A while back I made the mistake of asking an acquaintance of mine a seemingly harmless question about how her weekend had gone, and the rather lengthy conversation that followed went a little something like this:
“I went on a two-day retreat for our church,” she said. “It’s an annual thing, and this time, there were over 200 people in attendance.”
“Wow,” I said, “that’s a lot of people. I didn’t know you belonged to such a big church.”
“Well, I don’t.” she said. “We only sent three people from our church and most of the other attendees were from out-of-state churches that are affiliated with ours. Have you ever gone on a church retreat?”
“Actually,” I said, “I went on quite a few of them back in my early 20s. They were organized by a church I belonged to up in Oregon, which was where I was living at the time, and most of them ended up in a big barn after a lengthy hayride. And after all the speakers had done their thing, they usually held a dance, and they were always a lot of fun. And if you had more than 200 people at your retreat, you must have had a really good time.”
“Well,” she said, “I wish I could say that I did, but that would be lying, and I try very hard not to lie.”
“Really?” I asked, “what was the problem? Did the speakers talk too long?”
“No, it wasn’t anything like that. In fact, the religious part of the retreat went fine, with the spirit moving lots of people to speak wonderfully. And to tell you the truth, I’m a little ashamed that I let a bunch of little stuff ruin the whole thing for me.”
“Little stuff?” I asked with interest. “Like what?”
“Well, to begin with, the retreat was held at a hotel I would never stay in if I was traveling. It was a one-star hotel, or maybe a two at the very best. There were at least some renovations going on, but that just made things more difficult for the guests, especially since there were only two elevators and one of them was usually set aside for the workers. In other words, I spent a lot of my time going up and down the stairs to my room on the 7th floor and my bad knee hasn’t stopped hurting since I got home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Worst of all,” she continued, “was that the big celebration room had very poor air conditioning, and it was so hot and stuffy when all 200 of us were in there trying to breathe the same air that even a couple of ceiling fans didn’t help. One poor lady fainted dead away on the first day and an ambulance had to be called. And then the next day the ambulance was back again trying to help a poor man whose asthma had gotten really bad. They finally brought in four big floor fans and that seemed to help a little. As for me, it was usually so hot in that room that I kept dozing off and I tried everything I could to stay awake, including drinking so much coffee that I could hardly sleep at night.”
“Wow, that does sound like a pretty bad place to be holding a big retreat,” I said, trying to be sympathetic.
“Oh,” she continued, “I’m just getting started! On Saturday the one elevator that most everybody was using starting acting very strange. The doors kept opening and closing for no particularly good reason and it wasn’t long before a bunch of people were trapped inside it. It took fifteen minutes to rescue them and if you’ve ever been trapped inside an elevator that doesn’t want to go anywhere, you know how terrifying that can be.”
I nodded my head yes.
“And the hotel service was just awful! I shared a room with the two other women from my church, but I quickly learned after taking a shower that there were only two towels in the bathroom, and both had already been used by my roommates. Now have you ever tried to take a shower without a towel?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well,” she continued, “dripping wet, I called housekeeping several times, but no one would pick up the phone. And no one answered at the front desk, either. So, I finally had to put on some clothes, go downstairs and yell at this poor guy that we needed more than two towels in room 703! In addition to that, the food was almost beyond belief, and it was the first time in my life that the salad actually looked more appealing than the main course. Worst of all, during breakfast on Sunday morning the server for some unknown reason placed a bowl of soy sauce and a bowl of maple syrup side-by-side. Neither one of the bowls was labeled so I just assumed they were both the same thing – maple syrup – and ended up pouring soy sauce all over my waffles. And before I figured out what had happened, I had taken a big bite out of one of them. Do you have any idea what waffles with soy sauce on them taste like?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Well,” she said, “let’s just say that it immediately induces the gag reflex.”
“You know,” I finally said, quite proud of myself for having not laughed even once during our whole conversation, “maybe your less-than -comfortable retreat was just God’s way of making you suffer a little bit?”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked with interest.
“Well,” I said, “I was once told by a man that I really trust when it comes to matters of religion that the more suffering we do in this life, the more Christ-like we become, and I imagine that applies in one sense or another to everyone, from a person who survives the retreat-from-hell right up to what Christ had to do on the cross.”
“Well,” she said after quite a bit of seemingly serious reflection, “your God and my God must be two very different fellows, because my God isn’t into making people shower without a towel, walk endlessly up and down seven flights of stairs, or eat waffles with soy sauce poured all over them!”