All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

Jesus told us that “unless [we] become like little children, [we] will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, NIV). At a minimum it would seem that means that, when children start reflecting to us the way they see all of God’s creation, we adults should stop whatever we’re doing and listen carefully. If I understand Jesus correctly, he is telling us that through the voices of the most innocent and undefiled among us there may be a word of eternal hope and life coming our way. Are you listening?

Eight-year-old Ben Coleman is our teacher this morning. Ben is the brother of nine-year-old Corrie who, back in April, was the teacher for the morning when she told of how we progress to heaven just shortly after we retire and start singing in the choir. Today, Ben takes the witness stand.

Just a couple of weeks ago, right before the children were to go on stage to perform their spring musical, another little boy inadvertently elbowed Ben in the mouth. Besides being painful, Ben was so very disappointed that the elbow also knocked one of his teeth loose. Ben screwed up his courage and sang the entire musical anyway.

When he got home, Ben stood over the bathroom sink to finish the work the elbow had only begun. As bad as the elbow had been, it did open the possibility of leaving something for the tooth fairy. Just as he worked the tooth loose, however, it fell into the sink and down the drain. Again, Ben was so very disappointed. Scott, who is not a master plumber but who is a master father, decided to see if he could rescue the tooth by removing the drain trap under the sink. In the process, he got the trap loose but not without breaking another pipe that would require calling a real and very expensive plumber. Now, both father and son were so very disappointed.

The plumber came and, while fixing the broken pipe, discovered something else askew in the plumbing that required climbing under the house to repair. While there, he discovered two leaks the Colemans didn’t know anything about. One of them was just causing a nasty puddle to build. The other leak was more ominous. It had been dripping for some time onto a gas line that runs beneath the house. The leak was just about to corrode a hole in the pipe that would have soon started causing a very dangerous gas leak.

The rest of the story involves older sister Corrie coming to Ben’s rescue. The missing tooth was never found. So, Corrie offered Ben a souvenir. It was a fossilized shark’s tooth she’d had for some time and gave it to Ben telling him that he could put that under his pillow for the tooth fairy. Ben was aghast. “I can’t put that shark’s tooth under my pillow. The tooth fairy will think I’m a vampire!” Good intentions persisted and Ben decided to use the shark’s tooth anyway. Just to be sure, he wrote a personal letter to the tooth fairy explaining all that had happened and, what started out as one disappointment after another turned into something very wonderful.

Which is the meaning of the tooth parable. Had Ben not been elbowed in the mouth and lost his tooth in the sink causing the plumber to climb under the house, well, none of us would like to think about what could have been had the gas leak not been discovered. The icing on the disappointment-turned-hope cake was that all of this created an opportunity for big sister to prove her compassion.

That is all the scripture is encouraging us to see this morning. That what can at first cause us to be so very disappointed can, if we will let the grace of God have its way, come to be seen as nothing more than a painful way hope finds its way into our lives. “We . . . boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us . . ..”

Sometimes life can be so very disappointing. Storms of adversity can blow hurricane-hard and, like the wind that sheared the streets of North Oak Cliff this past month, rip seventy-foot-high hundred-year-old multi-ton trees out of the ground like they were children’s pick-up-sticks. When the wind blows like that in your life, what keeps you rooted? If trees can grow for decades only to be torn out of the ground in seconds, what chance do we have, especially when the trees we were counting on for shade in the mid-day sun are blown away?

Cameron, my youngest son, graduated from high school last Friday night. I remember the first time I held him. The case worker at Buckner, where he was placed with us for adoption, told us that his mother had lovingly placed him there because she knew she could not give him the family he needed. The father, she said, was not in the picture. She said, “He has no father.” I looked Cameron straight in the eyes, drew him close and said, “He has a daddy now.” Was that just yesterday? Last Monday or Tuesday? I just took a nap and woke up at his high school graduation Friday night. Where did the eighteen years go? I thought of all the time I missed with him because of the divorce. In those two hours, I missed him all those years all over again.

It was a wonderful moment, his graduation, for sure. I saw him with his friends. I saw him smile more than I’ve seen him smile in a long time. I hugged him tightly again, this time reaching up to reach all of him; he’s too big to hold anymore for more than the seconds a hug will allow.

We sat down, and the music began. The speeches were mercifully brief. I wondered what my life would be like if I could go back to that moment and start all over again. Then, they called his name, “Cameron Taylor Schmucker.” The announcer mercifully pronounced it correctly. Then, in less time than it will take to finish this sentence, he walked the stage, took his diploma, smiled as he shook the principal’s hand and it was done. I felt the passing of era, right before my eyes.

When his mother and I divorced thirteen years ago, when he was only five, I made a promise to him and his brother that, until they graduated high school, I would never leave them. I turned to Nancy as Cam walked the stage and shared with her that I had just finished keeping one of the most sacred promises of my life. I felt sweet and very deep satisfaction knowing that, though the divorce nearly killed all of us, that terrible disappointment became nothing less than the opportunity for the grace of God to sustain me while a depth of character was shaped in me that will always and forever be mine.

Then, I thought of Jesus, my only hope for moments like this, when life slips through your fingers like warm Jello on its way to your new slacks. I thought of Jesus. The same Jesus Cameron professed as I baptized him in this very baptistry. I wondered where I’d be without Jesus, my only sure hope. Life is too slippery-quick to ever hold onto; we only get to kiss it gently on the cheek as it passes by. Our only hope is of the Jesus who promised that no one, not even Satan and all his demonic minions, can ever separate us from his love or his sure grasp. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father . . . is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29, NIV). We can’t hold onto life but our hope is in knowing that our life will never slip through God’s hands.

If I didn’t have Jesus I don’t what I’d do. I have so many unanswered questions about God. In some ways, I have more questions now than I ever have had.

I don’t understand the indescribable suffering of innocent children who starve to death at the rate of 40,000 a day in this world – every day, day in and day out. I don’t understand how there can be so many children no one wants, 140 millions orphans worldwide, many who have nothing to eat and sniff glue to kill the pain of hunger or who are sold into human slavery to be used as sex toys and then thrown away. Where is God when an orphan cries out in hunger or cries at the hands of his abuser?

I don’t understand how people can hate other people simply because they have a different color skin or a different accent, or because they swam across a river on over-inflated garbage bags looking for a job no one else wants in order to feed their children who might otherwise starve to death. How can we speak of them with less dignity than we do our pet dogs?

I don’t understand how it is that, after whole millennia of violent evidence to the contrary, we still believe that war will destroy evil instead of perpetuating it. I don’t understand how we so easily confuse the gospel with the American dream and call anyone who criticizes the idolatry essential to the American dream unpatriotic.

I don’t understand how armies, equipped by oil profits our gas-guzzling cars consume, rape and pillage in places like Darfur and we don’t get it, and how come God can’t send a wind to blow the guns out of men’s hands and replace them with plowshares for planting crops instead of the dead bodies of innocents.

I don’t understand how people who are confused by their sexual orientation or who are certain of a sexual orientation that confuses us are not welcome in our worship services, but those who worship at the feet of materialistic gods, hoarding millions for themselves while others are starving, or gossip unmercifully, even about other Christians, or who cheat on their taxes or lie or sleep their way to the top of the corporate ladder are welcome in those same worship services as though God doesn’t see their sins because, somewhere in their distant past, they “accepted Jesus as their personal Savior.”

I don’t understand how people can think it’s OK to hoard millions of dollars for themselves as they drive by unspeakable human suffering on the way to churches where they will begrudgingly tip God during the offering and yet all but destroy their children and grandchildren by leaving them wealth they never had to work for.

I don’t understand how it is that fully half of this world’s population will be born and die never having heard the gospel and yet we tend to believe they have no hope, that God somehow created them for no other reason than to send them to an eternal hell. Then, having paid the preacher to vicariously do our evangelism for us, we go home after hearing about the eternal hell to which others are doomed, eat our roast and potatoes and take a nap before watching the game, as though the world isn’t going to the hell we want the preacher to tell us exists but which we hope really doesn’t.

I have more questions than I have answers. But, this much I know. One day, a day I can’t honestly remember, I asked Jesus to come into my heart and, just like he promised he would, when I opened the door, he came in. I didn’t believe it at first. So, I did it again. I was baptized twice and still doubted that it took, lying in bed as a little boy begging Jesus to come into my heart over and over again, just hoping I got it finally got it right enough for Jesus to take me seriously. Then, one day, Jesus said, “Why don’t you stop asking me to come in and just start following me?” One day, more recently than I can bear to tell you, I decided that’s what I’d do, follow him wherever he leads. Now, what is really beginning to be both thrilling and exciting, like a roller coaster ride out of control, is that he’s actually beginning to challenge what I believe and how I live and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to keep following him and stay the same.

Life is sometimes so very disappointing. I am so very disappointing to myself more than I am not. But, Jesus has never once, not once, ever disappointed me. Despite all of my doubts, he kept telling me over and over and over again how much he loved me, and the greatest joy of my life is that I can now tell you that, at age fifty-two, I’m actually starting to believe his love enough for me that I am actually beginning to know the joy of loving myself. I know Jesus loves me, not because I’ve always had the assurance of his answers in the midst of unspeakable confusion, but I’ve always had the absolute confident assurance of his presence. His love keeps proving itself over and over again in the form of hope. There are so many things I don’t know. This much I do know. I don’t know where I’d be without Jesus. Because, when I didn’t have any answers, I’ve never been without hope.

If you don’t have any hope this morning, I can’t give you any answers. I can tell you where I found hope. I can and will ask you to trust Jesus. To trust him enough to believe that, even if you have lost what you believe is the most priceless thing you’ve ever held, and you never find it again, like Ben has taught us, the journey seeking it may lead you to another life you could have never imagined. A journey from the disappointment of suffering to the endurance only faith and God’s peace make possible and then onto the character of Christ himself molding and shaping you within and then, finally, on the other side of disappointment, a hope that endures for eternity.

Sometimes, as Ben has told us, life’s greatest disappointments are just the painful ways by which God opens the door to a new hope in us we might have never known.

We have so few answers. We have more hope. Sometimes, life leaves us so very disappointed. Jesus always gives hope.