The first day at any work site, both from work camps and other mission trips I've attended, are always a patchwork of delays, delegation and expectations. The limitations on supplies are always overtaken by the eagerness of the workers. Instead of a slew of rookie high school kids who are about to embark on real physical labor for the first time, this group has been well tested from experience. It's like bringing an all-star team of Christians to a bible trivia contest. No job seems too big, no task too challenging.
Among the Ohio 9, almost half have been to a foreign country or plan to be in 2015 doing some kind of mission work. Haiti, Tanzania, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, the list goes on. Some of the 9 are looking into careers that will bring them into the mission field. A pastor, a social worker. Almost all have seen the effects of a home wrecked by a tornado or hurricane. Yet, there are moments that even among them cause them to pause and listen. such was the case on our first day.
We drove about ten minutes through rural roads to get to our job site. The new home belongs to a Ms. Lucille Shannon. She's a retired fifth grade teacher who has spent more than 30 years in Brookport. Everyone knows her. Many of the pastors, community members and other youth have been touched by Miss Shannon's presence. The minute she walked into the home to introduce herself we knew right away that we were among someone special. A life touched by God is something so bright you cannot contain its energy.
We ended up putting down our paint rollers to hear her story. Her original home had all but been destroyed. She had been misplaced for over year, still awaiting the day she can finally move back, call it home. As with any tornado survival story, the question always comes: did you have any warning? In tears, she began to tell us how she felt the storm would pass like many before she had been warned about. Living so close to the Ohio River allows some protection for disastrous storms like tornados. "I was going to go and lie down, let it pass," she said. "They've never hit before."
I saw myself in her home on that day, watching her nonchalantly going to her bedroom to allow the storm to rumble past. Perhaps on any other day like that one, she had fallen asleep, only to awaken to see the clouds dispersed and the rain gone. This time, the storm did hit. She felt the rumble of the oncoming disaster. It shook the floorboards and it shimmied a sense of urgency up towards her heart, she remembered. She prayed for Jesus, not for her, she told us, but for her kids who were at work, saved that day because of their jobs. The house was twisted into a slanted trapezoid. The corners had gone from 90 to 35 degrees, as if the tornado reached down its hand and twisted the frame of the home until it leaned inward and outward.
I think we have all been in a position of Miss Shannon, waiting for the impending storm to rattle some windows and make some noise, but in the end we nap through the commotion. The storm will pass, it always does.
The one thing about this God-imitating life is the storms we create, the ones we find ourselves in, do seem to pass. We grow reliant that the emergency broadcast system is really just a courtesy call. It's an "ahem, pardon me," in an otherwise innocuous day. We take score though, weak as we are, because the storms we try and nap through end up becoming the testimonies as to why we don't obey. In just 12 short weeks, I beat smoking. I never touched a drop again in my life and all it took was (fill in the blank). I knew it would all come out alright.
God isn't in the business of storm chasing. He doesn't create the storms either, in my opinion, but he does allow them to effect our lives. If Jesus is so vital to our everyday relationship with the Lord, why do we have rows and rows of self-help books in our stores? We pay for medications with questionable side-effects. We invest our monies in retirement funds to build something that we can take nice pictures form place them in a frame or photo album to make sure we always remember the days on the beach, the days we worked hard for. Those of us that have been in a storm with god always have the best testimonies. They understand their lives in these moments of near death.
Miss Lucille Shannon is a living stone. I'm referring to a passage we studied after a full day's work from the first book of Peter, chapter 2: As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
A stone isn't a great form of nature's wonder at first sight. It's shapeless and oblong, gray or a mixture of drab colors and earth. There's nothing special about rocks. Stones we keep in jars, or we skip them along the water. We drill holes through them and make them into jewelry. But a rock? We plow them out of the ground to remove them from the land. We toss them aside. We break them apart. So here's God letting us know that Jesus is a living stone. One word alive and the other inanimate. How can a stone be living? be alive? But somehow God is placing these rocks, our lives, into the shape of a precious, spiritual house. Even the best human architects need special epoxies to keep rocks together, to make them livable. God takes what's there and forms them into one. Somehow the erosion of life, the sanctification stamp of approval forms a house built for His purpose. None of us can brag, because without him we'd be just a measly rock with no purpose.
Tonight we were asked to take an inventory of our spiritual homes. What stays when we have to rebuild? What needs replaced? We can either go into the field and fish rocks form the earth, stacking them as high as a Babylonian tower but in the end how far will you go before the work of your own hands crumbles? I find myself tripping over the stones in my life. Tasks, to-do lists, concerns and worries. None of them are helping me build a spiritual home that lasts. The most important stones, my obedience, my family, my love for others, gets placed in a pile of rocks. I'll get to them later. Let me prioritize this pile first. I'll get to it. When is it time for a nap?
Miss Lucille is starting over. Among her new possessions is a scrap book containing pictures and letters from the various crews that have come in to help rebuild. By the looks of the home, the pictures, we can all tell that God has a hand in all of it. I'm not mad at God for causing this tragic event in her life. She's not just some living rock, I think. She's the one made of alabaster. Her new name has been written on her rock. It's now a precious stone, too bright to hold. Too loving for one person to have. On that new stone is her new name. God knows for sure what that name is, lovely and bold. Did you know that to have that stone all you have to do is let Him in? The master craftsman. I hope that when I see him face to face, I'm still not trying to pull an oxcart full of lumpy stones towards a destination too far away for me to see. What stays? What goes? This trip is helping me find those answers.
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