Caught (Part 2)

Sometimes I’ve wanted God to catch me as quickly as Dad did when I was a child.  

It hasn’t always worked that way. 

Several weeks ago there was a shooting at a factory in the nearby town where I went to high school. The shooting happened just across the street from the middle school, but school was already out for the day. Four people were killed, including the shooter, and fourteen injured. Our community is beginning a long recovery.

On that day I heard and watched the news stories of people who believed themselves to be caught by the hands of God, just like my dad caught us as we flew off the top of the refrigerator. Even as the shots were being fired, phone calls for prayers were being made. As people fell, others came alongside them and offered prayer for them while assisting them to run for safety. Those people who survived have a strong sense of God reaching for them and catching them up.

And there are the other stories, of those who died...those who have a long road to recovery...those who have lost loved ones...children growing up without a parent.

Psalm 103 says that God redeems our life from the pit. In order for that to be true, we have to have actually landed in that pit. I’ve always preferred the rescue to happen before I reach the bottom of the pit, but that only happens some of the time. 

There are a lot of rescue verses in the Bible, and I loved all of them. I also misunderstood them, thinking that God would always rescue me before I was in trouble. Maybe I would see the danger coming, but there would be a gasp, a look of terror, and then relief and laughter, right? It took me a while to become reconciled to the truth that sometimes God picks me up after I’ve fallen hard instead of catching me before I hit the ground. 

And sometimes, God sits with me in the pit.

In Psalm 56, which was the Psalm for the week before Palm Sunday from my devotional book, are these words:

"Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me:

all day long foes oppress me;

my enemies trample on me all day long,

for many fight against me."

and also these words...

"You have kept count of my tossing;

put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your record?"

There are some pits that are just part of life. Accidents. Illnesses. Deaths of loved ones. Natural disasters. They are things out of our control that shake our lives at their foundations.

There are pits we dig ourselves, sometimes willfully and sometimes in spite of ourselves.

There are pits made by others. Broken relationships. Crime. Abuse.

And there are pits that are part of following God. We follow a crucified Savior, after all. We follow a Savior who spent his last night before his death wide awake, sweating blood, and praying for another way to accomplish his mission besides the one that lay ahead of him. It is easy to forget that giving up your life is part of the deal. Sometimes we want to have only the picture of God catching us before we hit the ground, while ignoring the picture of God who left heaven to accompany us here, in our hard places.

But God IS here with us. Even our tossing and turning is recorded and our tears are collected.

The candles at the front of our sanctuary, lit in honor of those who died or were injured in the shooting. Photo by Joan Entz.