The following was written and preached by members of the Costa Rica Mission Team on February 2, 2014.
Mike
Today’s scripture from One Peter is a message directed to
the Christian churches located in an area under the rule of the Roman Empire in
the latter half of the first century AD. Christians of that era were counter
cultural; they went against what society expected or demanded of them. Because they were different, Christians were
treated with scorn and subjected to verbal and physical abuse by others. Government officials also began to view
Christians as potential threats to civil order and initiated a campaign to
harass and persecute them in a severe fashion.
To say the least, just as Christ had encountered before them, suffering
was a normal part of the experience of being a Christian for those to whom this
letter was written.
This morning we are going to draw from this lesson in the
Bible. We are going to relate a powerful
story that we learned on our mission trip to Costa Rica and we are going to
hear of the personal challenges that have been met by one of our mission team
members. From each of these different
sources you will see how by doing good for others and by improving God’s
Kingdom here on earth, we not only can bring comfort to those whom we are
helping but at the same time help ourselves overcome suffering that we may be
experiencing in our own lives.
Joy
We all experience some kind of suffering whether the loss
of a friend or family member, our own illness, broken relationships or even
what just feels like bad luck. During
our mission trip, we learned of the story of Pastor Humberto who is no
exception to that rule. As a young man
in his twenties, Humberto was working with members of his congregation cutting
trees in the forest to provide wood for the construction of houses for those in
need of shelter. While doing this work,
one of the trees that they were cutting fell in the wrong direction and landed
directly on Pastor Humberto. He was pinned
underneath the tree and lay there in agony for three hours before his fellow
workers could get access to a pickup truck to pull the tree off him. Once loaded onto the back of the truck, they
transported Humberto many miles across rugged terrain on bumpy, barely passable
roads to the nearest hospital. A full
ten tortuous hours following the tree falling on him, Humberto was finally
taken into surgery and the doctors discovered that he would be paralyzed from
the waist down.
Unfortunately, the suffering did not stop with the surgery
or the loss of his mobility. While in
recovery he continued to be wracked with severe pain but his nurses refused to
provide him with pain medication. They
taunted him saying, “You are a man of God.
If you are in pain, pray to your God to make it stop.” Permanently paralyzed, far from home with no
friends or family to comfort him, plagued by excruciating pain and tormented by
those who were supposed to help him, Humberto called out for God to take his
life. And God answered his call in a way Humberto did not expect.
Caltin
I am no stranger to suffering, as I’m sure each of you
could say as well. While I don’t wish to
equate my suffering to that of the Christians of Peter’s time or Humberto, it
is important to recognize that we all suffer and we are all under the same call
to endure our suffering and respond to it in Christ like ways. During our trip, we had nightly devotions and
one evening we were asked to say something we admired about the person to our
right. When my moment in the spotlight
came, Mike began with, “Caltin, your quiet demeanor…” which led to hearty
laughs. I am certainly not known for
being quiet and timid. I always wear a
smile and a laugh and I do that proudly which makes it no small task to stand
up here and tell my story of suffering.
I would much rather remain the Caltin you all know and love or at least
think is adorably funny. However, if
telling my story can help even one person get through some hardship, I gladly
bare my soul today. The last year and a
half have been very bumpy for me. My
biggest struggle lies in being unemployed for so long and thus being without
insurance. I have diabetes and shortly
before I lost my job at Wells Fargo, was diagnosed with the onset of
depression. With medication, I was able
to manage both diseases with success but when the job ran out, the insurance
ran out, the meds ran out, and I was given a trial that would test my faith and
strength more than anything had before.
At first I was able to self-regulate my diabetes and my depression…well,
in truth, I just ‘acted’ my way around them for months. Really, I should be given an Oscar for my
performance. A few months ago however, I
hit my breaking point. Rather I should
say my body hit its breaking point. I
was still on stage but behind the curtain I was constantly fighting thoughts of
worthlessness, emptiness, that I had been forgotten by God and anyone who loved
me, and worst of all I just wanted to stop existing. I really tried to back out
of the trip to Costa Rica. The health
problems were running my life and the financial desert I was in made it seem
impossible to be a part of this mission trip I had been so enthusiastic
about. God was not part of my struggle
at this point. I was under the impression
that I could handle it on my own. When
that didn’t work, I sunk so low I was sure there was only one way to fix all my
problems.
Mike
But the Bible, God’s message, always offers us good news
and hope.
In today’s passage Peter tells the early Christians to
humble themselves under God’s hand, that is, to become instruments for
improving God’s kingdom here on earth.
By trusting in God, they could cast all their cares and worries to
God…not one or two…ALL of their worries.
Why? Because God cares about His people.
God loves us. When we become
servants of God’s will and help others who are troubled or in need, we lighten
our own suffering by thinking less about ourselves and more about others.
Peter
warned the early Christians about forces that would threaten their faith in God
and that would “devour them.” Peter saw
that when people are suffering and undergoing hardship they are vulnerable to
questioning their faith and being led away from God. He urged the people to trust in God, to place
themselves under God’s protection by “humbling themselves under God’s mighty
hand”. Peter further noted that whatever
suffering that the people were called upon to endure during their time on earth
paled in comparison to the everlasting time thereafter where we will be
completely restored and renewed in the image of God.
Peter realized that people can draw strength from being
part of a community and he pointed out that the followers of Christ were part
of a much larger family of believers around the world who were facing similar
challenges. Being part of a larger group
of people with a common set of problems allowed the early Christians to help
each other as they knew very well the suffering that each was undergoing.
The
lessons apply to us today as well. We
must avoid the temptation to blame God and lose our faith when misfortune occurs. When bad things happen to us, that is the
time to be even more resolute in seeking to serve God. We can do this by reaching out and extending
a helping hand to our brothers and sisters in need—no matter where they live. By keeping our focus on the needs of others
rather than our own difficulties, we can cast off the stresses that torment us
and enjoy the comfort of God’s Peace.
Joy
There is good news in Pastor Humberto’s story as well.
Overcome by his hopelessness and suffering, Humberto prayed
to God to let him die so that his pain would cease. This went on for days and one morning, a
person whom Humberto had never seen before came into his room and told Humberto
that he had been sent by God. Humberto asked
the man, “Why? Why did God let me survive this when I am crippled and in so
much pain?” The stranger answered, “No
por que, para que?” Which means “Not
why, for what?”
The stranger then slipped out of the room and was never to
be seen again. When Humberto asked the
doctors and nurses if they had seen a man come into his room, no one had. Humberto then knew that God saved his life
for a reason and from that point forward he would place his complete faith in
God’s hands. When the nurses finally
approached him with pain medication, Humberto refused saying that God had taken
away his pain. That was 14 years ago and
now Humberto is a pastor in one of the slums we visited which is home to
thousands of refugees and is marked by extreme poverty and gang violence. But, Humberto is there, in his wheelchair,
pain-free and positively effecting change in his community, making it look more
like the Kingdom of God. Humberto told
us that as soon as he turned his attention to figuring out what God wanted him
to do, he thought less of himself and his circumstances and more about how he
could help others.
Caltin
Through several chats with Pastor Jen, she helped me hear
God’s words urging me to trust God and God will provide a way for me to go on
the trip and to get me through whatever I was going through…I was able to join
the Costa Rica mission team by heeding God’s words of wisdom. My struggles were far from over though. As the date of departure to Costa Rica
neared, I became more and more filled with anxiety. How would I deal with the constant thirst and
other symptoms of completely out of control diabetes in a third world country
where the water may not be safe to drink?
My biggest worry was that this suffocating depressing darkness I was in
would prevent me from participating and helping. I knew I was too unstable to be going out of
the country but Jen said trust God so that’s what I did. From the moment I woke up the morning we left
until the moment I returned to my home I experienced the most peaceful calm and
relief I have ever experienced in my life.
The entire time I was in Costa Rica I did not have one symptom of
diabetes or depression. I could feel my
sugars level out and was granted the freedom to focus on doing God’s work and
recognizing God’s purposes in sending me to Costa Rica. Being free from depression and demands of
diabetes enabled me to put others before myself and provided the opportunity to
do as much good as I could fit into 8 days.
My chains were gone and I was set free.
My struggles are still far
from over, but this experience has given me several things to consider. Back here in the states my suffering seems
just a bit more bearable, I know without a shadow of a doubt that God’s
promises are no joke…when God says trust in me and do good and I will take your
suffering from you….God will make good on that promise, and lastly that we are
all connected in so many ways but most apparent to me, through our suffering in
Christ.
Each of us will encounter problems in our lives and some of
those problems may be quite severe. Some
of us may be going through some pretty tough times right now. What Peter reminds us is that we don’t have to
be in these struggles alone. God is
available to help us if we are willing to let that happen. No matter what we are going through, we
cannot let our problems define who we are.
Our trip to Costa Rica illustrated that responding through hardship by
doing good can provide us with two paths to choose from in order to heal. As in Humberto’s case, doing good can give us
a purpose to our suffering and in my case doing good for those in need can help
get us through our suffering by focusing on other things. And let’s not forget that by choosing his
path, Pastor Humberto’s life and the lives of countless others are better by
incalculable degrees.
Our prayer for us all is that we start today to let Pastor Humberto
be our example and inspiration by repeating and living the mantra “No por que,
para que?” “Not why, for what?”
Amen.
