Even in Australia

This past Monday, I was busy trying to shove a cardboard box into the closet when the bifold door came loose and fell on me.  Fortunately, my dad was just outside putting together a toolshed for me and I was able to holler for him to help me.  I managed to escape the falling door with only a scraped arm and bruise.

Sometime later, after my dad had tried, in a futile attempt, to put the door back into place, he turned to me and said, “When the ladies from church were over the other day blessing the house, did they bless this closet?”

“Well,” I said, “the areas around the closet.”

“Maybe you want to call them back,” my dad suggested.

I have been having some bad days recently, whether it’s closet doors falling on me or the brand new air handler in my house that won’t blow air (anyone who knows me, knows that I am cursed with never having consistently working air conditioning)—whether it’s those things, or the recent discovery that I need surgery—it’s been a rough couple of weeks.

In today’s reading from Matthew 8:28-34 we learn about someone else having a bad day.

In particular, a pig farmer who was having a really bad day.

Maybe he had a feeling it was going to be a bad day as soon as he woke up that morning.

Maybe he had this twinge in his back.

Maybe he had tossed and turned all night.

Maybe all he wanted to do was to go back to bed.

But he was a pig farmer and the pigs needed to be fed.

So he went outside, slopped the pigs and stood there for a moment watching the early morning sun.  He was still half asleep and so maybe he didn’t notice the commotion at first, but then he saw it … a stranger was passing through and the two demoniacs had left the tomb and were yelling at the stranger.

“I knew I should have stayed in bed,” the pig farmer said to himself.  This wasn’t going to end well.

The stranger and the demoniacs spoke.  The pig farmer couldn’t hear what they said, but the next he knew his pigs were going crazy, screaming.  Suddenly, they took off running to the cliff. 

“No!” the pig farmer shouted, sprinting after them.

But he was too late.

The pigs had jumped off the cliff.

They were all dead now at the bottom of the ravine.

The pig farmer sighed.  “I definitely should have stayed in bed,” he said.

I remember some years ago in a Bible study that this was what bothered my friend Lorraine about the story of Jesus and the demoniacs and the herd of pigs—she was so troubled about the pigs.  What had they done?  This was the livelihood of the farmer—now gone.  No wonder the villagers drove Jesus out.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was called “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”  I think you can guess what the book was about.

Alexander is having a very bad day.  He wakes up with gum his hair.  His sweater falls into the sink with the water running.  His siblings all find toys in their cereal boxes.  Alexander finds cereal.  Throughout the day, one thing after another goes wrong for him and periodically, Alexander makes the declaration that he would be better off in Australia.

Which now that I think about it, may explain my fascination with Australia as a child.

But at the very end of the book, when Alexander tells his mother about his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, she replies with, perhaps, some frustrating advice.  “Some days are like that,” she says, “even in Australia.”

We all have bad days.  None of us are immune.

You know how it seems that every time you go to the grocery store, you get the one bad cart?  That’s what you think, right, every time—you are the unlucky one.

But as it turns out, everyone gets the bad cart.  They’re all bad.  We’re not a victim; we’re human.

There is no immunity, no vaccination against bad days.  We all have them.

But while there may not be immunity to bad days, there is treatment—something to relieve the symptoms. 

In our other reading for today from Isaiah 4:2-6, we learn that after all the horribleness the Israelites have endured, God “will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night. Indeed over all the glory there will be a canopy. It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from the heat, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.”

God is with us.

If we look at the verses from Isaiah as a metaphor for our journey, our existence, belief in God does not mean the day won’t hot or there won’t be storms and rain—belief in God means that He will be our shade and refuge from the sun, from the storm.

He will walk with us.

He will sit with us.

He will comfort us.

So that we know we are not alone, no matter where we are—even Australia.

Amen.