Clinging to Jesus in the Storms of Life

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His kingdom.

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0:00:22.7 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome to Grace at the Fray. The famous painter, Rembrandt, has a painting called “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” And my friend, Laurel Kehl, who makes an appearance in Season 1, Episode 6 of the podcast. Well, she loves this painting. And she uses it in her discipleship sessions. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, I’ll have this painting on screen. And while you’re there, hey, leave a like and a subscribe to Serge’s YouTube channel. So you’ll see all the disciples in the boat, each responding to the storm in different ways. Who can you relate to the most? The disciple who’s working really hard to pull the sail back to the mast, holding it all together with all their strength, or are you the disciple who’s holding on, looking longingly for the clear skies, waiting for the storm to pass? Are you the disciples who’s puking over the side? Are you the disciple who’s desperately clinging to Jesus, grabbing Him by the cloak in the midst of the chaos? Well, today’s episode is an invitation to cling to Jesus in the storms of life. And when we do, we discover that we become participants in the mission of Christ’s Kingdom. Participants in the calming of the storm, bringing order out of chaos, in the restoration that He brings to the world that He loves. So today, I’m taking you to Asheville, North Carolina with one of Serge’s Renewal team members, Aislinn Meyer. She and her husband Ross, recently moved off the mission field to do ministry at City Church in Asheville, where her husband Ross, is one of the pastors. And we in The Serge Renewal Team recently met in Asheville for our annual retreat and planning meetings, and we were given the opportunity to help out at her church’s distribution center that they had established in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. And you know, we didn’t do all that much on the day that we helped out. We just loaded a truck with supplies that were being sent to another town, and we organized the gymnasium. But in all of that, we met some really wonderful people. And it was an honor to share life with them for at least a few hours. And if you have doubts about whether going on the mission field will have any effect, you’re missing the point. The point is to just show up and see what God can do in your weakness. Well, afterward, Aislinn sat down with me to tell her story of what it looked like for her to cling to Jesus in the midst of leaving the mission field to find herself getting settled in a new life in Asheville, and then while she found herself speaking at a Renewal retreat, giving a talk on suffering the day before a massive storm turned her world upside down. And I know the news outlets have moved on from covering the destruction of Hurricane Helene, but Asheville is still there, and the folks are still recovering and will be rebuilding for a long time. If you’re watching on YouTube, I’ll show you some footage of some of the areas that we surveyed, but this is the remarkable thing. In the midst of this devastation, the Kingdom of God is moving forward, and people are experiencing the grace of a loving Savior, who is with them in the storm.

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0:03:44.9 Jim Lovelady: Aislinn, welcome to Grace at the Fray. Thank you so much for hanging out. Here we are in. Well, close to Asheville. We’re in Weaverville.

0:03:52.5 Aislinn Meyer: Close to Asheville.

0:03:54.0 Jim Lovelady: How far is Weaverville from Asheville? 

0:03:56.6 Aislinn Meyer: I don’t know, a mile. It’s 5 or 10 minutes on the highway.

0:04:00.7 Jim Lovelady: Okay.

0:04:00.8 Aislinn Meyer: Not far.

0:04:01.0 Jim Lovelady: It’s been beautiful here, and the trip through the mountains has been really cool. And getting to tour down in Asheville, what was it? An hour ago? Was sobering, I think it is the word for it. So yeah, here we are in Asheville-ish, where you have been living for the last year and a half, doing ministry with Ross, your husband. And I met you, I met y’all in London when you were working for Serge.

0:04:36.5 Aislinn Meyer: Right.

0:04:37.2 Jim Lovelady: What was it? It was about two years ago.

0:04:39.4 Aislinn Meyer: Yep, December 2023.

0:04:42.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:04:43.1 Aislinn Meyer: 2022. 2020.

0:04:45.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Whichever December two years ago was.

0:04:46.4 Aislinn Meyer: Two years ago. Yes. [laughter]

0:04:50.0 Jim Lovelady: And I remember walking off the train. Well, okay, so I remember losing an earbud as I stepped on to the tube. And a guy bumped me in my coat jacket, flicked my earbud, and it fell right between the train as I was making my way to your house. And I remember that you made pizza.

0:05:14.9 Aislinn Meyer: I did make pizza.

0:05:17.3 Jim Lovelady: I don’t know why I remember. It was good.

0:05:18.3 Aislinn Meyer: I remember that.

0:05:18.8 Jim Lovelady: And I remember that your kids are awesome.

0:05:21.9 Aislinn Meyer: Thanks. They are pretty cool.

0:05:23.7 Jim Lovelady: So I want to hear what things have been like for you. What I think was really cool about your story is that you did a conference. We do these “Missing Jesus conferences.” We have our Gospel Centered Life retreats, but we also have “Missing Jesus retreats.” And you spoke at one right before the hurricane came through this area. So I’ve just been curious to hear all about that.

0:05:58.4 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah.

0:05:58.6 Jim Lovelady: So ready, set, go. [laughter]

0:06:00.5 Aislinn Meyer: Great. Well, we moved to Asheville about a year ago, and we have been settling in deeply into our church community, into our kids’ school communities here, and I’ve been working with Serge on the Renewal team alongside you, and was excited to have this opportunity to share the “Missing Jesus conference.” But I chose the passage from Mark 5, Mark 5:21-42, 43, where Jesus heals the woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years and then raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead. And I chose that passage knowing that I wanted to look at suffering, and I wanted to look at Jesus with us in our suffering. But that felt really weighty to talk about, [chuckle] and it was a really hard process of me slogging through, getting to the point of having a talk to prep for people…

0:07:12.0 Jim Lovelady: Prepping for the talk was this slog? 

0:07:14.2 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah, prepping for the talk was a big slog, because I had friends and people in mind as I was prepping this talk and saying, “In their deep grief and their suffering, what is it that Jesus is really saying to them? And what does He not say?” I wanted to be really careful not to portray a happy spiritual bandaid to just put over these really hard griefs that these friends… I had in mind we’re walking through in the present. And so the way of considering who God is, who Jesus is in the midst of suffering, was really consuming my thoughts for a good two months before…

0:08:06.7 Jim Lovelady: It was two months? 

0:08:07.8 Aislinn Meyer: Uh-huh.

0:08:08.2 Jim Lovelady: A two-months slog? 

0:08:08.3 Aislinn Meyer: Uh-huh. Before I came to this point. And I was… The week of giving that talk in Raleigh, which is about four hours away from here, I was still having late nights, thinking through, “How do I want to say this? How do I want to portray this?” And the conference is on a Friday. I was leaving on Thursday. On Wednesday, I’ve heard, “Oh, there’s a storm coming through our area some time over the next few days.” I’m from Florida, and I know what you do when a storm’s coming through. You make sure you have non-perishable food. You make sure you’re stocked up on your batteries and your lanterns. So I picked up my kids from school, and we went to Walmart, said, “Let’s get a few things. I’m going out of town. I want to make sure you guys have what you need.” We have never… the longest I’ve ever lost power in Florida was three days. You eat your canned food on your camp suit in the backyards menu, about there not being AC. We never needed water and things like that. But I still am a good Florida girl and had gotten like eight gallons of water for my family and stocked up on those. But while we were coming out of the Walmart, it was this massive rainstorm. And my umbrella broke, and we could hardly see while we were driving home. And we get home and walk downstairs to check on our basement that was prone to some flooding when we had a heavy rain, and water is gushing out of the side of the walls in our basement.

0:09:50.3 Aislinn Meyer: On that Wednesday night, our basement started to flood, and I was trying to decide, “Do I go to this conference?” And then we decided, “Yeah, go to the conference.” I got a rental car. I drove to Raleigh across the state in the rain, made it there. I left my family. My husband said, “It’s going to be fine. We’ll figure it out.” The Friday morning is when the hurricane really came through here, and so I had been in touch with my family. I knew that Ross had been up all night the night before, trying to bail water out of our basement, not succeeding. But they made it through the storm all right. And their power had gone out at that point, so there wasn’t any, you can run the sump pump to the Shop-Vacs and things like that. So it was…

0:10:41.7 Jim Lovelady: Oh my goodness.

0:10:42.6 Aislinn Meyer: For him, that was the point where he’s like, “This is in God’s hands, totally and completely. There’s nothing else I can do.”

0:10:49.7 Jim Lovelady: There’s no way that I can get a bucket of water up the stairs and out the window.

0:10:52.2 Aislinn Meyer: He did try that.

0:10:53.0 Jim Lovelady: He tried for a bit? 

0:10:53.3 Aislinn Meyer: He tried for a bit, until the winds got too heavy, and neighbors’ trees were going down and stuff like that.

0:11:00.3 Jim Lovelady: Meanwhile, you’re at the hotel.

0:11:02.5 Aislinn Meyer: Right.

0:11:02.8 Jim Lovelady: With the tornado warning. I saw it.

0:11:03.6 Aislinn Meyer: That is true. Yes.

0:11:05.9 Jim Lovelady: I got the text and the picture of everybody hunkered down during the tornado warning that passed, I guess because basically, everybody showed up for the retreat.

0:11:13.8 Aislinn Meyer: Right.

0:11:14.8 Jim Lovelady: Which was fantastic. [chuckle]

0:11:18.1 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah, it was great. It was a strange experience to be sitting in that hotel stairwell waiting for this tornado warning to go through. And I think it was around that time when I stopped being able to get through to my family on a text message or a calling. And I’d known that they had made it through the worst of the storm, but I stopped being able to get through to them. I couldn’t get through to any other friends from church or anything like that. And so as we’re heading toward this evening where we’re going to be thinking about Jesus and who He is, how our need for Him is always our greatest need, and how He meets us in those places, I was really coming in already feeling that need. Patric, our teammate, shared before me. He gave a talk on that, on the need that Jesus meets, that Jesus provides. And after that, during the reflection time where we’re sitting with Jesus and praying, I had to go to the bathroom and cry. I couldn’t get through to my family, I was starting to see news reports of the devastation that had happened in Asheville in the wider area. I knew that my family was safe, but it was really unnerving not to be able to talk to them, not to be able to know how our church community was doing, how people had fared through the storm. And so in the very midst of giving this talk, I am feeling my need for Jesus’ presence with me in suffering.

0:13:14.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. How can we not miss Jesus in the midst of our suffering? Let’s talk about that. In the midst of some significant trials, some major troubles, as my friend Marc Davis would say from his study on the Book of Job. Okay, before you jump into the passage, I love… This is one of my favorite passages. My youngest daughter’s name is Talitha, and it comes from this passage. What do you think is… What do you find so unique about the Missing Jesus retreat? 

0:13:49.0 Aislinn Meyer: I think the Missing Jesus retreat is really unique because it is that. It is a retreat. It’s a space where we are coming and really looking closely at who Jesus is, what He did, not just in the past, but what He does now with and for us in the present and how these stories that we read in the Gospels shows who He is and how He’s calling us and inviting us and meeting us right now in our day-to-day lives. And so it’s not just like you’re listening to a bunch of exegetical talks, you’re listening to talks that show, “This is who Jesus is, and this is how He’s inviting you in your present circumstances to see Him afresh, to trust Him and to receive that rest and relief and refreshment that He offers you right now.” And you have time and space to do some of that reflection on prayer after you hear these things.

0:15:00.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, it’s not a conference, it’s a retreat.

0:15:01.5 Aislinn Meyer: Right.

0:15:02.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so in the middle of this retreat, you go cry in the bathroom, and then you gave your talk, and… Okay, so talk to me about the woman who bled for 12 years, Jairus’ daughter. How do I not miss those kinds of suffering, I love the way you unpacked the woman who bled for 12 years, like, “Hey, really pay attention to what that kind of suffering feels like and looks like.” And so talk about how, do you not miss Jesus in the midst of those kinds of suffering? 

0:15:42.3 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah, I think in the midst of suffering, we’re often tempted to believe that, “God either isn’t good and caring about me as an individual. Maybe He’s powerful, but He doesn’t care about me enough to stop this, or maybe He’s powerful, but I’m just some cog in His grand plan that He fits right in here so that these other things can happen. But He doesn’t care.

0:16:14.0 Jim Lovelady: “And I can grind down, and He didn’t care. He’ll just replace me with another cog.” Right.

0:16:21.2 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah. Or we know His love and His compassion, but we say, “God must not be powerful enough to do anything about this. He loves me and He cares about me, but He… I shouldn’t pray or hope that He could change these really desperately hard situations for anything good.” And I think in this passage, you get this great picture on how different voices can often be speaking those lies or questions into our hearts. We have the woman who it seems is suffering from great shame, and you have those internal and external voices of shame that really speak to this idea that, “I am not worth God’s time or His individual attention.” She believes that Jesus has power, but she does not want that individual interaction with Him. But He wants so much more for her. And so He seeks her out with compassion. He affirms her. He brings dignity to her. He gives her healing societally. He gives her healing in those places of shame, giving her dignity, calling her “daughter,” helping her be restored to this community that she’s been ostracized from because of her uncleanliness for so long. And then with Jairus and his daughter, he was so desperate for Jesus to come so quickly because his daughter was at death’s door ready to die. And he knew Jesus could do something if he got there fast enough, if he got there before she died. But Jesus delays to talk to this woman. And then he hears his friends come up to him and say, “You don’t need to bother Him any more.”

0:18:28.7 Jim Lovelady: She’s dead.”

0:18:30.1 Aislinn Meyer: “She’s dead. Don’t bother the teacher. There’s nothing else that can be done.” And then Jesus tells him, “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.” And they walk through this house where there’s all this wailing around them. The mourners are there proclaiming that she’s dead. But Jesus’ power is so much more than Jairus could imagine. His power to redeem and to heal his daughter is not limited by the timeline that Jairus imagined. His power is enough to raise her from the dead after she’s crossed over into death. I think this passage is such a beautiful picture of Jesus’ deep compassion for these individuals and how He has power in ways we could never imagine, and that in the midst of our suffering, He has desires for our hearts and He wants to do good amazing things far beyond what we can imagine in our circumstances, in our lives in our relationships with him. And he just calls us to take that next step of faith and follow after him.

0:19:47.4 Jim Lovelady: What was it you said about how… so the woman pushes through the crowd so that she could… if I could just touch his cloak. I know He has power like you said. If I could just touch his cloak. And Jesus… She touches Him and Jesus says who touches me? And the disciples once again I just love how at every step of the story the disciples seem to be missing Jesus. And they’re like Jesus dude we’re in a crowd. Everyone. What are you talking about? Why are you saying that? And what does He say about her faith? 

0:20:25.7 Aislinn Meyer: It says here, “Daughter your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed of your disease.” And it’s not that He’s saying your faith was really strong.

0:20:35.0 Jim Lovelady: That’s it.

0:20:36.9 Aislinn Meyer: That you were super courageous. You drummed up this large amount of faith and that’s what’s made you well. We see her trembling with fear here after she’s been healed. When Jesus calls her forward and she’s falling at his feet, she’s really afraid when she spills out her whole life story to him. It’s not that she’s really brave and full of faith but it’s her faith in Jesus, the one who has the power to heal her on every single level. That is what has made her well.

0:21:18.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I love that. I’ve had these thoughts where it’s like, I don’t know that my faith is very strong in this crisis of is my faith strong enough is the wrong question. And just when you were talking about that it made me just a reminder of it kind of doesn’t matter. There’s a sense of desperation that is real. It doesn’t have to be it’s not a conjuring of how strong is your faith. Just believe and you can do it and whatever. Our society seems to have these mantras that if you believe hard enough it’s like, “Well what if I don’t believe hard enough?” And the beautiful good news about this story is well just touch Him. Just touch Him and He will see you. And He already sees you. You’ll see that he sees you and He will heal you.

0:22:21.1 Aislinn Meyer: That idea of faith and going to Jesus in our desperation I don’t know where I got this image but I have this image of a Velcro wall. I guess Jesus is the Velcro wall and you know how you can in certain places.

0:22:35.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh I’ve done that.

0:22:35.1 Aislinn Meyer: Velcro. Oh you have. Amazing.

0:22:38.6 Jim Lovelady: Like a bouncy wall and you jump and you…

0:22:38.6 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah. Well perfect. You can envision this a lot better than I can but that image of I am absolutely desperate. I’m just flinging all of my desperate selves.

0:22:52.5 Jim Lovelady: I’m going to throw myself onto Jesus.

0:22:53.5 Aislinn Meyer: Onto Jesus and He holds me and He’s strong and He’s got me and his goodness and mercy and compassion are there. It’s not us who’s strong. It’s Him who’s strong and faith turning to Him in our desperation is just flinging ourselves at Him and letting Him hold us.

0:23:16.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. So you give this talk as there’s a storm outside and you already know that your life is in absolute upheaval. You don’t know the extent of which.

0:23:31.1 Aislinn Meyer: No. I would not have come if I had understood what was going to happen really.

0:23:40.1 Jim Lovelady: Well that’s part of this whole thing. This storm comes through northern… Through Western North Carolina. And Tennessee and who would’ve thought kind of thing. No one was expecting this kind of thing, but we’re filming this. How long ago was it? 

0:23:57.6 Aislinn Meyer: About a month and a half.

0:24:05.3 Jim Lovelady: Okay. And so it’s left the news. The news has moved on and we had planned to have this retreat in Asheville and a couple of days after the storm hit we didn’t have contact with you. We didn’t have contact with some of the other members of our team that are in this area. And so everyone’s just waiting to hear. I love that long text that you gave where finally you were at the bottom. Somewhere in there you said we finally have fresh water. We finally have water but we can’t drink it but we finally have water. But just your review of what was going on. So tell me some of the aftermath and your involvement with Ross, you and Ross with the church and just how did that talk prep you and your hearers because they’re in this community too for the flood, the devastation? 

0:24:58.3 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah. Well, that idea of God being good and God being powerful and God being present. Those three things I repeated to myself over and over in those first few weeks after I got back here. Even driving back to my family the next day I wasn’t sure how to get back home. Asheville had especially on that Friday of the storm it was essentially cut off all the major highways you couldn’t get through. So I found a way to get back but even just driving across the state, I felt that I just need to take this next step forward in faith. I need to just move along to this next city and then I’ll check Google maps again and see which direction…

0:25:53.1 Jim Lovelady: Oh wow.

0:25:54.2 Aislinn Meyer: I should go to see if they’ve updated road closures. And eventually someone who had gotten out that day texted me a way to go and I was able to make it home.

0:26:02.6 Jim Lovelady: Oh my gosh.

0:26:04.3 Aislinn Meyer: But couldn’t text and tell my husband why I was four hours later than I had planned to be. So he was real relieved when I got home.

0:26:14.9 Jim Lovelady: Truly.

0:26:15.0 Aislinn Meyer: Yes starting on that drive. It was this God is good and he sees me and he cares about me and my family. At that point it was God cares for my family better than I can. I can trust that they’re in his hands even though I can’t talk to them. I can trust that they’re in his hands. God is powerful and he’s present. Those ideas were really important to me and that’s kind of what my talk boiled down to for me. This is who God is in suffering. Those are hard truths to hold when you see places you love totally destroyed when you interact with people who have lost everything or who have lost loved ones. But those are the situations that Jesus was encountering people in and Mark as well people who had lost everything and he was good and he was powerful. He was present there with them.

0:27:27.7 Jim Lovelady: I’m going to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray and this week we’re praying for our teams in Singapore. Would you pray with me? Lord we pray that You would bless these folks. Give them joy in their work in Your Kingdom and the pleasure of Your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let Your grace abound in their relationships with one another with friends and family members and their children with the people that they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved. Protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness. Restore to them the joy of Your salvation and let Your Kingdom come and Your will be done in these places just as it is in Heaven. We pray in Your name. Amen. And now back to the conversation.

0:28:31.4 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah that’s what sustained me in the midst of that. We got back or I got back and I was with my family and we pretty soon started driving to check on people, made some connections.

0:28:44.4 Jim Lovelady: From the congregation? 

0:28:46.6 Aislinn Meyer: Mm-hmm.

0:28:46.7 Jim Lovelady: Okay.

0:28:50.3 Aislinn Meyer: And a couple of days in decided to meet downtown in our church office where we knew there was electricity. They hadn’t lost power in some parts of downtown.

0:29:00.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah we drove by that. So that was up on a hill.

0:29:04.7 Aislinn Meyer: I don’t know why they didn’t lose power. I think maybe the lines are underground or something like that. I’m not sure. But we met there in those downtown offices and we realized, “Okay this is the first time some of us had gathered.” We were there with… My husband’s a pastor at the church and we were there with one of the elders and his wife and we said, “Let’s get all these big post-it sticky notes and put them up on the wall and make sure we’ve accounted for everyone in the congregation.” And so we were texting and calling people and figuring out how are people? Is their house okay? What resources do they have to offer? Have they gotten out of town? So we went through that and as we’re doing that we’re starting to field offers of supplies from churches in our presbytery churches further out around the southeast. And we decided, “Okay well let’s just use this church office right here as a staging place to receive these things that are starting to come in.” And so one of our church staff members had driven down to Greenville and brought up a load or two of water bottles in his car.

0:30:11.8 Aislinn Meyer: And so we had those in the office. And then the elder’s dad had driven a Sam’s run of food and supplies from Charlotte over and we loaded those things up and we said wow we have quite a bit of stuff. Let’s make some signs and open up this church office this afternoon and offer it to people. And so that afternoon we were like, “This is what we have.”

0:30:36.2 Jim Lovelady: This is what we can do.

0:30:38.1 Aislinn Meyer: It’s not that much right now what we have here. We know later in the week we’re going to be getting some bigger deliveries from some of the churches in our presbytery further out but let’s start here. People need stuff right now. So we open the doors and that afternoon within an hour, all that food was gone. So we kind of closed up shop and said well tomorrow we can open. We can open up. We just have water. But people desperately need water right now. We went weeks without water from the tap. But over the course of that week, it was amazing to see how God provided through his people. In ways that really felt miraculous. And we would always have more than enough to offer people. That day we didn’t expect another big delivery for a couple of days but the next morning church members who had gone out of town were driving back in and loading stuff up and we ran through those supplies that morning we’re like, “I guess we don’t have any other food to offer people right now but we still have water. We can offer that to people.” And then someone unexpected would drive up with a load of stuff and we would be able to replenish it with more than we had before and be able to open doors to people again. It really felt like these loaves and fishes moments. It was amazing to see how God provided in ways we didn’t expect for the very immediate needs of our local community. It was so humbling and such a privilege to be able to receive these generous gifts that people were giving, that we did not provide, we did not pay for, but we were able to just extend and give freely to people.

0:32:44.2 Jim Lovelady: You were a conduit for blessing. So it all kind of funnels through y’all the way that you’re able to gather it all together and send it out almost immediately to the people in need. That’s wonderful. That’s what the church is.

0:33:02.2 Aislinn Meyer: Right. It felt like this picture of God’s grace just flowing freely and abundantly in. And those storehouses are not my storehouses. Those are storehouses that God has filled up. And I was able to just give that out generously and freely. Have people come in and they would say can I just have a bottle of water? And we would be able to say, “Well sure but can you take a couple of cases of water? We have so much.”

0:33:36.8 Jim Lovelady: Is that what you need? 

0:33:36.9 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah. What else do you need? We could ask people. A lot of times we were able to tell people, “We do not buy these things. People are giving these generously and they want you to have them.” And that freed up people to have it as well. And it’s just this really cool picture we talk about in ministry in ministering to people around us. We have infinite storehouses to pull from as we extend grace to other people but that doesn’t come from us. And in terms of forgiveness too we have that picture the parable of the unforgiving servant. He has been forgiven so much but he doesn’t extend that to others. And he’s condemned for that. But in this case it was these generous provisions being given and we could give it freely. I love that tangible picture of how God’s grace flows in and through us too.

0:34:35.4 Jim Lovelady: And you didn’t track where it was coming from. You weren’t conjuring it. You weren’t organizing a, “Hey everybody but this is what we need.” It was just coming in.

0:34:49.7 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah. In a lot of cases. We did have our church administrator who was… She was staying outside of the city in part so she could field all the phone calls that were coming through and she could direct people in. And people were asking what should we bring? And so we had just a shared note that we could update and say, “Okay today the most urgent needs are these things.” But we ourselves were not… We were doing that. We had no part in that. It just kind of would show up. We might get a text. There’s going to be a delivery coming in 30 minutes, can someone be there to receive it? And we would be.

0:35:24.2 Jim Lovelady: Even today when we went down there to help out it was kind of like, “Hey we’re going to be in Asheville. Is there something we can do?” And we were like, “I’m sure we can find something to do.” So if I understand correctly the distribution center that has been going for the last month and a half, they’re ready to move on because the needs… It’s not that the needs have diminished, it’s that they’ve moved to other places. So what we did was we finished packing up the last truck of supplies so that they could be sent off to another town about an hour and a half from here. And so there was something really cool about our work here is done. We just got here and we didn’t do very much but everybody else who had been there for a month and a half they’re like, “Oh our work here is done. We’re closing up shop. We’ve been doing church this way. Now we can send that stuff off to other places so that they can be the church in their area.” ‘Cause it’s vast, the damage is… It’s profound. And then here we are we close up shop here. Now let’s go back to being a house of prayer. And yeah it’s beautiful. Whenever there is a need we’re ready to meet the need physically. And then whenever we’re ready to hand that off to the next. To whoever is next ready to do that. So I don’t know it was an honor to get to do that. But I just thought it was really cool how I said, “Hey thanks for organizing this.” And you’re like, “Well it just kind of fell into place.” Everything has been over the last month and a half.

0:36:56.3 Aislinn Meyer: Yeah I think that’s right. At least it seemed that way to me. I don’t know if the people who are organizing it would say that. But yeah God has arranged things in such a way that you guys got to come and be a part of that. And my church and my Serge world are combined in that way. And that was really fun for me too.

0:37:15.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah I was delighted to get to meet those folks and hear their stories. Dana, she’s been on not sabbatical what was it? What did she call it? 

0:37:28.8 Aislinn Meyer: Furlough.

0:37:29.1 Jim Lovelady: Furlough that’s what it was. Yeah. She’s on furlough. So what better thing to do than to help out for the last month and a half. And for every box that comes in there is some logistic person making it happen but they’re just responding to the way that the Lord is offering for them and we’re just responding to the next thing and a box of diapers gets put in my hand and I put it in the truck in the game of Tetris that we’re playing to fit all that stuff. What do you think is next in terms of what your church needs and what you need and what it looks like to continue to push your way through the crowd to touch the hem of his garment.

0:38:23.2 Aislinn Meyer: I think what I was just describing of that experience, those first couple of weeks after the storm, is probably really typical of lots of people’s experience. Someone explained it to me, that after a natural disaster, there’s the first few weeks, there’s survivor’s euphoria, that you’re really thankful that you’re okay, that things weren’t worse for you. Even if you lost all your home, you’re really thankful that your family’s okay, and you are mobilized and wanting to do things. After a few weeks, three or four weeks, that adrenaline wears off and you start to, we certainly all had grief in those first few weeks. I guess I don’t want to diminish that. There was real grief in there, but now the long haul is starting to settle in. This is not just something that you get over in a couple of weeks. This has changed the literal landscape. Rivers no longer flow the way they did in some places. They’re on the other side of a road in some cases. It’s changed the literal landscape. It’s changed the economic landscape. And this real emotional impact that all of us have experienced. There’s this hard tension for someone like me where I’m really fine and my family is fine. We have minor damage in our basement.

0:40:06.9 Jim Lovelady: You still can’t drink your water though.

0:40:07.8 Aislinn Meyer: I still can’t drink our water. Well, right. I am like, we’re fine, but life is really hard in lots of ways still. Our kids were off school for an entire month. I can’t drink our water. Places we used to go to are no longer there.

0:40:30.3 Jim Lovelady: Washed away.

0:40:31.3 Aislinn Meyer: Washed away. But I know people who have lost everything. And so it’s this tension of holding the grief that’s mine, that this has impacted my community. And that’s something that we’re walking through together while recognizing that I’m okay. And then also holding this grief with and for other people who have lost everything. It’s a weird tension. It’s a weird thing to walk through. And I think we’re navigating that as a community. My experience really is like most of the population here in the Asheville area. We weathered the storm and it has significantly impacted our lives and our community, but we ourselves, we’re generally okay. So for people in my position, we’re trying to figure out, what does it mean to move forward? When do I have to be doing all the same things I was doing before? Life is a lot more normal, but all of us, our capacities feel significantly reduced. Our mental and emotional load is significantly reduced right now. And so I think we’re trying to encourage ourselves and people around us that that’s normal to be in that place right now. That we don’t need to try and rush past that and to normalize that we have communally kind of went through a traumatic event and that that impacts you in hard ways. And so kind of accepting that, is part of where we are right now.

0:42:34.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. That’s the, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” Generosity. That’s the grace at the frayed edges of life where, “Hey, it’s okay. We’ve been through a lot. Hey, it’s okay. The Lord is with us. Hey, we can be, we can have brain fog and some of us can be grieving harder than others.” And some of us can, we can be generous towards the people that weren’t affected as much as we were. And we can be generous toward the people who were affected way more significantly than we are. So there’s a heightened sense of generosity that seems like to me, like what I’m hearing. It’s a heightened sense of generosity, not just, Hey, “I want to give my stuff to the people who need stuff, but also I want to give grace to the people that it seems like need grace.” My knee jerk reaction isn’t to be like, “Let me see how much grace I can dish out today.” Especially when I’m driving down the road and I’m like, “I don’t drive down the road.” Like, “Let me see how gracious of a driver I can be toward the people around me.” That’s, I mean, just ask my wife and children, dad, slow down etcetera, etcetera. We don’t need to go into that. But just this, everyone’s antenna looking for ways to be gracious and generous toward one another seems to be heightened. And isn’t that the Kingdom of God? And so I don’t know. I find it beautiful that in the midst of devastation and like, we just drove down, what was the name of the river? 

0:44:12.6 Aislinn Meyer: Near the Swannanoa river.

0:44:12.6 Jim Lovelady: Swannanoa. We drive down the Swannanoa river and there’s debris way up in the trees because that’s where the water was. And flipped over trucks and smashed cars and houses that aren’t there. It’s just foundation and rebar just sticking up out of the ground. And a tanker train tipped over and they’re draining the, they’re burning off the oil that’s in there because that’s the only way to get rid of it. Just this apocalyptic place. And suddenly the Kingdom of God shows up in that wasteland. There’s something beautiful about the people who practice that kind of generosity. And I don’t know. I’m really glad that I’m really thankful that I got to see like Jesus sees and he has compassion and I’m trying to practice that. See and have compassion. And I appreciate you helping me see.

0:45:30.5 Aislinn Meyer: Thanks. There’s this picture that my husband and I keep coming back to this image of that kind of helps encapsulate that paradox of the utter devastation and the beauty of God working new life in the midst of this natural disaster that we just can’t explain and don’t understand. In the mountains here, just ’cause of the topography, as the winds came through on some sides of the mountain, it completely wiped out the trees on the mountain.

0:46:21.9 Jim Lovelady: Wow.

0:46:23.3 Aislinn Meyer: There’s no leaves on them. The trees are toppled over, but you get this drone footage that some people have taken that goes over these mountains. And once you cross over the bridge, it’s this amazing fall colors of the trees on that side. And that picture is really helpful for me in saying like, “Those are both true, right here in this area.” And that same mountain, they’re both true that like they, there’s incalculable loss. There’s loss that it’s really hard to fathom, but there’s profound beauty at the same time. And they’re both true. And that is hard to hold. It’s really important to hold too. And then they get a lot about Psalm 46 as well. It starts, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountain’s being moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. There’s a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high. And then it goes on and says, come behold the works of the Lord, how He’s brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.” And that Psalm, I think holds that tension really well of, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” So we’re not going to fear even though the rivers rise ’cause we know He’s here and He’s present with us. But He’s the one who has brought desolations on the earth. As it says in verse 8, but He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.

0:49:06.5 Jim Lovelady: How do you hold that? Yeah.

0:49:07.2 Aislinn Meyer: How do you hold that? And then we’re called to be still and know that He’s God and that He’s with us and He’s our fortress.

0:49:22.2 Jim Lovelady: The only way to hold that is to push your way through the crowd and grab a hold of the hem of His garment and hope for the best. Well, I don’t know what she was expecting. She’s been bleeding for 12 years and her life is full of being shunned from her community and exhausted all the time, thoroughly anemic and unhealthy and unwell, desperate. That Psalm and the juxtaposition of these things, just, it’s a nudge into that desperation and just right. Vivid. Psalm 46 is quite vivid in the context of where we are sitting today. And so it’s like, it pushes me into that place of, yeah, “What do I do with this?”

0:50:17.1 Aislinn Meyer: Right. We are so utterly out of control. And so we cling to Jesus in that point of desperation. And I think that that’s maybe, that’s maybe one of those glimpses of God’s work that I’ve been able to see in the midst of this is for our community, this has pushed all of us to this point of desperation and for people, for some people, that means they’re coming to church again for the first time in years, or even for the first time, or they’re coming to Bible studies.

0:51:05.1 Jim Lovelady: These are the people that are pushing their way through the crowd, pushing their way through the devastation, pushing their way in desperation to grab ahold of just, if I could just give me something, is there something I can hold on to? The hem of his garment is pretty powerful just the hem and let him see you and say, and call you daughter, it’s the beauty of these paradoxical things. And I do go, Jesus, I don’t know what you’re doing in these kinds of things. I don’t get it. I don’t get you. Like I said earlier, like that’s, it’s a very common prayer for me to say, Jesus, I don’t get you. And this is a great example of that. But so that’s me running to him and clinging. And he goes, he goes, “Hey, read Psalm 46.” And there’s something strangely, what is it? It’s like both comforting and jarring that happens that causes me to go back to run back to Jesus, cling to the hem of His garment. Hear Him say, hear Him call me a child of God, hear him call me beloved. And then just kind of follow Him in to whatever the next paradox is.

0:52:37.1 Aislinn Meyer: That’s something I love about that passage in Mark 5, is that Mark doesn’t paint for us like Jesus’ expression on his face or what the crowd saw when they looked at him. But I think we get a sense of that through the passage, because for both that woman and Jairus, they were at points where they were facing their very worst fears, but there’s something about Jesus, like His, I imagine it must be his compassion toward them paired with this power that they see and that they’ve heard about and that they’ve experienced. It’s like, this is the one where even though I’m facing my very worst fears, the things I would have imagined as my worst fears that they turn to him in trust and continue to follow after him and take that next step with him to see what is around that corner as they walk with Jesus into that room. And I think that that’s so beautiful that that’s the Savior that we have with us all the time. They have this momentary encounter with Jesus, but we have his presence with us all the time through His Spirit. And I so want for myself and for those around me in my community to see Him, to be enamored with Him in that way, to see His compelling nature, inviting them into this trust. Life is risky, no matter what life is really hard, whether you’re walking with Jesus or not. So here is an invitation. The one who has the power to do something with that messy brokenness and the one who can see straight into your heart and know you completely and love you still. Why not walk with him into that really difficult space and see what he might be up to.

0:55:23.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. There’s something about this Jesus. Amen.

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0:55:34.6 Jim Lovelady: God’s power is made perfect in weakness. I’m struck by this reality over and over again. And weakness is not something that you can manufacture in your attempt to live by this Bible verse. Weakness is something that you just have to have the courage to admit. And sometimes weakness is something that happens to us in ways that are so overwhelming. We just have to go with it wherever the Lord takes us. And you know, every time it’s a journey through some sort of death to self, death to expectations, death to ego, death to hopes and dreams. All so that the Lord can resurrect us to something that looks more like the resurrected Christ, something beautiful and generous where the Kingdom of God is very evidently at work, even in a desperate wasteland. That’s what’s happening in the area around Asheville. It’s the Kingdom of God at work. And Aislinn was the speaker at the Missing Jesus retreat. One of the numerous types of retreats that the Serge Renewal team offers to churches and organizations. I can’t stress enough the importance of leaving space in your life for going on retreats, especially if you’re a pastor or ministry leader. Pastors need pastors too. You need rest and refreshment. You need to be reminded that the gospel is real for you. In fact, I want to leave a link for a blog post that talks about the importance of going on retreats. Check the show notes for that. And I want to make you aware of some upcoming retreats that we will be hosting. One is in Greenville, South Carolina at the end of January, 2025. And another is in Pittsburgh. Go to serge.org/renewal for more information on those. Schedule some time to get away with your Savior. But let’s not forget the value of an entire church congregation’s participation in a weekend that reshapes their imagination around the gospel. I’ve personally seen the Lord do some amazing things in a church body, during and in the aftermath of these kinds of retreats. So if you’re a church that is looking to host a weekend retreat that enables your folks to slow down and steep themselves in the mystery of God’s grace, contact us. We’d love to come and minister to you and to your congregation. Ministry is like breathing. You breathe in the grace of God and you exhale love for others. You take in his life, his peace, his rest, and then you share it with others. And in the sharing, you discover your own need. That’s the rhythm of the Christian life. There’s a beautiful image in Zechariah 8:23 that talks about how all the nations desperate for life, desperate for grace will cling to the hem of a follower of God and say, take us with you because we’ve heard that God is with you. In other words, cling to Jesus and you will find people clinging to you and you’ll get to show them Jesus. We are blessed to be a blessing. So as you go to be a blessing to those around you, receive the blessing of God. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you, turn his bright eyes to you, and give you His peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

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