Maybe that’s just the right place to introduce Kay this evening because she has been down many roads over the last several years. C.S. Lewis said that a young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere – Bibles laid open, millions of surprises…fine nets and stratagems. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.” It was one of those open books – actually a magazine – that disrupted Kay’s life as a wife, mother and cofounder of Saddleback Church. But it was just a few months after that she was diagnosed with the first of two bouts of cancer and that same year she spoke to us here at The Gathering about The Power of One. Two close calls with cancer would be enough for one life – but not for Kay’s. Five surgeries, struggles with depression, the deaths of close family members and serious health challenges of three other relatives have pressed in on her year after year. And then the death of their son Matthew two years ago. But instead of trying to run from God or battle the darkness, Kay said she learned to surrender and look for the treasures worth embracing in times of suffering. And in every impediment and obstacle Kay has used each as a platform to relieve the suffering of others – AIDS, children and orphans, the dispossessed and now the Mental Health Initiative.
A poem titled “The Real Work” by Wendell Berry is true.
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
Kay Warren’s life has been anything but smooth but, as Wendell says, it is the impeded stream that sings.
Please welcome back to The Gathering our speaker for this evening Kay Warren.