the Requiest

Which would God rather, for us to continually try to be holy and fail or for us to not try at all?

Last Saturday I was given the opportunity to meet Major Joe Ko, US Army Chaplain.  Joe is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of Korea.  For the past year he’s been stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital and has been working with our wounded veterans. Joe came to our church’s Saturday Morning Men’s Breakfast and shared with us his experiences and his personal vision.

A little background; our associate pastor, Dr. Fred Carr is a retired US Army Lt. Colonel and became a spiritual mentor to Joe.  9 years ago they were both stationed in Germany. At the time, Joe was a Captain and Fred was a Major. As Joe related it, he was struggling with understanding God’s calling for his life and whether the military was really where God wanted him to be and approached Fred for some guidance.  What Joe told us, that Fred had told him, struck me like an epiphany but I didn’t write it down at the time, so I had to email Fred about it.  From Fred’s reply:

"It was funny that I didn’t remember having said that to him, but I remember it was on my heart about that time.  I told Joe that what God looked for in us was faithfulness – faithfulness to the assignment he had given us. It is easy to be become subjective when an assignment isn’t as enjoyable or fulfilling as we might want, but God wants us to receive it and be faithful to the opportunity. Of course that doesn’t answer the question "should I resign or continue in the Army" but is does help see that when you get up every day you can give God what he is looking for by your faithfulness to serve him where he has currently assigned you."

Major Ko opened by telling us of his duties as one of the chaplains at Walter Reed. It’s my understanding that he was here specifically to learn how to relate to our wounded veterans and so to facilitate this learning the chaplains are rotated thru the various wards at the hospital. He had a number of stories about some of the patients that he’s gotten to know, some of them were horrific, some heroic and inspiring, but one in particular stood out. I’m hoping I have all my facts correct but some of the stories he related started to overlap one another due to their horrific nature.

The soldier is only 22 years old. He was out with his squad on what sounded like a routine patrol. His group had stopped for a moment and were actually taking a break, smoking cigarettes, talking and joking around, when a mortar round struck in the middle of the group instantly killing his 4 friends and leaving him critically wounded. When he woke up, it was too find that he was a triple amputee. Both legs and his right arm had had to be removed. I have to imagine that there was also a lot of other physical trauma that wasn’t mentioned. Joe met him while on rounds in the psychiatric ward. Physically the soldier was recovering from his injuries but mentally he was in anguish. This particular day he was refusing all treatments and any of his medicine. He was highly agitated and verbally abusive to the nursing staff, which is when one of them, just having left the room saw the Joe and asked if he’d go talk to this soldier. Now Joe’s reaction is I think the same as most of us would have and that’s, "What am I supposed to say to this poor guy?"

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Just a quick reply to my friend Lauren.

Dear Lauren,

In regards to your recent post dated June 6, 2008 ‘array of thoughts ranging in seriousness‘ I’d like to comment on your following thoughts.

ok, forgive me on this one, I just had a bunch of friends get married or start into new relationships:
If marriage is meant to reflect God’s pursuit of the Church, then women = Church, men = God -for the purposes of the analogy (disclaimer: I have never met a man that I confused for God. I have met many men that I confused for pond scum.).
So husbands are to reflect God’s character:
God is LOVE.
Love is PATIENT, love is KIND, love does not ENVY or BOAST, it is not ARROGANT, or RUDE; love is not insistent on its OWN WAY, it is not IRRITABLE or RESENTFUL.
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS
ENDURES ALL THINGS
God is wise, loves children and wants many children. Once natural children have stopped being added, He adopts.
Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control.
Just as Christ gave himself for the Church, so the husband must give himself for the wife.While the church is unruly and whore-mongering, Christ is faithful and forgives all her sins, so a husband will continue his affection even while his wife is unfaithful.
As you can imagine, its very easy for women to be the church since both are sinful and I mean FULL of sin. But I admire men who persevere and strive for the goal when the prize is dim and so far out of reach, especially when they are surrounded by less-than-worthy women. A man grows with Christ and in Christ, and Christ renews and regenerates him making him ready for his bride and to be Christ’s bride.
I don’t mean to excuse women, only to present this in a semi-humorous way. Woman must strive after God as well.
We all have the hope or the promise that we will one day be the bride. And if God should see fit to receive glory through me being a bride twice, I hope that my husband and I will take the gauntlet together and reflect the salvation plan through our marriage.
God has set the standard high for husbands and I will follow my Father’s footsteps and set the standard high for my husband. God has granted forgiveness and grace and mercy and I will follow my Father’s footsteps and grant forgiveness and grace and mercy.

Disclaimer: My comments are really only pertinent to Christian couples within the context of what I would consider your normal Christian home. And they mostly derive from the conversations that I have had with the men in my own small group.

The men of SMGC while in a state of deep retrospect and humble prayer would most readily agree on that fact, at least when amongst ourselves that we are pond scum. We perceive this as our fallen nature that we are too, and try too contend with on a daily basis. While we recognize women as also being fallen creatures and like wise stigmatized by sin in some like wise pond scumminess nature. Our own scumminess, for good or bad, disallows us to clearly see your (womens) scumminess. We do however sometimes see our wives as being sometimes nagging and petty, but we (SMGC) largely concur that this abhorrent behavior is due to us being pond scum.

What we don’t tell our wives, because we pretty much think that they’d laugh at us, is that we’d really and truly like to be spring water. I know that this may seem like an insurmountable goal, but when we open up to one another and humble ourselves before God, we pray to be spring water to our families. However, knowing that they know us as well as they do, we’re afraid to tell them this – dream of ours – because we know our fruit all too often is that of pond scum.

So instead of talking to our wives, we huddle and pray and ask God to forgive us and to make us better than what we are, because we believe that he’s given us our wives as both a gift and as a lesson to learn from. And in that learning we pray that He will cleanse us and make us into the spring water that we know he’s calling us to be.