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A minister was called to the hospital. Caroline, a beautiful baby
girl the minister had recently baptized, had been diagnosed with a
malignant tumor intertwined with her spinal cord at the base of her
brain. Caroline’s young parents were stunned with hurt and grief. The
minister stayed with the couple throughout the night. But he had no idea
what he could do or say. Say something! He kept telling himself. A
prayer, a verse from Scripture, anything!
But all he could do was cry with the couple.
After some time, the pediatric oncologist came in and outlined a
plan to treat the child. The minister was relieved, of course – but
realized that he had nothing to give this family that mattered. Feeling
helpless, he decided then and there to leave the ministry and do
something more useful and constructive with his life.
Later that night, the child’s parents asked the minister for a favor.
“We’re exhausted. Caroline won’t stop crying. Could you hold
her for a little while so we can step out and take a break?”
The minister took Caroline in his arms and rocked her. She cried,
and the minister cried, and then, having expended all her energy, she
drifted off to sleep. The minister kept rocking little Caroline until her
parents returned, relieved to see their child at peace. They placed
Caroline gently in her crib, and the minister said his goodbyes.
As he stepped into the cold night air, he realized that he would not
leave the ministry after all, that all his preparing for ordination and
ministry was for this very night: to rock a very sick child to sleep, to
offer her and her family whatever little hope he had, to simply love this
family in God’s name.
This minister discovered that, despite his own doubts about his
ability to do anything that matters, he is able to bring the love of God to
a hurting family. Jesus comes to show us how to transform our own
sense of uselessness and exhaustion into the means for mending broken
hearts and heal wounded spirits. Jesus calls us to take on the “yoke” of
hope in the midst of despair and the “burden” of compassion under the
weight of fear and hurt. The “yoke” of the Gospel Jesus is “easy” in the
joy it brings to the generous heart; it’s made “light” by the love of God
that we are able to bring into the lives we touch.

As we prepare to celebrate the 4th of July. I began to reflect over
the last 4 or 5 months how many people I listen to who told me story
after story of being overwhelmed, overwhelmed by bombings and
vicious terrorist acts overseas and in this USA, by senseless school
shootings, cars being used as weapons of destruction, chemical attacks
on innocent babies.
I began to reflect on when I felt like this before. It was after
September 11, 2001. What I wrote then, needs to be spoken today.
When the first crews of firefighters and police raced to the World
Trade Center on that horrible day September 11, 2001, they had no idea
of the enormity of what they were about to see. In those first few hours,
not one rescue worker could find the words to describe the devastation.
When asked by news reporters what it was like, all anyone could say
was, “It was hell…I have seen hell…I have been to hell”.
And we wondered then and continue to wonder today: How could
God create such a hell? How could God allow such a hell to even exist?
The answer is perhaps too simple to grasp. The reality is that God
does not create these hells, then or today. Human beings do. Our
hatreds and self-centeredness form the foundation of hell’s walls; our
fears and angers are its gates. Hell can perhaps best be described as
where God is not: When we allow the worst of our human nature to
triumph, when we have torn down and dismantled the compassion and
justice of God, we have created a new hell.
And the breadth and width of the hells we create can be breathtaking.
So where do we go to escape these hells? Is God’s heaven out of our
grasp and beyond our vision?
In the wake of the September 11 bombings, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner
was asked some questions. He was the author of the acclaimed When
Bad Things Happen to Good People. He responded:
“Where was God? I have to believe that God was at the side of the
victims, hurting and grieving with them so that they would not be facing
death alone. I have to believe that God was at the side of the firefighters
and rescue workers, inspiring them to risk their own lives in an effort to
save others. I don’t believe that God was on the side of the terrorists, no
matter how fervently they may have invoked God’s name as they set
their fiendish plan in motion.
Why didn’t God stop them? Because, at the very outset of the human
experiment, God gave us the free will to choose between good and evil.
Without that free will, humans could be obedient but could not be
good”.
We believe that God is not the God of the dead but the God of the
living. God is not placated by the destruction of sinners but rejoices in
the return of the prodigal. God does not condemn us to hell; God wishes
all of us to be saved. God will love us for all eternity, but there always
exists the possibility that we will refuse that love. That rejection and the
refusal to respond to such love are precisely the meaning of hell. Hell is
not a place where God puts us—it’s a place where we put ourselves.
Christ comes to show us how to dismantle the hells we create and set in
their places the justice, peace and forgiveness that are the building
stones of the kingdom of the Father.

He was living alone, while his wife was recovering at a rehab facility.
At 84, physically limited, he feared the world beyond the walls of his
small house in Kansas City, Missouri – and the social and political
divisions in his community and world only fueled his anxiety and
resentment.
So little wonder when his doorbell rang that evening in April, he
reacted as he did. When he looked out his window, he did not see a
teenager who went to pick up his brothers. He did not see a young man
who had come to the wrong house (a common mistake in that
neighborhood). He did not see an honors student who, at 5-8 and 140
pounds, was hardly a menacing figure.
He saw a Black man on his porch who he immediately thought was
trying to break in and assumed that he was in imminent danger.
And so, he shot twice, hitting the teenager in the head and arm.
“Don’t come around here!” he yelled, as the teen struggled to get away.
The shooting left the country as well as his Missouri community
reeling.
The man’s grandson later told The Kansas City Star (April 20, 2023),
that his grandfather had been immersed in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear
and paranoia.” He believes his grandfather is not a racist – just 84 years
old, living by himself, retired…and afraid.
The April 13 shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yari reveals not just our
political divisions, but our fear of what and who we don’t know; ideas
that we imagine threaten our safe, protected bubble; cultures and
lifestyles that seem to call into question the values and verities we
learned growing up. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus tells his followers
again and again “fear no one,” “do not be afraid.” If we embrace Jesus’
spirit of compassion and Jesus’ vision of a world of peace and
reconciliation, we can move beyond the darkness of anger and
hatred….and fear. Jesus assures us that we have nothing to fear if our
souls are ever aware of the presence of God’s love in our lives and we
are resolved to manifest that love in the midst of every challenge and
adversity.