Category: News

For our children this week.

The Minister and Session

As we have reported to the congregation previously, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada made some big decisions in its meeting this past summer. In particular, it formally declared something that has been true about the Presbyterian Church in Canada for a long time: that we don’t all agree on the definition of marriage and that we don’t all see the role of LGBTQ persons in the church in the same way. The church declared that all Presbyterians have freedom of belief and conscience and are able to marry people and to elect their leaders accordingly. This has come at the end of a very long process of study and reflection on the scriptures and on our faith. The discussion is also still not over on the national level as we continue to work out how we can maintain our Christian unity despite some significant differences in belief.

And so, over the last few months, the Session of St. Andrew’s Hespeler has been discussing how we ought to make use of this freedom that the General Assembly has given to us. The Session feels that it is very important at this time to affirm that there is a place at St Andrew’s Hespeler for everybody. That includes every kind of family including singles, married with or without children, single parent families and divorced. That includes people who are straight but also those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual and asexual. In addition, all genders and gender identities are welcome to fully participate.

In addition, we want to affirm that we welcome not only all people who have a firm faith, but also all those who doubt. We welcome those who struggle with addictions or bad habits, those who’ve got it all together and those who feel like they’re coming apart.

Now, on one level, we believe that all such people have always been welcome in our church. But we also confess that we have not always been successful making all such people feel welcome. We are glad to take this opportunity to be much more explicit about our welcome and also to think about the implications of that welcome.

We also confess that all of us continue to struggle to be all that God is calling us to be and we pray that, with God’s help and the support of our siblings in Christ, we may rise to the challenge of living up to God’s calling upon us all.

Marriage

The Session is very concerned about the state of marriage in our society. We feel there are too many domestic relationships that are marred by disrespect, abuse and violence. We want to reaffirm our commitment to support and bless marriages that are based on mutual respect, love and support. We will joyfully celebrate any such marriages between two persons under God and according to the laws of the Province of Ontario.

Leadership

We want to affirm at this time what has always been true, that it is up to the whole congregation to choose those who will lead it. That includes ministers, elders and all other leaders. We will maintain our commitment to open and democratic processes for the choosing of leaders. We will also not exclude anyone from such positions merely on the basis of gender, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Conscience and Freedom of Belief

The session wants to state this as an expression of everyone’s freedom of conscience and belief. We do recognize that not everyone in the church will see these matters in the same way. We do not want to exclude anybody because they see these matters differently. The bottom line is we want to declare that there is a place for everyone no matter who they are. We are all just trying to do our best to take the Bible, apply it to our lives and live in Christ as we share His love with the world around us.

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Hespeler, 7 November 2021 © Scott McAndless – Communion, Remembrance Sunday
1 Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 146, Hebrews 9:24-28, Mark 12:38-44 (Click to read)

Just put yourself for a moment in the mind of that poor child, the son of that widow in Zarephath. Ever since your father died unexpectedly, you and your mother have been living on the very edge of survival. But that all got so much worse over the last couple of months as the entire countryside has suffered under a drought. Everyone has had a hard time, of course, all of your friends have been struggling. But many of them have, at least, a few resources to fall back on – some small savings or perhaps the ability to borrow – but you and your mother have had nothing at all.

Nothing, that is, except for one small jar of cracked barley grains and a little jug of olive oil. And so, you have watched day after day as your mother very carefully takes out the smallest amount of grain possible and just barely moistens it with a little bit of oil before frying up the resulting cake.  The cake is so small that it barely requires even two sticks of wood to build a fire big enough to cook it. Your portion of the cake hardly does anything to take an edge off your hunger, but that is not what alarms you the most. What alarms you the most is to watch how that small store of meal and of oil grows ominously smaller every single day. You know very well that there will be no more when that is gone.

The Very Last Cake

And finally there comes the day when you watch your mother very carefully divide the remaining supply in half. Tomorrow is going to be the very last cake and you both know it. The next morning, probably because she cannot even face the possibility of looking you in the eyes, she gets up even before you awake and goes out to gather some wood in order to build a fire to prepare your very last meal. And so you awaken alone, wash and get dressed and sit and wait for her to come back.

But then, after she’s only been gone for about an hour, she returns. And everything looks different. She is carrying her usual two pieces of wood, but she is also flushed and excited like you haven’t seen her since your father died. And she breathlessly announces to you surprising news: “I have met a man of God!”

She explains to you that she is now going to take the meal from the jar and the oil from the jug and she is going to make a small cake to take to the prophet. After that, the prophet promises, everything is going to be just fine for you and your mother.

How do you Feel?

And my question for you today is how do you react and how do you feel? I suspect that most of us would be immediately suspicious that our mother has just been taken in by a charlatan. There is a man out there in the woods who is taking advantage of poor widows by talking them into giving him their very last meals! And we would have all logic and reason on our side in thinking such a thing, wouldn’t we? I mean, isn’t that just the sensible way that all of us look at the question of scarce resources. When there is a stock of something that is in limited supply, something that we find to be essential or desirable, everyone seems to assume that the sensible thing to do is to save it and ration it and spend it as sparingly as possible.

Not Just a Miracle

And there is no denying that what the prophet Elijah asks of that poor widow defies all of those sensible assumptions we make about limited resources. He invites her to be extravagant and generous with the very little that she has with the promise that this is what will prevent what she has from running out. But of course, you might say that this story is all about defying logic and reason because it is, after all, a miracle story. Miracles are not supposed to make sense. Miracles require faith which is the opposite of reason, isn’t it?

And of course it is true that, on one level. This is a story about how amazing the prophet Elijah was and how God miraculously provided for him and helped some other people along the way. But I think it is actually a mistake to look at this as just a miracle story. Because if it is just a miracle story, then it would really only be something that applied to our lives under extraordinary circumstances. And I believe that there is a principle at work in this story that does not just apply to extraordinary circumstances. I think that this story applies very directly to your life right now and today.

Two Ways to Look at it

Because there are in fact two ways to look at the jar of meal and jug of oil in this story. There’s the way we are all inclined to look at it, as a limited resource. Whenever you look at something that way, you will naturally fall into scarcity tactics. When you are living with scarcity, you will save and ration and worry about what you don’t have. But the problem with scarcity tactics is that they form a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. When you assume that things are going to run out and act accordingly, things eventually run out.

But in this story, Elijah comes along and invites this woman to look at what she has from the totally different point of view. Rather than a scarce resource, he invites her to look at it as possibility and potential. And I would suggest to you that that simple change in perspective can actually make an enormous difference. Even though the practical number of resources available to you does not change, it will change the outcome. And, what’s more, though such a change in attitude may require a great deal of faith, the change in outcome does not always require a miracle to pull off, though it may feel that way.

A Church Story

This is a lesson that the Christian church always needs to keep learning. When I was first called to my second church, I spent some time talking to the people who had been there a long time to discover the real people’s history of that church. (This is always time well spent.) They told me that there had been a time, not all that long before, when the church had been poor. Membership had been stagnating or dropping, money always seemed to be in short supply and so that church had been doing what Presbyterian churches in particular seem to be so good at. They carefully cut all of their expenses to the bone, they put off repairs and they were very good at saving money. They were poor and they responded with scarcity thinking.

The Door

But the church that I had gone to did not feel like a poor church. Yes, they did sometimes struggle to balance their budget as most churches do, but they didn’t act like they were poor, so I asked them what had changed that for them. It had started, apparently, with a door. It was an old wooden door that led out to the street. It was drafty and broken and had long seen better days. But they couldn’t afford to replace it. They didn’t have the money. As that door was the main entrance for anyone coming into the church from the community, it was almost like they had put a big sign out front for everyone to see: we are poor.

But one day they were just cornered into a decision. They went ahead and replaced the old door with a brand-new glass door. They were terrified. They could never afford such extravagance! They were sure it was going to ruin them. But then something amazing happened. Almost overnight, without even trying, the door was paid for. And that experience opened them to a very different possibility. Maybe they weren’t as poor as they thought they were. In fact, maybe they were only poor because they thought they were.

Scarcity Tactics are Uninspiring

If they were just surviving and carefully doling out their scarce resources, somehow people didn’t find that to be something that was inspiring and that they were excited about supporting. But if people could see the church doing something, even something as small as a new door, they looked at supporting that in a very different way.

And so that church learned a very important lesson from that, and it was a lesson that they applied to much more then just keeping the building up to date. They learned to stop thinking about their church as poor and as having scarce resources. And, as a result of that, the church went on to take some amazing risks and do some very exciting things in the community.

It Matters How We Look at it

And that is a lesson that I have tried to carry with me ever since. For there are indeed many times when churches take a look at their little jar of barley meal and their tiny jug of oil and come to the conclusion that they had better hold on tight to what they’ve got, save it for themselves and cut back on any ministry and mission to the people around them. This scarcity thinking is what we always will fall into when we are motivated by anxiety and fear. And it always seems sensible, but it is not how the economy of God’s church is supposed to operate. God sent the prophet Elijah to that widow at Zarephath to break her out of such thinking. Who will God send to our churches to break us out?

So I do fervently wish that our churches would learn what that widow learned from Elijah. But it is a lesson that also applies in many other places. It certainly has applications in national economies and government policy.

Global Economics

Now, I am no expert on such matters, and I realize that they are all very complex, but I have at least noticed that slashing and freezing government spending does not always have the effect of balancing budgets and eliminating deficits that we think it should. In fact, such scarcity tactics will often make things much worse. The classic example of that, of course, is the Great Depression but it has happened again and again throughout history. In the Depression, governments and just about everyone else fell into the habit of thinking that resources and money were limited, and that they need to be rationed out, this led to a self-fulfilling prophecy as the belief that money was scarce made everyone hold onto what they had and that made everything become scarcer.

It spiralled out of control until the realities of a global war meant that there was no choice but to start spending enormous amounts of money. The number of resources available had not changed but the attitude about what was worth lavishing resources on did. Only a dramatic change of thinking like that was able to break North American society out of its spiral of scarcity.

And what about you?

But finally today, I don’t want to focus on government spending or on Church spending, but rather I want to focus a little closer to home. I believe that we all, at least in certain areas of our lives, have a habit of behaving like that woman and her son. What I mean by that is that we all have some resource in our life that we treat like that woman treated her jar of meal and jug of oil. We live in fear and anxiety that whatever it is is going to run out soon and so we ration it and share it with others only grudgingly if at all.

Now, I do not know what that resource might be for you in your life. Do you live in anxiety about money? Or maybe it is time that you just never have enough of. Others find that they struggle with a lack of options or of appreciation or of love.

These are all good things, necessary to life and you certainly deserve to have such good things. God wants you to have them. But God has sent Elijah to you today to challenge you to consider your problem is not really how little you have of such a thing; your problem is how you look at that scarcity. You are, after all, the child of the King of kings and Lord of lords. You should never think of yourself as poor. God will always give a person of faith not only enough, but enough to share in some powerful and life changing way.

Final Challenge

So here is my challenge to you today. This week I want you to act extravagantly and generously with something in your life. I want you to give something away – time, treasure, talent, whatever it may be. But this is the key point: I want it to be something that you do not feel that you can spare. If you are a free spender of money, if money doesn’t mean everything to you, then that is not what you need to be giving. You need to be extravagantly generous with something that you don’t think you can afford. Do it because it is something you can only do by faith. If you do it, I think God may surprise you with the news that you are not as poor in that resource as you thought.

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For our children this week.

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Hespeler, 13 October 2021 © Scott McAndless – Reformation Sunday
Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Psalm 119:1-8, Hebrews 9:11-14, Mark 12:28-34

It must have looked really quite disturbing. I mean, people were coming at Jesus from every side with these really tough questions. “Is it permissible for us to pay taxes to the emperor?” “This woman was married to seven different men, whose wife will she be in the afterlife?” “Is it permitted for a man to divorce his wife?”

I know that these are presented as tests and trials that people were putting to Jesus. And these stories have been handed down to us as perfect demonstrations of Jesus’ wisdom and cunning in argument. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that they were just these elaborate puzzles that Jesus was given to solve.

A Very Conflicted Scene

These were really difficult questions that people felt very strongly about. They were also politically charged questions that, just by being raised, would have gotten people very agitated on both sides of any issue. So, you can bet that people were not asking questions in calm and even tones. They were shouting and reacting with a great deal of anger. That’s just what it was like around Jesus sometimes. He was a very polarizing figure and I’m sure it must have been exhausting to watch the extreme reactions all around him.

What People Might Ask Today

Imagine, for example, the kinds of questions that would provoke such extreme reactions today. “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth,” someone might come up and say. “Tell us, is it lawful for the emperor to mandate vaccination in order for people to dine in restaurants and go to shows?” Oh, can’t you just feel everybody clenching their fists and turning red in the face as they wait for Jesus to try and give a definitive answer to that one!

Or maybe, in the context of the church, someone might come up to Jesus and say, “Rabbi, is it permissible for us to move around the furniture at the front of the sanctuary?” Yes, right away I can feel everybody choosing sides and getting ready for a really big fight. Or, I don’t know, maybe in the American context, imagine someone coming up to Jesus and asking, “Teacher, was the 2020 election stolen by the Democrats or not?” I think we all better duck our heads because bullets are about to fly, right?

And it is not that I have any doubt that Jesus could give the absolute best answers to those very divisive questions. In fact, I would love to hear exactly how he would respond. But I can’t help but feel nervous about the thought of being in the middle of the discussion. Can you imagine the people arguing, pointing, threatening and then maybe doing more than just threatening?

Conflict is Unavoidable

It is true, of course, that conflict is a necessary part of life. It is not healthy to simply avoid all conflict and we need rather to put the effort into working out our conflicts in the most constructive ways possible. And yet, at the same time, we are certainly not designed to live in a perpetual state of conflict with one another. That is simply unbearable and it kind of seems as if it was like that a lot around Jesus – not because Jesus brought it, of course, but people certainly had a tendency to bring it to Jesus.

Identifying with the Scribe

And so, when I read our passage from the Gospel of Mark this morning, it struck me as a real breath of fresh air when I saw that one of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another. I mean, if I lived in that age with the degrees that I have received, I might be considered a scribe. So, I immediately identified with him, and I felt his distress at all of the dissension that he was observing.

And this guy is kind of my hero, therefore, because we are told that he decided to intervene in the midst of all this conflict and that he was the one who actually brought it to a close. It says that after he had done what he came to do, no one dared to ask Jesus any more questions in order to start anymore fights.

How Did he Do it?

So, what did this amazing scholar do to accomplish this incredible feat? Did he tell everyone off for being so contrary? Did he beg and plead with them all to please just get along? I definitely need to know because I need to use this wise man’s strategy the next time I find myself surrounded by conflict.

Well, you heard the passage, you know what he did. All he did was ask a question. But there was something about this question that was quite different from all of those other questions that went before. Those other questions all drew attention directly to those things that people were in conflict over – things like taxes, divorce and the afterlife. His question takes us in a quite different direction.

Finding a Point of Agreement

“He asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’” Think about what he is doing here. In essence, he’s asking Jesus what is one thing that we can all agree about. What is one thing that actually unites us? The law was something that was absolutely central to all of their identities as Jews. They might squabble over many things, including how to apply the law, but they would never disagree on its importance.

And here, therefore, is the first piece of advice that I would give us based on this passage. When you are surrounded by conflict and it seems as if everyone is just wasting all of their energy on disagreeing about everything, what you need to do from time to time is step back and remind everybody that there are actually things that we do all agree about. And there is always something that we can agree about.

The Power of Shared Passion

The reason people get upset and in conflict is because they actually care about something. People who are not invested in something, who are bored or apathetic, generally do not want to waste their energy on arguments or disagreements. Usually there is some shared passion that they carried into that disagreement and so it can be really helpful to step back and point out that shared passion.

The Church and Division

In the church, as you know, we seem quite capable of disagreeing about many things. The history of the church is a history of division. Indeed, there’s a whole branch of the church that gets its name from its protest against all the rest. And yes, Presbyterians are definitely part of that branch, which is why they call us Protestants.

I’m not saying that some of those things that we have disagreed about are not important things. But whatever may have divided us, there is a definite need for us to step back from time to time and remember that we hold a very significant thing in common and that thing is, of course, Jesus – his life and his death and everything he has accomplished for us. I think that that scribe can remind us of the importance of pausing to recall that deep point of connection.

Jesus’ Answer

But there is more in this interaction between the scribe and Jesus than just a reminder of what they all hold in common. Jesus’ answer to the man takes us to what had long been considered to be the heart of the Law. Jesus was hardly the first Jew and certainly would not be the last to affirm the centrality this statement taken from the Book of Deuteronomy. To this very day, Jews of all sorts repeat this passage of scripture as their daily morning prayer. So, it was hardly controversial for Jesus to say what he said about this law. But the law itself is the perfect antidote to the conflict and disagreement that is so often a feature of people who feel passionately about anything, especially religion.

When you are arguing and disagreeing, your focus is always on yourself. It’s all about you being right, you having the correct understanding. You are often so invested that it also starts to be about defending yourself against what feels like attack. So, you are very clearly directing all of your heart and your understanding and your strength towards the goal of shoring yourself up.

Where we Need to Focus

But, of course, with his answer, Jesus is telling us all exactly where we need to be directing our hearts and our understanding and our strength. When we’re disagreeing, our focus in all three of those areas is on ourselves, but Jesus reminds us that it all needs to be on God. And that is absolutely the cure to much of the dissension that tears us apart. When we stop making it all about protecting ourselves and building ourselves up, we can actually start to get someplace.

Think back to some time in the life of a church where you have been involved where different factions were all caught up with fighting with each other. If you’ve been involved in churches for any length of time, it’s probably not all that hard to think of an example. It happens all the time. But how many of the people in the thick of that conflict were really fighting because they were passionate about God.

Oh, they might have said that they were, of course. The people often claim to know exactly what God wants in those kinds of conflicts. But so often, I have observed, it’s actually about people fighting for their own vision for how things ought to be, for something that has personal sentimental value for them or something that will prosper them in some other, maybe intangible, way.

 So, in his answer Jesus very clearly points out to all of the bickering people around him that no one should be arguing for their point of view for their own sake. And the message is clear. If we do make this all about pouring our hearts, understanding and strength towards God, rather than about defending or promoting ourselves, I think we will find that a lot of our causes of dissension will melt away.

Jesus Cheats (a Bit)

But Jesus is not yet done with his answer. At this point, to tell the truth, Jesus does cheat just a little tiny bit. The scribe, after all, only asked for one law, but Jesus manages to sneak in a second one. He jumps from the Book of Deuteronomy to the Book of Leviticus and adds in a second law taken from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Now, again, Jesus is far from unique in making this connection. Jews, both in ancient and modern times, would certainly wholeheartedly agree with him. And of course, when we choose to love our neighbours like ourselves, obviously that is going to go a long way towards diffusing any conflicted situation.

But notice how Jesus accomplishes much the same thing with this commandment as he did with the first one. The first one, as we said, had the effect of deflecting the arguers’ attention away from themselves on to God. In the same way, this commandment also deflects attention away from yourself directly onto your neighbour. And when you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about the person you are arguing with and what they’ve got going on in their life and what is troubling them, your appetite for conflict will be greatly diminished.

Dealing with Conflict

I don’t think that conflict in this world or in the church will ever entirely disappear. It is a necessary part of life. It’s not just that things would be deadly boring if we never disagreed about anything, though that is true, it is also that healthy conflict is an important part of any good relationship. And yet I think that if we can hold on to the lessons we learn from this interaction between a pretty wise scribe and a man named Jesus, it might well go a long way towards preventing us from being consumed and drained by conflict. And that is something that helps nobody.

Shall I say it once again? When we find ourselves consumed by conflict, let us:

• Step back and consider what we hold in common rather than what tears us apart.
• Instead of spending your heart, understanding and strength on defending yourself, lavish it on God.
• Stop thinking about yourself in order to think about what your neighbour or your sibling in Christ is struggling with and needs.

For our children this week.

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Hespeler, 24 October, 2021 © Scott McAndless
Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Psalm 34:1-8, 19-22, Hebrews 7:23-28, Mark 10:46-52

The Book of Job is a deep theological and philosophical dive into a very difficult question that people have always struggled with. It dares to ask the question why bad things happen to good people. But, as we read the end of the book this morning, I am struck by another question that is just about as difficult to deal with. Of course, the book tells the story of all of these terrible things that happen to Job. He loses all of his possessions to marauding bands of warriors, all ten of his children, seven sons and three daughters, are killed in a tragic accident and he deals with sickness so severe that it leaves him in constant pain and suffering.

About Recovering from Trauma

Of course, all of that tragedy does set up the difficult discussion of the question of why these things happen. But that is not really what the end of the story is about. In many ways, the end of the story raises an issue that is just as important for our present circumstances as the question of why bad things happen. At least, it leads me to ask the question how we can recover from trauma, from our losses and the really bad things that happen to us.

In some ways, the end of the Book of Job is a perfect picture of recovery. After losing everything, including his own health, Job gets it all back. He recovers physically. He gets his wealth back. And this is presented as a precise calculation. Wealth, in that world, was mostly measured in livestock and so Job gets back precisely twice as many sheep, twice as many camels, twice as many oxen and twice as many donkeys as he had before. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence; there’s got to be a message in something as exact as that. In the same way, Job gets his children back and this is, once again, quite exact. He lost seven sons and three daughters and gets back exactly the same number of both. Again, this is no coincidence.

Recovery is not as Simple as that

So, there you go, right? Everything lost has been given back. Trauma over. All’s well that ends well. Except here is the problem. Recovering from trauma is never as simple as just getting everything you lost back. Never. And you might think, based on these details, that the Book of Job totally fails to reckon with that reality. It suggests a completely happy ending. But I’m not so sure about that. I think that if we play close attention to the story of that recovery, we might see how hard Job and the people around him had to work at it. But to understand that, I think we may need to consider the story from the point of view of somebody who lived it, maybe, say, as Job’s eldest daughter might have told it. That’s right, we need to hear Aunt Jemima’s story.

Job’s Sorrow

Come on, children. Come and sit at your Aunt Jemima’s knee because I have a story to tell you. You need to hear this story because my father, your great grandfather, Job, is coming to visit later this afternoon. You need to know this story before he comes. Your great granddaddy had some terrible things happened to him many, many years ago. He lost everything that he held dear, not only everything that he owned but also everyone that he loved. He had ten children in those days, seven strapping sons and three beautiful daughters. But he lost them all in one tragic accident. Oh, my beautiful babies, you have no idea how much Job wept for those children.

And your great granddaddy tried for days on end to understand why such things had happened to him. He knew he had done nothing to deserve such tragedy. He spoke to his friends trying to find an answer and, in the end, he spoke to God and God came to answer. Now, did God ever explain to Job why such terrible things had to happen to him? Not really. God just sort of overwhelmed Job by talking about all the complexity of the universe until Job just gave up his arguments. Sometimes, you see, we never do get a clear answer to that question of why bad things happen to us.

You Can’t Replace Children

But the good news is that your great granddaddy got through it all. He survived and came out the other end of all of his struggles. He got all of his possessions back, in fact twice as much as he had before. And, blessing of blessings, he had ten more children – seven sons and three daughters. I was the first of those children.

And this is what you need to know today, children. Job loves me and all his children and he loves his grandchildren and, you, his great grandchildren. He loves you so much. But when he comes today, it may not seem that way. Instead of smiling and laughing, he will probably weep when he sees you. He’ll weep because you remind him of those children that he lost.

No matter how many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren he has, they cannot possibly replace even one that he lost. Lost children never work that way, never have and never will. I know that sometimes people, trying to comfort someone who’s lost a child, will say that. They’ll say, “Can’t you just have another one?” That can sometimes be the hardest thing for a grieving parent to hear, because they know they just want the one they lost back.

Living with the Fear

What’s more, having once lost so much, Job also lives with a fear of losing it all again. That has made it hard for him to just enjoy the things that he has and to show love. Recovery from loss – especially the loss of children is just that hard. So be gentle and loving with your great grandfather, it is what he needs most of all.

The Trauma of Generational Loss

Children, I don’t think that many people understand how hard it is to recover from this sort of trauma, especially when a whole generation is lost. I heard about a tribe once – they lived far away from this land of Uz – but they were invaded by a foreign people who came in and occupied all their territory.

These new settlers treated the people who had been living there forever as if they were ignorant savages. They decided it would be better if their entire culture were eliminated. And so, they took all of the children of the people of this tribe away from their parents. They took them and put them in schools where they were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture or religion. Many of these children were also abused in various ways.

The Challenges of Survival

But, much to the disappointment of the settlers, the original people survived. Many of their children died, but the people survived. But survival itself brought its own challenges. For the children did not know who they were anymore. And, when they had their own children, they had no parenting models to follow. So, even after the original destruction had come to an end, the effects of the trauma kept on being passed down from generation to generation to generation.

That’s exactly what Job didn’t want to happen for his family, and he worked hard to make sure it didn’t. And so, children, I’m going to tell you what measures he took because you might need to take similar measures some day.

Accept Help from the Right People

This is the first thing that Job did that helped him to recover. He accepted help. This is exactly where too many people fall short. When you’ve been through a really hard time, when you have struggled mightily and just barely managed to survive, there is a tendency to withdraw. After all, you don’t really want to talk about what you went through. That stirs up too many difficult emotions. And you can also feel this real need to be self-sufficient. But it’s just not going to work. Recovery, real recovery that lasts, always happens within a larger community of support.

So Job found that community of support. He had to be choosy. Not every friend was going to be helpful to him. In particular, the three so-called friends who came and argued with him that he must have deserved all of these bad things that happened to him, they weren’t going to be much help. So, he prayed for them, but then he just let them go on their way.

But then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all that he had gone through. They understood. And to them, Job could really talk about everything he had gone through and all of his emotions. And that, just that, was a necessary step for his recovery. It allowed him to begin to build his own story of what he had gone through and what it meant. And that became the beginning of a new story of who he was and where he was going from there.

Accept Other Kinds of Help

So, the sympathy and listening ears they brought meant a great deal. But they were also the beginning of his financial recovery as well as each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. So, my darling grandchildren, never forget that you need the help of good and trustworthy friends in order to recover from your trauma.

Job’s Emphasis on his Daughters

But there was something else that father Job did that truly saved the future generations of his family, something that I will never forget. It was about his children. He had seven new sons and three daughters. But here is the funny thing, if you go and look at the records of his family, you will not find the name of any of those sons anywhere. Now, Job loved his sons, there is no question about that! But he lived in a world that put all the emphasis on sons. They were the ones whose names were supposed to live on. They were the ones who were expected to build the future. But Job, after all he had gone through, decided that recovery for the future of his family needed to be led from someplace else.

Job had three daughters. I, Jemima, was his first born, and then Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. And you all know those names because your great-grandfather resolved that no one would ever forget his daughters. He knew that they would be the best leaders for the recovery from trauma. He even made sure that his daughters would inherit an equal portion of all his property with his sons, something that is quite unheard of in our world, as you know.

Women are a Key to Recovery

Job did all of this because he understood something that people too often fail to realize: there can be no recovery from tragedy if women are not a key part of it. There was a time when banks and development agencies tried to help whole countries recover from poverty or natural disasters by making investments, but they made a mistake. They chose only to invest in the traditional economic drivers like government and established industry. It was often not successful, sometimes driving corruption and embezzlement and often leading to a high failure rate. But they discovered something. When they gave loans to women, even very small loans to start some small enterprise, it almost always drove economic growth that helped the whole community.

This may have something to do with how women prioritize family and community and want to build for the next generation. It certainly has something to do with how women are often the carriers of important traditions that they keep and pass down, kind of like I’m doing when I tell you this story today. Well, Job understood this.

People told him that he shouldn’t make so much of his daughters, that he shouldn’t let them inherit alongside his sons. But Job knew better than anybody the trauma that he had been through, and in order to make sure that the scars of that trauma didn’t get passed down to the next generation and the next until it came to you, this was the wise decision that he made. If you ever get the chance to help people recover from trauma, you need to keep this in mind as well.

End of Story

Well, children, that’s the story that Aunt Jemima has for you today. Great granddaddy Job will be here very soon, so you all go and you put on your best clothes and wash your faces and get ready to greet him with the biggest hug any patriarch has ever received.

The Challenge of the End of the Book

I know that people often turn to the Book of Job as they try to process the very difficult question of why bad things happen. It is a useful book for that, even if it doesn’t give crystal-clear answers, probably because there are no crystal-clear answers. So, I’ve always loved the book for how it helps us to deal with that question.

But I’ve always had problems with the ending. Yes, it does say that, in the end, Job got everything back that he lost including a whole set of replacement children. But that always troubled me because I have tried to minister to many people who’ve gone through traumatic loss, and I know that just getting back what you lost is not the same thing as recovering. I also know that it never helps a parent get over the loss of a child when you suggest that they can just have another one.

But this time as I read the story, especially as I reflected on Jemima and her sisters, I realized that there is more to the story than that, and it really does lay out some of the steps that actually do help a person to recover from such devastating loss.

Dealing with your Trauma and Loss

So, if you have suffered that kind of trauma, or if you know someone that you love who has, I would counsel you to never underestimate the impact of the wounds and the scars that you carry. They are serious and they do not just affect you, they can also be passed down in your family. Be wise like Job and take steps to deal with your trauma. Find safe and supportive people that you can trust who will listen to you and help you process your experience. In some cases, you may need someone who has been professionally trained to do that. Do not be afraid to ask for help, we all need it sometimes. And make investments in the people who will build a better future for yourself and your family and everything you want to leave for the generations yet to come.

For our children this week.

What is a Faith @ Home box.