Puzzling predicaments

Have you ever done a jigsaw puzzle?  Remember the wooden ones or cardboard ones where a circle went in the circle hole or the cow in the cow silhouette?  We graduated to 10-piece puzzles and then 50 pieces.  Some folks got so into it that they do 500- or 1000-piece puzzles.

Life has felt like a jigsaw puzzle where we only have some of the pieces and there’s no picture on the box.  For some of us, this has led to a sense of anxiety, anger or apathy.

On this the third anniversary of going into shut-down, how do we put the puzzle back into a coherent picture?  How do we see what the picture is, feel like we are shaping it rather than falling into despair?  Especially when we are dealing with a massive deficit as a congregation?  It would be easy to panic or to give up.  But as followers of Jesus, we are reminded that Jesus points to a different way of seeing, a different way of acting in the world.

The story of the man born blind is worthy of a movie or epic novel.  What must it be like to have grown up without sight, only to have some interfering busybody come along. Did he sign a consent form?  Did Jesus explain the possible side effects such as being pulled into an interrogation by the religious authorities?  Did the man want to see?  Or was he happy with his life?

And who really couldn’t see in this story?  The disciples were struggling with the age-old question of why do bad things happen and assuming that it must be punishment for something the man did or his family did.  As if God sent blindness to punish the individual!  We still often think that when we hear about tragedies, asking what the person did to deserve the situation they find themselves in.  Why did Dad get cancer?  Why did Grandma have a heart attack?  Why were two police officers gunned down in Edmonton? Why are libraries in Winnipeg installing metal detectors in all the entrances? Why? 

I don’t particularly like Jesus’ answer.  So that God can be seen in action in their life, so that God’s healing love can be witnessed.  Not great.  What about the 20 or 30 years the man lived with a difficult disability, the ostracization he and his parents faced?

I don’t believe a God of Love would deliberately inflict suffering on anyone for the sake of winning a debate.  I do believe that Jesus was intentionally and publicly including people that didn’t fit.  He wanted people to have an indisputable and unforgettable experience of God’s presence in the world.  He wanted to shake people’s expectations and assumptions of who God was, what God’s community looks like, and who is worthy of God’s grace.

He wanted people to shake up the puzzle pieces.  To rethink about who fits in and who is out.  To reimagine community and reimagine where God is in the world.

What are the puzzle pieces that we have that aren’t fitting together the way they used to?  First piece is that we have gone through the valley of the shadow of death as a whole world these last few years.  Three years ago, I went to a St. Patrick’s Day birthday party.  It was usually a crowded, happy, raunchy event but that night there was barely a dozen adults in the room, and we were all wondering if it was even safe to be together.  A few days later, we were in lock down.  I was half-planning my funeral because I have asthma and allergies and didn’t think I would survive the virus.  We changed on a dime because we had to.  We learned how to work from home, how to stay away from our neighbors, how to do everything from church to banking online.  Sales of jigsaw puzzles went through the roof when people weren’t hording toilet paper or making sourdough bread or trying to keep their sanity and their marriages and families together.  It was hard.

Many community clubs like Toastmasters, WeightWatchers and Tops closed, churches too of all kinds of denominations.  Girl guides and brownies haven’t come back, schools opened and shut faster than a fridge door, with devastating impacts on children’s mental health and education.  Senior’s homes weren’t much better. People got angry and targeted each other, the health profession, the politicians that listened to scientists.  Dr. Henshaw’s appearance on television saw a surge in dress sales for her outfits and yet also a surge in death threats. And people died.  We were in the valley of more than just a shadow of death.  This has been world-shaking.

But. But.  Even though we are in the valley of the shadow of death, even though we have been blind since birth, even though we have come through many dangers, toils, and snares, the grace of Jesus has brought us safe so far, and that grace will lead us home.

Our book study this Lent had a story of a refugee living in a homeless shelter.  His name was Saleh and as a paraplegic, Saleh had crossed both desert and ocean to get to Canada.  He wanted to raise money for gift cards for his shelter friends. The goal was to raise $5,000 in 36 hours and get the cards to people before Christmas Eve. Impossible? No! He said “In Arabic we have a saying: ‘it is God who guides the hand.’ People told me I couldn’t cross the desert in a wheelchair. With God, I knew I could.” They did indeed meet their goal. Imagine the faith that helped him cross the desert in a wheelchair! We need that faith now!

It takes Saleh’s deep, courageous spirituality to meet challenges like what we have faced these last three years.  It will take deep courage, daring conversations and bold testimony to our neighbors to get through these next years.  But I have no doubt in my mind that whatever jigsaw pieces we have, God’s big picture will come together when we work as a team to puzzle it out together.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone.  Thanks be to God!