The Children of Tyranny (Chapter 2)
My last appointment ended. As the couple left my office, I glanced a bit uneasily at the clock on the wall across from my desk. It said 5:38 p.m.
The day had been full as most of my days are with appointments, telephone calls, and the completing of the piles of paperwork associated with my work. I am a financial planner. I like my job. I can help people and I like that.
Over the years I've built a respectable business. My client's like and trust me. It is because, in the main, I've employed God's Word in my dealings with them. And I have come to learn that His way works best even when it may cost me a source of revenue from a client. And experience has taught me that it is always best when faced with poverty or truth to choose truth. I may go to bed hungry, but, at least, a good conscience allows me to sleep peacefully. Tomorrow is always a new day, and God, I've come to realize over the years, usually takes care of that for me just as he does everybody else who belongs to Him.
I wish I could say that I have always trusted Him. But I can't. Oh! I could, I guess, but I'd be lying. And right now as I look uneasily at the clock, I must say I have this growing trepidation about the close of this day and the approaching night.
"Yeah. It's going to be one of those evenings," I thought to myself. "Lord, help me to rest in you."
I arranged the papers on my desk into neat stacks, put my pens and pencils away, and turned off my computer. There was still a bit of coffee at the bottom of my Barnes & Noble cup. I tossed it down. It was cold and bitter to my tongue, but the cup needed emptying and, though a bit unpleasant, by doing this, it saved me a trip to the kitchen to pour it out. Looking into the now empty cup, I decided I would wash it tomorrow when I come in. It was one of those things I always did at the end of the workday. Without thought, sort of.
My eyes caught a piece of paper I had propped against the computer monitor. I picked it up thoughtfully and read the small type on it. The edges of the paper were well worn from the many times I had picked it up before to meditate upon its words. It was the 23rd Psalms. My wife had given it to me some years ago and I had placed it there where I could see it most always as I worked.
As I read through it, I closed my eyes and mumbled, "Lord, help me focus on the 'goodness and loving-kindness' because I'm beginning to really struggle right now." For the thoughts swelling within my mind had nothing in common with these two words. Like the crushing waves of a storm-driven sea came the effusive thoughts churned up by the deep bitterness and sense of helplessness from within my soul for the crushing injustice and the intense loss I was forced to face because of a few self-righteous men who had taken control of the little church congregation I had raised my family in for many years.
And yet, there was a sense in which I knew it was a price I must pay in order to learn how it feels to experience the debilitating weight and hopelessness of such an injustice. For you see, there have been others within this little congregation that have been tossed into this churning sea for the same unjust reason I was there now.
Some had died emotionally in the foaming waves. Others, like Peter who had called out in despair to the Christ, were plucked from these seething waters of despair and had learned that their joy for living depended on Christ alone and not on others who could and who would forsake them to save themselves.
And I was one of those who forsook, for I had helped hold the garments of those who had condemned them and had ordered their casting away by friends and loved ones who thought they were doing God's work by following a leadership that demanded their shunning by all in the congregation for refusing to follow the leader's every decision, whether right or wrong.
It's amazing the cruelty a person will commit even on his own flesh and blood in the name of God. It's even more amazing what one will do to justify such cruelty.
I know, for I have been guilty of both. From ignorance, in the main, but still guilty, like the Apostle Paul before his conversion when he had believing men and women dragged violently from their homes and stoned to death for no other reason than forsaking the Jewish religion for the liberating truths of Christ. It was not for murder. It was not for theft. It was not for immorality. It was not for hurting others. It was simply for believing and for living in a better way then they were once taught.
Indeed, life is an irony to itself! Death is life. Life is death. And agony, the tunnel through which we must pass to be born into either, the darkness and isolation of death, or the joys and communion of life. And the subsequent paradox is that we always grasp for the passing soul to prevent him or her from leaving our present world into the next, whether their destination be death or life.
And I think we do this for many reasons, but all these reasons hang on one underlying motivation. And, that motivation is fear. Fear of what we really don't know, what we have failed to trust; or, fear of just letting go because we're convinced that the here and now is far safer than the other side and whatever it may be the other side has to offer the departing soul.
My cell phone rang, disengaging my thoughts. I put it to my ear.
"Yes?" I asked automatically.
"Darling," came a soft voice from within the electronic circuitry of the phone. It was soothing, in a sense, intoxicating.
"Hi, sweetheart," I responded.
"I am preparing supper," she said, "and I was wondering when I should expect you?"
"I should be leaving here shortly," I answered sort of matter-of-factly.
"Are you sure," she replied, unconvinced. "You sound a little distracted."
I chuckled, "Yes, I'm sure. Give me twenty minutes and I'll be home."
"Ok," she said, "Be careful coming home. I'll have supper on the table."
"Ok," I replied as we both disconnected.
She's such a sweet woman, I thought aloud. She's been a very good wife, a wonderful mother. I love her. Her children and grandchildren love her. Virtuous, in many respects, like the good woman in Proverbs 31. I trust her implicitly with everything I have, as do the children. It's so unfair that such a good woman as she is must suffer, too.
I hate it! It puts tremendous pressure on me to just give in like Adam gave in to Eve in the garden. Satan works in such evil and enticingly convoluted ways. How can we defeat him except we focus--not on the injustice, not on the cruelty, not on the lies, but on our crucified Lord who has promised deliverance in due time if we trust Him.
"Oh, Lord," I whispered. "Help me to remember this! To take refuge in this!"
Then it occurred to me that this refuge I was praying for is what helped my wife's father and mother, Buddy and Mozelle, through all the years we mercilessly shunned them; and, also, my brother and sister-in-law, Milton and Linda. I must remember! I must not forget! I mustn't! No matter what! But could I? For, it would take a courage I have not tried. I knew I didn't have that courage, at least the kind I came to realize that Buddy had. But I wanted it. And, most importantly, I knew it was available within the refuge I was seeking.
I remember sitting at Buddy's bedside, as he lay dying, and pleading with him to repent of his rebellious heart and to ask forgiveness. His reply shocked and troubled me. It shocks and troubles even today since his death some years ago even though, now, I know what he meant by it.
He replied in a voice weakened by years of emphysema and encroaching death, "Richard, forgiveness from whom? For what? What other forgiveness must I have besides what I have in Christ?" He coughed and sucked for air to go on, "Son, it takes two to reconcile. I've reconciled. Have you?"
My forehead furrowed as my eyes studied his face. He coughed out, "It takes two... it takes two..." Then he fell into a sleep and I quietly and thoughtfully left the room.
"It takes two," I repeated in a barely audible whisper as I walked away. "It takes two to reconcile."
Somehow, I knew the answer. Somehow, I didn't. But it didn't go away, for somehow I sensed that God had used Buddy's dying breath to convey to me a key which would unlock the prison doors that confined, not him, or Mozelle, or Milton, or Linda, and others who had been treacherously turned out of our congregation to a living death, but, me and others like me who were guilty of perverting justice and driving wedges between fathers, mothers, children--destroying whole families--simply because we believed God gave us the authority as leaders in the church to do this wretchedness.
Buddy died not long after. I knew he was free, resting in the arms of a loving Father.
I knew, also, that he'd given me something I could not ignore. I didn't understand it. But I knew I couldn't ignore it. And for the first time I experienced a deep dread, for I knew what I would face if I unlocked the prison gates with the key he gave me before his death. And what I would face made me afraid.
I leaned the tattered piece of paper on which the 23rd Psalms was written against my computer monitor and contemplated for a moment just where all of this was going to take me. Where it was going to take my wife, my children and grandchildren and all those I considered friends and loved ones. The flood spilled over me and washed through my mind and my emotions, but I could not cry. It was a fear. A great fear that there would be no answer, no solution while I remained alive. And, yet, how could I feel this way knowing that Buddy rested in a hope, which he carried to his grave. Could I do the same?
"I better get home," I thought. "I don't have the answers to all of this right now. I just need to trust Him. Lord, help me to trust you."
I turned out the lights. Closed the door to my office and walked down a long, dimly lit hallway and out into the early winter darkness to my car. In a few minutes I would be home in the arms of someone I knew loved me very much. And right then, that's all that seemed to really matter.
