Margaret (3)

As the first ALPHA evening progressed a pattern was set in our small group for all subsequent meetings (there were about ten weekly sessions and one weekend retreat). No question or comment was out of bounds, and Margaret cared about people. After her introduction, “Hi. I’m Margaret, I’m married with three small children and I’m dying of cancer and that’s why I’m here,” she was asked if she was okay sharing the specifics of her condition, which she did. After that, Margaret was full of questions about faith, about God, and about Jesus - and she was full of questions about the other people in the room. When others shared doubts or tough things they had gone through or were going through right then, Margaret wanted to listen, to understand, and to connect.

Another pattern that was set that first evening was that if humor could be found in something Margaret would find it, and that included telling stories about herself and her family. Her laughter was contagious and there were evenings people were moved to tears as they doubled over with laughter.

Margaret was there that night because shortly after she and Frank moved to Cat Mountain their neighbors, Shirley and Ralph Bennett, came over to introduce themselves. When they learned of Margaret’s illness they made it a point to be available to help Frank and Margaret in any way possible. Shirley and Ralph were committed followers of Jesus Christ, and when they heard about the ALPHA program, a program designed to engage those who are skeptical about, and even hostile to, the Gospel, they told Margaret about it and offered to drive her to the program and then pick her up when it was over. Margaret was with us because other people cared enough to ask her to come and to drive her both ways.

How many people live around us who are experiencing tough times, but we don’t know about it because we don’t seek to know others? Then there are those who we know are going through tough times, but we fail to reach out to them, we make excuses, and then one day they are gone and it is too late to touch them. There is always the good-old standby, “I wouldn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t know what to do.” Let’s remind ourselves that more than anything people who are hurting just need to know that others care about them - just to be with those in pain and distress is not at times the only thing we can do, it is also often the only thing others desperately need.

Margaret needed people to be there with her and Frank and their children, but she also needed to be there for others - she didn’t quit living because she was dying; she didn’t quit caring, she didn’t quit laughing. She was the best listener in our group over those ten weeks; perhaps that was because she knew every moment matters, every word matters, every person matters. She was also perhaps the most transparent person in our group - what’s the point with pretending to be someone you are not when you only have months to live...at most. Perhaps we can learn from that too.

The first evening of ALPHA gets right to the point with the question, “Who is Jesus?” Jesus is either who He said He is - in which case He means everything; or He is not who He said He is, in which case He means nothing. The ALPHA presentation utilizes a straightforward approach, popularized by C.S. Lewis who drew on others in developing it: Jesus is either Lord, Liar, or Lunatic - take your pick. What Jesus cannot be is a good man, that is impossible.

Here’s a quote from Lewis along this line from Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

As the evening concluded I wondered what Margaret thought about Jesus, I wondered what she thought about what Lewis had written, I wondered if she would return the  following week. As she was getting ready to leave with her neighbors I asked her if I could call her and come visit - she gave me her phone number.

A couple of mornings later I called to see how she was feeling and whether I could visit her - she told me that the afternoon would be great...