My Dad Is Bigger Than Your Dad! The vanity of comparison!

My Dad Is Bigger Than Your Dad

I am sitting in Pastor Shane Coppick’s office writing.  I have slept here (on is office floor) two nights in a row. We are here in Hueytown, Alabama with our mission team from Victory Hill Church in Lancaster, Ohio.  It has been an amazing trip to say the least.  Our team has done awesome in ministry and hard physical labor.  I stand amazed at what the human body can produce in relationship to energy.

The Hueytown Church of God has opened their building and hearts not only to us but to this community.  They have prayed with us, fed us and lodged us.  Pastor Shane is a freight train!  He is unstoppable. Hat’s off to Pastor Shane.   I encouraged him to “shepherd the city not just this congregation.”  It’s a rule of thumb one of my mentors taught me years ago.  Jesus never intended the church to stay locked up in a building producing grain for our own.  He intends for us to step into the streets doing the work of ministry.  The New Testament church set this model up for us by not staying in the upper room.  Hint! Hint to those congregations who have a self-imposed campus ministry to your own.  Jesus didn’t come for the healthy – He came for the sick.  Too many of our congregations are full of sick people who need more of a pacifier than ministry intensive direction.  Oh, well, my griping is over.

I digress to Alabama.  We see that “Katrina” look in too many people’s eyes.  I spoke with an elderly man attempting to clear his property by himself and saw the “look” in his eyes.  My layman’s attempt to evaluate him was that he was still in shock.  All it took was for me to ask him is he was alright and he started crying and said, “No…no…no…I don’t think I am!”  After hugging him, holding him and letting him weep on my shoulder we moved in with a team of guys and chain saws and helped him clear his property.  Job done.  Move on to the next and the next.  Sometimes it seems like all we are doing is moving a toothpick in comparison to the overall devastation.  But we are here for one person, one family and or one congregation.

His name is Ricky Adams.  He pastors a small rural church in Argo, Alabama.  His home was almost completely destroyed.  His church is half gone.  What’s left is being evaluated for demolition.  He still smiles and laughs.  He has a choice to whine, complain, moan and ask God those big questions that no one can really answer.  He chooses to laugh and smile.  His wife stood near what used to be the parsonage and held their little girl who was probably about four years old.  She talked about how their entire family “missed” this one. She could do nothing but give praises to the Lord.  Across the street from the Argo church a small community of people didn’t fair so well.  Four people were lost in one small community of homes.   I spoke with one aged fellow who lost his sister.  He talked about finding her body some ninety yards away from her home with sat behind what was left of his home.  They never did find her home….just her body.  He was thankful that they were at least able to recover the body – so many others were not as “blessed.”

I hired a Bob Cat operator to help us on the Argo sight.  He spoke of loss but still managed to go into Tuscaloosa and help with the recovery of bodies.  They stacked the bodies on his Bob Cat so he could drive them out of areas normal vehicles could not get into.   He explained the worse event for him was when they put a fireman’s ladder in the bucket of his Bob Cat.  He then raised a fireman up to a tree to remove a decapitated torso out of the tree.  Unbelievable!  He wept openly about his experience.  He had to talk about it.  He had to get it out.  We were there for that purpose also.  To hear the gruesome stories and the survival stories alike.

My dad is bigger than your dad. Sitting on the playground we used to compare how our dad was so much bigger, smarter and meaner than all other dads.  You remember how on the play ground we used to talk about our sports injuries?  We looked at Billy’s scar and said, “Oh Billy! That ain’t nothing! Look at my scar!”  From childhood we are subconsciously taught to compare…or in all reality…judge one another.  We do it almost instinctively.  We just do.  Even here amid the pain, destruction and loss.  We are tempted to compare this event with Katrina.  We were in Pearlington, Mississippi for four weeks.  We saw unbelievable devastation. Mother nature showed up differently in Mississippi than here.  She still showed up in both places and wreaked absolute destruction.  The pain of loss is still the same.  Pain is subjective to the person who has lost something.  Pain is still pain.  People who hurt still need ministry.  Regardless if they lost their material assets in life or they lost life relationships.  Significant life loss is always subjective to the one experiencing the loss.

Why then do we continue to judge, criticize others, make fun of others, even compare our “pain scars” and lower the level of human emotion of someone else?  After all our pain is much more than theirs!   Not really. We are just back to the childish issue of comparing dad’s again.  It’s not about comparing pain with another’s pain.  It’s about ministering to others through our pain.  When we minister to others our own pain becomes significantly less.  It doesn’t go away but somehow it gets easier to manage.  Pain is pain.  It’s not about the size of the wound – it’s about how we manage the scar.

Thanks for letting me ramble about our mission trip.  I can’t help it.  I have one of the finest congregations around.  They are not shy about following visionary leadership and stepping out of the boat to walk on water. They are not boat people – they are water folk.  Not perfect by any means but they just don’t want to stay in the boat.  Read this passage of scripture and ask yourself what you and or your congregation is doing to minister to others – at any level.  You don’t have to step out of the boat like some do but you at least have to be able to be part of the voyage to some degree.  Fund it, pray for it, resource it – but don’t ever compare or criticize those who do get out of the boat.  Only one got out of the boat.  Others were on the team and stayed in the boat. They helped load the boat. They helped navigate.  They didn’t fault Simon Peter for getting out of the boat nor did they fault him for failing.  It really is an amazing story.  There is a sermon there somewhere!  Please read what Paul wrote about suffering.

2 Corinthians 1:3-11

(3)  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,

(4)  who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

(5)  For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

(6)  But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer;

(7)  and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.

(8)  For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life;

(9)  indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead;

(10)  who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us,

(11)  you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.

Like I said…life isn’t about comparing my dad and yours.  It’s not about your wounds and mine.  It’s about how we manage our scars through humility and grace.