The Gospel According to a Roller Coaster

We were taken to Seaside Heights Amusement Park once a summer, and it was a big deal. Unlike the amusement park closer to home, Seaside Heights was bigger and more exciting. Of all the rides, the roller coaster was the ride that thrilled me most. (Yes, this is the same roller coaster you saw submerged in the ocean after Super Storm Sandy.) I could have ridden it all day long if my stomach and wallet would have allowed.  

Located on the farthest corner of the peer, the roller coaster had the ocean on two sides. Once strapped in, we heard the clicking sound as we were lifted to the summit. For a moment, we were on top of the world, able to look out across the sea and down the shoreline. Then, everything changed. With a sudden turn, we plummeted toward the wooden peer, swerving to the left, then right, before being lifted and dropped then turned again. I wasn’t one of those riders who let go and waved my hands in the air. I was a white-knuckler all the way. With eyes closed, I simply sought to survive. The view at the top became a distant memory. All I could think about were the twists and turns in front of me. It wasn’t until we were back on solid ground that I could remember the great view from the top.

The same is so often true of our lives. We’re lifted and given the incredible opportunity to live. Hopefully, along the way we’re given moments of inspiration, times when we see beyond the here and now to something larger. Such moments don’t come often, nor last as long as we might like, but they offer a perspective that can serve us well if we can just remember them. Unfortunately, life often involves sudden descents and twists and turns which make us forget the view from the top.

A job of a lifetime becomes excruciatingly difficult.

A joyful marriage faces challenges which shake its very foundation.

A religious person loses all sense of God when life becomes dark. 

The twists and turns are real and make us lose sight of what filled our soul at the start the ride. 

Let’s take a world-wide virus, for example. Such a thing can cause us us to cling to the sides of our cars with all our might and close our eyes tight. Mere survival causes us to forget the bigger picture - forget the ocean or shoreline - and think only of the immediate dangers.

But the ocean’s still there whether we see it or not. If we can just open our eyes a little and look beyond the twists and turns, if we can turn off the television and refrain from scrolling through the endless ups and downs of social media, we might catch a glimpse of the bigger world around us. 

Looking up, we might see how blessed we are to have homes, food, family, friends and health. Such gifts have always been there. The ride just causes us to forget, sometimes.

A (not so) strange story

What a strange story. I remember sitting in church as a child hearing Luke’s Road to Emmaus resurrection account and wondering what on earth happened? The idea that two followers walking on a road could be joined by Jesus and not recognize him seemed hard to imagine. Couldn’t they look over and see him for who he was? Couldn’t they hear in his questions his familiar voice? Then it happened. Gathered in a home, breaking bread, their eyes were opened, and they recognized Jesus. What a strange story.

All my life, I’ve wanted to see Jesus. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to hear his voice. I’ve wanted nothing more than to look over and see Christ beside me, but that’s never happened. All I’ve known is a sense of someone else being in my room when my parents knelt beside my bed to say prayers. All I’ve known is being awakened by a minister on the morning of my father’s funeral to go for a walk and feeling less sad. All I’ve known is an encouraging note given to me by a student just when I was questioning whether I made a mistake being a school chaplain. All I’ve known is sitting at dinner with a child while I made a painful confession and having him say, “I love you,” while passing the rolls. All I’ve known is sitting in a meeting of recovering alcoholics and addicts and hearing someone say exactly what I needed to hear. All I’ve known is the feel of someone’s hand squeezing mine just when I was feeling completely alone.

Maybe Luke’s story isn’t so strange after all.

Fear of Fear

I’m afraid of fear. I know, that’s redundant, but it’s also true. I’m not sure whether I was born this way or if it was something I learned, but the fact is, I run the other way from fear. I act as if it doesn’t exist, or shouldn’t, and that often appears like confidence, bravery, or callous irresponsibility - but it’s really fear in a costume. 

I’m in a program that speaks of living life surrounded by a hundred forms of fear. We share how we’ve coped (badly) with all those fears and learn from one another about better ways to live. As a wise person said, fear is going to be in the car with us; the trick is not letting it drive. As we make our way through these strange times of the coronavirus, it might be helpful to acknowledge the fear that sits beside us in the car and work to not let it take the wheel.

Someone once told me fear is like a road sign. It’s there to warn us and to make us aware of potential danger ahead. I’ve recently found fear as a sign pointing me to my need for faith. It doesn’t remover the danger, nor quell the fear, but it reminds me that I am not in this alone. I must do my part, but then I need to trust that God’s got this, God’s got me, and God’s got you. In fact, God’s got the whole world in God’s hands, as the song goes, and that’s something important for me to remember when the world around me is consumed with fear and it wants to drive the car.

I often think of something a classmate described when we were in seminary. He was in a swimming pool trying to teach his son how to jump (and later dive) off the diving board. His son, with knees shaking, stood at the edge of the diving board paralyzed with fear as he thought about jumping. In the water below, however, was his Dad. With arms opened wide, he called out and said, “I’ve got you.”

I stand on the edge of the diving board daily. It’s alright for my knees to shake, but, rather than focus on my knees and the fear causing them to shake, I want to look to the one below, the one with his arms opened wide saying, “I’ve got you.”