Find Your Way to Love the Hurting
My exhortation for us this morning, church, is that we each find our way to move toward the hurting in our church.
Our family spent Christmas in Los Angeles this year. My wife has lots of extended family there. We visit at least once a year, usually to break up the snow and cold in January or February. But this was our first time being back at Christmas. We stayed with her cousin (who’s a pastor) and his family (five children and they had one on the way). They live less than a block from the church building, so we walked to church that morning. It was 85 degrees. I told Faye that it didn’t feel like Christmas at all. It felt like Jesus’s half-birthday.
When we came back from church that morning, we walked into the house, and could tell something was wrong. A few minutes later, we found out that the couple we were staying with had just had a miscarriage. On Christmas Day. During Sunday morning worship. She had just finished her first trimester. The baby would have been number six, their second son. The family wept for hours.
Now, I could share about the quiet and common pain of miscarriage (my wife and I suffered one early in our marriage), or about what I learned about grief watching up close this family lose this baby together, as a family. But one of the things that has struck me most was how the church showed up and loved them in their loss. It was just how many members came to their front door. And this was on Christmas Day, when people typically have plans. Some came right away; some came the next day; some later in the week. Some could only swing by for a few minutes; others stayed longer. Some just dropped something off with a note to give them space to rest. Some brought food. Some brought their favorite Starbucks drinks. Most of them cried. It’s hard to describe how unusual and heartbreaking and beautiful the whole scene was. This church had learned how to grieve together, to carry each other’s burdens, to show up in hard moments.
Their love reminded me of Romans 12:12:
“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”
I want us to be a Romans 12:12 church. I want my family to be a Romans 12:12 family. I want to be a Romans 12:12 man.
So, again, my exhortation is this: Find your way to move toward the hurting. Don’t assume someone else is checking in. Don’t assume someone else will send a meal. Don’t assume they’re overwhelmed with messages and visits. When the trial comes — when sickness falls, when the job disappears, when the marriage collapses, when a loved one dies — when the trial comes, assume God plans to meet one of their many needs through you.
