Not to belabor a point, but...

My kids' fish died the other night.

Poh, a betta named after the Jack Black character in "Kung Fu Panda" had been struggling for days, so it was good that he finally went. But it's breached a whole new world for my two-year-old, who spent the next day asking, "Will you die, Mama? Will Daddy? Will Sissy? Will I? Will Grammy? Will my coloring book? Will my bed die? Will my lovie die?" Poor little kid. She's not quite as blase about death as I try and be. She reacts the way we all do, but are too smooth, polished, and urbane to show.

Being a pastor is hard work. Anyone who says it isn't is either 1) lying or 2) not doing it right. My whole image of myself as a pastor is one who stands in the gap--the gap between life and death, the gap between heaven and hell, the gap between brokeness and wholeness, the gap between knowing and believing, the gap between fear and peace, the gap between knowledge and belief. It's never easy to straddle two worlds, but that's what pastors are called to do every day.

Wednesday night: I was done. I was tired of the tears and the fear and the pain and the saddness and the waiting and the uncertainty and the death and the life--all of it. I was tired. I was done. I wanted a beer. But my day was nowhere near done enough to declare Miller Time.

I was sitting in my office, trying to find SOMETHING to do that would keep me from just crawling under my desk and giving in to the tears that were thisclose to the surface, when I glanced out into the courtyard of the church. And what I saw there caused hope to spring fresh in my heart, laughter instead of tears, joy instead of despair.

What did I see, you ask? Some heaven-descended dove with an olive branch in his beak and a rainbow spanning the sky? A voice booming from heaven, delivering a message that gave me the strength to go on?

Well. Not in so many words. :)

I saw three good men, standing around a barbeque grill. Two were cooking. One was "supervising". They were (so far as I know) unaware of being observed. They didn't do anything amazing. They flipped some burgers. They had a conversation. One was wearing an apron. Absolutely nothing spectacular, just being themselves.

And that sight is what brought joy into my heart, a balm to the sad weariness of my day. Three men. Flipping burgers in a church courtyard.

I always tell people that God uses the ordinary to accomplish the extraordinary. Water? Bread? Wine? Men flipping burgers? All can be salvific when placed in the hands of the Lord. Nothing is too mundane for God to scoop it up into His hands, and with a twinkle in His eye use it to change the life of His children. To bring them home. To ease their hearts. To give them the strength to carry on.

Thanks be to God that we're not in this alone. I'd have given up long ago.