When they unveiled The Great American Roller Coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, it was the roller coaster everybody wanted to ride. It had the longest and steepest first hill on any roller coaster of its time. I was a teenager back then. And I’ll never forget the first time I took my first ride on The Great American Roller Coaster.
I like roller coasters, generally. There’s something about speed and unexpected forces I find intriguing. The Great American Roller Coaster was supposed to have it all, and within just the first 200 hundred feet at that.
I sat in the first car and the second seat. “Put your hands up in the air,” my friends said, even though the warning signs on the platform and the car all said the same thing: “Keep your hands in the car at all times.” You know, they put those signs up for a reason, people!
I’ve learned two things about riding roller coasters. If you’re going to disregard the safety signs and reach for the sky, put your hands up before you crest the first hill, the first time you ride.
After you top the first hill, and the chain that pulled you up there releases you to the relentless mercy of gravity and grace, if your hands are not already up, they are not going to leave the safety bar you are holding on to. A whole lot of other things might come up, but your hands won’t.
The second thing I’ve learned about riding roller coasters is this. It’s never the same the second time, because now you know. Today’s experience shapes tomorrow’s responses. I never put my hands up the first time I ride a roller coaster because I hate that feeling of slipping out of the seat and being totally at the whim of the designer.
I almost always ride the second time with my hands up because now I know. It’s always easier to sit back and enjoy the ride when the uncertainty is gone.
I never knew how close God could be in a crisis until I went through one the first time. Now I know. Just before Thanksgiving my wife, Linda, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Yesterday (I’m writing this on the Tuesday before the paper is published on Saturday) she had surgery. I brought her home a few minutes ago. First there was one tumor, then she had additional diagnostic tests that said there might be four tumors. Then we had to wait while we found out there was only one tumor. Now, after surgery, we are waiting again for a final pathology report (which we should have on Thursday) that will tell us whether she has to go back for more surgery or move on to radiation.
It’s a life roller coaster of ups, downs, fits and starts, twists and turns and sitting still waiting to see what’s going to happen next.
Yesterday, while she was in surgery, I went to the Lakewinds Cafeteria at Miller- Dwan for lunch.
I got a bowl of soup and was sitting at the table when I felt the first hill in my stomach. Up to that point it was all uphill, pulled by the chain of medical diagnostic process. When they wheeled her away, she was sitting in the front of the train of cars headed over the crest of the hill. When I sat down to lunch, my end of the car went over.
But it was only for a moment, only a quick wash of dread, because this was not the first crisis God has carried me through. There have been others in my life, other opportunities, other challenges to faith where I’ve come to hold in my heart that verse in Isaiah where it says, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).
I feel bad for people who have to experience every life crisis as if it’s their first time on the ride.
There is a place of peace, a place where uncertainty does not disturb despite current conditions.
That place is sure in the love of God in Jesus Christ, who himself has passed through the greatest crisis of all, death. He lives. And because He lives, for those who believe, no crisis holds eternal threat.
That’s the Good News.
Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
Leave a Reply