It is one of my great privileges to facilitate the DivorceCare ministry at Coastal. I have always insisted that DC be on the ministry menu for these last 10+ years, but I have led the last two sessions. The raw need for deliverance is the topic of the hour. It’s not hard to have conversations about the things that break the heart and make us cry out to God. These have always been the conversations I want to be a part of, but they are not easy to find in church as usual. A broken heart is the straightest road to God. Getting people to share in a normal church Bible study can be pulling teeth – people are very careful, words are measured, and the Bible experts in the group keep everyone in check so no mistakes are allowed. But at DC the tears of both men and women flow, the confessions of failures tumble out, the fear oozes, the empathy is natural and immediate. Dreams have died and betrayals have shaken everything that can move. Nothing left to lose. This is freedom of another kind. I think that this is where Jesus would go when volunteers at church are being asked for. I have often been criticized for investing too much in the divorced and the recovering. The theory goes that we need stronger people at church. To me that’s like saying the hospitals need fewer sick people in them. Sick people are the mission of the hospital. It isn’t the strong who are past pain who take care of the weak. Jesus is the physician. All the rest of us are patients. And the only difference between us, as CS Lewis puts it, is that some of us have been patients a little longer and can show the newer patients around.
It’s Wednesday morning and I am tired from a late night out at DC. And today is a long day that won’t end until 10 PM tonight when my college class wraps up. But I never regret that kind of tired. It’s the one kind of fatigue that assures me that God is at work.
