May 25, 2018
By Rev. Charles R. (Chuck) Meathrell
Reflection on the past can be a challenging thing-but it has its uses. So much of my identity is wrapped up in the small town in which I was raised and the bulk of that centers around the church there. (All these years later it’s still my home church.) I feel that familiar tug on my heart remembering sundry and innumerable games played around the church and parsonage, especially the latter and its three yards. The main yard sat (well, sits) at the corner of Main and Church streets and at the time it was bordered on the northwest by the parsonage; on the north by the (late-great and rickety-as all-get-out) Trainer Building—a sort-of-garage that had been remodeled to become a nursery/library and two classrooms. On the northeast side of the parsonage was a longer, narrow yard with a large red-painted deck which once connected it to a trailer for Pastor Ken Davis’ mother. Behind that was a dramatic plunge toward Terrace Avenue down which, a few years later, I would lower a lawn mower on ropes. (Devil’s Plunge.) Finally, on the back of the parsonage, behind the bathroom and the master bedroom, was a great, forbidden place. It had a legitimate Narnia-esque feeling, sans talking animals, with a number of large bushes and several of the tallest trees in North America (from the perspective of a six-year-old). The bushes and trees cut it off from the street and brought it that solitude that appears with absolute suddenness and urges you to be solemn and respectful. Quiet. Often alone. So while all of the obedient children were playing hide-and-seek in the main part of the yard near Church and Main, I would steal away to the backyard and crouch down under a huge evergreen tree or climb up onto a stone monument by the street. In retrospect, I was doing a different kind of hiding. Sometimes even kids feel the need to hide away. We all do that to some extent; we feel the pressure that comes with life and have the same kind of “fight or flight” reaction that a horse has. We’ll spend a little time fighting and a lot of time flight-ing. (Yes, I know that’s not a word.) It’s a self-preservation instinct that God put into us that, like most everything He gives us, we abuse with tenacity and regularity. It’s a good thing to get away; we have a problem when our constant reaction to all stress is to run and hide away.
What are you hiding from?
Life can be incredibly stressful sometimes. Amidst the regular craziness of life (laundry, dishes, kids, keeping the marriage alive) these things come up that make us want to hide. You may remember what it was like when a parent passed away and you had to deal with estates and grieving while still keeping life rolling on. Possibly you suddenly lost your income and have bills to pay; it happens to the best of us. This brings us to the meat of the matter: what are you hiding from? Take a moment for some of that reflection I was whining about earlier—as difficult as it can sometimes be, it’s urgent that we take time to examine ourselves every once-in-awhile. There are any number of things that we can be afraid of, rational or not. Often times they boil down to the same few: sickness/death, loneliness/rejection, hunger, failure, poverty, and any combination of the aforementioned. Do any of those sound familiar to you at all? They speak to our human experience; we’ve seen others be sick and die and so we fear it ourselves. We have felt the sting of rejection by others and, like an animal at the electric fence, we back away from it. Perhaps we’ve seen hunger and are terrified that we might go there sometime ourselves.
Where are you hiding?
Where we go when life is scary is arguably the most important detail. It offers insight into who we are as believers and as people in general. It might be that you hide in your books or television. It’s also very possible that you treat your fear with shopping or (this is a big one for us Westerners) food. For folks not yet impacted by the Gospel, it gets worse as people treat fears and other struggles with all/any of the above as well as alcohol, drugs, pornography, and countless other vices. (Many Christians struggle with some of those last ones, too.) In each and every case above, that place of refuge is a mirage and will ultimately cause more damage than it will help. Remember that old Julia Roberts movie “Runaway Bride?” If you’re not familiar with it, let me fill you in: it’s about a bride who repeatedly runs away because she has a crippling fear of commitment. The problem with that particular plot is easy to spot; she’ll never be happy until she overcomes this fear. Of course, it’s easy to spot shortcomings in other people. Julia hid in a pair of metaphorical running shoes and did something literally that most of us non-fictional people only ever do metaphorically. She ran. She hid. Where we go for protection is kind-of a big deal.
Are you hiding IN God?
I would love to tell you that church planting has been the scariest thing I’ve ever done. The truth is that I was never smart enough, or honest enough with myself concerning what this was going to be, to be especially frightened. I probably would have been scared to death if I’d had an inkling of how incredibly difficult and sometimes painful it was going to be. Then when the deep moments of despair come, I have no choice than to do the thing that God has been urging me to do all along. I must go to Him and take whatever burden/trial/fear this is to lay at His feet, understanding that not only is He eternally mighty to bear that weight but also lovingly willing.
1 Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer;
2 from the end of the earth I call to you
when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I,
3 for you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the enemy.
4 Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take
refuge under the shelter of your wings!
— Psalm 61:1-4 ESV
I absolutely love that. He is a strong tower and thus when the enemy attacks we have our place to go and hide. (Does anyone else have goosebumps?) So when it gets hard, scary, sad, and bewildering we can all rush into that tower and remain there until the threat passes. These days, when I think back on Salem’s little Narnia, it is as someone who has been gone from the town and the hiding place for nearly a decade. Time has blurred the memory itself but not the feeling. I can’t say whether Pastor Dale and Janet were happy that I was back there, but in my own life it served its purpose. At last I can look back from my new, better hiding place and appreciate that the boughs of those giant evergreens were put there on purpose by someone with a plan. These days I bring the burdens of a busy life to the King and take refuge in Him—because He is far greater than the stone monument on Main Street. He is the strong tower.
