Day 48
Life’s A Beach
TV cameras routinely capture incidents where a number of Porpoises are found stranded on a beach. If found alive, rescuers attempt to return them to the sea and get them headed in the right direction. Oftentimes, this doesn’t work out as successfully as we would hope. Within a matter of days, these same Porpoises who were returned to the ocean end up back on the beach again. Why? Science doesn’t really get it.
Jesus was surrounded by people who just didn’t get it. At times, He would become frustrated, I would suggest somewhat exasperated, with those around Him. Jesus made remarks like, “How long shall I put up with you?”[i] “Do you still not understand?”[ii] “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?”[iii] The Bible also makes specific reference to the fact that Jesus’ disciples were befuddled by what He was saying. They said things like, “We don’t understand what he is saying.”[iv] Finally, the Bible makes specific contextual references to the fact that “they did not understand what he was telling them.”[v]
Let’s be honest. Jesus is still surrounded by people in the twenty-first century who claim His name who just don’t get it. Both Jesus and John the Baptist used a term that seems to have faded from the vocabulary of present day Christians.[vi] It’s repent.
We’ve developed other terms to replace repent in our ordinary course conversations like change, reconsider and have an open mind. Unfortunately, none of these terms carry the meaning that Jesus and John the Baptist used. According to the footnotes in my Bible(s), repent means to make a radical change in one’s life.[vii] It involves thinking differently, regret and most importantly, a positive change in your behavior that is visible to other people.[viii] This opportunity to change your behavior is supplied by the power of God, not human willpower. It’s not something you talk about with other people, asking them whether or not they recognize that you have shed a few pounds because you need a slap on the back. It’s like saying “God, I just don’t get it. I can’t go on like this. I give up. I need you. Please help me.” It’s feeling like a beached Porpoise.
It was a nice spring evening about 7:40PM. Our home was filled with about thirty young adults seated wherever we could put them and jammed together on the floor. Every Thursday at 7:00PM we had a gathering of this group in our home (They usually began to show up at 5:00PM to eat before the meeting began). We would share what was going on in our lives, study the Bible together, encourage one another, laugh, cry and pray. One of the guys named Jess (not his real name) was very concerned about his brother Jeremy (not his real name). He had not seen or heard from his brother for several weeks and was becoming increasingly concerned. Everybody knew that Jeremy and his wife had struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. Nobody in the group had heard a word from Jeremy. Until 7:40PM when there was a knock at the door.
I guided Jeremy from the front door to my seat in the living room. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing fresh, white bandages around his torso from his navel to his breasts. His right arm was in a sling. He was released from the hospital earlier that afternoon. As he shared his story of a drug purchase gone bad with the group, He lifted the bandages to reveal a gunshot wound and the stitches from the middle of his rib cage to the top of his navel. The doctors had saved his life.
For the next ten minutes Jeremy went on and on tearfully recounting the horror that drugs and alcohol had caused in his life. I can distinctly recall him saying several times “Never Again!” What he was really saying was “God, I just don’t get it. I can’t go on like this. I give up. I need you. Please help me. I’m as helpless as a beached Porpoise.”
Six weeks later I got a call from Jeremy’s brother Jess. He begged me to drop whatever I was doing and meet him at Jeremy’s apartment. It was dark. There were no lights on in the apartment. Jess had yet to arrive. I got out of the car and could hear a baby screaming inside one of the units in front of me. I grabbed a flashlight from the glove box. As I approached Jeremy’s apartment, the sound of horror coming from the lungs of a small child kept getting louder and louder. I pounded on the door for a minute and hollered Jeremy’s name several times. Nobody responded. The screaming child was obviously inside. I turned on my flashlight and aimed it through a crack in the drapes. I kicked in the door to find Amy naked in her crib, writhing in her own excrement. Within an hour or so, little eight-month-old Amy was on her way to the hospital with an agent for Child Protective Services. Amy had apparently been in her crib in that apartment alone, for several days. She was safely back at sea now.
As I drove home that evening, I was shaking, I burst out crying and pleaded out loud, “God! I just don’t get it! I can’t go on like this. I give up. I need you. Please help me!” My mind started asking all those questions that can never be answered at the moment you ask them like, “Is there really such a thing as repentance? Is repentance some sort of privilege for a select few? Who decides? Why do unrepentant people cause harm to others?”
After several months, I began to realize that repentance is not an event; it’s a process…a daily commitment to humbly embrace the fact that “God! I just don’t get it! I want more of You. I surrender this day to you. I need you. Even when I think life is going on just swimmingly, I know I’m just one wave away from being stranded on the beach. Please help me!” As one author succinctly puts it, “Dependence, sorrow, repentance, a longing to change-these are the gates to God’s kingdom.”[ix]
Pray for Amy.
NOTES
[i] Mark 9:19
[ii] Matthew 16:9
[iii] Mark 4:13
[iv] John 16:18
[v] John 10:6
[vi] Matthew 4:17 and 3:1
[vii] Footnote – Matthew 3:2
[viii] Footnote – Matthew 3:7 – Life Application Study Bible
[ix] Yancey, Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew, Zondervan Grand Rapids, Michigan Copyright ©1995 by Philip Yancey, p. 114.
