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August 16 – The Harm of Absence · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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Well, welcome back everybody to the Daily
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Ripples podcast. It is Sunday, so you've got
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just me today, Pastor Mike. You had Corey with you yesterday.
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He'll be back with you again next Saturday. In between, be sure
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to check out on Mondays now at 4 PM, we're issuing
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some expanded episodes that we're calling Waves. They're kind of
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like bonus episodes, but what they are is a big book study. Corey is walking
0:28
through line by line, starting all the way at the beginning with the forewords.
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He's already covered through, I think by this point,
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the doctor's opinion, and you'll hear the first part of Bill's
0:39
story tomorrow afternoon. So be sure to check in. And the way to
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make sure that you don't miss any episode is by going to our website,
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dailyripples.com, and you can subscribe via email, or you
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listener. I think they call those podcatchers. But regardless, Regardless whether
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who may need to listen. So please do so.
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Follow us and share with other people that you think might get something out of
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it. But today is Sunday, August 16th.
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Our devotional is called The Harm of Absence,
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and we're going to be talking today not about what we normally talk about,
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which is all the things that we've done that we need to undo, but maybe
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there's some things that we haven't done that we need to simply do.
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The stone. Sometimes the greatest harm is not what I did,
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but what I failed to do. As I was saying,
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anyway, ripple 1, practical. Today, I will consider
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where I have withdrawn from people who need my presence, attention, or care.
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Neglect can wound as deeply as harsh words or harmful
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actions. Growth begins when I honestly acknowledge both my actions
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and my omissions. Ripple 2: Spiritual.
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As I recognize where I have pulled away from others, the Holy Spirit guides me
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toward honesty, reconciliation, and renewed connection.
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The Father created me for relationship, not isolation,
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and Jesus showed up for people consistently, offering His presence
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as well as His words. And as always,
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we save our prayer for the end of the show. But, and I
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know that we have been sitting in kind of this place
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of the 8th and 9th steps for, you know, a few weeks
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now, and that is only fitting. This is the 8th month of the year.
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So we're focused primarily on the 8th step, which is kind of the precursor
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to the 9th step or making amends. As a reminder for those who
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are listening, who may be listening from a Christian faith perspective and not necessarily
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have a lot of history or knowledge of the recovery
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and 12-step programs, the 8th step is where we made a list of all
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persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
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And then the 9th step is that we made direct amends to such people wherever
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possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
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So as we're thinking about these 2 steps, I mean, I know
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how our minds work as those who are alcoholics or addicts.
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You start trying to remember those things. And for many of us, if we
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have done a 4th and 5th step, then we already kind of have a list
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of the people that we've harmed. Because after all, that 4th step
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inventory, we start out with who and what we're mad at, but we end
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up with, well, what was our part in it? And if we had a part
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in it, that means we have a part in making amends for that. But we
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start thinking about the arguments that we had, the things that we broke, the money
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that we took, The night that everybody remembers, even though I blacked
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out and can't remember a thing and woke up in a hotel room bed
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that had been stripped and showered and had no idea how I got
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there. But every one of those is an action with a beginning and
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an end and unfortunately, usually a witness.
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But today's devotional is asking about the other kind of thing.
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It's the empty chair next to the hospital bed when we should have been the
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one being there for somebody that we loved. It's the phone call that
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we never made to check in on that person that we knew was going through
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struggling with depression or anxiety. It's a friend
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sitting in a waiting room somewhere watching the door, hoping that you would show up,
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but you were too drunk or messed up or high or down or
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sideways, and so you never walked through the door.
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And that's a harder list to write, and it's for
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a simple reason, really. When I take an action, that leaves
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some type of evidence, but an absence just leaves an empty space,
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and that empty space doesn't make any sound at all. And I'm not going
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to go in again to an argument about what
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is the definition of nothing, but stay tuned this week and you'll hear Corey and
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I having exactly that conversation. But most of the time we just adjust,
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and the people around us do as well. They learn that we are
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a person who doesn't show up, so they stop expecting it.
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And it all just settles back into the way that things are.
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And that's the stone, because sometimes the greatest harm is not what
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I did, but what I failed to do. And then we get into the practical
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side of today's devotional. Today I'll consider where I have withdrawn
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from people who needed my presence, attention, or care.
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And withdrawn is a good word for it. You know, a lot of us,
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we didn't make some kind of grand announcement of, I will no
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longer be here. We didn't do anything like that.
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We just withdrew little by slow from
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the lives, from the events, from the activities of
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the people around us until at some point they
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stopped letting us even know what they had going on because they knew at that
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point that we didn't care. And I know how that went for me when I
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was busy drinking. I was busy managing a life that was coming apart.
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And all of my attention was self-centered. It wasn't
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self-loving, to be clear, but it was self-centered. And the
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next thing that I had to cover, the next thing that I had to explain,
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all of these things just piled on top of each other because with
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all my attention aimed at myself, there was nobody left over, or there
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was no attention left over for anybody else. And so
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people fell off. And some of them are still off. Now, for me,
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I started drinking so early in life that it kind of prevented
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me from even making a lot of close friends. But the people that I fell
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away from, for me, were more of that biological family
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at times when they needed me to be there. And I could have told you
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back then with a straight face that I was a good guy or a decent
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guy because, you know, I measured myself by
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what I really— by what I was accomplishing in the workspace.
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But everywhere else in life, I was just gone. I was absent.
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And that, you know, gone feels like nothing at all, you know,
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whenever, for the people who are in the middle of that.
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But if I were to ask the person who needed me at the time,
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that would be a different report entirely. And I think it'd be
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the same for a lot of us. I just wasn't there. And they
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probably have some hurt and harm over the fact that I
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pulled myself away. In fact, one of the amends that I had to make was
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to my mother and father for that year that I got a
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little butthurt and didn't talk to them and didn't go to any family events.
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That was where I was pulling away and doing nothing. And this program
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has a phase for it that's exactly right. It's sins of omission.
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And I know for those who grew up in church, you've probably heard of that
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as well. The literature is careful to
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define harm in a wide way so that we can't
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get out of it. But over in what we call the 12
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Steps and 12 Traditions, that's one of the official books published by
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our AA program, and it's on page 80 of
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that book. And let me pull it up real quick. And it basically says,
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we might next ask ourselves what we mean when we say that we have harmed
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other people. What kinds of harm do people do to one another
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anyway? To define the word harm in a practical way, we might
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call it the result of instincts in collision, which cause physical,
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mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to people.
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That means that I could hurt somebody without
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ever raising my voice or lifting a hand. So the practical
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work today is a particular kind of looking. It's setting the
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list of things you did off to one side to ask a different
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question: who would tell you in your life, if they were honest,
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that you weren't there? And that's maybe the first person that we have to reach
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out to? Most of us, if you really stop and think about it,
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and in fact, if you're listening and if you're in a place where it's safe
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to do so, go ahead and pause this and reflect on this question
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for a minute. Who would tell you, if they were honest,
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that you were not there? Go ahead.
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I'll give you a minute here.
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That emptiness gets a little bit uncomfortable after a minute,
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doesn't it? It's hard for us, especially those of us
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who have done so much damage in the past. Sometimes it's hard for us to
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sit in silence, but in that silence sometimes is exactly
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where God meets us. You know, most of us, we get a
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few names right away, maybe our parents, Maybe our children, maybe that
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friend who called 3 times and then stopped calling. Maybe it was
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somebody in recovery rooms that was struggling, but I was
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too busy to notice or pay attention. And when they raised their hand at the
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end saying that they needed a sponsor, I didn't even bother going and trying to
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talk to them. And I want to be careful about how I say the next
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part, because guilt is not a good engine in terms
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of driving us to either sanctification or recovery.
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'Cause it runs hot, but then it runs out. And what we're after here is
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clear sight so that you can do something with what you see.
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And that's all any of these steps in recovery have ever been for.
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And that's what, you know, in our life of faith, that's the work that the
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Holy Spirit does in us too when we actively seek God.
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But I want to widen this out a little bit because there's a story that
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Jesus tells that I think is the plainest picture of this stone anywhere
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in Scripture. And we've talked about this on this podcast before. There was
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a man that was beat up and left on the side of the road.
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A priest comes down the road, sees him, goes around and keeps walking. Now,
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it wasn't because he didn't care. It was because he was probably on the way
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to the temple, and if he touched the person who was injured on the side
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of the road, he would have been unclean. So the whole system encouraged the priest
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not to meet the need. Then a Levite comes down the same
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road, sees the same man, does the same thing. Again, a Levitical
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priest who is of the line of priests, and so very
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concerned with cleanliness and being unclean. And if you notice something
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about those 2, the robbers were somebody else entirely.
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You know, if you ask the 2 men at the end of the day what
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they'd done wrong, they'd probably have said, well, nothing. They had somewhere to be.
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They had to stay clean so that they could serve all these other people.
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See, they had every excuse in the book, but Jesus puts them in the story
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as the ones who got it wrong. Not the ones who robbed and beat up
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the guy. See, the whole weight of the parable sits on the 2 men who
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did absolutely nothing. And then a Samaritan
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comes down the road, and Jesus picked that Samaritan on purpose
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because for the people listening, that would have been an outsider. That would have been
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somebody on the other side. And he's the one who stops,
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gets down in the ditch, and pays for the man's care out of
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his own pocket. He didn't do nothing. He took action.
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And that's where this has been sitting on my heart lately, and I'll tell you
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exactly why, because I've started doing some work here in the Memphis area
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with a group of volunteers that have called themselves
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the Immigrant Relief Task Force, and it's had me back in these passages
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with fresh eyes, because Scripture is plain about our responsibility
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and our calling, especially as Christians. All the way back in Leviticus 19,
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God tells His people that the foreigner living among them is to be
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treated as one of their own, to love him as yourself, and God gives them
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the reason, and the reason is memory. He says,
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remember, you were foreigners in Egypt. You remember what that
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felt like. Remember, at one time we were all foreigners
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on this land that today we call America.
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We all had to start somewhere. And Jesus takes it further
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in Matthew 25, where he separates the sheep from the goats. He gives that list
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of who are the sheep. I was hungry,
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I was thirsty, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. And what gets me
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every time is how surprised everybody is. Both groups that
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he's talking to, they say, Lord, when did we see you? Neither side,
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either the ones that took action or the ones that didn't take action, neither one
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knew what they were doing at the time. But the second group is judged not
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because they did the wrong thing, but because they did nothing.
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No thing. They saw a hungry man. They didn't feed
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him. They saw a stranger. They didn't welcome him. You might— you could just replace
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that word stranger with immigrant. And they had somewhere to be.
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Now, I am a pastor, and it would be easy for me to stand here
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and point at the church and say we're getting this wrong, so let me start
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closer to home. Let me look within myself, as we all have
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to start by looking within ourselves. Ironically,
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as I was leaving just last week to
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go and tour a facility that we're considering using as
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part of the work being done by the Immigrant Relief Task Force, I had met
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up with a couple of other volunteers, and I had them in my car,
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and I was driving, and and I turned to get
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on the interstate and I saw a man stopped on
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the shoulder on the side of the on-ramp to the interstate.
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And he was getting out and he was looking at the back of his car.
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His car was kind of beat up, but I had people with me and I
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had somewhere to go and I didn't have time to stop. And what
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makes it even tougher for me is that that man was a man
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that I see nearly every week. And I've seen him many
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an afternoon sitting in his car cooling off, waiting to pick up his
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relative when they got off their shift. So it was somebody that I
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knew. It wasn't even a stranger, and I had to drive right past him.
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I was that priest on the road. You know, I've preached a sermon about
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the love of God on a Sunday morning and then go the whole week without
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laying eyes on somebody who needs me. And I think a lot of
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us in the church have gotten comfortable talking about love as a feeling we have
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rather than a road that we walk down, and definitely not a road
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that we stop on the side of. Side of even when it's inconvenient for us.
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We'll say that God loves everybody and we mean it, but then family shows up
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in our town or in our church that's scared and far from home, and we
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immediately start making excuses about how their
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situation is likely their own fault, or we just find somewhere else
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to be. People in power always seek more power,
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but the man in the ditch was in front of the priest. He was right
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there in front of a person of power. And what Scripture asks of me is
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what I do about the person in front of me.
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So that's the widest version of today's stone, you might say. Absence can
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be personal. It can also be a whole community of good people
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looking the other way together while another group of
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people in our very midst is suffering,
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going through trauma, detention, and death.
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So on that happy note, let's flip over to the spiritual side. The Father
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created me for relationship, not isolation.
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And that's there from the first pages of the Bible. God looks
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at the man that he had made, and God said, you know, I think that
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guy needs some company. Because before anything had gone wrong, before there was
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any sin in the story, the very first thing God names as incomplete
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is a person by himself. Adam was incomplete until
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God created Eve, created that companion for him.
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So when I pull away from people, I'm working against the
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very way that God designed me. And that's what makes isolation such a good trick
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for this disease. It takes the thing that we were made for and turns it
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into the thing that we run from, and that's people. Because I know for me
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and this alcoholic, when I was drinking and when I was drunk, I wanted to
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be by myself because I did not want to deal with the shame and the
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guilt of the next day of other people having seen me in that state.
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But the Bible also tells us and shows us that Jesus showed up
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for people consistently. He offered his presence as well as his words.
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And I love that line because it's true of the whole gospel.
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God's answer, you might say, to what was wrong
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with the world was to come and to be with
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us, to be here. In a body, in a town,
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at people's tables. At the very beginning of
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the Gospel of John, and this is in the New International
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Version, we read that in the beginning was the Word, and the
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Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with
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God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing
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was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the
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light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
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overcome it. So in the beginning,
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there was the Word, and the Word was with God.
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And then we read later on in John 1, in John 1:14,
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the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
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We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came
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from the Father, full of grace and truth. So God loved
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us so much that he came to live with us and among
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us. And we know that Jesus cared about the people
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that everyone else around Him said that He either
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should not talk to, should not touch, should not heal— all
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the things people were telling Him He should not do. But when a person in
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need was in front of Him, Jesus healed people.
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There was a man with leprosy who comes to Him, and Jesus could have spoken
18:30
a word from 30 feet away. He had done that before. But instead, He reached
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out His hand and He touched him. And that man had likely gone years without
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being touched by another person. And Jesus gives him that before he
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gives him his own skin back. And that is the presence of God. It's the
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thing all the good words in the world can't replace from a distance.
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Thoughts and prayers weren't enough for that guy. And then
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the Holy Spirit guides me toward honesty and reconciliation and
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renewed connection. And notice the word renewed in there, because that's
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a hopeful word. It says these connections are still alive, that something
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can be picked back up. And the Spirit's
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part in our devotional today starts with honesty, because the names
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have to come to mind before anything can happen with them. You know,
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ask God this week to bring you the ones you've been away from.
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You know, in my experience, that's a prayer that God answers
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eagerly, sometimes faster than we would even like.
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Because sometimes in a prayer we think, God, can you just remind me of who
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I need to reach out to next week? Because this week I've got a lot
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on my plate. Unfortunately, God doesn't work that way. Sometimes God
19:40
interrupts our day. Sometimes God interrupts our night. So that's what I'd leave
19:44
you with today. You know, the birthday party is, is over.
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You know, the one for your niece or nephew that you missed because you were
19:51
too messed up, and no amount of amends can put you back in the room
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for your 5-year-old niece who so beautifully cried
19:59
because Uncle Ricky Bobby wasn't there. Or whatever your name is as you're listening,
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or Auntie Sallie Mae. And that can
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leave a person feeling stuck, like this kind of harm has no repair available
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to it. But this particular debt gets paid.
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And for most of what's on our list, the amends might be just
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a conversation. But for this one, and maybe this is what, you know,
20:24
some of the old wisdom in recovery
20:27
rooms is talking about, about the whole living amends thing, maybe that's what you do
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after the conversation of the amens, because the
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amens needs to become a habit. And the habit we need to form is the
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habit of showing up, the habit of making the phone call,
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the habit of sitting in the waiting room.
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You know, it's the habit of taking the road that goes past the
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ditch, and we plan on stopping there so that we can
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see and find the people who may be struggling. And we
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can all start that today with whoever comes to mind. The Father made
21:02
you for company. Jesus himself
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showed you what it looks like to be with someone in person,
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and the Spirit will reveal to you the names
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of who you need to help if you just ask. And as Jesus
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said time and time again, let those with eyes to see see,
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and let those with ears to hear hear. Let's pray
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together. Father God, Help me see where my absence
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has caused harm. Through Your Holy Spirit, give me the courage to repair broken
21:32
connections and the willingness to be present for others.
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Shape my life through the example of Jesus and teach me to love people
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well. Amen. Well, that's it for today, everybody.
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Come— excuse me, Corey will be back with you
21:47
next Saturday. I'll see you next Sunday. And in the midst
21:51
this week, Corey and I have some great episodes. If you want to read today's
21:55
full devotional, head on over to dailyreadingwithtim.com.
21:58
If the show means anything to you, we'd love to hear from you. So reach
22:02
out to us anytime at wave, W-A-V-E,
22:05
wave@dailyripples.com. And of course, that is
22:09
D-A-I-L-Y-R-I-P-P-L-E-S.com.
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But for now, go and do all the good you can for
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all the people you can in all the places you can in all the ways
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you can by all the means that you can. And do it all for
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as long as you ever can. In the name of the Father and
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of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, may you go in peace.