I have a number of posts lined up in the ol' mental queue--book reviews, lessons learned, observations on the Army, philosophical critiques, etc., but once more, they must all be deferred.
There are some substantial reasons why I might not love the chaplaincy.
We are expected to solve all problems dealing with morals or morale, but are viewed suspiciously when we seek to use the resources of our faith--the very thing that equips us to be chaplains--in order to deal with these issues.
Like civilian pastors, the work of the chaplain is always underestimated and under-appreciated. We get the same snide remarks, like "It must be nice only having to work one day a week." If we don't produced quantifiable products, then we are seen as less effective and mission-essential than other soldiers. But even when we do quantify what we do, people often don't care. I list the number of counseling appointments I do and the categories they fall into in my weekly types reports, but it has been made clear that this info need not be included in my weekly verbal briefs to the staff.
It's as if people see their fellow soldiers as scaling great cliffs, while the chaplain stands at the base watching them. It seems a pretty mundane and insignificant task to observe these soldiers at work. Little do these folks know that dozens of these soldiers are connected by harness and rope to the chaplain down below. (It is much the same way with the civilian pastor and his brothers/sisters.)
That said, during a week that might be considered my hardest of the deployment, I cannot help but think how much I love this calling.
I always wanted to carry soldiers close to my heart as Christ carries me close to His. I always wanted to share their joys and their grief. I always wanted to know the stories behind the statistics. I always wanted to share about life in Christ amidst the valley of the shadow of death.
It makes me terribly sad to think about David, a brother who I got to know for too brief a time. Thoughts of Dana escorting her best friend home virtually paralyze me. For all their sins and frailties, this was the type of couple who would've been holding hands in fifty years as they neared the threshold of death. And they would've left behind a warm home filled with wonderful kids.
But I do not despise the relationships I have formed, the memories I hold, nor the grief I bear. This is my place, on the mourner's bench alongside those who grieve. By God's grace, I work at the intersection of human lives and the real world, where military traffic passes through every day, and no B.S. is allowed to pass. I tend a graveyard, not only for the memories of soldiers, but for utopian ideals, trite and petty cliches, rampant self-righteousness, and the haughtiness of the academy. War is where all these things come to die.
And out of war, emerging from the messy reintegration of families and the fading effects of PTSD, comes life and love. A soldier might think his wife a nag when he leaves home for war. He comes back to the one he knows warms both heart and hearth. Children might be thought an inconvenience when the soldiers leaves home for war. He returns in a state of defiance toward death, bearing children to replace the dead and raising children to nurture the living. This is my place as well.
The God-inspired author of Ecclesiastes, standing in the train of Solomon in all of his wisdom, power, and wealth, surveys the landscape of all worldly things "under the sun" and declares them all meaningless. He uses the term hebil, from which we get the name Abel, and which conveys the idea of unbelievable chaos and brokenness. According to one Hebrew teacher, this term, both semantically and contextually, carries the weight of a curse word. It's as if the writer is saying that the world and all of its idolatrous pursuits are f-ed up. It carries that profane, savage power.
But at the end of Ecclesiastes, the author says, in essence, "Here's the bottom line--the only reasonable way to think and live in this world is to fear God and keep His commandments." Under the sun, everything is screwed up. But, with heart is submission to He who reigns over it all, the chaos is imbued with meaning and hope.
And the One who reveals that to us is Jesus Christ. He entered into a world in such a shabby state that it could only be described truly with a word of curse. In life, death, resurrection, and ascension, He drew and draws hearts and minds beyond the sun. "Seek the things that are above," God tells us through Paul, "where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God" (Col. 3). It is there that those who have been raised with Christ find that there lives are hidden with Christ in God, only to be revealed when Christ in revealed in His final glory.
My goal, each and every week, is to take soldiers--who are under no illusions about life under the sun--and exhort them to seek the things that are above and find there the Champion of their souls.
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