Now that I work for a ministry who primarily serves children and families in crisis, it’s more important than ever that I learn the skill of steadfast hope intertwined with regular heartaches.
Last week, a director who works primarily with children in foster care sat next to me at a dinner table. I am accustomed to his commonly jovial nature, so I was surprised to see the way he slumped into the chair; his shoulders drooped in a way that revealed his heavy heart. He had just been on the phone with one of “his” kids. A teen exhibited behaviors that now had to be addressed by a mental health behavioral center. This young man was going to have to leave the safety of his foster home and be admitted to an inpatient program the next several days. Before the teenager caught his ride, he wanted to talk to this director, to find comfort in the adult he trusted as he worked through the trauma of the past.
The next day, the director and I were talking in a lobby, and I was introduced to a pastor who has been a friend of our ministry and staff for some time. I asked my colleague about any updates with his young friend and filled in the pastor about the tender care in which the director was handling the situation. The director described how distraught the teen was over missing a field trip, along with the family activities he would not be a part of because of his time “away.” The director had given the young man wise counsel, and we started brainstorming ways to make life better for the teenager when he came back home.
The pastor said “I’ll bring my plane out and we’ll fly him. We can give him a ride that will take his mind off that field trip he’s missing’.”
I don’t know many pastor pilots, so I was amazed at not only the skills the minister had, but the ways in which these two grown men were using their resources to love and serve a kid in distress. I imagined an awed and perplexed teenager flying in the clouds as they overlooked the location of last month’s field trip, knowing that he missed some fun, but getting to view that event from a way cooler angle.
It hit me that there was a boy in another town sitting with strangers, sad and afraid, unaware of two ministers planning a party on his return. The events being planned by these men were grander than any experience his common teenage life would hold for him.
These men are the perfect illustration of how a Christian can have joy in sorrows. No matter what distressing situation we find ourselves in, whether it be what was done to us or what we have done to ourselves, there is a Savior who is planning on our behalf. In this moment, our Lord is preparing a place for us. We have a limited view of what is in front of us or around us, but He sees above; His ways are higher than our ways. While we may grieve the things, people, or places we are currently missing, we can look up and trust in God who is at work in the details.
