So, Renee and I were watching another Hallmark movie Sunday night.  [What can I say?  At least I’m not watching them when she’s not at home – at least not yet.]  You can probably guess the plot line: a single mom is struggling to raise her son and keep her business running; the old boyfriend returns to town; sparks, conflict, romantic resolution.  

When the issue of a “father/son” baseball game came up in the movie, I was suddenly reminded of a very old episode of the “Our Gang/Little Rascals” series  – which some of you might recall as a series of short films from the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.  The specific episode I remembered is entitled “Dad for a Day”, in which Spanky, Alfalfa and the rest of the “gang” ask the man who owns the gas station to act as Mickey’s [played by a very young Robert Blake] surrogate dad for the “Father/Son Picnic” festivities.  He does, they have a great time, and at the end of the day, he proposes to Mickey’s widowed mother.     

Here’s the point I’m trying to make in all this re-hashing of sappy shows: when I was telling Renee about the old “Dad for a Day” film, and got to the part where the surrogate Dad proposed to Mickey’s Mother, I could hardly speak because I was on the verge of tears.

And before you shake me and say, “Get ahold of yourself, man!”, please know that I get it.  “There’s no crying in baseball!”  

But it’s not baseball or marriage proposals or Hallmark that has me in this condition.  It’s everything.  It’s the Pandemic; it’s the crashing economy; it’s the closing of stores and restaurants and businesses; it’s the end of dreams; it’s the end of TV sports; it’s the end of travel; it’s the inability to attend funerals and weddings; it’s the inability to gather to worship; it’s the end of hugs and handshakes; it’s George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery; it’s injustice; it’s Drew Brees; it’s “being a part of the problem”; it’s the looting; it’s the death of innocents and the death of innocence; it’s the defacing of monuments; it’s the end of mutual respect for different ideas; it’s the tearing apart of relationships.  

It.  Is.  Literally.  Everything.  

I know that my emotions have always been fairly close to the surface.  But now – wow!  Is anybody else dealing with this?  

For what it’s worth, here’s my explanation – what we have been experiencing practically non-stop since the beginning of this year is just a small revelation of the truth that we live in a dark and fallen world, a world which, according to The Apostle Paul, “is groaning in pain” – Romans 8:22.  And we are groaning too – Romans 8:23.  Paul wrote this in a violent world where life was cheap, and the powerful oppressed the poor.  2000 years later, when we keep seeing the same grim reality played out before us and realize that nothing has really changed since Paul’s day, how can we not groan?  How can we not weep?

Maybe weeping is a start to a better world.  But if we only weep because we live in a fallen world, maybe our weeping is mostly selfish.  Listen to the words of a great teacher, Landon Saunders:

 Today, each of us sits, in one way or another, at the bedside 
of the deeply wounded among us.  How we are present with
those in pain either creates solidarity or deepens alienation.
How we sit with one another can be healing, or the wounded
might simply wish we would leave.  

 

Presence with.  Listening to.  Weeping with.  Maybe that is a better start to a better world.  As Children of The King, who is better equipped to do this than we are?        

Ambrose K. Ramsey III

Shepherd