Delayed Madness

Long time, no post. Sorry for the delay. This recent hiatus in blogging has been due to a combination of things, not the least of which was my annual pilgrimage to watch the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament with two of my closest friends from high school. I had an excellent time. We watched the games, made snide remarks about the commercials and commentators, made lasagna-turkey-and Frito sandwiches (I'm not kidding here), and even enjoyed watching the newly-released "Casino Royale" together (which is, incidentally, moving up my list every single viewing...it's a solid #2 now). As those of you who watched the tournament this past weekend already know, there was really only one problem:

Thursday and Friday's games were mind-bendingly predictable and dull.

There's a reason we gather (along with half the nation) every March: we want to see crazy things happen. We want to see Valparaiso nail a crazy three. We want to see Santa Clara beat Arizona. We want to see George Mason go to the Final Four. This year? Nothing. I'd have settled for a favorite sinking a buzzer beater (eventually got that wish on Saturday). But all day Thursday and all day Friday, the most interesting thing on our television was Greg Gumble's ever-expanding girth.

Late Friday, I found myself leaning over to one my friends (our host had already gone to sleep out of sheer boredom) and said, "This is March Sanity. March Logic. No Madness here. I want some madness...and I want it now."

Be careful what you wish for.

I hitched a ride to Omaha Saturday afternoon and was scheduled to leave Omaha on a plane that would get me in to Denver at an early enough time to get me home at a decent hour. Spend some time with Julie, look over the sermon, all is well.

Well...all was not well. My flight, the last one out that night to Denver, was cancelled. I was placed on the 6:40 (central time) flight out in the morning and given an all-to-brief-thanks-to-a-5:30-wake-up stay at the Hilton. My saint of a wife picked me up at the airport at 7:30 (mountain), and I groggily made may we through Sunday worship before practically falling asleep standing up at lunch.

And so...I was still groggy and a bit put out when I came in yesterday. Holy Week is coming...and the list of things to do is long. I got in to work a little early, and started to make my way through the stacks. Then the church got a call. A 40-year old woman who has had 8 heart attacks caused by a tumor wrapped around her heart (and who, consequently, can't hold a job) needed money for rent. Another call. A 19-year old man with two kids needed gas to get to his new job up in Fort Collins. I spent the majority of my morning lining up help, referring, calling agencies and Deacons, doing what I could to help. Julie called right around 10:30 and I muttered to her, "I'm not getting anything done."

When the smoke cleared around 1:30...I sat in my office and looked at what I was supposed to do around 9:00 that morning. I thought about Holy Week. I thought about what I had said to Julie earlier. I thought about my sermon for this Sunday...that talks about God's love changing our life and especially our "to-do" lists. And I remembered the stinging punchline of a story a pastor once told me about a Sunday when he went into the pulpit with a terrible sermon because he had spent the whole morning praying with one of the youth. He caught himself saying: "If I didn't have to help anybody else, I'd sure get a whole lot more work done."

So I learned another lesson of Lent. The lesson of stopping and seeing (and then doing) what is truly valuable. Of looking beyond my plans to what needs to get done. Of finding the divine method, even in our madness.