I went for my customary run this morning and on the way I came to the place where I found $11.22 worth of change last year on New Year’s morning. It seems that someone celebrated the coming of the new year by hurling the contents of their piggy bank into the air. This year again there was loose change strewn across the street so I stopped and began to pick up coins. I’m not sure if it is a sign of a weak economy but this year there were fewer quarters, dimes and nickels; the vast majority of the coins were pennies. After I had spent a couple of minutes collecting coins a man came by on the sidewalk and, after greeting me and wishing me Happy New Year, he asked if I needed help looking for something. I explained that I was picking up the loose change that someone had thrown out and invited him to join me in picking the change off of the street. As he started picking up coins I asked him if he was out early for exercise or if he was on the way to work. He explained that he has been unemployed for over two years and that he often wakes early in the morning, worried about how to provide for his family, so he goes for a walk to pray and to relieve some of his anxiety. When we finished picking up the coins he offered his coins to me but I insisted he take all the coins and we continued our conversation. He spoke of the frustrations he experiences being unemployed. He spoke of the indignity of having to accept welfare. He spoke of his embarrassment of not working while his wife must continue to work. He spoke of the pain he experienced when the bank foreclosed on his house without even considering his offer to negotiate a lower interest rate. He spoke of the concern he has over providing necessary medical care for his family without insurance and the disbelief he experiences as he watches some people pay a ten or twenty dollar copay and he is told to pay five hundred dollars for the exact same services. He spoke of the many applications he filled out and job interviews he has gone to in order to gain employment, all to no avail.
We finally ended our conversation and, after wishing him God’s blessing and my hope that he find a job in the coming year, I continued on my run. I prayed for Pedro and for his family as I ran and, in the process, I began to reflect on God’s goodness to me over the past years. I thanked God for his grace in my life: for Jaci, for my job, for healthy family relationships, for the addition of my grandchildren to my family and many other things. But as I prayed I felt the familiar anger well up within my heart as I voiced my frustrations, perhaps better described as accusations, to God, questioning why it seems that some people have to deal with extreme adversity while others, like me, skate along without nary a problem. While I am grateful for my life, I experience anger against God because it seems he allows undo adversity to be piled upon some people while others prosper without a bump in their path.
My devotional material contains a poem by the Wild Goose of Iona that expresses my feelings well.
Inspired by Love and Anger
When trouble strikes and fear takes root
and dreams are dry and sense unsound
when hope becomes a barren waste,
then doubts like mountains soar around.
Our wandering minds believe the worst
and ask, as faith and fervor fade,
‘Has God now turned his back on us,
forsaking those he loved and made?’
God says, ‘See how a woman cares,
can she forget the child she bore?
Even if she did, I shan’t forget.
Though feeling lost, I love you more.
‘My dearest daughter, fondest son,
my weary folk in every land,
your souls are cradled in my heart,
your names are written on my hand.’
Then praise the Lord through faith and fear,
in holy and in hopeless place,
for height and depth and heaven and hell
can’t keep us far from his embrace.
It is easy for me to believe the words of Isaiah 49:14-16, to which the author of the poem alludes, when things are smoothly sailing along in my life. But when I see injustice, disparity and unchecked evil in the world, then my doubts of God’s watchful care and cradling love for his people soar like Mt. Everest. I pray that I will be able to praise God through both faithful holiness and fearful hopelessness, trusting God to work his will in either circumstance in spite of my doubts.
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