Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Yesterday was an unexpectedly good day. The past few weeks have been tense as everyone tries to navigate school work, work work, house work, and more – and we have all been together in a shared space with all our time shared for six months or so. So things have gotten tense, as I said, since school started back. Online school is tough on a rambunctious six-year-old and draining for a ten-year-old. So we have come to expect days to be a little stressful.

Then yesterday came. No fights between the boys. No arguing over homework. No climbing under the table to avoid schoolwork. No inexplicable rudeness. Just calm. Jokes. Relaxing.

It was really weird. It was unexpected.

Sometimes I think Christians get kind of programmed to think rough things, difficult things, and painful things won’t happen if we’re just faithful enough. We lament about God being mad at us when something goes wrong. We wonder if we are being punished for some long past bad deed or for some contemporary deficiency of character. We blame God or just get annoyed and forget about him altogether.

Sometimes we don’t necessarily blame God or even get mad – we just come to expect bad things, rough days, and tension to be the natural state of things. The experience of life just makes us come to expect that something unfortunate is just around the corner. We are no longer surprised by the negative because our worldview has become negative – we see in shades of grey so black doesn’t shock us much.

However, I think a more hopeful, more genuinely Christian point of view is to not just blame God when something goes wrong but to thank God when things go right. If we are quick to blame then let’s be even quicker to be thankful. It is easy right now to get caught in a cycle of despair, disinterest, and dejection. Yet then it happens, the good day, the joyful moment, the flash of genuinely lovely connection and re-connection. Let’s thank God for those.

It is hard to remain hopeful in trying times. Yet, if we can be programmed by life to expect the bad, let’s also be open to being programmed by faith to expect the good – to know that we are not only sinners in the hand of an angry God but are heirs with Christ held and watched over by a loving God. While life’s experience may keep us from being too moved by bad news – let’s let our experience of faith always make us ready to be moved by good news, by simple joys, and by mundane wonders.

If you are in the midst of some trial or another – Christ walks with us. If you are in the midst of some wonderful joy – Christ walks with us. If you are just walking from one day to the next – Christ walks with us. This is the remarkable fact of Christian life – Christ walks with us into joy, into sorrow, through this life, and into the next.

Yours in Christ,
Fr Robert