An Inconvenienced Man

Don't move unless you absolutely have to.  Whether it is across town, across state or across the country, moving is no fun.  That's not to say that Becky and I are not absolutely thrilled to be in Langhorne and at LPC. We are. It is simply to say that moving itself is no fun.  And we're still not done with it.  I'm not talking about the boxes of things who haven't found a good parking place or the pictures patiently waiting their turn to be hung on a new wall.  All that will come in due time. 

I'm talking about having to deal with moving agencies and utilities, banks and state bureaucracies, the post office and insurance companies.  Let's see, the phone company is on its third try and we still don't have a phone.  The other day it took eight and a half minutes of pushing buttons and choosing options to be put on hold to wait for a human being I could talk with about botched order number two (would I be connected quicker if I chose marca dos para español?).

Either the DMV or the Post Office lost the change of address notice for one of the cars and our bank in Beaver gave me too much money when I closed our account and then wanted to charge us an NSF fee for their mistake. 

Ten days have come and gone since the moving company said they'd have their final settlement to us within ten days, and the billing department of the gas company in Pittsburgh seems not to communicate very well with the customer service department.   

I am an inconvenienced man and I hate inconvenience.  Inconvenience puts me in a foul mood and the poor functionary at the other end of the marca dos para español options menu gets the full force of my foul mood. 

The third time I was placing a new service order with the phone company the 1-800-SERVICE person asked for my place of employment and I wondered how foul my mood was and what witness I gave when I said, "Langhorne Presbyterian Church."  In fact, I did okay, and Ms Rizzo at the other end of the line offered some comforting commiseration when she heard my long and sad story.  I'll decide whether I like Ms Rizzo or not next Friday when they say they'll come and install our new phone. 

Like most of you, I have faced a few genuinely hard days and difficult situations in my life, but mostly the things that put me in a foul mood are, at best, inconveniences.  I don't like to be inconvenienced. 

And then I hear about pastors in Zimbabwe who are "standing in the fire." 

I think about my friends in Brazil, Leonardo and Leandro and their widowed mother Jendara, who have been told that the government is going to drive a bulldozer through their house in the favela in three months.  They have no legal recourse because their house, like all the houses in the favela, has no legal standing.  Leonardo says his mother cries herself to sleep every night. 

Maybe an orphan in Myanmar would like to talk with me about inconvenience. 

An inconvenienced man.  What a petty title.

The prophet Isaiah told of one who would come and be known to us as "a man of sorrows and aquainted with grief."   Taking up our infirmities and carrying our sorrows; being pierced for our iniquities and crushed for our transgressions was more than an inconvenience.  It cost him everything.  Yet by his wounds we are healed and his punishment has brought us peace. 

The call and the claim of Christ in our lives is to lay aside our petty irritations at being inconvenienced and to daily take up the cross and follow him – to Zimbabwe, Myanmar and Lebanon; to Guatemala and Brazil; to Langhorne and Newtown – and like him and through him, in love (because he first loved us), to acquaint ourselves with grief and to carry sorrow. 

I better call the phone company to be sure they're coming next week.