bomb shelter

On Monday another high school student committed suicide on the train tracks in Palo Alto. This is the fourth suicide in 6 months. One of my friends is on a county commission that reviews all of the deaths of people under the age of 18. He told a group of us (mostly pastors) at a meeting today that the usual explanation of academic pressure isn’t the primary culprit in these suicides.

Another in the group who is a psychotherapist described the mental calculus of someone who’s suicidal. The situation the person is experiencing becomes so painful, death becomes a logical way out. Another contributing factor is isolation: there’s no one to provide a reality check. And it’s scary how inept our contemporary society is at providing us with skills for nurturing relationships. We teach people how to make a living, but not how to make a life.

This was highlighted by one of our group who is an Armenian pastor from Lebanon. He was surprised at how isolated we are in America. He told us that during the nearly 20 years of civil war in Lebanon bombings were a regular occurrence. People would immediately seek shelter in whatever basement was available. As a pastor, he would often invite people to kneel together, hold hands and pray. The group would contain people who were Muslim and Christian and non-religious, but in that basement it didn’t matter who you said you were on the outside. No one refused to kneel or hold hands, no one took sides, everyone was concerned about the same thing: survival.

For someone in isolation, inner turmoil can become an overwhelming source of pain. But when that pain is experienced together, when you’re able to hold hands with someone, when you’re able to voice aloud your concerns in prayer, there is healing and hope. It doesn’t make the danger of the situation go away, but it gives you the empowering to you need to face the terror.

It occurred to me that that’s what it means to be in a growth group. All of us are under attack from the daily pressures of life and forces beyond our control. There is a war raging that is threatening my very soul. Where do i go for safety? Where do i go to drop my facade, where i can simply hold hands and pray and make it through to another day? Where is my bomb shelter?

Let us not give up meeting together… but let us encourage one another. Hebrews 10:25