“Call
the Midwife,” a beautifully written PBS series, is set in a poor area of London
after World War 11. Anglican nuns, some
who are midwives, live among the people and host and support young midwives
who help in the clinic and at the deliveries usually in the ladies' homes.
Often the narratives and
actual words of the characters are insightful and profound.
Such
is the case in a recent episode when the boyfriend of Jenny, one of the
midwives, survives a bad fall but then dies suddenly a few days later. As Jenny pours out her heart and despair,
questioning where God could possibly be in all that has happened, the head nun
has a gentle, striking reply: “God is
not in the event. God is in the response
to the event.” She continues explaining
that God is in the love and care demonstrated by those who “come alongside” to
help those who are suffering.
Annoyingly
given to looking for improvement on many things, I would suggest God can be in
the response to the event to the extent that we allow Him to be or even seek
Him to be. We hear the disasters on the
evening news, we learn of a neighbor’s misfortune, we get “bad news” for
ourselves or someone we love. What is,
what can be of God in our responses?
After
years of physical therapy and visits to various specialists, I heard the term Primary
Lateral Sclerosis for the first time ever just recently. It has
been presented as an explanation for the increasingly painful and limiting stiffness
and spasming in my lower body.
Thus the event. On to the
response.
Chronically
given to looking for Christian inspiration most anywhere—inspiring commercials and
news stories, and movies, lots of movies—I loaded up the
DVD player and watched certain parts of “Under the Tuscan Sun.” It is one of the few movies I have paid for
when it first came out—that is how much it touched my heart from the
start. After a devastating divorce, the
central character goes to Italy on her friends' tickets. On a whim, she buys a very old villa in
Tuscany and starts a new life including her work as a writer.
Soon
she finds the venture more challenging than expected, but it is an encounter
with a snake that “sends her over the edge.”
She calls the nice Italian man who sold her the house to check the room where
she had seen the snake. After she voices
her general fears and frustrations, he tells her a story, a wonderful story
about an impossibly steep section of the Alps called Semmering. He continues about how people “built tracks
to connect Vienna and Venice. They built
the train track even before there was a train in existence that could make the
trip. They built it because they knew
someday the train would come.” In my
mind he was saying they built these tracks by faith, believing that a more
powerful engine would be coming.
The
church of the scriptures was endued with power from on high. The saving, healing ministry of Jesus was
continued among them just as Jesus said it would be. “Signs and wonders” are to accompany “those
who believe” (Mark 16:17), signs that include laying hands on the sick and
seeing, actually seeing them recover. Well,
you might say “I’ve been working on the railroad” trusting that this same power
is working in me. By watching parts of that movie, I was seeking God to be in the response to this event in my life. May God give all who seek the faith
that is of God and comes from Him, faith to not be defeated by the event, but to see
the full and mighty healing response of God to the event—just like in the old days.
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