This week someone on staff observed that the closer we got to the end of Vacation Bible School, the happier I looked. I suppose that’s true, but don’t get me wrong: I don’t dislike VBS, or kids! In fact, I think this is one of the most important things we do all year, and despite my personal inability to manage kinder-chaos, we have a whole team of amazing people who are uber competent in that area. It brings me abiding joy to see children being given the Word of God in their own imaginative idiom. For example, the VBS theme verse for Wednesday (delivered by a talking monkey) was taken from 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, a personal favorite of mine:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
I still remember the first time these verses really impacted me. A few years ago, I was with some fellow pastors at an event being hosted by George Robertson of our founding church, Second Presbyterian in Memphis. George had just lost his mother, and someone expressed their concern that he was having to lead this gathering in his bereavement. He replied with gratitude for their care and quoted this verse to us. It’s not that he wasn’t grieving, nor that he had been able to compartmentalize the pain and focus on his task. Rather, it was that he had made it his aim to give to us only what he was receiving from Christ in the midst of his own deep neediness. Let me tell you, it was more than enough.
I have found this to be especially true as I learn how to parent an adolescent. My eldest daughter rarely needs me to fix whatever is afflicting her. She just needs to be seen by someone who understands what it feels like to be living in between childhood and adulthood and has recovered from the trauma. Fortunately, her mother was once a little girl, and her father had his own truly awkward pubescence! We are therefore abundantly qualified to speak words from our experience – not dismissing or reframing – but just relating. We can see her where she is because we’ve been in similar spots too, and our presence tells her she’s not alone, nor an alien.
That reminds me of the way Boaz reached out to Ruth. Not that Boaz had ever been an orphan or a widow, or a foreigner (though his family tree did indeed bear its fair share of scandal). Paul tells the Corinthians that the particular comfort we’ve received is enough to then comfort others in any affliction. Even if their pain is not identical to our own, there is a mercy that meets us both. Boaz could be a redeemer because he too had been redeemed; a welcomer because he too had been welcomed. How do we know he’d been redeemed and welcomed first? Well, we’re going to talk about that this Sunday, and hopefully get a few handles on how we too can turn the ways in which we've been cared for by God into powerful care for others.