I stood in the phone booth in January 1992 -- no, not just before changing into Superman! By the way, do you remember phone booths? They were those ancient things, boxes actually. Perhaps you have seen them in Superman or Harry Potter movies? They were these glassed-in boxes on street corners in which was a black or silver box phone, a “pay phone” it was called, into which you put dimes, nickles and quarters to make a call. This was in those ancient times: before cell phones, computers at home, and Netflix. Yes, there was a day before Netflix! Indeed, in that era, everyone had “land lines.” I know a few of you who still have those. Those are phones directly connected to a phone line that is a physical thing brought into the house! Anyway, I distract myself.
So, I was standing in the phone booth. I’d dialed Karen at home. It was about 3 in the afternoon. I had just stepped out of the committee meetings with the Board of Ordained Ministry in the California-Pacific Annual Conference. I’d been interviewing with them all day, sitting before the whole board of 25+ people asking me questions about theology, the practice of ministry and my personal life habits. It was daunting. I had been working in pastoral ministry at that point for about four years. This was my interview to be ordained an Elder. They had deliberated and decided to wait on that ordination. They wanted me to take another theology course and apply another year. They had just given me their decision. I felt rejected and defeated. In addition, I was mad.
Karen answered and I unloaded my feelings about the day, the sense of defeat, the real sense that this meant my whole life was a failure. See, I am prone to exaggeration! She listened. She asked good questions. Then she said this, “Well, Brian, if you are this angry about their decision, I think then, they have made a good choice!”
What? Wisdom is not always what we are seeking when we are up against a wall.
When life doesn't go as you wished it would, when you hit a dead end, when the failures stack up so high they look like the Empire State Building next to your small, insignificant life, you need a God-sighting. You need a point of seeing that Jesus gets you and gets the dilemma, and gets the journey you are on. But often when in the middle of defeat, seeing and hearing from God is toughest. For me, it took my wife on the other end of the phone line to hold up the mirror. And through her wisdom, I began to listen for Jesus. It’s not that God is absent. God is never absent. Indeed, the disciples discovered this on more than one occasion.
It is that when God is closest to us, oftentimes he is behind us, holding tightly. And that’s when we are least aware of the fact that not only is he holding us, but often crying with us, too. Or sometimes, you might see God and Jesus having a belly laugh that finally, you are just where God wants you to be!
Standing there in that telephone booth I had no sense of God, only of my self-righteous anger. I had no sense of God’s design, nor plan, nor even the inkling that God was in THEIR decision. Instead, I only saw “red” and my justifications that they were wrong and I was right.
But God was there.