Nailed, helpless

Pastor Al preached Sunday about the thief next to Jesus on the crosses there outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago. We've read that story a hundred times, more probably, but this time it really stuck with me. This man enters the Gospel story for only 6 hours or so. But in that short time, he goes from reviling Jesus, hateful, insulting, crowd- pressured, resentful, scornful . . . to a changed man who recognizes Jesus for who he is, expresses faith, and heads to Paradise. All of that change occurs while his hands and feet are immobilized and his body is physiologically failing. No clearer picture of how helpless we are to effect change. No clearer picture that God's power can work in the most unlikely of circumstances. Something very real but very hidden occurs between two near-corpses, something that changes this man's eternal destiny.We are not exactly nailed, but in some ways trapped in suburbia far from those who hold our hearts, and feeling just as helpless. One child starting college: bewildering array of choices, hard-to-find classes, required print-outs but no printer, pouring his heart and sweat into making the club soccer team, feeling the let-down that the promise of wonders has been revealed to be tedious hard-work among the masses of freshmen in entry-level classes. One child alone in Africa: also busting his anatomy to make the soccer team, and his brain to be the lone Junior again in BC Calc, and to be himself. One team in Uganda: a direct lightening strike took out their power this week (how not-subtle an attack), turmoil and chaos as the district insists that under-age but shadily registered-to-vote students be released from school to participate in elections, a multitude of team illnesses, and the ever-difficult-to-negotiate cross-cultural lines of expectation. One team in Sudan: planning for the next year when the whole region could flare up in war after January's referendum . . or not, in which case we want to be ready to move forward. We listen to all of these, and promise prayer, feeling helpless to really offer any worthwhile words of comfort or wisdom, let alone real aid.And there is something about plunging across cultural lines that refocuses one's view of one's own sin. I don't like to think that I'd challenge Jesus to get off the cross and rescue me in a haughty and complaining voice. But is it any different to worry, and stew, and complain, and notice all the things about this time that aren't what I would choose? As we get distance from our normal life I remember the friend-wounds of coming face to face with ways I judged and hurt others. And I'm not proud of the weary, short, way I often react here. Not good.Six hours on the cross, five months in America. Not a peppy self-help change-your-life program, but a nailed down helpless look-only-at- Jesus state. If the thief can change into a spiritual human who will be communing with Jesus by doing nothing more than looking at him, then anything can happen. For those I love (friends, good classes, direction, joy, fair elections, peace, power, healing). And even for me, a changed human ready for the feast.