“Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town. Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind” (Psalm 107).
Barbara Brown Taylor is an American Episcopal priest, writer, theologian and professor emeritus.
In 2014, Time magazine named her on its annual list of the 100 most influential persons in the world. Some years ago, I spoke with her on the phone, asking if I could preach one of her sermons. She consented but reminded me that my parishioners wanted to hear my words. I once traveled to Baylor University where she was to be a guest preacher at their chapel service. She tells this true story.
More than a decade ago, Barbara and her husband were exploring the dunes on Cumberland Island off the coast of southern Georgia near their home. As he was looking for washed-up shark teeth and she was looking out for sand spurs, they came upon a huge loggerhead turtle about three feet long and weighing around 350 pounds. She was barely alive, her shell almost too hot to touch.
During the night the turtle had come ashore to lay her eggs. When she finished her task, she looked around for the brightest horizon to lead her back to the sea. But she had mistaken the lights on the mainland for the sky reflected in the ocean, and she had gone the wrong way. Now her flippers were buried in the sand, and she was stuck, half-baked in the noon-day sun.
Barbara began to bury the turtle in cool sand, while her husband ran to the nearest ranger station. She writes, “An hour later the turtle was on her back with tire chains around her front legs, being dragged behind a park service Jeep back toward the ocean.” The poor turtle’s mouth was filled with sand and her head was so bent, Barbara feared her neck would break. But it didn’t.
When they got to the edge of the water, the three undid the chains, gently flipped the turtle right side up, and watched the motionless creature. Gradually the waves began to bring her back to life. After a little while as the waves lifted her up, she pushed off with her back legs, and swam back to her home in the coolness of the ocean.
Ba rba ra conc lude s: “Watching her swim slowly away after her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”
Yes, sometimes it is hard to tell. So many nightmares before we are delivered home or before our loved ones are delivered home to us. The screaming pain of childbirth. The agony of cancer treatments. Letters from a loved one at war. The despair of unemployment. The empty visitor’s parking lot of the nursing home. What more clarity can we expect than Jesus was given at Calvary?
I think of the closing lines of Francis Thompson’s poem: “That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms. Rise, clasp My hand, and come! Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?”
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