Caught Red Handed

By Reverend John W. Roberts

As a reluctant and ever questioning convert, this book chronicles the life of a skeptical seeker looking to "catch God red handed!"

 

As red as Jesus' hands were on the cross, can one "catch God in the act" of doing something right?

 

From dying with empty pockets, to asking the right questions about suffering, to truly knowing "who" you are, to when a gorilla marries a turtle, here are the life changing "keys" for all people.

 

True stories from the hilarious to the serious, you will see "diving moments" that changed history in small and yet significant ways.

 

Moving from the ancedotal to Biblical, yet landing on the practical, Caught Red Handed answers one of the deepest questions of the human heart:

 

Is there a God, and if so, what is God like?

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reverend John W. Roberts
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201433482

Reverend John W. Roberts

Hope Dealer, God Prospector, Finder of God in Everyday Wonders!  Rev. John W. Roberts is a full time Teaching Pastor and Podcaster! Specializing in marriage, conflict and grief counseling, and empowering life-long transformation, John has over 28 years of experience serving in churches and counseling.  A Presidential Scholar from Southern Methodist University, John has a Masters in Divinity, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology.  He lives in Corpus Christi, Texas currently serving Grace Presbyterian Church and as "Bishop of the Beach!"

Book preview

Introduction

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.[1]

-Upton Sinclair

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God where are you? It’s a question I ask every day. I am sitting in an airport right now, working on a creative introduction for this book and I am looking for God. Airport connections, particularly ones with long layovers, can be a pain when I just want to get to my destination.  I remember traveling a million miles on summer vacations in my dad’s 1973 AMC station wagon asking what all children ask: Are we there yet? Do we ever get there wherever there may be?

Then he showed up. A stranger. A man I had never met and will never see again this side of heaven. He sat down next to me in the airport terminal and said Hello. He struck up a conversation. Does anyone do this anymore or do we all just stare at our phones?  He set the topic of the conversation. He puts down his USA Today newspaper and he starts by saying to me: Isn’t God a good God? Does this guy know who I am? I play along, Ahh, no, tell me more... He obliged.

I spent the last 30 minutes of my 2.5-hour layover listening to this fascinating older man describe his faith and how God, who he literally calls Dad, has seen him through a lot of bad and a lot of good. Ironically, he’s telling me about all the times God showed up for him, and how God always shows up, while I am typing my introduction to my book about God showing up. Come on, what are the odds?

His life and his story are beautiful, with twists and turns, but so simple in his message as he says to me these unforgettable words, like the words right out of God’s mouth, Son look for the Father every morning in the mirror and know that he is looking back at you! Wait, what did you say? Say it again, I am a bit deaf. Look for who? What are the odds of this happening? Was it a sign? A wink from God? A wonderful way to make a God connection while waiting for a connection. What do you do when writing an introduction about God showing up and then God shows up? You write it down. 

He told me to look for my Father’s handiwork within me, my life, and of course the life of others. It makes you wonder how much of God’s blood is in me and in you.  He says: Every time I look into the face of another, I see God’s masterpiece. Attention all travelers in life, God is in terminal B, number 27, talking to me....

I was born on Saturday and in church on Sunday because my mom played piano and organ for every church service I attended for my first 25 years on this planet. My dad told us, There is a sixty-percent chance God exists so get in the car and tell your mother she played good. From the moment I heard those words, I have been trying to determine if that sixty percent could ever be 100 percent. Despite this upbringing, I talked faith, but often lived like an atheist. I went to youth group because there were some cute girls going. There I found out that God can work through mixed motives! I remain a skeptical and reluctant convert at times. If I could pray a prayer that symbolized my Don Quixote like quest, here are the words of Edward J. Farrell from beams of Prayer: Spiritual Reflections.[2]  These words have been my search:

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"Oh That I might ever know

Your Presence in every face

Your pulse in every heart;

That I might ever feel

Your breath in every breeze

Your Touch in each raindrop;

That I might ever see

Your Smile in every bloom

Your Might in each Sunrise.

And, oh, please grant

That I might view Life’s beauty through Your Eyes..."

Chapter 1

I Don’t Believe In God

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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.[3]

-Helen Keller

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I don’t believe in God. That’s how she greeted me as she opened up her front door and motioned for me to walk into her house that day. She said, No offense, and I know you are a pastor, but this God stuff just doesn’t make sense. We stood there in awkward silence in her entryway, as I struggled for the right words to say back, wondering why an atheist called a pastor.

It’s like calling the cops after your house has been robbed and announcing when they show up, You cops are always too late. I don’t believe you are doing much good out there. Good luck finding the robber. Once again, you are too late to catch the criminal red handed. Ministers and cops have similar jobs: looking for clues, pointing to evidence, testifying and trials!  We both are trying to catch the guilty one, and I longed to catch God in the act of doing something right!

She had no idea of my existential struggles, of how often I asked myself: What am I doing here on this earth?  When I first began doing so many funerals, I had a strange thought: How much of my time will I spend burying people who ran out of time? She said it louder one more time as if I were in the back row of church and spiritually deaf: I don’t believe in God, but my loved ones did, so here you are! She was really putting an internal damper on those four years at Southern Methodist University getting my master’s degree in God; their title, not mine: Master of Divinity; the Master of God! How about Master in searching for the Master? Aren’t we all in the end, seekers of this God our hearts long to find?

It was year two of my ministry. The first two years of ministry were innocuous enough, spent mostly rearranging the Associate Pastor’s office furniture. I was as green as a spring leaf in March. I got a call at the church from a lady I didn’t know. She wanted to know if I could bury her husband. It was a gun for hire type of funeral, meaning she didn’t have a church home, and she was looking for someone who knew about prayers for the dead!  She was reluctant to come to church and asked me to do what very few professions still do - make a house call. Why did she call me? There are a hundred other more experienced pastors in this town. Maybe she had and they said, No! I wondered if I was phone call one hundred and one.

I walked into the family room, shades drawn shut, and mixed in amongst the anger at the divine, whoever that was, there hung in the air a heavy scent of grief. I looked down and saw the reason. She had three urns on the coffee table. My first thought was, Geez her husband must have been a big guy. Did I mention I was verde? She explained to me: This brown urn is my husband, this blue one is my sister, Sally, and this yellow one is my Aunt Debbie. She then said a line I will never forget. The line made me feel like I was suddenly the Kmart blue light special of pastors as she said: I know we didn’t talk about this over the phone, but I was kind of hoping you could scatter my husband’s ashes at sea, along with my sister and aunt! You know, like a three for one special? That comment sure made me feel special.

Did you just say that out loud: Attention everyone, today and today only, it’s the three for one burial on aisle 7? She had lost all three in the last year. Grief is always heavy, but that’s too much weight for anyone to carry. I get it. There are some myths about God that make people miserable, and rather than believe in them, people choose not to believe, period. I went back to her opening statement and said: Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either. There are some myths about God, that if you believe in them, they will make you miserable. She looked at me with an accusatory glare and blurted out: What kind of God takes the three people I love out of my life? What kind of God gives my husband cancer?

As she asked me these piercing questions, I suddenly felt very alone. Remember Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, Tango and Cash, or Crockett and Tubbs? Famous Cop duos?  How I wished at times this ministry was like that. I need a partner when someone asks me a question like that. How does one defend God all by yourself?  Is this my job? Shouldn’t God be big enough to defend God’s self? When you lose that much, someone must be to blame right? Life is not fair; she had been dealt a deck no one wins with. We want life to be fair and it never is. Part of being an adult is dealing with this.  I shook my head yes at her question, I agree Ma’am, that is not a good God. That is an evil God! But what if everything bad in your life is not from God?

A look of consternation appeared on her face. She said, Well, that’s what everyone says, God has a plan for your life. Or He never gives you more than you can handle. Then, she said a line I never have forgotten: If only I had been weaker, then maybe God would not have given me so much to handle, right Pastor? No, no, no, I found myself blurting out. I thought: you are mixing silly things Christians say with Biblical truths! Check your sources! What a terrible myth to believe, but people do. Do you think we each have a burden scale that only God can read?

God does not do load management on each of us in terms of trials and tribulations. There’s not a suffering scale that we get measured on so we each get what we deserve.  People say, They get what they deserve. But some people get way more than anyone deserves! Burying three loved ones in a year is too much for anyone, and it’s not a load she should carry by herself. Talkative Christians had struck again; she had been sold a bill of goods from some over-reaching well meaning Christians!

It’s hard to believe in God’s providence without letting God’s arms grow too long. He doesn’t reach into everything. Sometimes God limits God’s self. Sometimes God gives us three career choices and says you decide. He cares more about who we become than what we do vocationally. Besides if God picked us up every time life knocked us down, would we ever learn how to stand?

Life and the laws of living on this side of heaven often send things our way that we never see coming. Things that will knock us down. We are all only one phone call away from our knees. Live long enough and you know this truth. Clearly Jesus believed there was an evil presence in this world that was fighting against God’s will. It’s why his number one prayer was to join God in making God’s will to be done, God’s kingdom to come. (To make up there come down here, a little bit of heaven on earth!) It’s not hard to believe in the devil, is it? No one writes a book trying to prove him guilty. But is God guilty of the devil’s work? I think not. I am trying to find out if God is guilty of love, of mercy, and of grace!

How does one define providence in the midst of cancer and death? The woman countered by saying: That’s what your people tell me Pastor! You know, everything happens to you for a reason, and your husband’s untimely demise was all part of some God’s master plan. Your people? Ever been called one of those people? I shook my head no, thinking if everything that happens to us is providence or some cosmic plan, God is a really bad event planner! I tried to reverse her snake bitten theology, with some anti-venom. I said, No, not everything that happens to you is God’s will. If that were true, Jesus would have never done any healing. As Jesus walked this earth, He changed and transformed people and their suffering. He cared not only for one’s eternal soul, but for one’s belly. He cared if someone was hungry, sick, hurting, or needed love and compassion.

Every time he encountered someone blind, sick, diseased, or dead, he brought healing and life and transformation to that person. Not one time did Jesus say, Sorry, God wanted you to be blind. Sorry God wanted you to have a bleeding problem for the rest of your life. I can’t heal you. It’s God’s plan. Sorry God wanted you to be dead Lazarus. No resurrection for you! When does Jesus ever encounter suffering and not redeem it? Never, even his own. Show me when Jesus ever told anyone suffering, This is God’s will for your life. I continued: I don’t believe God gave your husband cancer. Cancer is never from God. Cancer is the great thief. It steals people and their time from us. God is love. God is incapable of going against who he is, as love. God is healing. God is life. God is re-creation, restoration. God is not death and disease.

When you come to your end, that’s often where God begins. When you wonder if he still knows your address, that’s usually when the doorbell rings. I told her what kind of God I believed in and confessed that was the one I was also looking for: one of love, grace, mercy, and joy, not the author of disease and death.

What you believe about God is important and foundational to how you live. If you believe God wants you to kill people, it might lead you to flying planes into the World Trade Center one day or blowing up the Federal Trade Building as Timothy McVeigh wrongly believed. What if you believe that everyone is a child of God?  What if you believe that God is the Loving Father and Mother of everyone? What if you believe God says, Never kill in my name? What I believe about me, determines how I live, even if my beliefs are wrong. If I believe I am slow and clumsy, how will I act? Slow and clumsy. If I believe no one will ever love me, how will I act? Unlovable! If I believe God is the author of evil or doesn’t care much about me, why would I bother to pray? If I believe that God is out to judge and punish me, I will do my best to avoid that God. Your beliefs determine the steps of your feet!

Tired of the theology, she brought us back to the reason for the visit. She said, I know it is unusual pastor, but can you bury all three at once? Now, again, I was green, but what is the right ethical moral thing to do? Refuse or tell her no? Do I need to honor each person’s life separately and have a separate ceremony or work the three for one? Should I tell her, in the words of my Spanish professor, it’s a little bit pinche or cheap to ask for a three for one special? Probably not. This gig was only paying a C-note, or one Benjamin Franklin, 3 people for 100 bucks. Is that all a life is worth? Was she suggesting that? Nah, she is lost in a cloud and haze of grief. She is looking for someone to help her through three significant deaths in her life. I told her, You are in luck, I just happen to be running a three for one special this week."

She laughed, and I felt more at ease. We drank a gallon of coffee and discussed her loved ones, what they meant and will continue to mean to her life. She brought out the scrapbooks. We looked at pictures and she laughed and cried. Reframing one’s life after they are gone is always such a touching time for me as it speaks to the sacredness and gift of life.

As it turns out, this 3-1 funeral was quite the adventure! I was hoping the real God would stand up. Is it too much to ask? If God is truly everywhere, and in every moment, if God is really Emmanuel and with us, isn’t he coming to the funeral too?  I remember praying to God, Please show up for this funeral. Please God make yourself known to this woman. How can I get out of the way so you will show up? Turns out, God didn’t need any help.

We went out from the Corpus Christi Bay into the ocean about four miles offshore on a Navy pontoon boat! Do you know how windy it is in Corpus? I don’t care what anyone says about Chicago being The Windy City. Living in Corpus is like living inside a blow-dryer! Adding to the day’s fun, the seas were a bit high!  Have you ever been on a small boat when the seas were rough?

I was green with experience and green with sickness, so was the family. Literally, we were on the first floor and then the tenth floor, and then the third floor all in a matter of seconds. It was up and down, and a pray around type of experience. She had brought along her family. It’s August and 100 plus degrees. I’ve got a black clerical shirt on, black pants, black shoes, and a white collar to indicate I was the one who agreed to pray. I found out black is not the right color in August in full sun! There we are, all getting seasick, as the family tries to decide just the right spot for releasing their loved ones into the seas, and I am thinking, I really undercharged here!

Finally, the captain and the family landed on the holy spot, and we anchored as best we could in the windy, high seas. Now picture this: I am some twenty-five-year-old kid, in my short sleeve black shirt, black everything, soaking up the sun, sweating away and I lean over the railing of the boat. I am trying to scatter the hubby’s ashes and at the same time maintain some sort of sacredness to this whole moment. Have you ever tried to take ashes out of old urns? It’s not always fun or easy!

As it turns out, the husband was a bit bony, and things got stuck. As best as I could I pulled on the calcified bone, and right at that moment a wave dipped the boat ten floors down. There came a gust of wind, and all of a sudden, I was wearing the hubby. When I say wearing him, I mean I was covered in ash, like some sort of chimney cleaner. I had ashes stuck to my sweaty arms, grey ash all over my black pants, shoes, and even on my sweaty face. I was awestruck with ashes!

Did I mention I was green in experience? Did I mention I missed the class in seminary on what to do when you accidentally are wearing a loved one? This dispatching was harder than I thought. What do I do? Do I jump in the water and risk being swept away at sea? Do I brush him off as best as I could? Help me Lord.

I stared for what seemed like an eternity at my sweaty ashy arms and pants, saying the Star Trek prayer, Beam me up Scotty. Get me out of here! Then I brushed hubs off as best as I could and turned around to face the music and the family. They all gasped and looked in shock as they realized I was wearing hubs, dad, their loved one. It was Frank! So, I said the only thing I could think of at the time, I’ve never felt so close to him as I do now... They burst into laughter and told me it was Frank’s fault. They told me how he was a

Reviews for Caught Red Handed

[jroberts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Got me looking over my shoulder for God's love and presence.