Kay Mardis

A Tribute

A few days ago I came across an email that I sent from Guatemala a few years ago. Included in my report of our week there was this statement: "The hand puppets are a hit with the children. Thanks, Kay!" 

Kay Mardis, a lifetime member of Arab First Baptist Church, had spent days making about two hundred cloth puppets for the children there. Such acts of kindness were typical of her in the church and community. While Four Friends International was in its infancy, Kay prepared several meals for our gatherings. She encouraged us, prayed for us, and donated to us. Her compassion for the people of Jalapa was nothing other than Christ-like. She, and scores of other selfless volunteers, are responsible for the success of this ministry. To say "I am thankful for her life" doesn't do justice to the depth of my gratitude.

Kay lost a battle with COVID-19 last month, and the Four Friends International family deeply mourns her loss. She will be sorely missed in the days ahead. Her impact, however, lives on in the multitude of lives she touched at home and abroad. Her positive words and caring deeds are her legacy, and the world would be a better place if we all would imitate her. Indeed, more than anyone else I have known, she obeyed the apostle Paul's exhortation to "not grow weary in doing good." Thanks, Kay! 

FAITH IN GOD AND THE CORONAVIRUS

Dearest Taylor... I’m sitting here at your computer, tapping out the staggered rhythms of my heart on keys that once felt the touch of your fingers... Over seven months have passed since you died, yet every day I wake up and feel it incredible that you are not here... I do miss you terribly.  –Bruce Vaughn (1995)

The pandemic has brought many a Christian to his or her knees. It has also brought questions to the minds of believers and non-believers alike. "Where is God in the pandemic? Is He aware? Does He care?" Such questions of faith, of course, are not new; indeed, they echo throughout history. 

About fifteen years ago, I wrote down my own answer to these questions. I thought about some people I knew who had experienced tremendous suffering and loss. Then I imagined what I would say to them if I invited them all to my house. The following paragraphs are my words to them and to anyone else whose life experiences have raised questions about the nature of God. It's longer than most of my updates, so grab a chair and join this imaginary called meeting. My prayer is that its message may resonate with someone who needs God's embrace in this difficult time. 

A CALLED MEETING

(Although this is an imaginary gathering, the individuals and their life stories are real.)

The invitations were sent weeks ago, and now the guests are arriving. One by one they enter my home and are escorted into my living room. They are here at my request, but not one of them knows the reason. They have never met the other invitees sitting around them, so they have no idea how much they have in common.

The first to arrive, forever punctual, is Bruce Vaughn. A dear college friend, his life was turned upside-down in the 1990s when his five-year-old son was diagnosed with lymphoma. After two years of hopes being raised and then dashed, Taylor succumbed to the disease due to complications from a bone marrow transplant. His death, which I witnessed from a distance but experienced up close through conversations with Bruce, gave me a new perspective on life that has never since left me. Now, as a Christian counselor in Nashville, my gentle friend—one of the smartest and most consistent men I have ever known—lives in the long shadow cast by Taylor’s death.

The next to arrive is Oscar Whitt, my brother-in-law and likewise my friend. Today an engineer for the Boeing Corporation, he has lived the past thirty years of his life facing suffering and sorrow at every turn. As a senior in college, Oscar lost his only brother in a terrible automobile accident. The two boys had been such close friends, almost inseparable during childhood. A few years later Oscar’s father died when his truck collided with livestock that had wandered into the road. More recently—almost unfathomable is the sequence!—his mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer. Though determined to beat the disease, she died within a few months. Oscar now finds himself the lone surviving member of his immediate family. And all of this before he reached his mid-forties. Today, in gloriously ironic fashion, he and his wife have taken on the enormous task of adopting and raising three brothers, now ages fourteen, twelve, and ten. For Oscar, the task at hand is to mold a new family while he grieves the loss of the old.

Shortly after Oscar is seated, Jessica Seay joins the group. She was one of my youngest daughter’s high school teachers before taking an extended leave of absence. The reason was the untimely death of her husband. A handsome and hard-working young man, he became infected with a very aggressive bacteria known as MRSA, and it took his life in a matter of days. My daughter has told me how close the couple was, how Jessica bragged about him while in the school cafeteria. Adding to the tragedy, Jessica now is left with the challenge of parenting their young daughter, not even a year old when her father died. As you can expect, the turn of events has almost paralyzed her very existence. Still today she struggles in its aftermath to make sense of life again.

My fourth guest, Kelly Clem, enters next. Although we have never before met, I feel that I know her. I saw her for the first time on Palm Sunday, 1994. The minister of a small Methodist church in Piedmont, Alabama, she was being interviewed that afternoon by local and national news reporters, all seeking her response to the terrible tragedy that had unfolded earlier that day. A fierce tornado had ripped through the church during the worship service, collapsing the building. Victims of the storm included several little children sitting in the front pews awaiting their turn to participate in the service. Reverend Clem, I remember all so well, bravely held herself together as she tried to answer the unanswerable. Why did this happen? Why a church? Why little children? She spoke of holding on, of faith in the midst of a storm, of a God who embraces us in our hurt, and of the responsibility of other humans to act as community to her grieving congregation. What made Kelly Clem’s demeanor so unbelievable (and her words so believable) was the fact that her young daughter was one of those who had perished that morning. Somehow this mother suppressed her own grief until she could minister to the grief of her congregation and speak to the nation at large. Seen from the perspective of one who has two daughters of his own, what she did that day was one of the most courageous, selfless, sacrificial deeds I have ever witnessed.

The final visitor to arrive is you, and you soon find yourself sitting in the same room with the four mentioned above. When you hear their stories, you wonder aloud what you could possibly have in common with them. The scope and depth of their suffering seem so great and yours so small. Surely, you tell me, I have made some sort of mistake. My reply is that you are here because you too have experienced suffering. You have personally felt the pain and injustice of life, although perhaps in smaller measure. You have witnessed tragedies at home and abroad that have brought tears to your eyes and questions to your mind. And you live each day with the stark realization that you are just one heartbeat removed from suffering the likes of which my other guests have endured.

After everyone is comfortably seated and the customary introductions are completed, I take a seat with all of you and begin to share from my heart:

The main reason you are here, and not others, is a sense of comradeship I have with you. Your particular life stories have greatly influenced my life and have impacted me at every turn. As I have pondered suffering and the nature of God, each of you in this room has crossed my mind more than once, Recalling the suffering you have endured, I have hesitated when I have been tempted to oversimplify God’s nature or be too presumptuous about Him. Each of you is a reminder to me that life is not simple and that faith in God is not simple either. In a way, you have been my system of checks and balances, my fulcrum, my course adjuster along this leg of my journey.

I think I owe it to each of you to share what I have discovered. Without knowing it, you have been a part of my religious experience, a guidepost on my journey. I want to return the favor by letting you have a glimpse of what I have learned about God. It matters not whether you agree with my conclusions. Only this concerns me: that you are aware of my debt to you for any answers I have found and of my deepest empathy for you in the present as you continue to deal with the past.

What I have been unable to answer for myself and will be unable to answer for you are the “why” questions. Why your loved one? Why not you or me instead? Why not the reprobate down the street? Why not a preemptive act from God? Why not, in a display of divine power and love, an end to your terrible ordeal? These questions are usually the first to surface when tragedy strikes. I have discovered that they are also the longest to linger, simply because they are the toughest to answer. And I find myself in no position to shed any further light. As plainly and humbly as I can say it, I still do not know why. I am no nearer an answer at this stage of my journey than I was when I started.

What I have been able to piece together, at least in part, are some of the “who” questions. Who is this God over me and the universe? Is He a God of undiluted love, power, and knowledge or a God limited in one or more of these areas? Whom do we worship or refuse to worship each Sabbath or Sunday? Does He know our hurt? Does He care? Is He available to help us? God, who are You? These questions, outgrowths of the unanswered “why,” are the principal subject of this meeting, and I want to relay to you the answers I have found.

The knee-jerk reaction to suffering seems to be to limit God in some way. Some would limit His power. Since He has not acted to prevent suffering or to relieve it, God must be limited in what He can do. But I have not been able to embrace this explanation. The universe around me is so laden with power that I cannot fathom the power of its Creator being anything but infinite. So when you ask me if God could have acted to prevent what each of you went through, my answer is, “Yes, He could have.” Those hands, strong enough to create this universe, certainly could have protected you from suffering the way you did, even from suffering at all. I offer no glib answer in an effort to defend God. If you are expecting me to minimize His power to make an excuse for your plight, then you will be disappointed. In fact, I would encourage you to do just the opposite, to raise your perception of the power of God to heights not yet imagined. That is the God Job came to know, and that is who God is to me.

Nor should we try to deal with our suffering by limiting His love. The depth of human love is to me inexhaustible. The love of God, its source, must likewise be beyond measure. The same can be said of His knowledge. If the complexity of the universe is any indication, God knows more than any of us ever dreamed He could know. Any attempt, therefore, to distance God from your suffering by saying He doesn’t care or is unaware is futile. He knows full well your circumstances and loves you in the midst of them. Yes, He even suffers with you, for the suffering dimension of His love is boundless as well. Again, I would ask you to expand the borders of God’s love and knowledge to regions yet unexplored. Better yet, I would ask you to consider His love and knowledge to have no boundaries whatsoever. That is the God Paul came to know, and that is who God is to me.

And so the trend continues. With each attempt to limit one of God’s attributes, I reply that the wrong road has been taken. An about-face is in order. Limiting God is not the answer, for that is not who God is. If He is sovereign (a Committee of One on how the universe is run), then He is completely sovereign. If He is moral, righteous, and holy, He is absolutely so. If He is omnipresent, then there is nowhere, not even that silent place in the midst of grief, from which He is ever removed. If He is just, then there can be no limit to His fairness and no doubt that justice will come. If He is purposeful, then it is impossible—given the scope of His power, love, knowledge, sovereignty, righteousness, and justice—for His purpose to be denied. It is impossible for you and me, in spite of appearances in the present, to miss what He has planned for us. In summary, what we need today is an elevation of the greatness of God in every dimension rather than a limitation of Him in one. The result would be true revival. Before such a God we would fall on our knees in awe and arise in understanding and service. That is the God Isaiah came to know, and that is who God is to me.

As to the “what” questions, let me offer my own answer. What should each of us, beset in different measure by pain and suffering, do with the rest of our lives? What should we do with what looms ahead of us that will give meaning to what lies behind us? My advice to you is to place whatever has befallen you into the hands of this great God and to trust like the rising of the sun that He will make everything right. I firmly believe that God will reunite you with your loved one, and it will seem then as if you had never been separated. You will someday see God in all His glory, and—like Job, Paul, and Isaiah—your questions will fade away. Your suffering and your God will no longer seem paradoxical. On the other side, you will be able to see God’s pattern yourself, and you will find your mistakes and your calamities and your distress and your failures and all your pain woven therein. Then you will say, “It is marvelous in my eyes!” In the interim, I pray that you may feel the warmth of His powerful embrace and notice the tears on His compassionate face. That is the God Jesus came to show, and that is who God is to me.

By capturing this sense of God’s multi-faceted infinity, the question soon before you may not be “why” or “what” but “where.” A renewed focus and a brand new life mission may be the end result. You may again find inner peace and purpose, both derived from the infinite peace and ultimate purpose of God.

 As I complete these words to my guests, I am well aware that they have already spoken them to me. Much of what I have said I learned from them. My picture of a God of suffering love—and of hope in Him as our most valuable possession—came straight from my personal discussions with Bruce Vaughn and from some letters and speeches he wrote after Taylor’s death. I have already alluded to the impact the words and deeds of Kelly Clem had on me as she bravely ministered to her congregation and her nation that tragic day. Oscar Whitt’s persistence and consistency in the face of suffering and his labor of love for his three sons are nothing less than my advice already put into practice. And Jessica Seay’s continued struggle to find meaning in a world without her husband and best friend is a reminder to me that coping with suffering is a process wrought with a suffering all its own. I am indebted to these guests for teaching me about God and about life. I hope and pray that something I said today may, in small portion, have returned the favor.

NEXT MONTH'S UPDATE

I will postpone the latest news from Guatemala until next month. The tribute and conversation above take precedence this month.