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Thoughts and Prayers

When a tragedy like a school shooting or a natural disaster happen, people feel helpless. They wonder what can be done and look for solutions. Then a cycle begins that repeats itself every tragedy.

Often they look for someone to blame. One group sincerely believes the answer is a simple, practical one. They propose legislation and new government regulations. They shame anyone who disagrees as callous and uncaring.

And when someone responds to the tragedy with their “thoughts and prayers”, they pounce on the uselessness of those two words. They see this as avoiding responsibility.

But the ones who offer their prayers honestly feel the answer to most tragedies is beyond anything they can fix. They know not even an act of congress can change the human heart, and cruel hearts are where tragedy is born. So they admit their weakness, bow their heads, and go to the one Person they believe can actually do something about it.

When they see someone affected by that tragedy, they offer their sincere thoughts and prayers. Because that’s all they know to do that will make any difference.

I know some believe that praying is just floating a few niceties in leu of actually taking action. They say things like, “You can keep your hypocritical thoughts and prayers to yourself! Shame on you for not doing more!” To them, “doing more” means signing on to their own radical agenda, usually by supporting a highly partizan political non-solution.

How arrogant we’ve become, that we assume every problem has such an easy fix! Instead of acting to help social problems, we pretend our vote is all that’s needed. So we watch the homeless and never roll up our sleeves to help, we see children overcrowding a foster system and never offer our homes.

We actually do NOTHING, and them shame others for not adopting our empty symbolic gestures.

We’re as silly as Job, standing before a God of unknowable depth and demanding an explanation for why something bad happened. When people with greater minds than ours have struggled for centuries looking for unfathomable answers about why evil exists, we arrogantly think we’ve got it all figured out!

I know something about that helplessness people feel when tragedy strikes. It’s something I get to see a little too often as a pastor. There are times I feel completely useless praying for a patient’s healing in the hospital, when all indications are they are going to pass away.

I visited a pastor in the hospital once. His 7 year old son was a healthy active boy until late the previous summer. As I sat by the boy’s bed where he now lays unresponsive and moaning, the dad tells me how a few months ago something in the boy’s body began attacking his brain. His sickness came of nowhere with no obvious cause.

Now this little boy who was playing ball last year can’t even tell his dad what hurts. That father now has him back home as they pray for a miracle but also wait for what the doctors say is the inevitable.

I’ll be honest. I had no idea what to say, much less what to pray. But praying is what I’ve been doing ever since I left that hospital room, and each time I see the father’s updates on Facebook.

What about meditation? No thanks. Meditation only helps you accept the way things are. When someone’s son is dying they don’t want acceptance, they want intervention.

So when I’m overwhelmed and powerless to fix a problem, I pray. My prayers ask God to intervene, believing that He can, but I do not presume to tell Him how or when. And I trust it with Him, knowing that the answer to my prayer may indeed come back as “no”. But if anyone can do something, He’s the one.

Sadly, people without faith can not understand the importance of prayer.

It is not an imaginary exercise.

It is not avoiding responsibility to take action.

In an age of hubris and self-empowerment, it acknowledges you don’t possess the power to change some things.

Prayer is humbling yourself before the One who is greater than you, and acknowledging His ultimate control beyond your own.

It is seeking to change things by contacting the only One who truly can affect change in any situation, no matter how bad.

So just a piece of advice: you might want to be nice to some of us thoughts-and-prayers folks. When you’ve run out of easy answers one day, you might find yourself wishing you could find one of them.

God forbid that one day the doctor gives you those test results you were hoping never to hear. Or you get that call about your kids in the middle of the night. Or some other overwhelming situation overtakes you that you feel powerless to face alone.

Or when a world-wide pandemic hits that no man has the power to fix.

Or when it’s your kid’s school on lockdown.

That’s when you might see the wisdom in shutting up about your favorite political solution. It’s about that time you might just want a few of those prayers for yourself. And I’ll bet you won’t be reminding me how ineffective #thoughtsandprayers are.

Know that when I pray for you, I’m doing the most powerful, effective thing I know how to do. So just in case, here are my thoughts and prayers for you that God protects you from any of those tragedies I mentioned. That’s the very best I’ve got.

You’re welcome.

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PASTOR-IZED 03/02/22
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Fiddling on the Roof
Copyright © 2024 by David Gipson. All rights reserved.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.