Risen? I Doubt It.

He showed up yesterday. I should have known, after all, I expect it. But I have doubt.

I lied to Stan last night. I didn’t mean to. When I asked him if he could show me his 30 day sobriety chip, I tried to read his face as he turned in his chair to get his hand into the pocket of his jeans. I thought that he might think I was an alcoholic too, or maybe I was afraid he wouldn’t think I understand addiction. “I’m not in A.A.,” I said; “My addiction is worry and work.” It wasn’t the truth; not exactly. The truth came to me as I awoke, 2/3 of the way through the night, and wondered why.

Yesterday, you see, was the second time I returned to my weekly ritual of serving dinner at the local homeless shelter and then spending an hour with a group of residents in what they call a “Goals Group,” mine again since returning from an involuntary four-month medical time out. With the end of Lent I was released from my cave, the Mayo Clinic cardiothoracic surgeon telling me heart surgery was not needed after all, that I could return to normal activity and monitor the bulge on my aorta. Last week, my first week back to at the shelter, was tough, appropriate to Holy Week. I wept on my way home over the news that during my four month hiatus a number of my old group had relapsed into intoxication, lost jobs, lost housing.

So yesterday after dinner, I was glad to see two people in the group room, doubling the previous week. All during the time I had served dinner prior to the Goals Group, I had been looking intensely at the faces of the “new” residents, faces I did not know. How would I be useful to them?  Flo was there waiting as I came in, and she said that another would be coming; that would be Stan, who I had seen coming into the building. The two of them were a great gift to me, trusting me to let me know who they were, what they were going through, what they thought would be useful on their Thursday evenings in the group. I came home grateful to have been useful.

As I awakened this morning, it was Stan and Flo who were on my mind, and the things we talked about. It really was a good group. They both left looking forward to next week, and I left looking forward to spending time with these two talented people who began to see their worth a bit more in just that one hour of companionship and conversation. That’s when I realized that I had lied to Stan and to myself while he reached for that blue metal 30 day chip.  I knew the truth.

My name is John and I’m a Doubtaholic. I didn’t know if it would “take”, this Life after Lent, this believing that this Jesus really beat death, that he really lives. I had my doubts last night before the Goals Group. I have doubts today about my ability to weave my interests into a meaningful life, about being useful and good and having enough saved and being able to earn what more might be needed.

You too?  You say that it’s hard to believe that God sent his son to save us from ourselves, through the complicity of a teenage virgin, and that his son fed the hungry and healed the sick and challenged the powerful, and that they crucified him and he rose from the dead?  Me too. Let’s watch for him. He shows up.  If you read the Scriptures these next few weeks, like the gospel today (click for a link)  you’ll see a pattern. Jesus shows up. He appears again and again to his doubters, in the stories and in our lives right now.  Watch for him.  Each night, stop for a moment and recall when he showed up.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.