Dear Friends,

I stayed up way too late in a Buffalo hotel room the other night, eating string cheese and Oscar Mayer salami from the convenience store across the parking lot, watching the tail end of the Connecticut-Syracuse basketball game on television. Unfortunately for the folks I spoke for the next morning, that game went into six overtimes before Syracuse finally won around 1:30AM…and unfortunately for the guy sitting next to me on the plane ride home, I ate all the salami. Still, I have no regrets. That game had more drama than most Broadway plays.

I will spare the details for those of you who are not basketball fans, except for this one: At the end of every period but the last (when the game was finally out of reach), whichever player had the ball took a shot, no matter how off-balance or far away he was from the basket.

Basketball players always do that, of course, at every level all over the world, the same way football quarterbacks throw Hail Mary passes in the last seconds of their close games. Nobody really expects such desperate, unlikely attempts to succeed. Everyone knows that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they don’t even come close. But everyone watches them anyway, holding their breath, because everyone also knows that every once in a while even the longest of long shots is good. And when it is, when that last-second basket or touchdown improbably – maybe even impossibly – wins the game, the crowd goes wild. The winning team goes wild, too, and together they mob their unlikely hero and joyously celebrate what is almost invariably called their ‘miracle shot’.

That is what we are doing here: Throwing up desperation shots, secure in the knowledge that most of them are bound to fall short. Tutoring high school kids who can barely read, let alone hope for college. Searching out jobs for the least-employable adults imaginable in the midst of the worst economy any of us has ever seen. Securing mortgages so we can rent houses to families that have never lived anywhere longer than a year or two. Trying to create genuine, long-term friendships where some friends have cars and credit cards and other friends are losing their food stamps, where some friends read to their pre-schoolers and other friends still smoke and drink while they’re pregnant, where some friends have everything and other friends nothing at all. Loving people who are broken beyond repair.

That is what God is doing here too, I think: Loving us with all his might, seeking our salvation in every moment, ceaselessly calling us to do his will in this world, so as to make it over into that glorious Kingdom that Jesus was always talking about. He doesn’t always get his way, of course, at least if my life is any indication. So often I thwart him. So often I don’t listen, or I disobey. We all do. One day God will have his way with us, but for now we more often use our free wills for other things. We are the problem, however, not God’s will. No matter how broken we are, God always does His best. God always takes His shot.

When I suggest that some people can’t be helped no matter how much you love them, friends of mine say I am limiting God’s power. But when those friends suggest that God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants to, in the life of whoever He chooses, I wonder if they think God is a monster…or if they are only watching God’s highlights reels, where all His ‘miracle shots’ are collected and replayed over and over again. You know, cancer patients healed, junkies redeemed, families reunited, hurricanes averted, crippled planes landed safely.

Don’t get me wrong; Over the years, I’ve experienced a few of those ‘miracle shots’ myself. I’ve seen times when everything and everyone lined up just the way God wanted them to, in ways that only a good and loving God could have orchestrated, in what the hymn-writer called ‘a foretaste of glory divine’. Honestly, if I hadn’t, I think I would have given up ghetto long shots a long time ago. Still, I keep taking them because doing so feels like the best, most hopeful thing to do, not because I think they are actually going to succeed. In fact, I almost never think they are going to succeed, and most of the time I am right. Most of the time, at least here in Walnut Hills, broken people stay broken.

So what? Win or lose, loving people is a beautiful pastime. Loving people is a good job, too, and the people who do it are good company. Loving people is a wonderful life. And, every once in a while…the crowd goes wild! And when that happens, I believe God is right there in the midst of the mob, celebrating the miracles that must be miracles to Him as well. In the meantime, keep the faith.

Sincerely,

Bart