May 18, 2022
I tend to be an optimist, my attitude is often reflected by the Carter Family’s song “Keep on the Sunny Side.” But sometimes life's clouds eclipse my sunny disposition and find myself singing Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood's song “I’ve Been Down So Long (It Looks Like Up to Me).” The news of this past weekend has led me to be humming Nancy and Lee a bit more these days.
I returned home from our delightful “Get to Know First Covenant” gathering Sunday afternoon, only to learn of a church shooting in Southern California. It was doubly painful to see that this, like the Buffalo shooting the day before, was motivated by hate towards a people group, this time, a Chinese man attacking a Taiwanese church. It makes us realize how challenging it is to consider yourself safe in our nation at this time; ordinary actions from grocery shopping to attending school or church can make you vulnerable. Some time ago, I wrote an essay expressing my view of guns, gun laws, and the gun industry in a post you can find here.
The short version is this, growing up in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania hunting was a given, and guns were assumed. But guns were respected and understood to be dangerous, and not treating them as such evoked strong responses. Now the NRA which once supported the marksman, markswoman, and hunter and their safe use of guns for sport, now serves as an advocate for the gun industry protecting and promoting its profits. Those gun owners who understand guns as dangerous instruments that need to be respected must step into this conversation to build bridges across the divide that exists in this conversation. Not all people who value guns for sport, see them as an appropriate—or even safe—form of self-defense, but their voices are muted. Too many lives—including our own—are at stake if they do not speak out. Please pray with me for a more reasoned conversation from both ends, that puts people’s safety before profits.
Another cloud rolled in the next morning, as I open my email for the first time and found a letter (included below) from President Matthew Jock Moses, giving the details known at the time regarding the death of James and Rachel Nyaluck Gai Tang’s daughter. Since that time, I have learned that the funeral for her is currently scheduled for June 4. Beyond this news was the photo of James with his son and daughter, now both deceased. Parents burying a child is life out of order. It is a deep pain that never fully goes away. I cannot imagine what it is like to have lost two children over a short span of years. I have written to both President Moses and Pastor Tang on behalf of our church, expressing our care, our sympathy, and our ongoing prayerful support for them. Might we all live into those words in the weeks ahead, knowing how much they all must be relying on our God’s mercy and grace to move forward, however slowly, from this season of loss.
But these are clouds. They only block the sun, they do not extinguish it. And we know firsthand that Cascadia’s morning clouds and drizzle often give way to the afternoon sun in all its glory. As we read in Ecclesiastes, there are ‘times to cry and times to laugh, times to mourn and times to dance.' (v. 3:4) Let us now pray in earnest in this season of tears and mourning, lamenting those clouds that block the comforting light and warmth of the sun of God’s grace these days, especially for those who grieve lives tragically taken from them. But let it not be seen as diminishing God’s capacity for redemption, which gives us the promises of laughter, dancing, and rejoicing in the ongoing goodness of God, that one day will be ours again.
Here's to days of singing happy tunes.
With audacious hope,
Pastor Todd