The Messenger - February 2011 - (Page 1)

Grandview United Methodist Church “Making Gentle A Bruised World” The Messenger Volume 13, Issue 2 February 2011 Andrea’s Attic: Thoughts From An Associate Pastor’s Cluttered Top Floor The Rev. Andrea Brown When a disaster occurs, it is nearly always because many things have gone wrong all at once. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. -Matthew 7:13-14 Not just one error, but a series of errors, lies behind the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the damage Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans, the space shuttle explosion, the near meltdown at Three Mile Island. Car accidents are rarely caused by a single mistake. Often some combination of speed, driver impairment and/or distraction, and sometimes even mechanical failure combine. If even one of those factors had gone right instead of wrong, the accident might have been averted. Even we resilient human beings usually don't die until many things are going wrong all at once. People can live a long time even when so vital an organ as the heart has been damaged. But when the kidneys and the lungs and the liver all grow weak and perhaps the mind becomes irreversibly addled, eventually the heart will stop, and the whole body with it. We call this Multiple Systems Failure. The phrase kept occurring to me after the shooting in Arizona. So many things combined to leave six innocent people dead and a dozen more people wounded. Without blaming any individual but the shooter himself for his actions, it is a biologically inbred God-given gift of every healthy grieving process that we weigh factors that led to loss. We test the validity of various potential causes by debating them in our own minds with others, and then we may conclude some are baseless. But God has designed us as people who try to learn from mistakes and prevent future calamities. And though this is harder than just locating all evil in a single person, this process is healthy and lifesaving. It's impossible to say which death seems the most upsetting. The loss of a 9-year-old girl seems particularly tragic, but then so, too, does the loss of a 30-year-old who never had the chance to marry the woman to whom he was engaged. So, too, does the loss of a judge—by all accounts courageous, fair, and hard working. And so, too, do the losses of three innocent people in their 70s. An obituary of the one man, a church volunteer, made me think of certain older members of Grandview who, like him, give their time and talents daily to help others. How upset I would be if someone would so carelessly take one of these men's lives! What a loss that would be for the hungry people that person would have fed, the children he would have taught, the young adults for whom he was a role model. And even the 22-year-old (Continued on page 2) Inside this issue: Notes of Thanks Youth Ministry Council’s Corner Building Up, Reaching Out Missions, Faith & Action Immigrant Realties 3 4 4 5 6 6

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Messenger - February 2011

The Messenger - February 2011
Inside This Issue
Notes of Thanks
Youth Ministry
Council's Corner
Building Up, Reaching Out
Missions, Faith & Action
Immigrant Realties

The Messenger - February 2011