The Anatomy of a Bad Day

Scripture Readings

WWTW- Me Again…we need to fix this!

Introduction- I can’t wait to preach the sermon this will become!

We’re kind of stuck in between here a little bit this week!

Last week we wrapped up a series on Stewardship, called Taste and See

We looked at how we can be good stewards of our time, our talents, and our treasures.

And we committed to filling out pledge cards by December 3rd, right? ;)

And next week we begin the season of Advent.

We’ll be taking a look at something called the Advent Conspiracy, about how this season isn’t quiet what is being presented to us by our culture.

We’re going to take a look at what it means to worship fully, spend less, give more, and love each other in this Advent Season.

But as I was preparing my sermon schedule, that kind of left this week as a one-off sermon.

And this sermon has to do with me crying!

And a few months ago, I had a No Good Terrible Awful Bad Day.

To set the scene a little bit, as I was driving home at the end of the No Good Terrible Awful Bad Day, I wiped a few tears from my eyes and said to myself “I can’t wait to write the sermon that this day has become!”

And so, this one might be more fun than serious, so settle in.

This is the Anatomy of a Bad Day.

J’s No Good Terrible Awful Bad Day

Mowing the Lawn- The Revenge of the Yellow Jackets

Sarah and I are very proud home owners.

And I love just about everything about our house.

Except, because we live in Pittsburgh, we live on top of a hill that is roughly a 300% grade.

Which means two things:

The driveway is miserable in the winter snow.

And the front yard is an absolute miserable thing to mow.

It has turned mowing the lawn into one of my least favorite chores ever.

Which means I procrastinate.

Which means that the grass gets even taller.

Which makes the job that much harder.

So I began the No Good Terrible Awful Bad Day by mowing the lawn.

I came around front, and had worked up a very good sweat and said a few words.

And as I was weed whacking the side, I noticed a few yellow jackets buzzing near the ground.

I stumbled upon the nest, and was lucky enough to have noticed it in time to drop the weed eater and run for safety.

Side note: I legitimately wonder what my neighbors think I’m up to about 70% of the time.

So I decided you know what, they can keep the weed eater, those devilish yellow jackets.

I’m going to go mow the flatter and more pleasant (yet still overgrown) back yard.

It was back there that I stumbled upon the second yellow jackets nest.

And this time I wasn’t as lucky as the first, getting stung a good 2-3 times before I made it to cover.

At this point my inner wimp took over and said, I’m done mowing the lawn today.

My substantially braver than me wife came out later in the day and sprayed both nests.

But this did of course leave us with a mullet of a yard, where about 40% of it was mowed, and the rest was horribly overgrown.

We are the Bethel Park Clampets.

You can’t give this stuff away!

After a middle aged temper tantrum from yellow jacket stings, I proceeded to the next portion of our day.

A wonderful member of our congregation had gifted our family 4 tickets to the Steelers Preseason Game against the Bills.

Josh was 100% all in, but Julian wavered, and Sarah was all too happy to stay home with him and avoid dealing with the crowds and the heat.

This meant that we had two extra tickets to share, and so I set about finding someone to come with us.

The qualities we were looking for:

Someone I wouldn’t mind chatting with after the first team was taken off the field.

Someone who wouldn’t mind coming along for a 7 year old’s first game.

And someone who was free that evening.

I learned two things in the process of finding someone to come with Josh and I:

1) Everyone was on vacation that week.

2) Everyone of my friends takes way better vacations than I do!

My favorite was when I called one of my friends, and the ringtone sounded a little different.

When he answered, I said “You wanna go to the game with me and Josh tonight?”

He said “I’d love to, but we’re in Aruba right now.”

We are no longer friends.

I spent 3 hours trying to find someone to come to the game with us.

I literally couldn’t give this stuff away!

Eventually my friend Travis was able to join us, so we made plans to meet at the stadium, and off we went.

Traffic!

Josh and I planned to take the T down to the game.

Mistake #1: I don’t know how to read a T- Schedule.

I thought a train was coming about 3 minutes after we got to the stop by our house.

It turned out it was coming 30 minutes after we got to the stop by our house.

And I didn’t feel like sitting with a restless 7 year old for 30 minutes, and being late as a result.

So I asked Josh, and he decided we should drive.

Mistake #2: Trying to find parking on the North Shore.

I’m used to Penguin games where you can park right next to the arena about 10 minutes before the game and be ok.

This is not how things work at the Steelers games!

We sat in traffic for an additional hour right next to Heinze Field (I’ll call it nothing else, thank you very much), making waiting for the T seem like a substantially better deal.

So we wound up going back across the river, parking by gateway plaza, and then walking over to the stadium.

For those keeping track at home, that’s a lot of walking to ask of a 7 year old.

Perhaps being a bit more tired than usual had something to do with what comes next.

Afraid of Heights

We got to the stadium, met up with Travis and his buddy, and started the walk up to our seats.

Walk, yes, because the escalators weren’t working.

More walking for the tired kid.

I hadn’t given him dinner yet, so we stopped at a concession stand and grabbed some chicken tenders and fries.

Then we started our way toward our seats, climbing a whole bunch of stairs to get there.

But we had gone up the wrong stair case, a decided it’d be easier to get to our seats if we went back down and walked up the other side.

So we did all that, finally found our seats, and settled in.

We missed the first team altogether, but we were here! We made it!

I picked up a chicken tender, and turned to hand it to Josh, and saw that the little dude was straight up weeping.

He started screaming that he was scared about how high up we were.

He started crying when we had gone up the wrong stair case, but I was too caught up in what I was doing to notice.

So I leaned in and started to talk to him, we’re safe, we’re ok. Nothing’s going to happen.

And eventually he calmed down, and started eating a chicken tender.

So we watched the first series of our evening, which was of course a three and out.

The Steelers punted, and I was following the ball with my eyes, and as it made it back to Josh, I could see he was weeping again.

More fear of heights.

So I thought maybe if I got him down to the level just outside the concession stand and away from the field, I could calm him down and talk him in to watching the rest of the game.

As we were talking, we were sitting next to a older African American woman, who was like the stereotypical movie grandma type.

She leaned in while I was talking to Josh and said “Oh honey, are you afraid of the heights?”

In my mind I was thinking “Alright! Grandma to the rescue!”

Then she launched in to it. “ME TOO! I’M NEVER GOING BACK UP THOSE STAIRS AGAIN IN MY WHOLE LIFE! THIS STADIUM’S GOING TO KILL ALL OF US. NO WAY!”

Game over.

I apologized to Travis and his buddy, and started walking out of the stadium.

Luckily, a stranger caught this picture of Josh and I as we were leaving the stadium.

We then walked the whole way back across the city, back to our car, which was parked for a sum total of 1 hour, but cost me the whole game rate…and made our way home.

Josh fell asleep in the back of the car, and seeing his tear streaked cheeks, I shed a few myself as I thought:

This will make a good sermon someday.

Putting a Bad Day in its place.

We’ve all had bad days before, right?

Nothing seems to go right.

Seems like the universe is conspiring against you a little bit.

And I want to talk about bad days, but I want to make sure that we put bad days in their place.

A bad day versus a cancer diagnosis

When I think about my friends and family who have overcome, or are continuing to battle cancer, a few stings from a yellow jacket don’t really hold up, do they?

A bad day versus world hunger

When I think about how jealous I am that my friends get to take these awesome vacations, I can remember that there are as many people who look at my every day life with jealousy because I have food on the table. I’ve never starved a day in my life.

A bad day versus persecution

When I think about my brothers and sisters in Vietnam, who have been beaten for their faith in Jesus Christ, having to walk a crying child through the city at the end of a long day really doesn’t stack up, does it?

You’re allowed to have a bad day!

There’s a spectrum here.

We don’t want to treat our bad days as if they’re the worst thing in the world.

Of course they aren’t.

Of course there are others who are struggling way worse than we are on a bad day.

Of course there is lower case suffering and upper case, true to the bone, existential suffering.

And we shouldn’t confuse the two.

And yet, I don’t want to pretend that bad days don’t exist either.

We all have bad days!

You’re allowed to have a bad day!

You’re allowed to get grumpy at those kind of days where nothing seems to go your way.

You’re allowed to get upset when lots of little things conspire to wreck a day.

The question, as it is for everything we look at here together, is where does God fit in and show up in our bad days?

All Things Work Together

I think our second scripture lesson has the “Bad Day” verse in it.

Romans 8:28 “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

I want to break this down a little bit, phrase by phrase, to see what God’s up to in our bad days.

For the Good, not calling it Good.

This verse does not say that everything that happens to us is itself good.

It’s not good to be stung by yellow jackets.

It’s not good to traumatize your child in ways that will probably come up again in therapy.

It’s not good to be in a car accident.

It’s not good to get a cancer diagnosis.

It’s not good to loose a dear friend.

Those things are not themselves good.

But in Christ, they work for the good.

I have known dear friends who went to the doctor for something minor like back pain, only to discover a much deeper ailment, only to receive treatment for that ailment and have a better quality of life.

Is back pain good? No. Did it work for good? Yeah, I think it did.

I never would have become a pastor if I hadn’t failed out of music school in college.

Is failing out of music school good? No. It stunk. Did it work for the good? I think it did.

Or how about someone who said some difficult truths to you that led you to growth and healing and maturity?

Did being hurt by those words come across as good? No. But did it work for the good? You be the judge.

There is a word of caution here:

Sometimes pointing this out to someone who is in the midst of their own darkness isn’t that helpful.

Telling someone that everything will work to the good eventually has the habit of robbing us of the practice of sitting in grief with our brothers and sisters.

But for our own knowledge and edification, knowing that in some mysterious way, perhaps that we’ll never understand until the fullness of time, that all things work for the good in Christ?

That can be helpful on terrible awful no good days.

Keep our love for God at the forefront.

There are some people that will put this “for those who love God” line as a kind of gate to keep people out.

Everything will work for the good, so long as you’re in our tribe!

So long as you agree with our theology!

So long as you are part of our group.

I don’t really see it that way!

Instead of being the gate to keep people out, I see this more as the window through which we see the world.

You are much more able to see how all things work for good when you are attuned to God’s love for you.

You are much more able to keep your focus on the bright side when you pour your love out for God.

You are able to put these bad days in perspective when you see the whole story of God’s love for humanity.

I think all things will work for the good for everyone, because that’s the story that God is telling.

But I think our love for God helps us see it a bit more clearly.

God’s Purpose.

What exactly is God’s purpose?

Lots of different theologians will give lots of different answers to this question.

Here’s mine: God’s ultimate purpose is to be in loving relationship with all that God has created.

Richard Foster has said that if you read the scriptures deeply enough, one major theme presents itself from Genesis to Revelation: God wants to be with us.

God wants to be with his people Isreal in their trials.

God wanted so badly to be with us that God came as Jesus to be with us as we are.

God wants more than anything in the world to be with us for eternity, and so Christ beat death at deaths own game.

And so if all things will work together for the good according to God’s purpose, then what do relationships have to do with our bad days?

At least for me, more often than not, a bad day is a bad day because I’m unflinchingly focused on myself and my own selfish wants.

I was cranky because my friends had better vacations than me.

I was cranky because we were late to the Steeler game with the traffic.

I was cranky because my son’s fears were keeping me from watching preseason football.

This is where bad days can do a bit of damage, where our uniquely focusing on what we want can wreck our relationships with those around us.

When we’re uniquely focused on ourselves, we miss those who are around us trying to help.

We miss those who love us, and forget to return love for them.

We can say things we don’t mean and wind up hurting our most loved ones.

When we’re focused on God’s purpose, of being in relationship with God and all of creation, then we start to get a new perspective of bad days.

Because it turns out that bad days have a little bit of a super power.

Different Kinds of Tears

I wasn’t crying in the drivers seat because I had a bad day.

It turns out that this particular bad day had taken me to a place of gratitude.

I was crying because I’ve been blessed with a fantastic home, no matter how many of those evil yellow jackets think it’s their home too.

I was crying because I’ve been blessed with enough friends to fill a contact book in my phone, and each one of them shares a beautiful place in my life.

I was crying because I’ve been incredibly blessed with these young children, who trust me to look after them, and to raise them up so that they will know a few things too.

That they will know that all things will eventually work out for the good.

That they will know that God loves them deeply.

That God wants to be in relationship with them as well.

Sometimes, when you know that all things work for the good for those who love God, your no good terrible awful bad days actually lead you to a place of gratitude.

Not every tear is such a bad thing.

May you know the tears of bad days that lead you to grateful moments.

Because this is the day that the Lord has made.