Heavy Night

Our group was not very uplifting this week. There were seven of us which is a bit small for our group. It clearly pointed out to me the power of presence and strength in numbers. We are better when most of us are in the room (even a couple of guys missing makes a difference) and there’s no substitute for sharing, praying, and just being with a group of guys struggling to make life work.
As we went around the room to just catch up on our week, the weight descended on the room like a heavy, dark mist. Five of us talked about feeling burdened, heavy hearted, weighed down. Three of us are really burdened - facing significantly reduced income and the very real possibility of losing jobs. One of the guys facing income or job loss is over 70 and another has five kids at home. I sat and felt the weight that I was feeling (certainly nothing like these guys) deepen. What do you say? How can you help? What can you do? The impulse to end the meeting and just go home was very real.
We were about to plow forward with a DVD when one of the guys said he wasn’t up for it and just wanted to talk. And we did. We talked about the message series and getting our priorities straight; about how we are all really blessed; about the anxiety of losing our job and the impact of that on our families; the difficulty of praying when everything around you is screaming out for attention and immediate solutions; how hard it is to trust God when life seems to be spinning out of control; and more.
The amazing thing for me was that no solutions were offered for anyone’s problems. No quick fixes were provided for financial problems. No facile platitudes were sprinkled around about how it will all turn out OK. No shallow encouragement to just simply pray more and trust God more. But this is a guy’s group, right? Isn’t that what we do – fix problems, offer solutions, just keep on moving forward?
In the end, we sang a couple of songs, prayed around the circle and headed home. I still felt weighed down. I know the other guys did. Not much had changed in our worlds when we left – there was a lot staring these guys in the face when they got home.
But as always, God was present. Jesus didn’t reduce any of the burdens. If anything, I felt more heart heavy when I left than when I showed up. But there was a definite sense that we weren’t on the journey alone; that we didn’t have to carry the burdens by ourselves. It seemed clear that Jesus doesn’t show up necessarily to fix our stuff, but often just to walk with us and help us bear the weight of our stuff. And what I appreciate most about the guys I meet with every week is that no one in the group is trying to fix my stuff either. It’s just a group of guys seeking a better relationship with Jesus and willing to help bear each others burdens on the journey. A heavy night made a little bit easier by a band of brothers and a loving God.