Today's Sermon: Back From The Crusades.. Like The Plague

Well first of all I'd like to say that the Missionary Position Crusade to Huddersfield, England was a fascinating & rousing success. In fact, with a little imagination, I should be able to pull 2 or 3 sermons out of the bloody (I just love saying that) trip!
But today I need to play a little catch-up.
I've been going over all the correspondence that has piled up over the last 10 days. The emails and confessions and all. Of all the hundreds of pieces of correspondence (most of them being spam, I might add) 2 pieces stood out significantly in my mind.
One was from a child. The other from a much older woman. They both had suffered losses recently. The older woman had lost a long time friend. While the child had lost a dime store goldfish.
Immediately my heart went out to the woman. After all her loss was genuine. She had lost a human being. Someone that she had known and loved for years.
I mean a child's acquaintanceship with a goldfish could never compare to something like that.
Still for some reason I had trouble holding that thought.
So I re-read both letters. This time with an open mind.. and an open heart. And though both letters were written in very different styles. One multi-syllabic the other multi-emoticons.. they both conveyed a same sad confusion. And they both asked the same basic question - Why?
So now what do I say to both of them?
Well.. I do know for a fact that dime store gold fish have life expectancies of about 45 minutes.. You might want to keep that in mind the next time you pet shop.
But other than that.. I'm stumped too.
When I was a kid the father of some friends of mine got cancer. He was a young guy really. Younger than my folks. I remember asking God to not take away Pammy's dad. But he did anyway.
So I figured God either didn't listen to or just couldn't hear the prayers of kids. I figured I'd have my say as an adult.
Well I bet we can all guess just how disappointed and pissed off I was when I realized that it didn't work that way either!! In fact by puberty I'd pretty much decided that we were all just heaven's lab animals.. scurrying and hiding and spreading humanity all over the surface of the earth.. with none of us escaping God's immaculate dissection.
But then that's a pretty dark morbid approach.. especially from a church lady like myself. And hell.. it would only traumatize the kid!
Unfortunately though I still pretty much believe it. I found out just after my return this week that my uncle's cancer (which had been in remission the last 5 years) has resurfaced.
And since my mind doesn't know what to say (to anybody it seems) I'll just say what's in my heart...
Bloody buggery bollocks!
Amen!



 

the word was delivered at:
¶ 2:32 AM