A Prayer For A Friend

I stopped working at Barnes & Noble for three months. I had worked there for two years. Truth be told, as I try my best to tell it in these posts, I didn't miss it all that much. I was a different person at work than the man I wanted to be. Days and days and days spent being a lesser example had allowed me to create a reputation I did not want to accept. I was not looking forward to returning to a place that had known well the parts of me I was ashamed of but had also not respected the parts of me I was proud of.

So walking through those front doors again last week was kind of bizarre. I'm still working at the job I originally left B&N for, but now that I have no classes in the summer, I have time to work both as a research assistant and as a book slave, er, uh, book seller. I can't complain, really. With a wedding down the road, I need the savings. So, it wasn't bizarre working, necessarily. What was weird was encountering the subtle, yet profound changes that had occurred in a mere three months.

And it wasn't until the end of my shift that first night back that I heard the biggest change. Susan Schwab was in the hospital fighting for her life.

Many of you have heard my stories of the "grandmother" of Barnes & Noble, the sweet old lady who always replies the same way to my immature jokes -- with a question. Here's the typical exchange when we're recovering the store at the end of the night:

"Susan," I usually say, "there's no way this book will get in that shelf."
"Caleb," she replies, "just stuff it in there. We'll make it fit."
I can't help myself, of course. "That's what she said," I say, trying not to laugh.
She gives the same response she has dozens of times over the last two years.
"Who said that?" she asks. "Valerie?"
We all just laugh and get back to work.

Susan has seen the best of me and the rest of me, rarely in that order, and she still smiles when we greet. And it's a sincere smile, too. She has made a huge impact on the place, infuriating people with her commitment to her work and reminding us, even when we don't want to remember it, that there really are reasons to be happy at work.

So when I found out about her truly awful diagnosis, of something like six different kinds of cancer, I immediately made plans to visit her. This is not a big deal, and anyone who had encountered her would have surely done the same. But for me, it was a challenge. I knew that as soon as I walked through those doors and entered the cold hospital lobby, I would be overwhelmed with memories of my grandmothers, each suffering slowly under the pain of cancer. When I got to Susan's room, the memories became amplified, and for a moment, seeing her there, with her hair resting calmly on the pillow as the doctor gave her a progress report, time stood still. I had seen that rest before. I had heard that conversation.

Suddenly, the card I bought felt worthless. My prayers seemed weak. My concerns appeared infantile. Here was a woman, struggling to live on a bed in a hospital, smiling when she saw me walk through the door. And there I was, a young man, physically alive, but struggling often to find that joy that seemed to leap from her frail frame.

Like my grandmothers, Susan is a Christian. And like the two incredible women I called Mamo and Gran, Susan smiles in the face of her diagnosis. She has joy. A sign outside her door reads, "Smile Before Entering! Only Positive Thoughts In This Room!" But that sign isn't for Susan. Is she scared? Sure. Death is a serious thing. But she smiles. That sign is for us. It's for the people still here, the people with a clean bill of health who are still dying inside. It's just a piece of paper on a cold metal door, but it challenged me. It still does. Find that joy. Find that love. Find that peace that sees God beyond the fear, beyond the hurt, beyond this life.

I had to go straight to work after visiting the hospital, and the time I had spent there was brief. Susan was speaking with her doctor, and all I had time for was a quick word and card delivery. When she called from her room to Barnes & Noble a short time later and asked for me, she thanked me for the gift and said it was what she needed to get through the day. That might have been the most humbling phone call I've ever received because it was my visit to her that got me through my day, through my selfishness, through my own kind of death.

In my life group, we are starting John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life (available free here), and last night, we discussed what it meant to live a life unwasted. Surely this is it, to glorify God in the harshest of situations with a simple gesture of faith. A smile in a hospital. A bit of laughter from a woman resting in a foreign place. My grandmothers had that faith. Susan has that faith. I want that faith.

If you are reading this, say a prayer for Susan Schwab and her family. They need love and encouragement as the long days go by at University Hospital. But don't just think of her illness. Live by her example.

Hebrews 6:11-12 (ESV)
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Having Christianity Both Ways

As I left, walking under the glittering red sign at the 2008 Austin City Limits Festival, I could hear the bullhorn ahead of me. Figuring it was some hippy rattling on about local politics, I didn't really give it much thought. It wasn't until a few minutes later, as I moved along with my fiancé and younger brother through the sweaty mass of people exiting Zilker Park, that I realized who was talking so loudly.

They were Christians.

Immediately, I felt disgusted. There they stood, in the middle of the road, yelling at everyone who passed by them. With sandwich boards draped over them outlining the horrible Hell that awaits the unsaved, these people were actually screaming the gospel to anyone in sight.

It wasn't the message, of course, that bothered me so much. Obviously, a very large chunk of the people leaving ACL were likely unsaved. It was the way that message was being conveyed. What insulted me was that these people actually thought that yelling at the festival goers would somehow fill up the seats in churches everywhere. I find it seriously doubtful that anyone there was convicted to any conclusion other than that Christians were very angry people, bitter about the world around them. In the sounds from the megaphone, one message seemed blatant to the people forced to hear it: Christianity was irrelevant.

Today, there are few things as difficult for young Christians to get around than the notion that Christianity might be uncool. Nobody wants to be left out of the “in” thing, and even on this blog, I regularly highlight music and reference jokes that are a large part of our popular culture. The problem, though, isn't in enjoying popular music or laughing at popular jokes. This, to me, doesn't make a Christian “lukewarm” in God's sight. What does make us lukewarm, though, is when our desire to be accepted begins to erode the truth of our faith.

Of all the issues that present such a clear example of this desire to have Christianity both ways -- true and widely acceptable -- few are as instantly recognizable as the issue of abortion. Today, it is easy -- yes, easy -- to take stances on global famine, on genocide, on poverty and homelessness. These are important issues, to be sure, but they are relatively simple for a person to support. Nobody in the world is for global famine. Nobody supports poverty. No legitimate government is pro-genocide. Granted, there is a difference between outwardly protesting famine, genocide, and poverty and actually doing something about these issues. Nevertheless, there is not a public stigma against fighting these problems.

Abortion is completely different. When someone hears that you are pro-life, your first fear might be that you are now a sandwich-boarder or a megaphone-holder. If you are pro-life, you become fundamentalist in popular terms, and as we all know, taking that side of the issue would not be very cool. It would not be acceptable. As a Christian, I can do the smart thing and fight mass murder abroad, with full support from the people around me, and I will still feel like I'm doing something grand. Why would I bother with fighting abortion at home, right?

What we have done is drawn lines in the sand where they never needed to exist. We have allowed vitriolic politics and the fiery hatred of some to create fault lines among Christians. There is a professor at my university who is fond of the old cliché: if it quacks like a duck, has feathers and a bill, and loves the water, you should probably call it a duck. It is amazing to me that Christians have gotten into the business of classifying the issues before us in a hierarchy of acceptability. Abortion is murder. There, I said it. Sue me. Why do we have such a problem with saying that genocide is wrong, and well, abortions might be, too. Is our timidity on the subject of abortion any worse than the fire-and-brimstone screams of the festival protesters? Don't both stances give the unsaved a false impression of Christianity?

I'm aware that Paul was "all things to all men," but what does that mean exactly? Was he what all men wanted? Or was he what all men needed? These two things are mutually exclusive. People can want what they don't need and often need the difficult processes they don't want to experience. Those who are unsaved need neither angry, guilt-inducing lectures nor shy, easily diluted convictions. Our positions on issues should be filtered through one prism and one prism only: Jesus. How would He feel about the issue? How would He feel about how we argue it? What people need is an unwavering love, one that is courageous and certain. Neither of these attitudes -- the frightening or the permissive -- shows the love of Christ.

It would be a sad life for a Christian in America who allowed his politics to dictate his faith, rather than the other way around. The world needs God for many reasons and on many issues. I pray that we would not dilute the beautiful truth of God's message in an effort to be accepted, when it is up to God, and not us, to move hearts to Him. Something to think about when you watch this possibly -- but not justifiably -- controversial John Piper video: