How Faith Works

             Our wonderful daughter Heather had a flood in her house a month or so ago after a bad rainstorm caused water to come into her garage and basement and to make the whole house unlivable.  She and her daughter and sons were essentially homeless for at least six weeks.  Fortunately, she is surrounded by an excellent community of caring people who got to work, cleaned out the debris from the house, found ways to begin to reconstruct the place and now it is essentially back to normal and she is going to try to put it on the market for sale. 

            Rosie and I had a part in the encouragement of her in all of this and in providing a small part of the cost for the work; but the accolades belong to the friends who took time in their own lives to come to her rescue and do what they could to make things right for her.  They personified what being a Christian means in the middle of trouble in a community.  They were the assets that Heather was able to draw on to get her life back to some semblance of normality.  They are the ones whom we need to applaud. 

            In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says to his followers: Come unto me all of you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.  These are the words that resonate in my heart when I think of what those people did for our daughter.  As Christians, they came together to make her burden light when it was otherwise overwhelming.  I have no words of thanks that are adequate for what they did for her.

            Most of the time, we cruise through our normal lives with burdens that are moderate to light.  Sometimes, though what we discover is that we have been given much more than we can carry.  This is the time that community really matters, and the faith that we hold dear comes into play.  It is easy to play at Christianity, but when the chips are down and the world needs what we can do to help, our faith demands that we come to the fore and do our part to make life easier for those around us.  We are not always sufficiently aware of those who are real heroes.  These are the ones who step up in difficult situations and redeem that which has been lost.  That is what the community surrounding Heather did so very well.  Thank God for them and their faith that made such a remarkable difference.