Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

The waiting room

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Romans 6:5, Psalm 118:16-17
If we have grown into union with Christ Jesus through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection ... The right hand of the Lord has struck with power; the right hand of the Lord is exalted. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.

We do not die into nothing. We die to live. Today we sit with each other, alone without our Lord, waiting for life. With God a day is like a thousand years. And in this time we will learn what God has for us to learn about mercy and justice, about love and acceptance and truth.

Mrs. Ruby Turpin walked into the doctor's waiting room and sat down. Her eyes took in everyone there. Flannery O'Connor's eyes became Mrs. Turpin's. This was the story of a most important day in Mrs. Turpin's life, appropriately called "Revelation." (http://producer.csi.edu/cdraney/archive-courses/summer06/engl278/e-texts/oconner_revelation.pdf)

Mrs. Turpin waited for the doctor in her own manner of waiting, making lots of inner conversation about the natures of those around her. Secret thoughts and secret judgment. But on this day a silent college girl across the room looked at her and seemed to know her mind. The girl was ugly, but she was strong, and at last she threw her book at Mrs. Turpin and cut her eye, then ran across the waiting room and tried to choke her.

She screamed obscenities at Mrs. Turpin, and Mrs. Turpin fell victim, even in her own self-righteousness. "What do you have to tell me?" she shouted at the girl as she was being pulled off her.

But once home again, hosing down the pigs and shouting now at God, she was struck dumb at sunset as she absorbed "some abysmal life-giving knowledge."

"She saw the purple streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven ... battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.

"And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people she recognized at once, those like herself and Claud, always with a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right."

Mrs. Turpin was surprised by the grace of God, letting all that white trash into heaven, surprised especially to see her own self back there at the last. She watched that tail-end crowd moving up the sunset streak into the sky and "could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away."

We listen too, and watch, sitting on our own Group W bench, waiting for what happens next. This is our Easter vigil. We join Ruby Turpin at sunset. "The invisible cricket choruses have struck up, but what (we hear are) the voices of the souls climbing upwards into the starry field and shouting hallelujah."

We climb Jacob's ladder, Lord, because you put it there for us to climb. We know it's on the right wall, even if its end is not in sight. Step by step. We climb. The voice in our ears is yours. "You are loved, because I love you." Do not be afraid.

Devotions Archive

The waiting room

Saturday, April 4, 2015