A Faith Shaken

Good morning.

It's a cloudy, gloomy, winter morning here, so unlike the way it was a couple of years back when I was at Lake Placid in the winter. I dug out the picture this morning to remind me of better times, but even the sight of majestic mountains and blue sky can't break though my sorrow.

It's Sunday, and typically on Sunday, I get up early, catch up on my email and Facebook posts, and then get ready for church. Today, I did all that, but with a heavy heart as this morning will be the last time I hear my minister preach from the pulpit, and the fact that the situation has come to this has shaken my faith so deeply, I doubt ti will recover.

In the past decade, I've watched the moral values I held dear, disappear, one by one, replaced by secularism with the legal system supporting it. No more prayer in school was just the beginning of the end. I've always known bad things happen to good people, but I believed that, in the end, good triumphed over evil. It does in all my novels, but that's fiction for you--not as close to reality as we might like. In this case, a wonderful, caring, person, one who embodies everything I've always considered to be the way Christ wants us to be and live our lives, has been sacrificed on the altar of someone else's personal gripes and ambitions. It didn't matter that more of us wanted her to stay. It didn't matter that none of us really knew what all these complaints were. All that mattered was they got what they wanted-- a beloved minister gone.

Our minister was more to me than the person who stood in the pulpit each Sunday and gave me something to think about. Often, in her sermons, I found the inspiration I needed to get through a difficult scene. She was a friend, a colleague with whom I had a close working relationship for more than ten years. She was a caring individual who stood by my daughter in the darkest times. She was th steadfast force in the lives of my grandchildren who carried them through more sorrow than four children should have to bear in their young lives.

But, after this morning she'll be gone--hopefully not from our lives, but if she has to move away, which is quite likely since she needs to support herself, it will be a bitter pill to swallow, one that may lodge in my throat for years to come.

Now, my faith is hanging by a thread. I do not believe this is the will of God. There is a darkness in all this as the entire process was cloaked in secrecy and spurred on by innuendo and rumor. Sure, everyone claimed the whole thing was transparent, but no one actually came right out and said what was at stake, and now it's a done deal, leaving many people, not just me confused and hurting. Turning the other cheek is impossible now. It will be very difficult to face the people responsible for this injustice and even harder to worship a God who didn't stand by and support this wonderful minister. I'd pray for guidance, but I'm no longer convinced God answers prayer.

My faith's been shaken and I don't think it will ever recover from this blow.