Courage to Surrender

My alarm clock unlocked a deep sleep interrupting a wonderful dream. I was in surrounded by family, close friends that I had made throughout my life, and by many others who I felt knew me and whom were known by me. We were at a beach party, the sun was warm, the ocean breeze was cool, and the food was good. It was in such a deep, peaceful, sleep. It was a dream that made me fight my return to reality. I didn’t want to wake up.

As I hit the off button, clock numbers glowed 4:30 a.m. I threw the covers off, swung my feet to the floor, and walked groggily into the bath room. Turning the light switch on was like the flash bulb from a studio photographers’ camera.

After putting on my running clothes I went out into the dark morning for my daily run. The air was fresh and the stars still sparkled.

Running for about ten minutes and going through my stretching routine finally woke up my body. I began to run again; settling into a nice pace that felt smooth and energizing. Reflecting on the new day made me feel fully alive. The birds also welcomed the new day with their singing. Then, strangely, I began thinking about my life journey. I thought, I am thirty-eight years old and have been trying to follow Jesus for twenty years, yet I still feel I haven’t found a church where I feel safe and at home. Where are the people who love me like they love Jesus, who care more about those who suffer than they do about themselves? I reviewed the five or six churches where I’d been a member or a regular participant. There were even a couple of churches where I’d spent more time at meetings and programs than I did with my wife and kids. I’d never found a church that felt to me the way I thought it must have felt at the beginning of the church after Pentecost, or even two hundred years after Pentecost. I wondered again where to find the church I’d read about in the gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Every church I’d been involved with seemed hung up with traditions and the values of their culture. Most were self-absorbed. I was getting tired of trying one more church in the hope of discovering where I belong.

I considered suggesting to my wife Deb that we attend a new emerging church that was starting up in an old reclaimed church building in our neighborhood. And then, just as I was deciding that maybe I should try again, a kid passed me jogging about twice as fast I was and he wasn’t even breathing hard. My mind shifted to my running and the thought that I was never going to get my youth back, either.

One of the reasons I ran almost every morning and often lifted weights was because I always hoped to restore and maintain the body I had when I was eighteen, or at least twenty five. This kid running past me had the body that I’d had and was in the condition I was once in. The devastating realization came upon me that I was approaching middle age and would never be twenty years old again. It felt naive to think that I could actually imagine myself with a body restored to its youthful prime. And, oh yes, I also planned on being able to run a six-minute mile with no pain because I could remember running a five minute mile in high school energy to spare, and without pain . But the blur that ran past me at that moment popped my bubble. Reality hurts. I was never going to get back my twenty year old body. Maybe I also had to face the reality that the church was never going to look like it did when it was in its youth either. I realized that maybe I should stop hoping for a biblical community of Jesus’ disciple, let go of fantasizing about some extended family of surrendered sinners and just meld in with what was available.

Rather than being challenged to run faster, my pace slowed down and I felt a wave of sadness like I hadn’t felt since my brother was killed. The rest of my run was a labor of discipline. It was 6:00 a.m. by the time I finished my post run stretches. I walked for another five minutes to cool down and then went into the house for a shower. After a shave and shower and some fresh clothes I made myself a cup of coffee and got the Sunday paper off the front porch. The rising sun peeked through the glistening Japanese Red Maple that grew outside my kitchen window. In the quiet of this fresh morning, only the birds were singing. The memory of my dream came back to me. It reminded me that I had not lost ability to dream. I guessed I wasn’t too depressed after all; just despondent about the church. I sat down with my coffee to read the Sunday Morning Post-Gazette. I always read “Prince Valiant” in the comics first. Then I began to scan through the front page. Same old-same-same-old, I thought. But on page three in the bottom left hand corner, the heading read, “Dr. Brandon C. Bryce Assassinated. In broad daylight, the Children’s Army of the Kalif Resistance Forces (KRF) interrupted worship services at the Day of Hope orphanage today and opened fire, killing the worship leader, his wife, two of their three children, and ten orphan children. The worship leader was Dr. Brandon C. Bryce from Park Hills, Pennsylvania. …………….” It was as though a bolt of blinding lighting thundered out of a brilliant clear blue sky and struck my heart. I sat stunned in disbelief. ………………….. There had been no one to whom I was closer than this brother and sister……………….