through this life. But now those seven days have been whittled down to the only three that maybe have ever really counted:

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Yesterday, back when the world was as normal as any of us could expect and we were living as though our lives were as solid as the mountains outside my window. Change would come, we all somehow knew that, but it would come slowly, gradually, and from a distance long enough that we could see it well in advance.

Tomorrow, which is so filled with uncertainty and fear right now that most of us try to avoid thinking much about it at all.

And today, this moment we’re all trying not to sink inside, where so much of what we think and do is spent just trying to keep safe without losing our hope.

So yes, it sounds right on the surface. Nobody’s ever had to live through an Easter like this.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that’s not true. Surely down through the ages there have been other Easters when so much went wrong in such a hurry. Moments in history when everything felt broken to the point that people wondered if it could all be put back together again. I could maybe dig out some of my wife’s old college history textbooks and find some examples, but I don’t need to. One Easter has stood out in my mind all week as the perfect parallel to what we’re all facing right now.

That first one. 

Of the three days that make up the holiest weekend of the Christian calendar, two of them are given the due they deserve. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are so ingrained in our hearts and (believe it or not) our culture that it’s easy to miss what exactly they mean for all of us. But that day in between — that’s the day I’ve spent so much time thinking about lately, because that’s the one that describes exactly where we are at the moment.

Not Good Friday or Easter Sunday, but Holy Saturday.

I only know it’s called that because I looked it up, thinking that day had to have some sort of adjective attached to it. And it’s the perfect one, don’t you think? Holy.

“Venerated as or as if sacred; having a divine quality.”

Yes.

We know the story of Good Friday. We celebrate the events of Easter Sunday. But the Bible is strangely silent about the Saturday in between, leaving us to only imagine what that day was like for the disciples Christ left behind. Men and women who were suffering from the so much that went wrong in such a hurry. Who were facing their own shrunken world of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Yesterday their world lay drenched in beauty. They spent their days at the feet of their Lord, watching in wonder as the sick were healed the poor were given hope, astonished at every turn that God could be so loving, so gentle and kind.

Tomorrow was an unbearable thought. So much was made unknown now, their hopes dashed by the memory of the dead man hanging from a cross. What comfort could tomorrow bring? What meaning could the coming years provide when life itself felt so meaningless?

Which left them only with today, that first Holy Saturday. They woke from an uneasy sleep heartbroken by the feeling that life as they knew it had come to an end. Everything they had believed had come to nothing. Far from beautiful, their world had become a place of danger, leaving them to hide indoors for fear of the same death suffered by their savior.

Sounds familiar in a way, doesn’t it?

That’s where we are right now, you and I. We’re living out our own Holy Saturday, only ours will last months instead of hours. Caught between a yesterday that aches upon its recollection like pressing on a bruise, and a tomorrow that only offers more of the same.

Like every other Christian with any common sense, my family will spend this weekend at home. We’ve never had to go through an Easter like this. That’s why it will be so special.

Because we know what those men and women on that first Holy Saturday did not — there is a power beyond all sickness and death, a certainty that can tame any doubt, and a hope that transcends anything that threatens to befall us.

That is why even in these days we can yet laugh. That is why we can stand strong. And that is why if I could somehow find those few men and women hiding in fear on that first Holy Saturday nearly two thousand years ago, I would tell them the same as I tell you:

Hang on, because joy comes in the morning.

The best things in us

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A quick look at my website tells me that it’s been almost two years since I added a single word to this blog.

Aside from the (very) occasional update to social media, I’ve largely been absent from the internet. There are reasons for this, good ones and many, which will likely come up from time to time in the weeks and months ahead.

For those who have kindly reached out privately to make sure I am still alive, thank you. I very much am. And for those who have wondered if I’m still writing — yes, I also very much am.

But again, we’ll get to that.

Suffice it to say for now that there was some question if Billy Coffey should remain Billy Coffey or perform a bit of literary magic and become someone else, and that at some point in the last two years, the internet became little more to me than just a place where people shouted at each other. Both of those things made me realize that maybe the wisest decision was to take a nice long break and head back out into the real world.

It’s ironic that heading back out into the real world is what ended up bringing me back to my own little corner of the virtual one.

Because it’s crazy out there right now, isn’t it?

One month ago we were all under the impression that our lives were as solid as the world we walked upon. Now we’re coming to understand that was just a story we told ourselves to keep the monsters away. The truth is that life is a fragile thing, much like our happiness, our peace, and our plans for the future. Any one of them can be threatened at any time by any number of things. We’re nowhere near as big and strong as we think. A lot of us are figuring that out right now, myself included.

Like most of you, I’ve spent the last few weeks at home. My wife the elementary school teacher is still teaching, though only to those students blessed with internet access and only from our sofa. Our children are here. I am fortunate enough to continue my day job here here in my upstairs office. We take the dog on long walks and play basketball in the driveway, spend our evenings on the front porch listening to the wind and the birds and our nights watching movies. We’ve fared better than most. The sickness has stayed away from our little town. Though its shadow creeps in everywhere, I’m even more glad than usual to call this sleepy valley my home.

Social distancing, that’s the key.

Keep others safe by keeping yourself safe. Don’t go out unless you have to. That’s life for all of us right now, and it looks like it’s going to stay that way for a while. One day at a time, wash your hands, sneeze into your elbow, wear a mask, call and text the ones you love.

Get by. I keep hearing that from people — we all just need to hang in there right now and get by.

I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that, and for many of us that has to be enough. Let’s face it, hanging in there and getting by is exhausting. Most days feel like we’re all having to swim against a constant current. Victory doesn’t mean progress, it just means holding in place.

That was my thinking up until about two days ago. I figured the best way through this was to keep apart and keep busy, so that’s what I’d been doing. Lots of work. Lots of walks. Lots of writing and reading. Getting by. I thought I was doing everything right.

Then I had to go to the Food Lion in town.

It can be a harrowing experience to go to the store now, and next time I’ll tell you how that trip to get some groceries made me feel a lot better about things. But right now I’ll leave you with what the little old Amish lady in line told the cashier. I couldn’t hear the beginning of their conversation (the rest of us in line were standing six feet apart and looking at each other like we were all infected), but I did catch the end, that warm smile and a gentle voice that said:

“The worst things in the world can never touch the best things in us.

We just have to try and get our eyes off the one and put them on the other.”

Not the first time an Amish lady told me exactly what I needed to hear.

The truth is that I’ve been practicing as much distraction these last few weeks as distance, keeping myself busy so I wouldn’t have to stop for a minute and really think about what all of this is and what it means. I’m not going to beat myself up over that. Sometimes the things that come into our lives feel too big to handle. Too scary to look at. For a lot of us, this time is one of those things. There’s nothing ever wrong in getting by.

But that little Amish lady at the Food Lion stirred something in me that had gone asleep.

I’m tired and stressed and worried and can’t stop washing my hands. But for as much as I just want all of this to be over, I also don’t want it leave me the same as I was a month ago. If we believe that nothing in life is random and everything means something — and I do — then there must be a purpose to all things, even the bad ones. For me, that means wondering what my purpose is in this, and what purpose this has in my own life.

Somewhere along the line, I lost myself. I bet I’m not the only one who can say that.

If that’s you, then maybe we can find ourselves together. Because in the end, that’s how we’ll all get through this.

 Together.

The “What You Do” List

Our daughter is but a few days away from joining the ranks of legal drivers in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

In preparation (as well as to decrease, however slightly, a father’s angst), I’ve done my best to offer whatever advice and warnings I can. Don’t speed. Don’t text. Don’t pick up hitchhikers. Always do your best to avoid hitting dogs and rabbits and raccoons, but don’t worry about squirrels. We have no deal with the squirrels. You get the idea.

Driving around with her has sharpened my own view of driving, most of which has drifted into the realm of instinct over the years. I’m paying more attention what I’m doing on the road through the filter of “I need to tell the little girl this” or “I need to make the the little girl knows that.” The list has gotten so long as to be somewhat unwieldy. There’s nothing like one of your kids getting a driver’s license to make you realize how dangerous driving can be.

I came across one of those Need To Tell Her This things a few days back along a stretch of road known around here as Brands Flats.

Long straightaways and gentle curves and a 55 mph speed limit which is all but impossible to obey. Coming around one of those curves, I managed to catch a glint of early sun off a windshield hidden among the median’s thick trees. I braked (that instinct thing) and held my breath. Good thing I was doing under sixty, or ol’ Smokey would’ve had me.

What I did next was what I’ve always done, what my daddy taught me to do and what was taught him: I went on around the next curve and flashed my lights at the three vehicles coming the other way.

That’s when things got a little wonky.

The first car was a purple hatchback driven by a young lady who promptly offered me a middle finger.

The country boy in the jacked-up F-150 behind her flashed his lights right back at me.

And the third, an ancient man driving an even more ancient Dodge truck, only gawped in confusion.

I’m not going to sit here and say I hoped each and every one of their names ended up in Smokey’s ticket book.

Don’t mind if it’s implied, though.

Granted, I’ve always been a little behind the times. But when did flashing your lights to let someone know a speed trap is waiting up ahead stop being a thing? Or is it still a thing, and i’d just run upon a few grouchy and dim-witted folks down in Brands Flats?

I figured I’d ask around. Turns out I’m in the minority of people who still do this. The reasons why varied from laziness (“I ain’t got time to go flashing my lights at everybody”) to fear (“You know that’s how you get shot at, right?) to outright orneriness (“I figure if the bastards is speeding, he deserves himself a ticket”).

The younger drivers I asked even turned my question back on me, wanting to know why they should bother flashing their lights at all. Don’t people need consequences for their actions? Don’t speeding tickets help pay for our roads and schools and help that policeman keep his job? Aren’t I in some way circumventing the law by helping those breaking it avoid punishment?

My answer to each was the same, however confusing to them it was. Why was I taught to flash my lights? For the same reason I was taught to pull over for a funeral procession and remove my hat until all those cars went by. The same reason I was taught to get into the left lane when anybody’s coming off an on ramp:

Because that’s what you do.

A simplistic answer, maybe. But also a telling one. I remember a time when That’s What You Do was answer enough. It spoke to something much deeper than the act itself, straight the meaning beneath it. Our society was filled with That’s What You Do’s. Those words helped hold things together.

The sad thing, the terrible thing, is I don’t see much of that anymore. Blame politics or Twitter or the onslaught of a 24/7 news cycle. Blame a culture where people demand they not be defined but go around defining everyone else. Whatever it is, we’re just not getting along. We don’t see others as very much like ourselves, all holding on to the same fears and needs and wants, all getting out of bed each morning for the same reasons—to do our jobs, play our parts, and feed our families. It isn’t We now, only Us and Them.

I think I’m going to start a new list for my daughter. My son, too. A That’s What You Do list. Not just for driving, but for living.

It isn’t a matter of them learning anything, either. All my kids have to do is remember that in the end we’re all in this together for good or ill. We’re to watch out for each other and help each other and be ready to offer a hand when needed.

Forget color.

Forget Conservative or Progressive.

Never mind religious or atheist.

We’re all family in the end.