Abandoned

Abandoned.

Maybe you abandoned the ministry, or maybe the ministry abandoned you. Either way, it's very likely that your friends, even the ministers you thought were your friends, have abandoned you.

"Oh, I'm sorry...I'm just SO busy these days. Things at the church are CRAZY! But things are good! Praise God! And hey, I'm sorry for what happened to you. I'll pray for you. I gotta go! Let's get together soon, ok?"

"Ummm...ok...but..." Dial tone. "But my church is holding the vote next week..."

"Ok...but..." Dial tone. "But they voted me out..."

As I languished in a particularly horrible internship that would eventually push me out of the ministry forever, my wife - MY WIFE - reached out to several ministers we thought were friends, begging them, pleading with them on multiple occasions - she emailed several times, called them, called their wives, anything she could think of - PLEASE, PLEASE call my husband. PLEASE help him! He's dying inside! He's losing his career before it even starts! He's SO depressed and I can't help him! Please!

The silence was deafening.

I was just as sure as sure can be that this was a completely unique experience. Only MY lousy friends, only THESE particular pastors could be so cruel, and God was punishing ME for daring to pursue the ministry out of selfish ambition (even though Paul said he didn't mind if the gospel was preached out of selfish ambition, so long as it's preached).

And of course, when we suffer and everyone abandons us, that's what we're tempted to believe, right? We're SURE that this is a horrible thing that has only happened to us.

And we are tempted to think that way because when someone in our church is sick, say they have some form of cancer that involves a battle that takes years to fight, then our perception is that the entire church rallies around them, bringing the family meals, praying for them at every single church gathering. It feels like we're ALWAYS hearing about that poor family and all they're going through. And if we're honest with ourselves, we tend to get a little sick of hearing about it.

Now stop and think about that. Everyone gets a little tired of hearing about it. Why? Because that's all they're doing. Hearing about it.

Next time someone in your church is dying, go and visit them in the hospital, and ask them how many visitors they've had. What they tell you will be very sad, especially as their stay in the hospital gets longer.

I once visited someone who had been sick for YEARS. Their spouse and children were SO sad! But they had grown almost numb to it after so long.Teenage children whose parent had been bed ridden their ENTIRE LIVES. Imagine!

Do you think they had a lot of friends? An active social life?

Have you ever visited someone in a nursing home? Most people have once or twice.

Did you enjoy the experience? How did it smell? Remember the poor suffering souls, dangling over the precipice of death, their lives hanging by a thread, literally just sitting around waiting to die. Did you make eye contact with them? Did you stop and talk to them all? Maybe you knelt down and looked them in the eye and asked them if you could pray for them? Maybe you held their hand and vowed to return daily after work, just to comfort them a little in their misery?

Neither did I. Nor does anyone else.

Would you like to work in a nursing home? It takes someone with rare gifts to do that kind of work. And of those, I imagine very few of them actually enjoy the work.

The truth is, the last thing you want to do in the world is go visit someone in a nursing home. Why?

It's because of the suffering. It's sad. It's depressing. You just want to get away from it. You have that reaction instinctively. It's just as natural as pulling your hand away from something hot that has just burned you. Touching it causes you pain. Being in a nursing home causes you pain. You want to just get away.

It's NOT just interns who are going through a horrible time in their internship who are abandoned. It's not just the minister whose congregation is crucifying him unjustly, or whose wife is leaving him or who is being put on trial for a crime he didn't commit.

It's also ANYONE who is suffering. Your minister friends don't want to be around you for the same reason you don't want to be in a nursing home.

Now, that's not an excuse - it's just a reason.

Maybe you can forgive your friends though when you realize the very same sinful tendencies lurk in every heart. Prove me wrong if you still feel defiant and go to the local nursing home. Even if you DO go once, you probably won't go back.

It's a good thing funerals only happen once, because no one would come back the second time.

But what is it about nursing homes that make us so uncomfortable? I could be wrong, but I think it's because it makes us feel vulnerable, like maybe some day we too will suffer such a fate. We don't want to be around death because we like to forget that one day we too will die. Or maybe that we too might get cancer or get sick or have to go through some awful, painful procedure for one reason or another.

If that's even remotely correct, or even if there's just a nugget of truth in it, then should it be any surprise that a minister wouldn't want to hang out with a minister whose congregation just voted him out of office, or whose presbytery just forced him to abandon the ministry?

They can't be around you any more than you want to be around the barely alive in a nursing home. They want to pretend like their job is secure. They want to believe that their congregation loves them and would never turn on them. Just like you once did, and turned your eyes away from the many signs that in retrospect were painfully obvious, but to which at the time you were blissfully - willfully - oblivious.

So yes, be angry, but only just. Remember that you would react the same way. Heck, maybe you knew someone who was once crushed and you stayed away from him. It's ok to be hurt, but don't add self righteousness to it, because you are no better.

And I'm not saying this from some ivory tower, just studying the theory. It happened to ME. This is MY thought process about MY experiences. I was abandoned. By ministers! Men I thought were my CLOSE friends! But gradually our conversations grew less and less frequent, till eventually they stopped returning my calls, even my wife's impassioned pleas.

This is how I've learned to forgive them.

But as my counselor recently explained, forgiveness doesn't necessarily entail giving trust back right away.

I've forgiven those men, but I no longer have a relationship with them, because I cannot trust them. Sadly, they have proven to me in ways I cannot forget that they are not worthy of trust. Those scars remain.

At any rate, they're too ashamed to return my phone calls at this point anyway.

Instead, I look forward to the day when we will at last be reconciled in glory.

In glory, when we're at last free from sin, I will see these men again, and they will apologize for abandoning me, and I will apologize for hating them for it, and we will be truly reconciled, and it will be forever.

And that's where our hope is right? Isn't that what I used to passionately insist upon in the pulpit, that we should abandon hope in this world and place it in the age to come?

Abandoned.

And so we come full circle. Let's abandon hope in this world, and instead live our lives with the age to come in mind, storing up treasure in heaven rather than here on earth.