Sometimes God Needs Our Help.


It all began with my email message
to a Christian friend. 
He was disturbed with a thought
I had written about
the existence of God’s  laws.     


“God loves you. His earth does, however, have a natural course of events that is forever happening. And, sometimes. as a result, a few of his children are hurt or killed.  And, sometimes, his children suffer as a result of those natural occurrences.  That is how life is. That is how His creation functions. Accept this fact.”
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I have watched a few young adults who don't see God's rules.  And, these rare young folks think "life's rules" have no power.  But, the fact is, if you're in Haiti during an earth-quake, you are in trouble.  If you steal and get caught, you may have to pay "big time".  If you drink and drive, God's laws and our community laws still exist.  I have known a few young men who killed themselves for various reasons...but, the fact remains, they are dead.   
Is there a loving God in charge? Yes. But, regretfully, there are life rules that also exist. There are times God steers us away or may perform amazing miracles...but, sometimes the rules are left in place and damage is sustained.  These are  tough statements if the dammage occurs to your child?  These are disturbing thoughts if you loose a loved one?
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I would have never written such a thought until I had walked with a few “troubled” young adults in their worlds.  I would never have written such a thought until I had seen Aaron become Schizophrenic and find little usable help in his neighborhood.  I would have never written such a thought until talking with Sheighn a few days before he committed suicide.  I pray for Chris now in his fourth term in prison.  I watch as Rob struggles with back pain sustained in the military and the military bulks at the option of corrective surgery.  I watch as a young adult uses highly addictive street drugs that more effectively address pain. And, the list goes on...
 
How could such problems exist in our communities? How could such suffering exist near our Christian lives? I know lots of folks that are walking a Christian road, in faith. They often have amazing miracles happening all around them...it's a magical, relatively safe path that sometimes is most profitable.  Praise God.  I smile as I think about Evan in "Evan Almighty".  Evan talks about God's interference in "Evan's plans"...and, God laughs.  I like that part of the movie!  Evan was walking in that magical, safe path free of extreme stress and free of severe life challenges and full of great rewards.  And, God said, "Enough of this easy road. It's time to walk with me for a while."  Like the biblical Jobe, God took Evan's house, his car, and his secure life and gave him hard work, worldly doubtful outcomes, and a community’s skepticism.  And, Evan kept going forward on God's plan.  Let me conclude this thought with my observation...many Christians appreciate God's rewards but few are ready to engage in His work.  Even this writing disturbs me but I love the chance to say these words.

For now, lets such stay focussed on a couple community problems...mental illness and suicide. It's our job as a community to address and, sometimes to invest in solutions for these problems...and we do little.  We help folks in Nigeria. We run to the folks in Africa who have no education.    Yet we look with scorn at our neighbor's children who sit in prisons or hospitals.  We discourage good teachers from teaching by establishing random rules. We manipulate our educational success by defining specific learning goals and then prepare students for their measuring tests.  We disregard the vagrant who dies in the cold of Winter.  We leave our communities problems to the police and hospitals...and, then we offer our public servants few options to resolve those devastating problems.

Remember, we used to house our mentally ill, but, even then, we rarely sought solutions beyond numbing medications. We don't need more facilities to house the abused mothers or hospitals to house the over-dosed youth, or the prisons to house those whose injuries are habitual.  We do need more Christians who will walk with those who hurt. We do need more Christians to speak up for those whose voices are weak. We do need more reformers, more scientists, more police who can love and offer hope to those who sit on the edge of life.

It's not a dark picture I see.  It's a desperate hope I believe in.  Oh yea, my past ten years have opened a view of our neighborhoods and that view motivates me.  What we have created in our communities is the result of our selfish greed.  I think we need to repair our mistakes and begin searching again for real solutions.  I think we need walk with those folks that are off-track and help them get back on.  No Government program can replace people helping people. No government program can replace God's Love.  Government can assist those in need by listening and responding but not by creating it's own solution plan.  

In a nut shell, we live in a community that has lost it's ears...it no longer hears its own hurt and pain. We live in a selfish world that seeks only it's own profit.  And, that world is hurting, destroying, crushing the life out of a few of His children.  And, that's what I've seen! And...that’s what needs to change.

Would you please take care of these problems right away?

I moved for years at the edge of this suffering world as a Social Worker but I always kept comfortable and emotionally safe. I always went home at night and closed the door behind me. After retirement and many failures with at-risk youth, I decided on my "ten year" plan. I decided to assist a few young struggling adults find success and that's when "all Hell" broke loose. That's when I saw a few young adults trying with my support and still loosing.  Examples of "the losers" included a young adult experiencing Schizophrenia, a few repeating legal offenders, the results of unrelenting use of numbing alcohol and drugs and, lastly, the behaviors resulting from ADD/ADHD.  Oh yea...the young adults must carry much of the responsibility for their outcomes.  But, we too, must share in that responsibility

I can't ignore the adults I met "who loved to dominate" over youth; the community that didn't financially invest in solutions and services for those off-track problems; and people (much like my old self) who disengaged themselves from responsibility for improving the financial support and services for those damaged citizens. This last group of adults, those who “disengaged”, I hold much more accountable at judgement and, yet I know, they seek only to walk on the safe edge... not willing to carry-on the educational campaign that needs so badly to happen.  

And, oh look, I didn't even touch on folks like prison guards, angry police, statically hungry prosecutors, or public servants that see only their fearful personal needs.  And, compounding these problems, we protect those harmful workers as “public servants”.

There...now I'm exhausted and it's all your fault...you paid attention. These social, personal problems faced by our young adults are seen by our God.  Our God is at work.  My fear is we are the cause of these problems and we are failing to correct these problems.  We must assist Him so people like Sheighn will not have died unnoticed.  People like Aaron will not have to live with on the streets with untreated Schizophrenia.  And, less noticed, people like Justin and Rob will find a successful life path for their ADD or chemically numbing lives, before they fall into a prison lifestyle.  And, I thank God I have not had to experience more of life's suffering within to our neighborhoods.

I have walked a path that most of us know is there but fear to experience.  I'm now awake from a beautiful dream and find myself standing in a painful wilderness calling for God's help and our neighbor's actions.  I pray that we can alter our future and begin saving the lives that now follow in the same paths of those who have already "crashed and burned".

(BradEngert2010)

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 Let's go home while you pray and “get to work”,


Or, lets not put our fingers in our ears.
Lets look at a solution process.