Sunday Morning Meds--Relief

“The LORD delights in those who fear him, 

who put their hope in his unfailing love.” Psalm 147:11

It was strange watching the video, eerie.  The fire looked fierce but ordinary, I suppose, an chunk of apartment complex going up in flames, smoke everywhere, the helicopter circling the blaze slowly, the camera coming in close. From east to west, the roof was mostly gone, the whole place a blazing honeycomb. 

The last shots of the almost two-minute video were taken quite low. The camera zeroed in on the colonnades of a second-story apartment porch, where flames were lapping away at the roof, and something—I couldn’t see what—was lying on the cement balcony, in flames.

Those final images, I believe, were taken of our son’s apartment. 

When he called, he started the conversation with a line whose relief was disarming: “I’m okay.” He’d lost most everything, he said. He had his book bag, his truck, the clothes on his back—and his bike. Everything else—his Mac, his cell phone, his TV and furniture—was gone. All of it. 

The Red Cross got him a room at a motel until Friday when the season’s pigskin finale would fill every spare room within 100 miles of the university. They gave him $100 to buy socks and underwear at Wal-Mart, then told him the university would find him a place to live for the rest of the semester. 

Meanwhile, others called to offer him a bed. Some woman asked about clothes sizes, and a fraternity was taking up an offering.  

           

He said his cell phone—he bought a new one while the smoke was still rising, and the dealer gave him a $50 credit—just kept ringing even though, he said, he never got all that many calls. It was his first semester at the university.

His parents did not get frantic.  He wasn’t a child anymore, and I trusted the largess of good people. They’re everywhere. They really are. I trusted that he wouldn’t be alone. He told us he’d been shocked himself at the many offers of help.  They kept coming. 

His parents were not frantic, but we were powerless. We would have jumped in the car the moment I put down the phone if he would have asked us to come.  But there really was nothing for us to do. Thanksgiving was coming. He would be flying home, as planned.

I wonder sometimes, why God doesn’t see to it that my stuff burns up more often.  Why doesn’t he stick me with a dose of suffering? Some of us experience suffering that won’t quit. I’m not one of them. 

I remember thinking that maybe that fire burned up more than our son’s earthly goods.  I remember thinking that maybe something new would rise from the flames. I remember thinking that maybe something new had risen already, his having to trust other people.

Right then, I felt closer to promise of this verse than I would have, had you asked the day before or the month after. That day, I understood it because I didn’t know where else to put my trust. All I could do was put it in Him.

The single verse from Psalm 147 asserts that God is delighted with my faith, which has grown, not because of anything I did but because I had nowhere else to go with my hope, my trust, my prayers--nowhere else but to him who delights in our hope because we know his unfailing love—from frat boys, the Red Cross, friends and strangers. I trust God’s love. 

About that, God is himself delighted.  And so am I.