We need to start sharing our "God
Moments." These are times in ministry and the life of the church when God
blesses us with a special sense of His presence or activity. A time
when we experience a moving of His Spirit in such a way that we know that He
is with us.
It is easy to look at what is wrong
in the church and to worry about what we will or can do about our problems.
This will lead to discouragement and cause us to become ineffective in our
ministry and mission.
Our focus must be on what God is
doing. This transcends our problems and gives us hope. We are told in
Scripture to encourage one another. “God Moments” is an opportunity to
encourage one another by sharing what God has done and is doing.
I will be sharing such moments and
I ask that you email me your "God Moments" so we can share them through our
website and through the Northern Lights.
Here is one of my God Moments in
ministry, one I have already shared with a number of you in the past year.
When he was born, his heart was
defective and the doctors were hoping that in time they could repair it by
surgery. His parents were devastated. For a while they were
allowed to take him home. One Sunday morning, he was baptized in
church.
After a while it became clear, that
his only hope was a heart transplant. A donor heart never came and I
remember well the day when his father called to tell me that his baby boy
was dying and together we watched him take his last breath in the hospital
chapel.
A week later, I was visiting the
family. They also had a five year-old son who had taken a back-seat
for months as the focus was on his baby brother.
I asked him if he wanted to say
anything about how he was feeling. Without saying a word, he got up
from his seat, grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs to his bedroom.
He opened up the closet door and
directed me into the closet. He closed the sliding door on my side of
the closet and got in on the other side and closed the door on that side.
Here was a 50 year-old pastor and a
five year-old boy sitting on the floor of a dark closet.
The closet was his sanctuary, his
private place, a place where he would go when he wanted to be alone to cry
or express his anger. To me it was holy ground, a sacred place that
not everyone is invited to enter,
For a few minutes, he cried and
told me how much he missed his baby brother and how he was feeling.
In ministry, I often experience
God's presence through holy moments when someone trusts me enough to allow
me into their pain, their secrets and deep struggles.
“God Moments” are often special
times when we share times with those who are dying or grieving. When we are
totally there for each other, but more importantly, God is there with us and
in us.
In his book Reaching Out, the
popular spiritual writer Henri Nouwen tells a story about one of his former
students who returned to visit with him. "I have no problems this time, no
questions to ask you. I do not need counsel or advice, but I simply want to
celebrate some time with you," the student said. Here's how Henri
described their visit.
“We sat on the ground facing each
other and talked a little about what life had been for us in the last year,
about our work, our common friends, and about the restlessness of our
hearts. Then slowly as the minutes passed by we became silent. Not an
embarrassing silence but a silence that could bring us closer together than
the many small and big events of the last year. We would hear a few cars
pass and the noise of someone who was emptying a trash can somewhere. But
that did not hurt. The silence which grew between us was warm, gentle and
vibrant. Once in a while we looked at each other with the beginning of a
smile pushing away the last remnants of fear and suspicion. It seemed that
while the silence grew deeper around us we became more and more aware of a
presence embracing both of us. Then he said, ‘It is good to be here’" and I
said, ‘Yes it is good to be together again,’ and after that we were silent
again for a long period. And as a deep peace filled the empty space between
us he said hesitantly, ‘When I look at you it is as if I am in the presence
of Christ.’ I did not feel startled, surprised or in need of protesting, but
I could only say, ‘It is the Christ in you, who recognizes the Christ in
me.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘He is indeed in our midst,’ and then he spoke the
words which entered into my soul as the most healing words I had heard in
many years, ‘From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground
between us will be holy ground.’
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p.
45
