hockey

I am going to make a rather huge confession.  I don’t like hockey.  

I don’t hate it, I just don’t understand all the intensity with which the guys in my house holler at the television and debate the trades.  I go watch a game once or twice a season but my husband is well aware that I am there to hold hands, and eat the snacks, and that there will absolutely be a book in my purse.

In grade twelve, the cutest guy in my class asked me if I liked hockey and if I wanted to go to a game with him.  Well, that changed things.  I professed great love for the sport and between when my bus got home from school and I was picked up for my date, my sweet Dad did the best he could to save me from revealing my ignorance.  I can still remember him laughing as I ran out the door, “they are not quarters, honey, they are periods!”  Unfortunately, the new attraction to hockey didn’t really last.

This week hockey brought Canada together.  This week, we have been in community.  With sticks on our porches and jerseys on our backs, a nation has grieved as one.  And yet, it is not hockey at all that united us.  It is instead, grief for lost sons and deep humanness, that though we cannot change the situation, says you are not alone in your sorrow.

Alone is how the enemy would have us.  Brokenness and division is his specialty. 

Community has always been the message of God.  “Alone” God declared to be “not good” (Gen 2:18).  Our covenant-keeping God through the pages of Scripture calls us again and again to be in community with each other and community with Him.  He reminds us that we are not meant to be alone.  He restores what is broken; He heals what is hurting.  When our sin separated us from God, Jesus gave his own life to bridge that gap and create community with us. 

Our stories are different, but our hearts feel the same.  We know no one is immune to hard times.  We have our own stories of death, of loss.  There can be pain so deep we have no words.  There can be hurt we may never understand.  Yet, there is One who stands beside us, whose very name means, ‘God is with Us’.  

See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated, ‘God is with us’. Matthew 1:23

Jesus came so we could have a home with Him forever in heaven, and yet I find it interesting that the message here is not “us with God”.  It is “God with us”.  He does not always pull us out of our pain, but stands right in it with us.  He is not watching from afar.  He is our hope in the hurt.  He is here - with us in our waiting, with us in our pain, with us in our sorrow.

 

The book of Matthew is an account of Jesus Messiah, his life, his death and resurrection.  But the bookends to the gospel are the message of Immanuel.  The very last words of Jesus are a reminder to the disciples that they do not walk alone.  

It is a reminder to us, as well.
 

“Remember, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  Matthew 28:20

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Humboldt would be for us to walk away unchanged, back to our isolation, back to our apathy, and back to carrying our pain alone.  

Let this week remind us all that time is short, loved ones are a gift to be cherished, and we were never supposed to spend so much time pretending everything is perfect.  We are all a little broken, after all. 

That is why we have Immanuel - God with us.