When Your Conscience Catches Up

Dear Friends,

This Lord’s day we will wrap up our sermon series entitled “Core Values for a Life that Really Matters”.  Our last Core Value is Integrity.

During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Selena Roberts wrote in the New York Times of a heated controversy that threatened the integrity of the games:

About 10 yards past a security checkpoint along the path of a cinder-block hall inside the Salt Lake Ice Center, a panel of nine judges filtered into a room for a standard post-competition meeting last Tuesday morning. Twelve hours removed from the controversial moment when gold medallions were draped over Russia’s Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze instead of Canada’s Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, the judges assembled for a review of the decision under Ron Pfenning, the head referee.

At first, it was business as usual as the judges sat around a table, pouring over marks for several skaters, according to two high-ranking figure skating officials who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity.  Then the meeting took a bizarre turn. Pfenning, known as a gentle and meticulous caretaker of skating, handed each judge a piece of paper with a passage about honesty and integrity, officials said.  As each person passed back the pieces of paper, the judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne began to sob, officials said.

“It was a rambling avalanche of words,” Pfenning said when reached by telephone. “I hadn’t asked her a question. She had been teary-eyed through a lot of the meeting. It was an outburst: ‘You don’t understand. You don’t understand. We’re under an awful lot of pressure. My federations, my president Didier, I had to put the Russians first.’  Didier Gailhaguet is the president of the French Figure Skating Federation. Pfenning said that when Le Gougne called out Gailhaguet’s name, he knew he had to report the incident to the International Skating Union. “I never gave it a second thought,” Pfenning said.

For several minutes, the wail from Le Gougne grew so loud, one official said, that a person in the room stripped tape over the crack in the door in an apparent soundproofing effort.  The two high-ranking skating officials said no one embraced Le Gougne, the stylish 40-year-old Frenchwoman, as she cried out. Many of the judges, officials said, saw her as a pathetic figure. They already knew why Le Gougne was distraught, they said: her conscience had caught up to her.

What do we do when our conscience catches up with us?  How does a commitment to Integrity of heart and life save us from disastrous relationship crises?  This is our focus for this Sunday!

On another note altogether, many of you have taken a keen interest in the earthquake tragedy in Haiti.  We have raised (and sent) over $3,400 to help with the relief efforts.  Thank you for caring.  Here is a letter to the Grace Covenant Mission Agency sent by one of their pastors, who lives in Haiti and head up the work there.  The Hernandez family serves with Grace Covenant in Paraguay, so they are our connection in Haiti.  I am printing the letter as is, with grammatical errors and all:

Greetings today in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus-Christ!
There is no way to explain what is happening right now in Haiti. We can
resume all in one word: If the Lord is not the author of what we have seen,
God has a reason for it to happen. Since January 12, the number of
Christians is increasing. Here in Mont-Rouis, during the fasting days (3
days) 590 people have come to the Lord. 95% are young people. The church of
God where I used to attend is too little to receive the Christians. Pastor
Meres, in Lanzac was asking me for help to buy more chairs or banches
because there is not enough room for the people. We had this event in every
village in Haiti.
Our churches are doing good. The ministers are doing good, too. Pastor Oseme
was the only victim during these days. He was in PAP, a block fell on his
knee, it was not too bad. But, he was later kidnapped and had to pay a
ransom of 1,500.00US. I lent him some money, other people lent him to
re-emburse the money he lent.
I will try to send some pictures of people we were and are helping now. We
were helping people to go to the hospital, medicines. Milk for the little
children etc. We want to thank everyone who has contribute to send an
offering to help our Haitian brothers in their circumstances.
You could not hear from me since there was no signal on Haitel to use the internet.  Try to write more next time, God bless.   Raquens Turenne.

The takeaway is that God can use even disasters and tragedies to bring more people into his forever family.  Every pain has a purpose, and every ruin is redeemable.  

I hope to see you Sunday!  

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John