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Minutes of Meetings with God |
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Oklahoma City ... |
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It's been difficult to settle down and work. One day, after staring at the computer screen forever and failing to make sensible words appear, I went out to the lavender barn to work on one of the lawn tractors. Right before the end of last year's mowing season, the mower deck on our red tractor locked up. Thankfully, the yellow tractor still worked, so we were able to keep the grass manageable until it quit growing. I had already removed the deck from the red tractor, so it was a matter of going through the deck's parts to see which one was the source of the trouble. I was sure I knew what the problem was, a jammed up blade or pulley. One of the blades wouldn't move and had some black twine wrapped around its drive shaft, tough stuff, and hard to see when the deck is on the tractor, but that wasn't what had seized things up. The pulley still wouldn't turn even after I cut a great gob of twine away. I yanked the pulley, took off the blade and removed the drive shaft from the deck. I don't know how things tend to work for you, but for me, the more I have to take something apart to fix it, the more it's going to cost me to put it back together and working again Sometimes It have to call somebody who knows what he's doing... ouch! Then it really gets expensive. When I had the drive shaft out, I saw the problem, the bearings were fried (melted right down into globs of metal) and the bearing races were welded to the shaft. I saw the dollar signs $$$$ starting to add up. Sure enough, the parts came to a little over $50 for two new bearings, a new drive shaft, and a new drive belt. I had to get the thing put back together so we could start cutting grass before it got waist high. I could have probably jumped to the conclusion that it was the mess of twine wrapped around the drive shaft that caused the problem with the mower. But, the twine wasn't enough by itself to fry those bearings. I remembered I had trouble with the drive belt tension early last year and couldn't get it adjusted just right. Maybe I had adjusted the belt tension too tight (which wouldn't help the bearings any). And I noticed the drive shaft that seized up was the only one that didn't have some kind of bracing to off-set the belt tension, a design weakness that doesn't help bearings to last long under hard work (and we work our tractors hard mowing almost 6 acres of lawn). It looks as if a number of things led to my trouble. All the stuff going on as a result of the bomb blast in Oklahoma City has been spinning around in my head. Like most people, I've been wracking my brain, and I've been doing some serious praying, trying to deal with my feelings of anger and fear and grief, trying to understand "why?" and to give some sane meaning to it all. I wish I could say I have it all worked out, but I don't. I am very aware that the more we as a nation have to take things apart in order to resolve what happened, the more expensive (not just in terms of money, but in terms of spirit, faith, trust and love) it is going to be to get things back together and working again. I am also very aware there will not be one easy answer to "why?" the Oklahoma City bombing happened. The people who set off the bomb are only one part of the answer. Other parts have to do with love of God and neighbor, trust, hope, fear, anger, hatred and deciding "who is to blame" for all this suffering. As a nation we badly need healing. I sense that some things will not help us to heal. A pastor in Oklahoma City asked: "Why did God let this happen to us and to our children?" I don't think that is a helpful question. It tries to shift the responsibility off of us and on to God. The only thing we can fault God for is giving us the gift of life. God fills our lives with miracles of life and love and generosity, but we ignore the lessons God would teach and instead we embrace death, fear/anger/hatred, and greed. Oklahoma City, and violence, poverty, starvation, and disease, are not God's problem. These things are our problem, yours and mine, it's up to us to experience God's grace and to change our lives and our world so Oklahoma City doesn't happen again. I don't particularly like it, but, it seems that I (we?), would do better to look in the mirror and ask: "Why did I let this happen to us and to our children? How did I/we allow ourselves to get so far from living lives that fill the world with God's life, God's love, and God's generosity? |