Survival of the broken

When I was a kid my family and I would go to Hershey Park at least once a year. It's an amazing amusement park with roller coasters, shows and tours of the chocolate factory. When I was really small I used to wish so bad I was big enough to ride the roller coasters. One coaster in particular called The Super Duper Looper seemed like the best adventure a little kid like me could ever have. Once I got big enough to ride that thing, I gathered all the courage my 10 year old body could and rode that roller coaster as many times as they would let me. It was the thrill of my life, that and the free chocolate at the end of the factory tours...

Once, when I was in college, going through my mom's old clothes in the attic, looking for something cool and vintage, I found a black t-shirt with that roller coaster on it and the words "I survived the Super Duper Looper". I wore that t-shirt until it had holes all through it. In fact, it was after college that with much sentimental anguish I finally threw the shirt away because it was just unwearable. Still there was some sort of 10 year old pride in me that surfaced when I wore that shirt. I survived the fear of the mounting roller coaster. Yeah, I did it, I rode it and I'm alive to tell the story.

Fast forward to May, 2010 and all over Facebook I see verbiage and pictures that add up to similar survival language. "I survived the Nashville flood of 2010". When most of the city has been under water, there's some kind of identity to be found in surviving. For some reason, and it seems as though it's always this way, we are more defined by what we struggle to overcome. It's in the struggle of things that we find ourselves. AND it's in that struggle that we learn what real love is as those around us sacrifice what they have to join in our suffering. I've seen so many pictures already of people sandbagging, cleaning out debris, using their boats to get to people who were stuck, spending their day yanking out old crumbling dry wall and helping their friends go through the damage. I've heard stories of strangers showing up at houses of people they they don't even know that they just heard may need an extra hand. Churches have gathered task forces and Hands On Nashville's website crashed from the volunteer response.

When I watch people gather to help, when I see my fellow Nashvillians bend to join the suffering of those who have lost everything, I have to say, I see Jesus. And whether or not these people even believe in Jesus, they are acting like him. How can that be? I think it has something to do with God's divine potential being in all things. Jesus own life suggest that holiness is found in the bearing of one another's burdens.

I know I talk about the shared life a lot on this blog, and I hope it doesn't get old. BUT...I am captivated by this concept. I am captivated by a God willing to share in our suffering, willing to suffer and struggle. I don't understand that. When I see someone struggling, it's painful just to watch, let alone suffer with them. But it's the survival of the broken that tends to reflect a God bigger than our pain, and bigger because he shares our pain and overcomes it.

I'm beginning to see that the boundaries of friendship are less defined by our differences and the ways that we screw it up and more defined by our willingness to share life together, the way that Jesus shares his life with us. What this means is that we have the power, the love, to reach out and befriend all kinds of suffering folks and that when we suffer, we are not alone. And in some way, we become a whole messy group of people defined by how we struggled through together and how even when we die we survive and live on. Thanks be to God.