Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries by Major Michael Ramsay
The children went to and from camp this week.
In the end I think we had 22 or 23, 7- to 12-year-old campers accompanied for
their journey anyway by a number of chaperones. It was interesting. There were
the usual challenges, of course, of some people not being able to make it at
the last minute and people’s phones no longer being in service – but this time there
was more, much more.
First, the bus caught fire. Truly. It was a
real blessing that none of the kids were on it yet. We had to scramble to find
enough cars and drivers to get the children to the ferry and we even had to
press Remi (our Food Bank driver) into action, driving the cube van with
everyone’s luggage in it. And remember that the camp is in Gibson’s so the
children have to catch 2 ferries to get there; so we are under a bit of a time crunch.
We race to Nanaimo (as fest as the speed limits will permit, of course). Almost
everyone had made it to the ferry but one car was just not coming. We were
waiting. We were wondering. We were waiting.
Mayor Sharie Minions was driving (she was one
of the chaperones that came with us all the way on both Monday and Friday and
we are so thankful for her and all our drivers). It appears that the adventures
for the morning weren’t over for her yet. As she was driving over the hump, a
car came towards her careening out of control. It spun right towards her, in
her lane, at high speeds; she recalled that she has no idea how she missed it: self-aware
car features, reflexes? The grace of God intervened for sure. The car just
missed her and her carload of kids and crashed into a guardrail on the oncoming
side of the road. She stopped, called 9-11 (which is always an adventure in and
of itself; it really is not a useful feature being that it is never staffed by
local people – but that is another story); she called the children’s parents to
let them know that their kids were okay and make sure that people were still good
to go to camp and then she did make it to the ferry just in time for us to buy
our tickets.
There was one more breath-holding moment at the
ticket booth because earlier in the week reservations weren’t working and we
usually try to make reservations for groups this large and also earlier in the
week my corporate visa wasn’t working so we had to get The Salvation Army to
sort that out – I wouldn’t want to have to try and buy that many tickets any
other way. It all worked out and we got our kids to camp. Now this isn’t the
end of the story though – there was the ride back…
The day we went to get them was Friday. You
remember what happened all across Canada on this past Friday? Rogers’ network
was down so no interact and no visa in many places. As I was driving to the
ferry, I was wondering indeed how and if we would be able to get all of these
kids home again – it is a bit of money for all these folks on the ferry
(especially since the 12-year-olds pay full fare!). We get there and none of
our drivers/chaperones who are parking their cars to get on the ferry to meet
the kids can get the parking permit machine to work. They tried Visa, Interact,
even cash. At this point we are more than a little concerned. I go up to the
counter to buy our ferry passes and… apparently Visa worked just fine with the
ferries – just not interact, so that was a big relief!
But there was more – this time not our
adventure but the Victoria group. We bought our tickets to come back to the
Island as soon as we could. The moment the ticket sales opened for our sailing
and we had all our kids present and accounted for, we lined up to purchase our
tickets and then we took the kids down to the beach to wait (for I don’t know? ¾
hour or so?) with all of the other Salvation Army groups returning to the
Island – Courtney-Comox, Parksville, Campbell River, Nanaimo, all the Victoria
corps…
When the time came, we boarded the ferry and
headed for home. When we were on the ferry I saw Pat Humble. He has been in
charge of family services for all of the Victoria corps for years. I’ve known
Pat pretty much since the day Susan and I first went to a Salvation Army many
years ago. He told me his story of camp. He made it on the ferry back to the
Island - but none of the kids from the Victoria corps did. The kids were still
on the mainland – but he was on the ferry back to the Island. He is a very nice
guy and not very easy to fluster at all! But he was less than impressed with
the 5 chaperones who were with the children, who were supposed to get them on
this ferry. You see Victoria brought a van on the ferry with all the children’s
supplies: Pat was driving this which is why he was on the ferry. Not one of the
chaperones apparently thought to buy the tickets for the kids until the ferry
was just about to leave and by then it was too late so they remained stranded
on the mainland for another hour or two and now Pat was desperately trying to
get a hold of the bus line that they had hired to drive all the Victoria kids back
home again, and their parents, and, and, and…
Camp can be fun – who knew getting there and
back would be quite the adventure? (The kids did all seem to have a really good
time though!) In the midst of all this I am sure there was no shortage of
prayer. A couple of competing thought kept coming to my mind through this
experience that I will sum up with these verses, though there are many similar
verses from each perspective.
·
Romans
8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
him, who have been called according to his purpose.
·
John
10:10b: … I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
And
·
Matthew
5:45: He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the
righteous and the unrighteous
·
Ecclesiastes
9:11: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or
the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the
brilliant or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
·
John
16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this
world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
In some denominations there are always those
who believe that only pleasant, nice, prosperous events happen to those who
love the Lord. The rest of us however grasp the fact that the race is not to the strong,
time and circumstance happen to us all, and that life’s battles belong to the
Lord. However, in the midst of trying times – even times much more trying than
getting kids to and from camp – we can be tempted as was Job to complain and blame.
There have certainly been stressful times in my life – again much more
stressful than these stories – where I have looked in front of or above me and
called out loudly to the Lord in anguish not knowing where or why or anything except
frustration. That all being said the sometimes seemingly competing ideas of
Romans 8 and Matthew 5 competed briefly in my mind this week
·
Matthew
5:45 He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the
righteous and the unrighteous
And
·
Romans
8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of
those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
To what is Romans 8 referring? This could be a
long conversation… Romans 8 really is bound to Romans 7. These two chapters
have a lot to say about the Christian life and holiness and everything else.
One of the things to which Romans 8:28 is referring is the idea that we have
quoted many times from Major Ivany that in the end everything will be alright;
so (take heart because) if it isn’t alright it isn’t the end. Romans 8 does
spend a lot of time talking about the eternal spirit within us that is seemingly
struggling with the mortal body around us and does offer up the hope that one
day our perishable body will be (as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:53) clothed
in immortality.
Some of the challenges with just putting this
all in a future tense though could come from what we saw in the aftermath of
the US civil war. A very strong racism, segregation, discrimination, oppression
was forced upon a whole people, a whole culture. The struggle certainly hasn’t ended
yet. In the midst of everything there were some great, solid people of faith who
have led and continue to lead down there. I am really impressed with how God
used MLK jr and others in their time and circumstance. Some other faithful folks
from an even earlier time penned the many great ‘spirituals’ that have a solid
Christian message that sometimes, however, may seem to put too much of our hope
or even all our hope on the other side of the metaphorical River Jordan, in the
future Heaven, not leaving room for hope in the present. This thought can be
summed up in an expression that was common when I was quite a bit younger, “Life’s
a b…, life’s hard and then you die”. I think life is much more than that. I
believe that Christ called us to live life abundantly.
But what does it mean to live life abundantly?
Does it mean that everything is always going to come up roses? Does it mean
that everything is always going to be easy? What does it mean that all things
work for good for those who love the Lord? Does it mean that there are no
difficult times for those who love the Lord? The scriptures are quite clear
that for those who love the Lord, in this life there will be struggles: many of
Jesus’ early followers spent many years in prison followed by violent deaths. We
have all seen in our lives that time and circumstance happen to all (as Proverbs
and Ecclesiastes drive home). So what does it mean to live life abundantly?
My mind goes to John 16:33: “I have told you
these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have
trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” And my mind goes to reconciliation.
And my mind goes to forgiveness. I think that this is the means by which Christ’s
freedom is lived out in our lives.
I have done a lot of work in the prisons and
the courts in my life and ministry. One absolute travesty (of many) in our criminal
justice system is the victim impact statement. There is not much more vicious a
society could do to a victim than we do by compelling them to make a victim
impact statement years after they have been victimized. The victim is told to
hold onto and even grow (or conjure up) the hate they have for the person who
committed the crime. They are told not to forgive. They are told to ask for the
strong punishment for the person who wronged them. They are told to hold onto
this hate and unforgiveness for years and then – no matter how harsh a sentence
is meted out on the other person, they always feel that if they hated them a
little more than they may have ‘gotten what they deserve’. This victim impact
statement process re-victimizes the victim. They are compelled to hang onto hate
and unforgiveness for years, when we know that the sooner we can get over a traumatic
event, the better our success rate in doing so. It is vicious to the victims. In
many cases our system forces the victims to be trapped in their trauma forever when
healing could have been available right away. I have seen this play out time
and time again.
The Christian response to evil is the opposite
to this. God wants us to be free of hate – for hate destroys us. It is all-consuming.
Unforgiveness can ruin our whole lives. It can make us unable to work, it can
make us unable to have relationships, it can drive us to addiction. Sometime people
even suffer physical symptoms to go along with the emotional and spiritual symptoms
of unforgiveness. The devil can use unforgiveness to destroy our whole live.
I truly believe that contrary to this, the
message of the Gospel, the Good News of Christ is that of reconciliation with
one another and with God and I truly believe that the only way we can be reconciled
with anyone is to forgive them. The only way we can have peace with others – or
even ourselves – in when we are able to forgive (cf. Matthew 5:43-47).
When we forgive we can love and when we love we
will indeed have life abundantly. I am sure we have all seen people who seem to
have had every advantage in life but are absolutely miserable and I know that -especially
in our Salvation Army context- we have seen many people who seem to have
nothing at all and many people who seem to have had nothing go right for them at
all but have been experiencing perfect freedom in Christ; I am convinced that
this freedom in Christ comes from our reconciliation with God, our fellow
person and that this all comes out of forgiveness which we can all dispense as
God has already given it to us (to dispense); so that He can love even us, even
me and we can love each other so we will love Him.
Jesus says, John 10: 10: “The thief comes only
to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it
abundantly.”
John 16: 33 “I have told you these things, so
that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take
heart! I have overcome the world.”
Let us pray…
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