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Chaplain Highlights (2-20-09)

February 21, 2009 in Chaplaincy with 4 Comments

I volunteered my time last night as a chaplain for the Mesa Police Department. Here were some highlights:

  • –Investigated two different (but nearly identical) instances of mothers leaving their three children in the car while they went in and shopped at Wal-Mart. Apparently, this is a growing crime problem in Mesa.
  • –Made my first trip inside the Mesa jail and got cursed out in Spanish.
  • –Ate dinner at a Barcelona/Italy family diner on the SW corner of Lindsay and Main. 5 words: all-you-can-eat-meat
  • –Screamed through about half of Mesa doing Code-3 (lights and sirens)
  • –And spent at least 30 minutes listening to a lady from Vietnam tell me all about her life. I determined that I could only understand one fifth of what she was saying. I did a lot of smiling and nodding. And she did a lot of ceaseless talking. She apparently really likes John McCain.

A Deal With God

July 2, 2008 in Chaplaincy, Church, Spirituality with 4 Comments

I was on a ride-a-long last Sunday with one of my friends from Third Format who is a Gilbert officer. He introduced me to his closest friend in the force and we got to talking over some food. I asked him about his view of God and he told me that he and God had an agreement. Intrigued, I asked him for the details.

He told me that he agreed to not talk bad about God and that God wouldn’t talk bad about him.

Wow. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry tears of remorse for such a broken image of God. Yet this implied fear/anger toward God is not unique to him. As I’ve reflected on that conversation since then I’ve been reminded of how many people out there live in isolation from a loving God who wants nothing more than to reconcile Himself to them. And it’s usually “Christians” who push them away. How do we be the church for people like this?

Compassion

January 27, 2008 in Bible, Chaplaincy, Spirituality with 3 Comments

I recently read through the book of Matthew and something stood out to me that I hadn’t noticed before. There are 4 times when Jesus looks at people and feels compassion for them (9:36, 14:14, 15:32, 20:34). I was extremely challenged by this as I thought about it. Is that my natural response when I see people? Rarely. So I started praying that God would change my heart so that this would be true of me as well. And I haven’t had much luck with it being changed lately. So God gave me another opportunity on Friday night.

I was in my police chaplain role on a ride-along with an officer and it was a pretty slow night. The last call we had was catching two guys who had been caught trying to break into a car. As we debriefed them and searched through their things, I had a weird experience as I watched them sit on the curb. One guy was homeless and the other lived in a halfway house. I felt something that I didn’t expect…compassion. I felt sorry for these guys in a way that kind of shocked me. Here were two guys, who were living lives that none of us would ever want and they had just made another mistake that would make things even worse for them.

It felt great. I knew none of the officers I was with had any sense of anything for these guys and thought they were lost causes. So my feelings were kind of odd. But I savored the moment knowing that God had answered a prayer. So maybe there is hope at last that God will make me more like Him. Here’s to feeling more compassionate.

A Perspective on Fear

October 31, 2007 in Chaplaincy, Spirituality with 2 Comments

One of the ways that I get out of the Christian bubble is by volunteering my time as a police chaplain. It makes for some interesting stories to be sure. I was on a ride-a-long last friday and I got into some great conversations with the officer I rode with. I asked him all sorts of questions. One of them was “Do you ever get afraid?” His anwer kind of startled me.

“Never.”

“Really?” I said. To me, I thought he might have just been trying to be macho or keeping up with the tough cop image. Lucky for me he must have seen my perplexed look and he felt compelled to elaborate.

“I trust in my training and the other officers around me. What is there to be afraid of?”

“I don’t know, the unknown?” I confidently fired back. And then it dawned on me how lame I sounded. Was I afraid of something?

I have been replaying that conversation in my mind all week. What if I viewed my Christian life like this? What if I looked fear in the face and gave it no concern because I was so confident in my God and in those who God had put around me? And I began to see a beautiful image of how we should act as believers. Suddenly, 2 Timothy 1:7 makes more sense. We are not to live with fear and uncertainty of the unknown, but with confidence and passion that we are well equipped for what is before us. Bring on the unknown.