Pondering The Rubble

rub·ble

noun 
broken bits and pieces of anything, as that which is demolished

The scene was sobering. Bordered eerie. Heart-wrenching and grief-striking. The ramifications of what had taken every American hostage to disbelief on that weather perfect Tuesday morning in the fall of 2000 rendered me speechless.  Thoughts that randomly raced here, there, everywhere and back again.  The after-math of terrorism.  Sobering. Eerie. Heart-wrenching and grief-striking. Standing and staring into the shocking face of Ground Zero less than a year after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that left the magnificent Twin Towers in a heap of rubble.  A heap of rubble …an understatement of significant proportions! The scene promoted a near state of shock. Again.

I don’t know about you but I don’t often ponder rubble so when our pastor  recently admonished us to take note of the rubble we find in our families, it grabbed my attention.  More often I bear this bad habit of being overwhelmed by the rubble of the “half-done incomplete work” in a project, a relationship, a family.  Rarely do I practice the wisdom of being encouraged by the “half-done completed work.” I admit being seriously encouraged by the sermon as some personal rubble has discouraged the heck out of me in recent days.  I hadn’t noticed.  His sermon blew the whistle. Beyond noticing, Pastor Dan challenged us to “remember the Lord in the rubble!”


Lesson to be had from the rescue workers at Ground Zero.  Men and women inspired to work beyond exhaustion, ignore the overwhelming sense of loss and grief, sacrifice the daily-ness of their lives to work around-the-clock hoping and praying for one more miracle … one person still breathing. Even if barely. This rubble clearance crew, if you will, rested only briefly in a tiny 18th-century Episcopal Church just yards away from where the towers fell. St. Paul’s Chapel transformed into the WTC relief center where clergy consoled, cooks dished out simple meals, and medical workers treated stiff muscles, burned feet and more. Volunteers at the chapel recall weary rescue workers coming in covered in death, only to wash up a bit, grab a bite to eat, sleep a spell and head back out to sift through mounds and mounds of incomprehensible rubble.  Desperate to find some sign of life …. 

“Almost as soon as the World Trade Center’s twin towers fell on September 11, 2001, thousands of firefighters, police officers, construction workers, search-and-rescue dogs and volunteers headed to Ground Zero to look for survivors. Because they didn't know how many people were trapped alive in the wreckage, firefighters and other rescue workers had to search carefully through the unstable piles of rubble for air pockets, called "voids," where they might find people who had been unable to escape from the collapsing buildings. To be safe, they didn't use any heavy equipment at first. Some dug with their bare hands, while others formed bucket brigades to move small amounts of debris as efficiently as possible.”  

 (http://www.history.com/topics/ground-zero)

As those of another kingdom, we too partner with the Way Maker to “find people who have been unable to escape” from something that the enemy ordered to collapse on them.  Not a building but a circumstance. Or relationship. Assigned to trap them alive.  Keeping hope alive. Reminding fellow sojourners that God longs to salvage and redeem.  Jesus showed up on the scene for that very reason; to “undo the works of the devil” (I John 3:8). Clear out the rubble of broken lives and sometimes messy relationships.  The Son of God, the expert rescue worker. Never overwhelmed by the rubble of our lives.  Rescuing is His forte. Rescue efforts His glory.  

And one never knows what might show up in the rubble … a place where God loves to show up and show off.

“According to actor and photographer Gary Marlon Suson, one page from a Bible was buried under tons of World Trade Center Steel and rubble, found by rescue workers … amid the ruins. ‘After more than 93 days of fires, a skinny, little, frail page from the Bible survived. 

I find it quite unbelievable,’ Suson told The POST.” 

(http://www.groundzeromuseumworkshop.com/quotes.htm)

The Dance with Disappointment

I did a double take.  A wearisome looking elderly gentleman leaning on the pole at the bus stop as if he could not bear his own weight for another minute. The weight of his body? Or the weight of the world on his shoulders?  Hard to tell. His desperate roadside presence grabbed my attention begging it to action. I nearly stopped to bid him a ride.  Sadly, that doesn’t work well in this crazy world we live in.  Maybe if he had been a woman.  I prayed instead.  Seems lame.  My heart screamed action but my head spoke wisdom. As I prayed and clutched my steering wheel, the disappointment on his sagging shoulders and hunched demeanor kept tugging at the compassionate edges of my heart.  What made him weary?  Who drained life from his once potentially strapping frame?  What had he been dealt that required his tired self to lean on a pole?  Was he headed home where he had a loved one to lean on? A shoulder to cry on? Kindness to shelter him?  Distracted, I made my way from traffic light-to-traffic light that lined the main drag of our quaint college town.  

My car was headed to the office.  My mind was back at the bus stop. Life drained from my stomach as a big knot began to replace peace.  A foreboding thought took my heart captive. Again. What if things don’t go well for my own children?  What if they end up like that old man?  What if life disappoints them?  It will.  It’s a given.  So, what if they can’t handle the disappointment?  What if the disappointment they meet leads them to shift away from faith or self-care? What if a secret sin takes them hostage like it did for the leader our community recently watched tumble from his pedestal to a jail cell?  What if? The proverbial worry inquiry.  What if? Sigh. Aware of the demise of my thoughts, I tried to sass back at them but my heart caught the sound of a faint melody within. I stepped onto the mental dance floor and began the all too familiar dance with disappointment.  Is that what was leaning on the pole at the bus stop in the body of an old man?  Disappointment.  Just anticipating it in the lives of those I love threatens me.

Disappointment.  We’ve come to eat its bread in our community over the last eight months as we’ve had to reckon with things not being what they appeared to be.  People not being whom they appeared to be.  Disappointment in a system that bled integrity.  But didn’t.  Happy Valley that bled safety and idyllic small college town America.  But wasn’t.  Leaders who bled compassion.  But broken.  Broken .... the word hangs thick in the air of my mind. Brokenness.  His. Hers. Yours. And mine.  What came first, the chicken or the ... I mean, the disappointment or the brokenness?  Pause. Does it matter what came first? Not really. What comes after disappointment? After brokenness?  Enter grace. 

Amazing grace that comes in and changes everything.  I’m desperate for grace to show up in the ramifications of my own brokenness.  I wait for grace to collide with my disappointment.  I count on grace to be sufficient for my off-spring. Grace that died for me while I was still flaunting my selfishness, missing God’s best. (Romans 5:6, 8)  Grace that goes beyond my human comprehension and requires my spirit to grasp it. And receive. Grace leads me to the gut-wrenching reality that your brokenness and your “dark side” is no worse than mine.  In fact, they are much the same.  We are fellow humans from the same family. From the same seed.  Fallen in the same garden.  Eden.  A place where selfish longing trumped obedience to God and lies were believed instead of met with truth. There I fall too. Over and over and over again. Grace is receiving God’s approval of me when I disapprove of me because I feel so undeserving.  So deeply undeserving. But that makes grace no longer grace.  Deserving it. I’m desperate for grace and yet, ashamedly I sometimes withhold it from you. At which point my desperation turns frantically needy.  A sip from the fountain of grace is hardly enough.  A fire-hydrant of grace is more like it.  The reckless gush of grace that knocks me over and floods my entire being with a God-perspective washing my limited perspective down the drain. 

Drenched and dripping with grace I stand and begin to sway to a new melody within. The music that assists my dance with disappointment transposes to the melody of grace assuring my dancing heart there is hope. Hope … the kind that originates in suffering doesn’t “disappoint or delude or shame” because of the love of Father God. His love pours into my veins and changes the pulse of everything.  It transforms the movement on the dance floor. The rigid and calculated steps of my dance with disappointment becomes a free-spirited, twirling and graceful flowing dance of hope.  Hope in the what if’s …. past, present and future.  Hope for my brokenness. Hope for yours. Hope for that of an old man at a bus stop. Hope that is built on nothing less.  Hope in eternal salvation that comes by way of grace … timeless.  Its melody is heard only by those who come face-to-face with the Songwriter of grace.  The Songwriter who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Romans 5:3-5 (Amplified Bible) 

Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles 

and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and 

hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. 

And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). 

And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful 
and confident hope of eternal salvation. 

Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.