One of my favorite stories about my brother-in-law, Buck, has to do with the video game called Pokémon Go! Do you remember that craze? I actually think it’s still a thing, but back in the day I had no clue until the day or week they invaded the church parking lot! It was crazy! One summer we had like 200 cars pull into our parking lot per day! I couldn’t figure it out. These cars would pull into our parking lot and never stop at the church. It was driving me crazy! I couldn’t figure it out. And then I told my son-in-law, Devon, about it and he just laughed and said, “Dad haven’t you ever heard of Pokémon Go?!? The church must be a PokéStop! Cool!” That next Sunday Devon, a huge Pokémon Go fan himself, missed the first 10 minutes of worship because he was driving around the back of the church trying to find where the PokéStop was! I guess PokéStops are important! Who knew?
Well, my brother-in-law, Buck, was probably about as far away from being a Pokémon Go fan as you can get. Buck, who tragically died due to Covid-19 complications during the Pandemic, was all about one thing…sports! He was a player, coach, referee, fan, and much more! As his brother-in-law, I found that if I was going to relate to Buck, I had better learn his language, and so whenever I saw him, I zoomed right in on a conversation about sports, because eventually that was going to be where we were going to end up. In fact, it kind of frustrated me. He seemed so single-minded. Sports, sports, sports!!!
But my attitude about Buck all changed when I started to talk with one of his sons, Nick, before the funeral. Since I was going to be officiating at the funeral, I thought I should get a bit of the inside story about Buck from some of his friends and family members. To be honest I was a bit worried about my conversation with Nick. Nick, his youngest son, was Buck’s polar opposite! Buck loved sports. Nick wasn’t inclined to sports at all! He wasn’t athletic. And he was no fan! In fact, I always thought that Nick kind of resented Buck’s love of sports. As I talked with Nick, he shared a bit of that resentment. He had wished his dad had maybe given up some of his sports activities to spend some more time with family. But as he was talking, Nick got a little teary eyed as he said this, “Well, you can say all you want about my dad and his love of sports, but Dad always took the time to play Pokémon Go with me! When Pokémon Go came out, I was obsessed with it. I wanted to do it all the time. And for some reason, Dad started to help me with it. Especially after he retired. He would spend hours taking me around to PokéStops in town and even beyond that!”
I was dumbfounded! Buck playing Pokémon Go? No way! I asked Nick if his dad enjoyed it. Nick shook his head, “He didn’t get it at all. I tried to explain it to him, but it just wouldn’t click. He just did it to hang out with me. He knew it meant a lot to me, and this was just a way for him to hang out with me. I knew he didn’t really like it, but in some ways, that meant even more to me. It was something he did with me, not because he liked it, but because I guess he loved me. He loved me enough to cooperate with me even when it didn’t seem to be his thing. That was pretty cool! And even though Dad didn’t really get it, we had some great times doing it. I felt the closest to Dad when we were playing Pokémon Go!”
That was pretty cool! Rev. David Orendorff in his book, “The Way of Lovingkindness” alludes to prayer in this way. “Prayer for me is an aligning of my mind, heart, soul, and strength with the Spirit…When I pray for someone’s health or situation, I don’t pray for God to come down and fix this. I pray this: ‘God, I join my love to Yours for the well-being of (said person)’…I choose in intercessory prayer to partner my spirit with God’s Spirit for the best that can be where the world suffers. I have come to believe that joining my spirit with the Spirit effects change for well-being beyond what I am able to physically accomplish. In this way I partner with God in body and spirit for the well-being of all.”
In other words, prayer is all about cooperating with God.
In many ways, Buck was bending his will to and cooperating with Nick’s will. In many ways, Buck was praying with his son. In many ways, God was using Pokémon Go to better the kin-dom of God! Now that’s way cool!
May God continue to teach us all how to cooperate with the Spirit and make this world a better place! May God continue to teach us how to pray!
Your friend and pastor, now glad that our church was a part of the Pokémon Go prayer craze, Brook
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