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Here humans craft and share their personal, compelling, beautiful, sometimes difficult 17 minute story of when God got real in their life and how that experience changed them. Following their story, they consider with host Sarah Hollar how their experience continues to affect them in their relationships, their sense of self and their way in the world.
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In this episode, God came to our storyteller in a time of loss,
disorientation, and uncertainty.
God came bringing peace, security, renewed purpose, and identity.
God came through the kindness of a neighbor.
Thanks for your listen.
When God Got Real Through Kindness.
I want to begin my story with a quote from Naomi Shihab Nye's poem about kindness.
She says, Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things.
Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between regions of kindness.
Naomi Shihabnai.
In 2019, the job I loved for 11 years in a religious organization I had been
a part of for 29 years was eliminated due to downsizing.
I was 64 years old and devastated. Indeed, I felt my future dissolve in a moment,
like salt in a weakened broth.
I spent the next year applying for similar work, came close with interviews but never hired.
I left no stone unturned. I sent a resume and a cover letter to any opening
I saw for which I was remotely qualified.
Financially, I was not in a place to take early retirement and found myself
working a part-time retail job.
That year was, in Naomi Shihab-Nai's words, a desolate landscape between regions of kindness.
And yet, it gave me time and space to work through feelings of betrayal,
anger, financial fear, and the disorientation of not having a role or a title.
While I struggled with feeling God's presence in all of this,
Scripture helped to give voice to my dilemma.
This verse from Psalm 37 was particularly helpful.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Refrain from anger. Leave rage alone.
Do not fret yourself. It leads only to evil.
And this one from Isaiah 38. How can I speak, and what can I say to God? The Lord has acted.
I must endure the rest of my years in bitterness of soul.
But the Lord is over us. We live, and everything in us lives by the Spirit of the Lord.
O cure me, restore me to life. Then my bitterness will turn to well-being.
It is you who have kept my life. from the pit of nothingness.
In January of 2021, my father died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.
And my neighbor down the street dropped by with some baked goods and to offer her condolences.
And just as she was leaving, she turned and said, My daughter mentioned that
the Episcopal church she attends has a job opening.
She didn't have any details about the job, just simply that one was available.
On my way to my father's funeral, I was able to check out the church website,
and the posted position was a perfect fit for my education, gifts, and experience.
Still, I wondered if I should apply. The posting indicated experience in an
Episcopal parish was preferred, not required.
I was an Episcopalian but I had always been drawn to that tradition and often
used the Book of Common Prayer for the daily office,
as I perused the church website I recalled having been there a few years ago for a community event,
and I remember hearing Evensong coming from the nave as I walked to the lecture
hall and fantasizing about what it would be like to work there.
I applied for the position and was invited for an initial interview.
I was excited to be asked for a second interview with the rector of the parish.
And in our conversation, we discovered that we shared a history as former Southern
Baptists and that I had gone to seminary with his brother-in-law.
After a few weeks of waiting for reference checks, and I'm sure the brother-in-law
was one of them, even though not listed on my resume, I was offered the job.
I served in that parish for almost five years before retiring from full-time work in 2025 at age 70.
I'm still a member of the parish. I was confirmed shortly after starting work there.
And not only has it been a place of employment and ministry for me, it is my spiritual home.
It's also been a healing place to offer my gifts and to be able to step away
from meaningful work on my own time frame.
God got real for me in the kindness my neighbors showed during my father's death,
She knew how long I had been looking for full-time work that would utilize my gifts for ministry,
I would have never known about that job opening without her mention of it.
Out of that exchange, God made a way for me to write the final chapter of my ministry career,
and to serve in an environment that provided some healing space for the hurt
and betrayal felt in 2019.
Naomi Shihab Nye advises, Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things.
The loss of a job I loved and the loss of my father opened me to this deep experience
of kindness offered by my neighbor.
Shihab Nye goes on to say later in her poem, Before you know kindness as the
deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the
thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.
That year of sorrow, looking for another job, navigating feelings of loss,
and speaking to my sorrow in words from Scripture,
hollowed me out to know kindness as the other deepest thing inside.
In retirement, I find myself in a similar place from that 2019 layoff,
but the circumstances are of my own choosing.
I find myself asking the same questions. Who am I without a job, a title, a role?
As I navigate this threshold space of ending a full-time career and stepping
into a new beginning beyond the 40-hour work week,
I find myself wondering, what kindnesses can I offer that might make God real in someone's life?
Because, after all, it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.
So, Mona, I am meeting you today because a mutual cool friend introduced us,
via email and said, I think you two should meet.
I am grateful for her intuition and introduction and your yes to sharing your
story of when God got real.
And I am moved by your story because I think it addresses three truths.
One, that both people of faith and people who are skeptical of the active,
invested God, both have a hard time accepting the inevitability of suffering.
I think when hard, sad, painful things fall upon people of faith,
they often think, I don't understand.
I know God loves me and has the capacity to keep me well and safe and grounded.
I do my best to follow the outlined penance.
Why is this hard thing happening? And what do I do? and what can I do to remedy it?
And skeptics say, if there is a benevolent God, why does suffering seem to go on so unchecked?
And the second truth your story brought to my mind is that in our culture,
there is a sense that humans have the agency to outrun, outthink,
out good decision, loss, or grief, or suffering.
We believe that at some level, at some times, we have more control than we do.
And the third truth your story raised for me Was our,
human brains, human hearts, human souls Have a hard time surrendering to the
reality That God does not promise a life free of suffering,
God promises I know and love you best I am with you in the midst of your loss, your grief, your pain.
God says, in my time and in my way, I rescue you.
In my time and in my way, I will bring you home to the full,
firm ground of kindness.
Does any of that resonate with you?
Well that's a lot,
I mean from theodicy to the nature of human suffering that's a lot actually
it does you know as um as you were talking I was just uh.
It just raised an awareness that I think for most of my life,
and especially in my faith journey, which is interwoven with my career journey,
has been this sense of, you,
know, if I'm good enough, you know, if I check all the boxes,
if I do all the right things, if I,
you know, then it's like that, you know, I do good things, so good things should happen to me, you know.
And so when something happens beyond my control, a place that typically I will
go to is why, you know, why is this happening?
I've been a good girl. I've been a faithful Christian. I've been,
you know, I've been good at my job.
I've, you know, so I don't deserve this kind of thing, you know.
And, yeah, so for you to lift up these things really has made me think more deeply about.
That God is with us in all of the circumstances of our lives.
And that it's not so transactional to think, well, if I'm good,
good things are going to happen.
And I mean, you know, I'm an Old Testament scholar, and so I'm very familiar
with the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.
And, you know, that whole, that's a whole thread that runs through the Psalms
and through the book of Ecclesiastes, you know, that, and the wisdom writings that,
if you're good, then good things come to you. And if you're bad,
they don't. And that's just not, it's not, that's just not the way things work out.
Yes.
That's not the reality of the world.
And I'm not sure it's,
I think we misconstrue, I think we don't understand that it's also not part
of the human condition that we were, you know, that we were promised or we were expected.
To go through life without hard things befalling us.
And I think we live our, you know, it's more comfortable and our culture certainly
reinforces the idea that,
if you keep your eye on the prize, you can avoid suffering. And it's just inevitable.
No one gets out of this world without hard, sad, loss, grief,
struggles coming to them.
Right. Yeah, I agree. And I think, and so the lessons for me in those hard times.
Have been just that, you know, what are the lessons here?
And that doesn't mean that I think, because I don't think that God sends suffering,
on human beings to teach us something or whatever,
that God has this plan and kind of manipulates us like puppets or whatever.
But that there are those invitations in those difficult places of our lives,
for deepening, you know, for –.
It's kind of – it's liminal space, you know. it's um and,
it's it's um so and it's it's a place of surrender um i think um,
and and the surrender is it's like you mentioned earlier it's like we think
we have more control than we do over our lives in the circle so it's so that
place of of surrender is um uh,
it's like who am i you know in the midst of this and who am I and who will I
be beyond this and who is God for me and with me in this, you know, so, um,
Yes. Yes.
A deep, a deep question and a deep wrestling.
Right. And that's what, and human beings are capable of doing that.
You know, bees can't do that.
Human beings we are wired for that that recognition that reflection and that
wrestling i think uh that's that's a gift of being human the capacity to do that.
Um another aspect of your story was how your knowledge and affinity for scripture
was a consolation to you in this difficult time.
How you found profound and practical, practical coping, not esoteric,
theoretical, intellectualizing.
From Psalm 37, you took to heart, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.
Refrain from anger. Leave rage alone.
Do not fret yourself. It leads to only malevolence.
And from Isaiah 38, words from a human in grief and struggle,
crying out, this is how I am feeling. This is what I am experiencing.
Apparently, I must endure the rest of my years in bitterness of soul.
That future leaves me despairing.
And, and, and this is also true.
This is what I believe about the nature of God. God is present. God cares.
God is capable of changing my circumstances and or my understanding.
Can you say more about how for yourself and your work with others,
how you process scripture through loss and return to kindness?
Well, Scripture has just always been.
I guess,
it's interesting. It's like paradoxical, I guess, a voice of God to me,
but also a place for me to find my own voice.
And so the Psalms in particular are—,
to use human language to speak of all the seasons of life, whether it's seasons
of joy or seasons of pain and suffering,
seasons of God's felt absence, seasons of thanksgiving.
And so I'm just always amused that I keep this on my phone, just this running, it's in the notes app.
And so, I mean, it's like, it's, it's many, many pages because as I do daily
devotionals or read scripture, if something speaks to me often,
I will put it in that note.
And so I can just kind of scroll back through and in preparation,
you know, for this podcast, just scroll back through that section during that
time in 2019 and just was amused,
at the scriptures that I wrote down there, like the Psalm 37, because a lot of times.
It makes me laugh. Refrain from anger, leave rage alone, do not fret yourself, it leads only to evil.
And it's like, well, I just kind of needed to hear that because I was pretty
angry and pretty raging about having lost my job.
And so I chuckle sometimes at just the way, and this has just kind of always
been the case with me, that the way that Scripture will just sort of speak to
me just when I need to hear it.
And I think I kind of, to your question, I think.
I really devoted my life's work to really helping folks,
Relate to scripture in that way. I think there are a lot of people who,
especially people from marginalized communities, have had scripture used to condemn them,
or to, yeah, to condemn them or to perpetuate violence against them. And so,
it's hard then for folks like that to see Scripture as life-giving or to see
Scripture as invitational or to be able to trust Scripture for their spiritual
formation. You know, I mean, there's,
a—certainly you can study Scripture from an academic perspective,
but to really allow the text to read you, that's a big shift that requires trust. And,
so I've spent, like I said, most of my career,
really trying to open up those spaces for people to be able to read and encounter
scripture in some ways that are helpful to them and that are trustworthy. Yeah.
One of the things I,
just love about the Psalter, about the Psalms, is that there is empirical evidence,
in those writings of how God is up to the task of being present to us at our worst.
When I say that, I mean, you know, people are railing and saying,
where are you? Why did you leave me?
I can't believe you've done this to me. Shaking their fist, and God has the
capacity to stay in relationship.
And God doesn't, you know, walk away.
And God can hold that. And I think that, and gives, just seeing that gives us
permission to be our true authentic selves with God whenever, wherever we are.
And that's very encouraging, I think, because, um...
You know, we don't have that in all our relationships, right? Right.
Yeah. Yeah.
And going to Scripture doesn't have, it's, you know, for some people,
I think it feels as if it is an academic exercise.
In some ways, it may feel like it's something you have to get right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
As opposed to entering it. And I loved what you said about it's also a place for me to find my voice.
Now, that's really interesting to me. I want to think some more about that.
Yeah, yeah. Well, and as you were talking, what came up for me is that I think,
too, that sometimes people go to Scripture or,
that somehow quoting Scripture or interacting with Scripture requires a certain
level of piety, you know.
And I don't, it's, I mean, for me, Scripture has just, it's just kind of about
the nitty gritty, you know, of life and of.
Who the divine is for us. And I mean, there's certainly places that are problematic in Scripture.
And so I think you do have to do that academic work to look at,
you know, the historical context and use of translation and all those things.
Um, but you know, I, I'm not willing to that phrase, you know,
I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. I mean,
the other pieces that are problematic, uh,
but, um, there's so much more that's, that's life giving, uh,
that's this hair. Uh, yeah.
Um,
one thing I was curious about, uh, I, um,
You know, I'm of the mind that God reaches us in a variety of ways because we are,
diverse in our wiring and in our world orientation.
And I think it's lovely that, you know, you found this poem made its way to
you and really resonated with you.
And Naomi and Shalop Nye talks about loss and that we can't know kindness unless
we also know it's opposite.
It's the loss, grief, struggle. There's synonyms for loss, grief and struggle and suffering.
But I'm curious what you think some synonyms of kindness are,
in relation to your experience of God.
Well, I think, I mean, it's just like,
my neighbor, I mean, just taking the time, I mean, you know, noticing,
being present, I mean, saying something. I mean, in that particular instance,
I mean, she didn't have to come up the street to say anything.
I think a lot of people, when they find themselves in the midst of somebody
else's suffering, they don't say anything, you know, because they don't know what to say.
And so I think just to be able to risk,
being present to someone who's suffering or someone who is having difficulty,
I mean, not ignoring that. I mean, I think,
that's incarnational. You know, I think that's...
But, you know, living out a dimension of God, you know, for the other person.
And so I think,
yeah, just there are big acts of kindness, but there are also small acts of kindness.
I don't know why this story is coming to mind, but.
We were with some friends a couple of weeks ago who were in town visiting,
and we went to a winery, a wine tasting.
And the person who served us was so wonderful and just taught us all about these wines and,
gave us a little extra tastes of things. And so when we left,
I didn't realize that by the time I got home, I realized that I had not tipped that person.
I was just kind of caught up in the conversation with our friends that were
from out of town. and I felt so bad about it.
And, uh, so I just called the winery and, um, he answered the phone and I apologized
and said, I'm so sorry that, you know, um, I really, you were just such a great, uh, resource for us.
And so I want to mail you your tip.
So I went, so what's the address there and I want you to be on the lookout for it. And so I did.
And I don't know, I guess for me, that was an act of kindness.
I mean, that person, I hope that person...
We'll remember that and we'll think, you know, wow, she didn't have to do that.
I'll probably never see her again. But, you know, she took the time to apologize
and to acknowledge what happened and to make it right.
And so, I don't know. I just think those kinds of acts of kindness matter.
You know, they matter. I mean, there was another time, I can't believe these
stories are coming up, that my dentist's office called to affirm an appointment I had.
And I was having such a horrible day that day.
And I was really short with the person on the phone and said,
of course I'm coming in. I made the appointment. I will be there.
And after I got off the phone, I felt so bad about that, that I called back
and apologized. I'm sorry, I bit your head off.
But I'm just having a bad day. So I think, you know, it kind of goes back to
our conversation about scripture.
It's just like, those are moments I think of realness. You know,
I guess when God gets, when humans get real, God gets real, I guess, is what I want to say.
So the idea that came up for me as you were talking about this is.
I think it may be that our acts of kindness, big or small, are demonstrations
of what it means when, from here, from Genesis, being made in the image of God. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I appreciate that. All those little things. Your friend saying,
oh, by the way, here's this job.
Mm-hmm. Possibility. You saying, oh, my gosh, I want to treat,
my brother or sister well. I forgot to do the gracious right thing.
I'm going to send the tip.
Saying, oh, I didn't need to be that short with this person and taking the time.
Those little acts of kindness are that demonstration. We are.
This is what God wired us to be, gifted us to be. And,
we're taking that seriously. Yes. We're identifying with that.
We're living that out. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think...
It just kind of feels like kindness
has become an endangered species these days. You know, I mean, just.
The meanness that seems to be, you know, in our culture right now, or just that,
everybody gets what they deserve, you know, so you deserved this,
and that's not the case. I mean, it kind of goes back to the beginning of our
conversation about suffering.
But, and so I think it's just.
Certainly in this culture, there's just such a need for kindness that I think makes a way, yeah.
For God to act or for God to be real. you know,
it's like it's a way we can sort of co-create or co-participate you know yes yes,
well thank you thank you for your yes thank you for your story thank you for
the work you're doing and helping people engage in scripture and finding God's voice and their voice,
you're welcome thank you for the invitation absolutely well to your heart be
well thank you you too Sarah,
thank you listeners and subscribers thank you for your time attention and ponderings,
I invite your comments and reviews I also invite you to share your story of
when God got real send them along to sarah at whengodgotreal.com.
Until next time, breathe and be well.