Prevailing Mercy

Struggles and questionings aside, the call to serve helped anchor me. I believed the Lord had work for me to do and I pressed ahead, knowing he loved me, that he was after my best, regardless. Even as I wrestled with a sense of unworthiness and the feeling at times I was a junky heap of damaged goods, the assurance of his care sustained me. I knew who deserved credit. Not me, that was for certain.

So where some useful cause might arise – sponsoring a student, leading a class, encouraging a co-laborer (of my own culture or another) – I felt at home there. The discordant clamorings of unhealthy desire quieted for me most in such times. Times I poured out my energies, my prayers for others.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise*. The ancient passage consoled me again and again through my bitter-sweet years. Laying my wounded heart before him was all I knew to do. Turning myself over to his mercy, repeatedly, sincerely. All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and he that comes to me I will in no wise cast out*. Rehearsing such verses before him tethered me. His Mercy remained a constant. Ever meeting me in my places of brokenness, never condemning while never at the same time ‘giving me a pass’.

Regret – shame – contrition – repentance – thanksgiving. The cycles continued, ending every time at the door of mercy. Mercy from one nearer than a brother. Jesus. Friend of sinners.

My theme verse may well have read something like the following.

“I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. . . It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. . .” (Romans 7, the Message)

Notions of dodging responsibility, passing the buck, excusing my wrongs held no attraction. I knew what disobedience felt like, knew wrong-doing, wrong-thinking, wrong-fantasizing when it entered the neighborhood. Like a drug-detecting dog, my conscience picked up transgression’s scent. The buck stopped with me.

Those times in Christian culture were such that few religious communities – wherever found – seemed able to walk with their people through the mine fields of sexual brokenness. There were likely more caregivers available than we knew. That was the part of the problem. They weren’t known.

Occasionally through my overseas years a handful of struggling men would surface, gravitating together for encouragement and prayer. I linked up with such a group for a season. The effort was commendable as far as it went. Yet, although we did not intend to purposefully avoid certain topics – like sexual purity – we did. Each of us lived in Africa where wild game abounded, yet we always managed to ignore the elephant always in the room.

A day would eventually come when Missions agencies, church councils and team leaders would, in compassion, open doors that had been long shut to needful conversation. To counsel, to pray with the broken and their spouses. During the times we were in, however, many in Christian service simply did the best they could to forge ahead. Pretty much in silence, managing demons. Some, myself included, muddled along for years. The Holy Spirit graciously watched over our wounded, transgressing, saved-yet-fractured souls. We mercifully made it through without falling as casualties. We brought with us some scars, no question, yet still moving forward. Limping with rays of hope, our marriage companions often our greatest source of strength.

For other men, their suffering goes on undisclosed, unaddressed, even today. Their pain real, their wounds deep, shame binds them and replays a false narrative in their mind. . . there is no place to turn.

May these gain help. Through the Friend. Through His children, his wounded healers.

Like those I would one day find.

©2017 Jerry Lout   *Psalm 51 *John 6:37

Desire

Desire comes with being human.  

The moment I launched as a newborn – right from the birth canal – I fought for air. Nothing going forward in life would ever trump the urgency of this one desire. Once my hunger for oxygen was met and my lungs were assured that there was more on the way, a second desire was born. I craved food.

And once I gulped in my first samplings of milk – catching it’s flavor and texture – my infant body had no problem calling for seconds. And anytime the beverage I craved for thereafter was out of reach, I knew it. No one needed to convince me. Like James Dashner wrote*.

“I felt her absence. It was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. you wouldn’t need to run to the mirror to know they were gone”

I write this sitting in a bagel shop next to a couple making conversation.

“What would you say is your passion?” she asked.

The guy’s response sounded muffled due to the Christmas music streaming through my ear buds. That didn’t matter. Her question, though, did matter. It matters to us all, What would you say is your passion?

Of the many desires, hungers, passions that surface in our lives, none trumps something we might call the desire of the heart. We may come to know what it is our heart desires or we may not know.

But every heart desires one thing in common, a thing that is not tangible. Something deep. Grand and even eternal. What we so hunger is real – the most real thing ever – even though it could seem elusive.

We yearn for eternity. And the Being behind it. C. S. Lewis gives us an insight,

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

Desirables on this planet crowd the avenues of our lives, forming an endless parade. We feel the magnetic pull toward some attractions more than others. A few may inspire and energize us. We sample the object we’re drawn to and it feels right. An appetite, or desire, can carry such a pull that sensory language must be employed to capture its power. Athletes savor the taste of victory or suffer a bitter defeat.

My Norwegian friend, Oddvar Naustvik found a stirring of desire and nurtured it. Oddvar wanted to successfully compete in an iron-man triathlon.

Another friend, Robello Samuel of India, pursued his desire – to gain expertise in the field of drilling wells.

From the time Cody Stinnett could tap his foot to the rhythm of music he yearned to excel as a percussionist.

Still another friend, young Elizabeth Miles, longed to tackle and master a language.

Each desire is lofty, some even noble. How attractive still is the hungering after ‘another world’, as Lewis suggests. The world for which we’re most rightly suited.

Such desire is withheld from noone. Curious thought. The sensory language of scripture invites,

Taste and see.

©2017 Jerry Lout             *The Scorch Trials. J Dashner

Redeeming Pain

The mission doctor drew his penlight back from my little girl’s ear and sent me a sympathetic look.

His voice betrayed a strong Dutch accent, “The infection is bad.”

The young doc had recently been assigned to Ombo clinic, a Catholic mission outpost in Migori village. I had brought our three-year-old Julie in this morning, hoping to remedy her nonstop earache. Julie had sat astride my dirt bike’s gas tank the twenty mile ride in. Was it wise exposing her head – especially her ears – to the breeze out there? A little late to ponder that, I thought.

The physician reached for a sharp-pointed instrument I had no interest seeing.

“I need to pierce the ear drum and you will want to hold her firm.”

What followed was one of the necessary and least welcome assignments presented parents of young children all down through the ages. How to explain the act of heaping pain on top of pain – at the hands of the white-coated man whose job was to bring pain’s relief – and at the hands of daddy, nearest thing to hero in the room?

 Why daddy? Why do you help this man hurt me? My daughter’s distressed eyes silently begged the answer more strongly than her voice ever could.

I swallowed hard, the fear inside me rising from the insecurity of my youthful fatherhood. I’ve never gotten schooled in this thing going on here. I hoped my voice – it’s ok, sweetheart, it’ll be okay soon – offered some kind of comfort, assurance that all would be well. Indeed, my greater struggle came from within rather than from the physical act of imprisoning my princess in this smothering hold.

Mercifully, the sharp pierce of the surgeon’s device came and went quickly. Julie’s sudden cry cut through the lab facility, echoing harshly in the uncarpeted, brick-walled room. The whimpers soon trailed off and she grew calmer. I rocked her slowly back and forth. The infectious throbbing went away, the pounding pain gone. Her tense body relaxed. She quieted.

Years afterward, the visit to Ombo Clinic prompted me to reflect.

Of God’s most-recognized titles, ‘Father’ must rank the highest.

Thank you Lord that, when I least understand you or your actions, your care and wisdom and presence get me past my confusion and pain. Eventually.

Every time.

©2017 Jerry Lout