Return As Far As You Can

I was cleaning tonight, going through some old papers that have been lying in bags in piles under a chair, hidden away, things that I haven’t wanted to take the time to go through because they were mostly things that I knew could be recycled, but in among them were things that had my name and number on them and other people’s names and numbers and I don’t like to put that kind of information out for recycling without shredding it, and since I don’t have a shredder that means I have to sort through everything and tear those sheets up into little pieces where the names and numbers appear. I’d been putting off going through them, thinking that maybe I’d just go ahead and buy a shredder, but I bought a clothing rack at a yard sale last weekend and I’d put it together this week while I’ve been taking my vacation time, and in order to make room for it I needed to move some things around and one of those things was the chair where the bags with those papers were hiding.

The area where I put the rack is the living room space, and it’s been a bit of a mess for a while now because I have so much paper and supplies from my job lying in piles and then I have these other piles from the job I had before. Last winter I did a big house cleaning, and I’d gotten it so that things were much better, but the piles from work continue to grow and although I did try to sort through some things, I didn’t do as much as I really needed to do because it’s just such a huge undertaking. Even if I had a shredder I’d still have to go through everything because I know mixed in with the things that can be recycled are things that are precious and important. A few things, a very few, and they are things that I don’t even really remember what they are, but I know that I don’t keep things just to keep them, and so I know that hidden in the piles from work of the present and of years gone by are things that I’ll want to see again and that will have deep meaning when I see them.

Tonight as I tackled the piles, I started going through one bag at a time. I knew I’d get to the point where I’d hit a wall and would have to stop, so I started with one bag and I think I got through at least two. I was also going through other things at the same time, bags of supplies for my job. In the nutrition and wellness work that I do I save lots of labels of different kinds of foods, and even though I have my kits ready for the groups that I am currently teaching, I like to save different labels of foods that I know could be useful for someone or some group at some time. And people give me food packages too – sometimes people in my classes will bring me things to add to my collection. I’d love it if I had the space to keep them all, but I don’t have the space for the supplies and paper that I have to keep at home already, never mind having extras around just for some future possibility. So I reluctantly went through some of those tonight also, and put some into the recycling piles as well. I’d gone through them last winter too, but there is still more that needed to go and still more even though I went through them again. But for now I had to say enough is enough. I’d hit that wall and needed to take a break.

The first bag that I went through of papers from my old job was a trip down memory lane. Information from trainings, faxes and emails and all kinds of folders full of community partner information from different agencies I’d collaborated with. Then I got to the second bag, and in among those same kinds of things I found those few precious items. Letters from the youth I’d worked with talking about what one of the projects we’d done together had meant to them, and a letter I’d written to them one weekend when I’d gone to a retreat called “The Encounter” that was a life changing experience in many ways. The retreat is one that is done with groups all over the country, and from beginning to end you are surrounded by the love of Jesus in a way that opens your heart and heals you and brings you so close to God. We received letters that weekend and wrote them, and tonight I found one that I wrote.

In that same bag I found a sermon I’d picked up one day in August or September of 2006. I think it may have been September because the sermon was dated from August 27, and it wasn’t a sermon I’d heard. I’d walked into a church to pray, I don’t even know why I was in that neighborhood. As I remember it now, I’m realizing that only a few months later I was working on an event that ended up being in that same church. It’s amazing how God will do things like that. On that day I had been walking by and the Holy Spirit said to go inside, and as I remember it now, at some point during that day I’d heard the words in my head, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” (Psalm 37:23)

You see, the reason that church of all churches was the one where He led me to pray is because it was a church that was in some way related to a man who I had loved who had betrayed me. It was a church that he was registered at, though I don’t think he ever went to services there, though maybe he did once, I don’t really know, because during the time of our relationship we both were walking very far from God. When he betrayed me, that was the time that I was born again, and so I was able to forgive him because if he hadn’t treated me so terribly I would not have come to know the Lord. As it was I had been in the darkest place that I had ever been in my life, deserted, abandoned, betrayed and desolate. I had basically been left for dead, and I thought I would be better off dead. But God, but God, but God. I have a sign on one of my walls with a passage of scripture from Acts 3:15, “You killed the author of life, but God raised Him from the dead,” and the “But God” is in really, really huge letters. Whenever I need a reminder in the midst of a struggle or storm, whenever I need a pick me up, I look at those words and say, But God! He has a way of showing up in the midst of the biggest mess and making it something beautiful.

But I am not able to do that on my own, and although I’d been able to forgive, it had been difficult for me to fully want to pray for this man who had done so much to cause me harm. But God, but God, but God. That day when I walked into the church I knew it was to pray for this man, and so I sat in a pew and took a Bible from the rack – in those days I hadn’t yet bought the little one I carry with me now always. I don’t remember the scripture passage the Lord led me to that day, but I remember that it did speak to my heart and the situation. It was an Episcopal church and I knelt on the kneeler, and prayed for the salvation and healing of someone who had harmed me. There was so much release in that prayer, and as I rose I felt the new lightness that had come over me. I walked around the church and looked at the many different beautiful areas – it is a historic church that I had always thought beautiful from the outside but had never seen from the inside.

On my way out, I stopped to look at the different sermons they had available, and picked up three that I took with me. I found them tonight in that second bag of papers, along with the letters to and from the youth. When I saw the title of one of them, “Return As Far As You Can,” I remembered that it had touched my heart deeply when I read it, and so I read it again tonight. It was preached by the Reverend Elizabeth Garnsey, and when I saw her name, I knew that she was now with another church that I have attended in recent years, and one that I just attended two weekends ago for a special celebration welcoming the new Rector, someone who I also know from another church that I have worked with for the nutrition and wellness work that I do now. It is so amazing how God will orchestrate these things. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.

The truly amazing thing to me is that I had spent my life walking so far away from God, that it makes no earthly sense why He should see me as someone who is worth ordering steps for. The end of that passage in Psalm 37 is, “And He delights in his way.” What has there ever been in my life that would make the Lord delight in it? But that is the true miracle of Jesus. It is by faith and faith alone that we are made righteous, and that faith is a faith that is given to us by God. He arranges it all so that He can love us and bless us and bring us back home to Himself.

In the Reverend Elizabeth Garnsey’s sermon, she used one of my favorite passages, John 6:56-69. Jesus is speaking to his disciples about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and many of them turn away because the teaching is so difficult for them to accept. Jesus is left with the twelve, and we read that He asks them, “’Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’” There have been many times when the going has been very rough, and I speak those words to my Lord. In that time when I was born again, there was nowhere else for me to go, and now that I know Him, there really is no other choice.

The sermon itself is a beautiful and powerful one. I don’t know if there is anywhere that it can be accessed online, but I plan to contact the Reverend Elizabeth Garnsey and ask her. If there is a way to add a link to this blog, I will do that as it is a blessing to hear her words and her journey. She ends her sermon with a beautiful passage from the Talmud, “A son left his father. He was asked to return but said, ‘I cannot return.’ Then the father sent a message to the son, ‘Return as far as you can, and I shall come the rest of the way.’” She then writes, “The teaching about the bread and wine tells us the same thing, in a class where the serious students are also beginners. There is always a way back, and the way back is not so difficult. Come as far as you can, to the table set for you. Jesus will meet you there and take you the rest of the way. Amen.” I remember when I read that, the power that those words had to heal what was in my heart, and I felt that same power again tonight. I was a beginner at that time, eight months born again, maybe nine at most. At every step I’ve taken He’s met me, and brought me further along the road back home.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan