My Friend Jerry - Part 3

Our praise honors God and changes us…

The exile for the people in Israel was because they would not be obedient to God. He wanted them to know him, to love him. He wanted to bless them, but they didn’t see it. They wouldn’t respond.

We all face our own exile. It is a lonely time. It can either serve to point us to who God is and what he is asking of us in terms of obedience -- or it can bring us to the conclusion that he doesn’t care about us, about me.

My time of exile lasted a few years. It was an extended period of loss, grief, and deep loneliness. Exile has the potential to rob us of our peace and health. I recall being so lonely that despite having wonderful friends who really wanted to “be there” for me, I couldn’t find comfort in that. I remember one particularly painful day driving downtown Bloomington to the Jesus Coffee House where I have spoken many times and come to love the people who frequent that amazing place. Why did I go there? I didn’t know at the time, but looking back it was because somehow I knew Jesus would be here. He was my only hope. I sat and cried with Bonnie who leads the ministry there. I hurt badly, but I knew God was with me.

Pain is pain, and I don’t claim that my story is special or particularly “bad.” We don’t help ourselves by trying to compare stories. Three things I do know to be true:
1. Push in on anyone with a few questions and you will find pain and loneliness, regardless of how good their life is. Simply ask, “Who hurt you?” “Who have you hurt?” “When have you been left hanging… misunderstood or abandoned?” The answers will be revealing.
2. We can overcome the pain with God’s power
3. We do come back from exile, but only if obedient to learning what God has for us there and always one baby step at a time.

God didn’t change my circumstances. He changed me.

A few months after that day at the Jesus Coffee house, I was in the process of selling my 120-year-old house when a nasty hailstorm rolled through, stripping the roof and siding, breaking windows, and filling the dirt-floored basement with muddy water. When I opened the door to the basement, my first instinct was to shut it -- to go to bed -- and to convince myself it would take care of itself.

I could have called for help -- but I didn’t. I went downstairs with a plastic cup. Why a plastic cup? Only God knows! I knew there were many better ways to deal with a flooded basement, but for the next four hours -- one cup of muddy water at a time -- I moved the mess to a drain. It was crazy. It was frustrating. But the strangest thing happened. I felt God’s presence -- not in a joyful, happy way -- but in a “you are not alone” way. With every muddy cup of water, I knew he was with me. After a while, I started to see progress. My body and my spirit ached, but I overcame the mess and I walked back from exile. God was with me. I was pulled up out of the muddy pit I’d been left in, one muddy cup of water at a time.

We all face exile and its loneliness. How will we handle it? Will we do so with perseverance, clinging to truth, with obedience, and with honest comments to God and others about how we feel? Or will we defy God, go our own way, deny truth and blame him or someone else for our life, or pretend our hurt and loneliness doesn’t matter?

We all make that choice, whether we think about it or not. When we choose God, we are never truly alone. When we choose to defy God, we will find loneliness at the end of every road.

Jeremiah didn’t get up every day to face rejection -- he got up to meet with God. He listened, spoke, and acted. He was obedient, and that’s what mattered.

As Eugene Peterson writes, “Faith invades the struggle; it doesn’t eliminate it.”

There are more lessons from my friend Jerry, come back!