Source:  AAC Weekly Email Update

(The following is from the September 3, 2010 edition of the AAC's Weekly Email Update. Sign up for the Weekly Update here.)

By The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey, J.D.
Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council

(Part 1 is here)

Dear friends in Christ,

Have you ever been inside an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a hospital? This is the place where the most severely ill or injured patients are placed. It is a place full of a bewildering array of life-support machines - some to monitor blood pressure and heart rate, others to monitor respiratory function, and still others to monitor other life signs.  In the antiseptic light of each station it is easy to become mesmerized by those monitors, their screens and signs of life, and the steady beep that accompanies them, until an alarm goes off in your room or the next, and someone responds hurriedly to address the immediate crisis.  Different nurses, technicians and specialists seem to come in every 5-10 minutes to administer a particular medication or anesthetic, to check the IV-drips and adjust the monitors.  It's easy to wonder if among all the specialists anyone is keeping track of the whole picture.  For those who are keeping vigil for a loved one in the ICU, it can be a very lonely and frightful place as their loved ones lie unconscious, hovering between life and death.

This was the appearance of things after the doctors told us that our premature daughter's twin brother had just died, and that we needed to go immediately to the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) to be with our daughter, Carol, whose future was in jeopardy.  I still have a very vivid memory 20+ years later of my wife Julie in the wheelchair, steeling herself through her tears to make that first visit.  It was terrifying.

I remember with thanksgiving the chaplain who took Julie and me to the NICU and then on bended knee looked us both in the eyes, took our hands and told us not to lose heart:  that God was with us as we faced our fears and tears.  It was as if Jesus Christ himself was there on bended knee to remind us of that great truth in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:

"Therefore we do not lose heart... for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Through our vigil for Carol in the NICU over the following months, through grief and fear and faith and persevering prayer and joy at every breakthrough, we learned the next great lesson about fragile beginnings:

2.  Do not judge by mere appearance

Every time I hear about another church that has lost its property in court after leaving TEC, or about individual vestry members being sued by TEC, or about the further "Indaba-isation" of the Anglican Communion and its power structures, or another failure by the Archbishop of Canterbury to exercise leadership over and against violations of Communion teaching on human sexuality (Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (1998)), or the blatant under-representation of confessing Anglicans and their growing churches in the councils of the Communion, or the undermining of the Primates' authority on matters of faith and order, or the blatant double standards observed by the so-called "Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion," (or indeed, almost anything the SCAC does) - not to mention the divisions and distractions that too often paralyze the orthodox and confessing Anglicans throughout the Communion today, I am tempted to despair.  The appearance makes me wonder about the fragile beginnings of the Anglican Church in North America.  What future lies ahead of us?  Is our Anglican Communion like a patient in ICU, hovering between life and death?

Then God reminds me of the lessons we learned as we faced fragile beginnings in that NICU with Carol.  We learned to look beyond mere appearance at what God was doing behind the scenes-just as I shared last week.  And we learned how to move beyond dismay and discouragement to faith and trust in Christ for the future by doing two important things:

Ask questions. We had to face the question "Why did God permit one child to live, and the other to die?"  Even the most intellectually and biblically satisfying response to this theodicy did not address our pain for the loss of our son and the fear for the daughter we still stood to lose.  I remember almost literally hearing the Lord speak to us one day, "Ask not why, but where... where am I in the midst of this fragile beginning?"  That question turned us outward from our pain and fear to see Christ in the nurses who were so lovingly attending Carol, and to so many others who were praying for her and us.

Where is Christ in the fragile beginning of the ACNA? Why, he is everywhere! He is in the spiritual freedom and renewed vision for mission in our clergy and churches.  He is in the unity of Spirit we have experienced in provincial and diocesan gatherings. He is in the excitement of new churches that are being planted. He is in the missionary partnerships we are enjoying with overseas Anglican dioceses - with brother and sister Anglicans in the Global South who are modeling New Testament faith and life for us in Christ. He is in the testimonies I heard several weeks ago in the class I was leading at Christ Church, Savannah, where people under the threat of eviction shared how they are learning to forgive those who are suing them, experiencing release from anger, and how they are turning their eyes from the building to the needs of the community around them.

Sometimes we leap to despair because we don't have all the facts. Julie and I learned that we needed to ask the nurses and doctors why things appeared the way they did.  Often we discovered some new facts that helped allay our fears and put things in perspective.  Jesus' critics challenged his "bona-fides" out of ignorance.  "The Christ doesn't come from Galilee" they said, "The Christ will come from Bethlehem" (John 7:41-44)  Obviously, they didn't have all the facts, and they hadn't asked enough questions.  Jesus said to them "Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment" (John 7:24).  We too need to resist the temptation to judge by mere appearances, and to take some time to ask questions and get all the facts.  Often this will lead to the deeper and more important questions that we must mark, inwardly digest and pray over so that we, too, may come to a right judgment for further prayer and action.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. We must never regard the size of our problems as anything near comparing to the size of the Savior who loves us so, and who promises to meet all of our needs out of the abundance of his riches (Philippians 4:19).  We had to regularly step back from the real appearance of Carol's fragility and intentionally look at Jesus Christ through worship and the word so that we could maintain this perspective and not lose hope.  We will need to do the same thing regularly in our Anglican realignment if we are to keep the perspective of 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 that what God is doing in us and for us through the crises we face is of far more weight and glory than the momentary afflictions and disappointments that we suffer along the way.

As Dr. Ken Boa observes in his wonderful devotional "Leadership in the Image of Christ" (Atlanta: Trinity House, 2007):

"There are only two possible perceptions of God's character and our circumstances; each of us will choose one when we encounter trouble.  We will either view God's character in light of our circumstances, or our circumstances in light of God's character.  If we choose the former we will tend to look away from God and look to ourselves instead... [of] leaning on the Rock." (p. 50)

I choose looking at our circumstances in light of God's character.  Because even if circumstances don't turn out as I hope - even if we lose every court case, lose all our buildings, lose our connection to Canterbury and lose the Anglican Communion as we have known it historically - we will stand in the same rock-solid assurance in which Paul stood when he faced hardship, suffering, pressure and despair.  At the end of the day, whatever the outcome, we will be able to say with Paul "But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9b).

Which choice will it be for you?

Yours in Christ,
Phil+

Next Week:  Lessons from Fragile Beginnings, Part 3:  "Pay attention and enter into what God is doing"