PATRICK BUTLER: God Is Doing Something For You Right Now

24 July 2010

I don’t know. What I was thinking? When I became editor of ResonateNews.com, a Web-based Christian news site recenly, I was kind of wondering if it was as good as what I had, or would be missing something?

In effect I was asking if God knew what he was doing.

I was missing something all right - “big time” as they say. When I take another look at the incredible stories, honestly, I’ve been privileged to be part of recently, I can say I have been missing the big picture of my life in God, “who can open a door that no man can shut.” In short, I’ve blessed out of my socks.

Let’s recount: First, I was at the premier Pow Wow for Native North Americans who were gathering expressly to worship Jesus. Not a bad way to start my first day as the new editor of ResonateNews.com, on site, live and in color in Oklahoma.

It was one of the most amazing, historic-laden and “weighty” events I’ve ever been to. And may I say I’ve been a few conferences, committee meetings and church events billed as “the best meeting ever.”

Only 12 hours after my door pass at the other newspaper expired for good, I was standing on the main stage in Meers, Oklahoma, watching – nay – witnessing, history being made as the All Nations drum group pounded out “honor beats” to Yahweh at Camp Yeshua, in the shadow of a rising full moon in the fabulous Wichita Mountains.

I was nearly in tears as I could hear and feel the sounds of reconciliation between Native and European Americans resonating off the hills, as the men sang their hearts out to God and the women danced at stage front, in the traditional native’s dances to the native rhythms and sounds. To God be the honor and praise from all nations and tongues, I thought while standing on that stage.

And the location of this event “happened” to be near the end of the historic Trail of Tears, more than 150 years ago. The native drums beat for Jesus just 12 miles from the fort Custer was stationed in 1876. . Here now, in front of me, were the descendants of crushed, oppressed people worshiping God without bitterness, accusation or acrimony in the sounds of their songs.

“How?” I wondered. “How are they doing this?”

Sing to the Mountains organizer Jonathan Maracle, a Canadian Mohawk and founder of the band “Broken Walls” explained to me, “We can forgive what happed to us, because we have warrior hearts when it comes to forgiveness.”

Amazing. “Warrior Hearts of Forgiveness.” I have never heard anyone frame forgiveness in that fashion.

And a week later, a warrior heart of forgiveness is what I encountered in Christine Lemay, a French Canadian woman who has paid the price of pain while doing her part to reconcile with former adversaries.

Many Americans don’t know about the “Oka Crisis” near Montreal in 1990, but those in Quebec still do – vividly. The crisis escalated to deadly force when Mohawk First Nation members blocked off the main roads leading out of Montreal for 78 days. They were protesting the construction of a golf course being built over ancestral burial grounds. Francine’s brother, Marcel, a Quebec Provincial policeman was killed, the one fatality in the standoff.

Usually a “faith” story of this type might take the usual awe-inspiring avenue of Ms. Lemay forgiving the Mohawk First Nation of complicity in her brother’s death.

But Ms. Lemay did something more dramatic than that. She asked the Mohawks to forgive her, and all white citizens for the “unjust treatment Mohawks had received in the last 200 years “at our hands,” she told me.

She did this publically, in a church to some Mohawks who had come to make a presentation about getting the Bible translated in their native language. She made her unplanned apologies first, without telling them of her connection to Marcel Lemay.

When forgiveness was extended to her, she told them “I am Francine Lemay, sister of Marcel Lemay,” and the whole place broke up in tears, she said to me over the phone in her gentle French-accented English.

“How did you do this,” I asked her, quite astonished. “What gave you the strength to do such a thing?”

“Christ was my model,” she said. “How can I be angry at someone after all Jesus has done for me and forgiven me for?”

She suffered for her forgiveness she said, from those who choose to remain bitter and angry about the whole situation.

“They will have to talk to God about it one day,” she said. “I can only do what I am doing.

Later, Ms. Lemay then said she doubted that “true reconciliation” could be done without Christ. This is the story the so-called "major media" quietly bypassed.

“I don’t know, I’m not an expert,” she said. “But life is hard. Those difficulties give us an opportunity to practice what Christ has been telling us, again and again and again.”

I’ve been transformed this last month, hearing such words and meeting such people.

I used to wonder why I didn’t really have any heroes I could easily name.But now I think I have two: Ms. Lemay and Maracle. I realized that anyone who has escaped bitterness in this life is a hero of mine, because bitterness is the easy way out, the logical conclusion of living in this life without the light of the world.

And I never would have met my new heroes and been able to write their stories for you to read if I hadn’t been “set free” from the newspaper. My world has been made larger and better as a result.

What is God trying to set you free from so he can do something bigger and better in your life? He is always trying to make us in awe of something, I believe, and he is setting it up right now.

I can see more clearly now - having met Maracle and Ms. Lemay - that with the light of the world, there is hope for all people, everywhere to receive healing that awaits them in the wings, needing only a messenger to bring them the good news.

I wonder who will carry that message? Whom shall we send? Maybe the only good answer to that question is something like, “Here I am. Send me.”