What Can I Do?

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.  Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of believers.  Galatians 6:9-10

Anyone else out there ever get stuck watching a really distressing amount of Elmo's World?  A major feature of that show revolves around Elmo checking up on his neighbor, Mr. Noodle, who is always attempting something interesting, and usually doing it wrong.  He tries to read a book, for instance, and struggles with such basics as opening the cover and holding it right-side up.  Meanwhile, Elmo and a helpful but creepy chorus of disembodied children's voices shout instructions to him.  I think the segment is meant to demonstrate to kids that we can only accomplish our goals through persistent effort, and we shouldn't give up when things are hard.  I personally worry because no one ever addresses with Elmo the impropriety of constantly spying on the neighbors.  (Also, why do Elmo's window shade and table drawer conspire to make his life difficult? Is it because they know he's a snoop? Just wondering...)
      The medium may be a furry muppet with socialization problems, but the message is familiar.  Don't give up! If at first you don't succeed,  etc. etc. This is valuable advice if the motivation for giving up is frustration. Especially for little kids, the tendency is to be aggravated by the unexpected difficulty of a task. What to do, though, when the problem is not frustration,  but weariness? Not the difficulty of a task, but it's constancy? Or even just the sheer number of things that have to be done?
       When there is a never ending mountain of work to be done and no realistic chance of finishing, that is when even the grown-ups want to quit. Even worse,  sometimes we know from our experience that doing our very best will not be enough to make the changes in the world that need to be made. We can finish  all the tasks on the list, and there will still be needs to be met, and work to be done. How do we follow the exhortation from Galatians and not become weary?
        It seems to require a little strategic giving up. When the work is overwhelming,  make peace with the realization that it will not all get done. Tell yourself,  maybe every day that you won't finish all the things you really need to get done.  Instead, ask yourself "what CAN I do?" Here in this moment, I can accomplish something,  help someone, get something started, make just a little more out of my time. It won't happen, though, if I can't let go of my list, my expectations. I have to face, not the fear of failure, but it's certainty.  This day will get away from me.  There will be a pile of unfinished something still looming over my head. So each task I undertake must be something valuable unto itself.  I have to quit thinking in terms of getting done with everything and instead work to contribute something good to the world every time I get the chance.
        The fact that I cannot clean the whole house (or the whole living room) will not stop me from picking up the legos! I will heroically save my family from painful foot injuries!  What next?  I can't reverse poverty, but I really can give something to the food bank when the grocery store has those handy coupons at the check-out.  I should have posted at least 6 blogs in the month since I started working on blogging again.  Instead, I've spent four weeks knocking this post out a few sentences at a time.  Guess what? That's still more writing than I've done in a year.  Progress! I may never make all the difference I wish to make, but I will never stop making some difference, if I persevere.  So, what CAN you do today?  Don't give up, Mr. Noodle.

Total Depravity

               You know, I’m not a 5-point Calvinist.  In fact, I’m not a Calvinist at all, but I am quickly coming to believe whole heartedly in the total depravity of humanity, mostly thanks to Facebook.  We are hopeless slaves to sin.  I’m sure someone recently posted a pithy little picture with a caption to that extent.  Just watching the speed with which people that I know to be good people, who honestly believe themselves to be trying to stand up for what they believe is right, degenerate into outright hatefulness and cruelty in public forums is enough to show me our desperate need for the grace and the cross of Christ. 

               Apart from Christ, it seems that the natural child of righteousness is animosity toward those who are less right.  Apart from Christ, it seems that being tolerant of others can lead directly to apathy regarding injustice and abuse.  Anytime we step outside the radical and glorious light of the Cross, even our best only makes everything worse.  The more we try, the more we fail.  The less we try, the more we wither.  And just to be clear, Christians are exactly no better than the rest of the world at putting into practice what Christ shows us and offers us.

               Obviously, disagreements, even passionate disagreement, is an unending condition of the human race, at least as long as we retain our powers of thought.  The problem is, we see those with whom we disagree as the enemy.  Oh, what’s that?  You don’t see anyone as your enemy?  Then why did you post that anonymous thing on facebook calling them all morons, bigots, or whatever the insult of the day is?  Maybe you don’t have facebook.  You’re not off the hook.  There are hundreds of ways, whether on the internet or in good old fashioned casual conversation, to speak cruelly of others, and we all do it sometimes.  Whether we even realize it or not, those we see as “wrong,” we treat as being evil, and if we really don’t think they’re evil, the shame on us is doubled, because then we are being rude for no reason at all.

               This is why we all need to crawl together back to the foot of the cross.  We need some sackcloth and ashes to show our repentance for the way we speak to and about one another.  We have to realize that the grace that will break us out of the cycle and stop the escalation before one more heart is broken doesn’t come from us.  Colossians chapter 1 makes this much clear:  We are God’s enemies, because of our total wrongness, until we are reconciled to Him through Christ, because of His total rightness.  This suggests three things to me:

1.      None of us is “right” enough to be accepted by God on our own, so maybe none of us is “right” enough to vilify someone else even if they are obviously wrong.

2.      The work of the cross is powerful enough to bridge the gap between our sinfulness and God’s holiness, so surely it is powerful enough that there may be reconciliation between us here on earth, all of whom are sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

3.      Did you catch that, according to scripture, the work of reconciliation started with the One who is right?  The One and only in all of reality who had an unequivocal right to judge and reject, took it upon Himself to fix what was broken because of us.

Soooo….if you’re in any way serious about imitating Christ, and you see someone who is obviously wrong and sinning and lost, you don’t get to call them names.  You don’t get to control them.  You don’t even really get to stop them.  What you get to do is lay down your life for them, in any way you can.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever heal what is wrong with all of us except for the grace of God.   How will any of us ever know just how healed and reconciled and redeemed God would make us unless we extend that grace to each other, and do so publicly, as well as privately?  I’m really tired of trying to correct the world.  I’m really tired of working to make sure that right prevails, and the evil are shamed, boycotted, and legislated against. I just want to sit, slumped and head bowed, at the foot of the Cross and ask Jesus to move in our world in a way that I cannot. I don’t care what you say about me on your facebook page.  I’m getting out of the business of fixing other people, and instead I’m just going to try to extend some grace to the broken.  The rest is in His hands, which is exactly where it has been all along.

Chainbreaker

One quick note: I composed the following blog the Monday after Easter, I just procrastinated on getting it posted.  Sorry it's not as timely or relevant as it would have been, but hopefully it's still worth a read!

Yesterday morning, the youth at church planned and led an amazing Easter sunrise service, culminating in a parade around the sanctuary to Charlie Hall’s “Chainbreaker,” complete with paper chains.  That song never, never, fails to move me to tears, which also means it causes me to think deeply about its meaning.  “You are free/you are free/drop your chains sons and daughters/come and run in liberty.”  Freedom through Christ is a common enough theme throughout Christianity, one that always stirs emotions, but what does it mean?

I felt that freedom all the more profoundly yesterday because I was not experiencing a number of other emotions that I associate with freedom.  I was tired, stressed, and for a number of reasons, a little sad.  Our congregation has been through a lot this year, and there were people that I missed yesterday.  Freedom in Christ doesn’t seem to mean freedom from pain or heartbreak, doesn’t appear to mean safety from bad things happening, and clearly is not immunity from the ability or even entirely from the desire, to sin.

So what does freedom from the power of sin mean?  Yes, it obviously means that we can be forgiven our sins and thus freed from eternal damnation, but is that the limit of freedom?  What exactly are the chains that are broken?  There’s a very subtle cycle that sin moves us into, both our desire to commit sin and the pain we experience when others sin against us, or those we love.  In the face of great pain, or the strong desire to take actions that will cause others pain, two instincts take over: the instincts to distance and devalue.  We push others away, and we tell ourselves they don’t matter.  We lessen the depths of our relationships and the strength of our commitments, as well as draining away the passion from what we used to value, and it’s pretty obvious why we do it. We don’t want others to hurt us, and we don’t want to have to care if we hurt them. We don’t want to feel how far we fall short of our values and ideals, so we set the bar lower on purpose. 

Obviously, we all do this to some extent, and this is bad, but sometimes we don’t even see how little we are left with when we follow this path.  We make ourselves so small when we allow nothing in our lives that is big enough to threaten or challenge us.  We make ourselves so small, and that tiny, tiny piece of self that is left to us becomes what we live and die for.  All our resources are turned to protecting and justifying it.  This trap of distance and devaluation is the chain that sin forges for us, the chain that holds us back from the life abundant that Christ has for us.

The hope found in the cross allows us to face our pain and our failures, to own them rather than to shrink from them, reducing ourselves thereby.  The crazy truth of God’s boundless forgiveness and ceaseless presence with us allows us to hurt without losing hope and to fail without despairing.  When this happens in our lives, we are freed from the need to turn parts of ourselves off, to make our relationships shallow, or reduce our values to lip service.  We are set free from the chain of the mediocre life.  Christ alone can halt our downward spiral into isolation, self-satisfaction, and endless quests for diversion. 

Winning the Mommy Wars

The commentators on the news this morning are at it again.  It seems that yet another study has come out revealing the astounding information that working moms struggle with guilt and stay-at-home moms struggle with feeling unfulfilled.  Really?  This is news?  ‘Cause I’m pretty sure there are also some working parents who feel unfulfilled and some stay-at-home parents who feel guilty.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of people who don’t even have kids who yet manage to feel both guilty and unfulfilled at the same time.  Has anyone considered the possibility that both of these emotions are just an unavoidable part of what it means to be human?

            In case anyone is wondering, I am both a stay-at-home and a working parent. That is to say I work part time, and largely either from home or with my daughter accompanying me to work.  This is the new thing, this working and parenting simultaneously thing.  It’s touted as the perfect compromise that means no one has to give up anything, and know what?  That turns out to be what we in the religion game like to refer to as a lie.  Working from home largely means the following for me:  It means I get to experience both the guilt over leaving my child to learn witchcraft from Dora the Explorer for hours at a time (parents of pre-schoolers, back me up.  We all know Dora’s a witch, right?) at the exact same time I experience the frustration of knowing that my work will never, ever really get done.  Guilt over the ploys I use to distract my child coincides with aggravation at how ineffective they actually are.  Everyone gets cranky, and we all need a nap. 

Know what?  I’m pretty sure that all the guilt, all the aggravation, all the moments of feeling like a failure at pretty much everything are in no way indications that anything is really wrong.  I never signed anything that said I get to be happy all the time, or have everything go my way.  The Bible says straight out in Romans 8 that frustration is part of God’s plan for the world.  That verse is right before the popular passage about nothing being able to separate us from the love of God.  I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that those two ideas are presented together, or that everyone always quotes the victorious bit at the end and glosses over the whole “aggravation is part of the plan” bit. 

So, if we accept the premise that a certain amount of headaches, doubts, and regrets go with any path we choose, what do we do, especially with regards to the challenges of turning children into functioning human beings with minimal neurosis?  Well, I look at it this way:  It takes a certain amount of time, energy, attention, and bread-winning to make and keep a home and raise a family in it.  There are many different ways to split that work up, and how each family wants to manage that is really up to them.  Maybe it takes both parents at work just to pay the bills (or maybe there’s only one parent and you do the best you can do.)  Maybe it takes a full time parent at home to attend to the business of homemaking.  Maybe you both work part time or maybe grandma moves in to help out.  All of those systems are fraught with aggravations of their own.  It doesn’t matter what set-up you come up with, you’re going to have to work a few things out, so take a deep breath, switch off all the angry voices in your head, and figure out what is the best use of everyone’s time and resources.  Just remember these two things.

1.     Domesticity matters.  Whether it’s someone’s full-time job or everyone’s part-time job, home, and all that goes with it, is terribly important.  The temptation to measure self-worth by net-worth is overwhelming, and shouts at us that if something isn’t a revenue stream, it is of minor importance.  That pressure can drown out the deeply human need for refuge.  Creating a space that is safe, welcoming, peaceful, and maybe just a little boring is important work.  It is anything but a small or limiting task.  It can absolutely take everything a person has to give, and it is an endeavor worthy of giving everything you have.  If you doubt it, just go ask anyone who never had one.  Every participant in a home has to contribute to it or it won’t work, so no matter how many hours you put in at your job this week, don’t forget that you are needed in the place where you live.

2.     Home, work, family, career, fun, sacrifice, guilt, fulfillment, it all needs to be part of a bigger picture.  There is work to be done in this world, and for whatever reason, it seems that we are more useful in groups, (families, churches, communities, offices,) than we are as individuals.  We are also more dangerous in groups, but more on that later.  Every family looks a little different, but whatever yours is like, it’s been given to you for a reason.  What is the mission God has given your family?  What contribution can you make to the lives of others?  What is that you can share because of what you are already sharing?  Servant-hood, not out of guilt but out of purpose, may be the best path to fulfillment.

Honestly

I think honesty is waaaaay overrated.  Now hang on a minute.  I’m not saying that honesty isn’t a great virtue.  I’m not saying that honesty isn’t essential to healthy interpersonal relationships.  For a Christian, honesty is non-negotiable in contrast to its opposite: deliberate deception.  I’m firmly opposed to deception, even in the little-white-lie-to-facilitate-everyone’s-good-mood capacity.  For me, the problem is that our quest for honesty has replaced our search for truth.

As valid and valuable as it is, honesty is not truth.  In John 14:6, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Truth is not contained in us, nor does it originate with us, nor does it end with us.  Truth can inhabit us, but we don’t possess it.  Truth comes from God, and is much, much bigger than anything we can be honest or deceptive about.  Honesty, on the other hand, is our best attempt to “tell the truth” about what is going on inside of us.  What do I genuinely believe, perceive, and experience? What have I done or said, and why did I say or do it?  These are the things about which we can be honest.  These are the things which we can know.  Truth is something sufficiently higher than we are that we can never know it fully, at least not while we see through this mirror, dimly.

How often do we say hurtful words or commit destructive actions in the name of honesty?  “Sometimes the truth is hard” or “at least I’m not being a hypocrite,” or “No one should have to live a lie” becomes our rallying cry, and we run off pell-mell in the direction that we “honestly” want to go.  We all do this.  I’ve done it a million times.  The problem is, no matter how deeply we believe something, it may not be the truth.  Our perceptions are limited, and Truth does not belong to us.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be honest.  Deception is a terrible trap, and lies ruin lives.  It is a good thing not to deceive.  It is a better thing to try to discern what is present or relevant in our situation that might be truer than ourselves.  Our honesty is worthless when we ourselves are deceived, and you can be totally honest and still be dead wrong.

So what’s the take away?  Should we trust ourselves?  I tend to say generally not.  At least, we shouldn’t trust in ourselves only.  In any course of action, or choice of words, no matter how small, there is room for wise council, prayer, research, counting to ten, and all kinds of other steps intended to supplement and enrich our honesty.  Sometimes we simply have to act on the best we know.  Sometimes all we have to go on is what we believe.  When that happens, the best thing we can do is to temper our actions with caution and gentleness, not being afraid to speak or act, but always remembering that someday we may know better, that we can learn from others, and that everyone makes mistakes.  At least, that’s what I honestly think.

Objects in Space

When Christ says anyone who wants to find his life must lose it, He is challenging the central, sinful tenant of every human heart from first century Palestine to modern day America.  It is the principle of self-determination and self fulfillment.  Our goal, far too often is to make ourselves happy.  If we are moral people, our goal is to be happy while causing the minimum amount of damage to others.  If we are flippin’ saints, our goal is to contribute the maximum amount to other people’s happiness. 

Rarely do we ask whether or not happiness is what we were made for.  It’s as though the planet earth were suddenly feeling frisky and adventurous and said, “See you later, sun, I’m off to explore.”  Then took off gallivanting through the galaxy, and suddenly wondered why it couldn’t hold all its stuff together properly.  According to the laws of the universe, it is impossible for any object in space to orbit around itself, and without the gravitational pull of something far larger to keep it on course, all you get is an asteroid, careening around wildly and crashing to its doom on the first surface strong enough to attract it.

We want to be self-determined, but we can’t be.  We don’t have to like it, but we are nowhere near big enough to hold ourselves in orbit.  We have to revolve around something outside of ourselves, and that Something has to be far, far larger than we are.  All of us wake up one day and realize that the choices we’ve made aren’t making us happy, and aren’t fulfilling us.  I know that I wake up that way at least twice a year.  One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows (Wicked, for any of you who don’t know me well enough to guess) sums it up great:  “Happy is what happens when all your dreams come true…isn’t it?” Nope.  Not to be a downer, but every dream that comes true, with all the joy and wonder that it brings, also brings you to the inevitable question: “What now?” If you were counting on that dream to be the end of your journey, you are out of luck, my friend. 

Happiness or fulfillment or whatever you want to call it is a tricky thing.  It is the ultimate truth represented in every fairy tale that contains the legend of a treasure that can only be found when you aren’t looking for it.  Trying to fulfill yourself will never lead to anything but frustration.  Ditto with searching for happiness.  The only way to find either one is to get busy living for something else.  The grain of wheat will never fulfill its purpose by trying to be the best darn grain of wheat it can be.  It was made to turn itself into something else, to be used up and spent in the fulfillment of its calling, and so were we.  Happiness is a frequent and pleasant by-product of surrender, and it is one of God’s greatest gifts to us, but anything that is found within us is too fleeting and flimsy a thing to be that for which we live.

Next time we ask ourselves whether or not something we are doing is making us happy, we first need to ask ourselves whether our own happiness was the point of that action.  If it turns out that we only made that choice to fulfill ourselves, we have to seriously question our expectations.  Why would we ever think that something so great and amazing as happiness or fulfillment could flow out of something as small and narrow as ourselves?

Yeah, but she's our witch

“Yeah, But She’s Our Witch:

Why the Church Should be More like Serenity”

The best t.v. show of all time, “Firefly,” centers on a small spaceship crew trying to get by in the tumultuous universe the human race has made for itself five hundred years from now.  The rag-tag band of outcasts and adventurers that crew the good ship “Serenity” are ostensibly in search of one thing: a job.  Any work you’ve got for them, they’ll do it, from hauling legal cargo and passengers to smuggling contraband and occasionally a little gun-slinging.  They need work.  They need money.  They need food for their table and fuel to keep their ship flying.  They’re a lot like most of us.  Specifically, they’re a lot like any church I’ve ever heard of.

Churches, whether we intend it or not, are goal driven.  We’re always on the look-out for that next job we need to do, trying to discover the work that God wants us to accomplish, the causes He wants us to champion.  We look to find a mission around which we can wrap our congregational identities, believing that if we do so, a sure sign will be that our doors will stay open.  Our lights will stay on.  Our staff will get paid.  We’ll be able to do even more Godly work in the world.  The cycle of blessing will continue when, and only when, we successfully execute the job God wants us to do.

What I’ve always loved about “Firefly,” though, is that over and over again, the mission gets derailed by the needs of the people trying to accomplish it.  The crew must put their work on hold to take care of their own, and sometimes others who come across their path.  Mal takes time out from pursuing a paying job to flatten a guy who insults Inara.  When Book needs a doctor, the job comes to a full stop.  Rescuing Simon and River from danger gets in the way of, well, almost every mission that comes along.  In fact, it’s relatively rare that the crew of Serenity completes their work.  They are really not great successes.  When the crew does see a tidy profit, they almost immediately hand over every cent of it to ransom Mal and Wash from captivity.  In fact, time after time, caring for one another wrecks the crew’s plans, interferes with their work, and complicates their profit.  This is why I want to live aboard “Serenity.”

In church, we know we’re supposed to love each other.  Everyone agrees to that, but when relationships get in the way of accomplishing what we think is supposed to be our “mission,” other people are off the priority list.  Once a person disagrees with us on what the church should be doing or how we ought to do church, that person becomes expendable in our minds.  Sure, if the dispute is minor enough, we might agree to disagree, but if the difference is real and vital, then we feel justified in either winning them over or cutting them loose.  They’re going to hold us back from accomplishing our God-given mission, all that work we believe we are called to do in the world.  They become, to use a very churchy term, “stumbling blocks.”  I mean, I love you and all, but if it’s a choice between you and my mission, then it’s your own fault for not getting with the program.   

The problem is, I’m harboring a growing suspicion that the relationships we develop in church, first with Christ, and then with each other, may be the only mission we are called to in this world.  What if you are supposed to be my only cause?  Knowing you might be supposed to be my only mission.  Loving you could be my only program.  When I look at the scriptures, I see the story of the good Shepherd. 99 sheep are very definitely with the program.  They’re hanging out right where they’re supposed to be, munching on the food they’ve been provided with, staying in the boundaries, obeying their Shepherd.  That’s not good enough for Him.  A shepherd’s whole job was to stay with the sheep, and that’s the one thing He “fails” to do.  The missing sheep leaves a big enough hole that He literally walks away from the rest of His responsibilities to go and restore it, prioritizing the needs of the individual, and the troublemaker at that, over the successful accomplishment of the rest of His task.   

I want to quit thinking of you as something I can dismiss when you don’t support my agenda.  I want a friend who is most present to me when I am most useless to them. In the church, as in the rest of the world, we distance ourselves from others when they become a liability. When someone is caught in failure or sin, the world builds a pyre and the church shows up with the matches.  Where, oh where, are the friends who will show up with a spaceship and some shot-guns and announce: She may be a witch, “but she’s our witch.  Now cut her the hell down.” Where are the people willing to insist that right at the moment when a person becomes worthless or dangerous is the moment when we need to scoop them back up into the fold and hold on for all we are worth?  What, besides that kind of faithfulness will ever open up our hardened, self-satisfied hearts enough for us to be changed?  What else can it truly mean to become the body of Christ on earth?  This church thing, heck this salvation thing, is kind of a crazy idea to begin with.  It shouldn’t work.  Only love, first God’s for us and then ours for each other, will keep us in the air when we ought to fall down.

If at first you don't succeed...

I’m listening to a great song, The Altar and the Door by Casting Crowns.  It talks about something that’s on my mind pretty often, namely that tenacious tendency we all have to get all fired up about making big changes in our lives, then run out of steam less than halfway to our goal.  In a Christian context, think of it as the “Last Night of Camp” effect.  In a more secular context, we might think of it as the New Year’s Resolution phenomenon. 

We can’t put up with who we are or how we live for one more second.  We cry, we pray, we re-dedicate our lives, to Christ, to weight loss, to financial responsibility, the list in inexhaustible and unique to each individual.  The point is though, whatever we want to change, we have a plan.  We’re with the program.  We really mean it this time.  And then we fail.  We get distracted, life gets too hard, something happens that wasn’t part of our plan, and we give up.  Then we hate ourselves, cry some more, and start the cycle over again.  This is a bad thing, right?

Maybe, but then again maybe not.  Here’s an example from my life.  I want to lose twenty pounds.  Always.  Pretty much regardless of what I actually weigh at the time, I wish it was twenty pounds less.  I go through this cycle with weight loss over and over where I have a great diet and exercise plan, I’m super dedicated to it, I start to lose weight, then I go out and consume every French fry and potato chip in the city of Abilene.  More than once, this has frustrated me to the point that I want to quit altogether.  I decide that I’m never going to lose those twenty pounds no matter what, I’ll just go and buy some bigger clothes, and eat what makes me happy.  You know what happens then?  I gain five to ten pounds a month.

Do you see my point?  Even though it’s frustrating to never really reach my goal, even though there are set-backs and failures along my way, those re-dedications to a healthy lifestyle are apparently the only thing standing between me and constant binge eating/dangerous rates of weight gain.  Some day, I hope and pray for more progress, but in the mean time, my short-lived attempts at self-control are having an effect.  It’s not the effect I’m hoping for, but maybe it’s worthwhile anyway.  Maybe it’s worthwhile because I’m still establishing the habit of paying regular attention to the issue of my health and well-being, and making a pretty frequent effort at practicing restraint and discipline.

I think this principle may be applicable to more than just healthy living.  Maybe it’s true in any habit we want to break or establish, and true even in our dedication to Christ.  I don’t know that Christ gets as annoyed by our frequent tearful returns to the altar as we do.  Yes, He knows we’ll fail.  He knows we’ll be back to repent again in the future, but maybe He also knows what kind of mischief and mayhem we are avoiding during our “good days” for lack of a better term.  While we’re beating ourselves up for all the progress we failed to make, maybe we don’t realize how much ground we would have lost if we hadn’t tried. 

I think that if nothing else, the cross tells us that our failures are not a problem for God.  He’s already found a way to deal with my brokenness in the long run.  In the short term, maybe it’s perfectly okay that I deal with my brokenness through trial and error, trying and failing, flying and falling.  We may not be able to sustain the flight, the mountaintop, the fired-up-good-intentions-never-gonna-be-the-same kind of days, but at least we had them, and history indicates that we will have them again.  Meanwhile, who knows what God is achieving in us through even our brief and sporadic efforts.  God’s ability to accomplish His plans is always greater than my ability to mess them up.

God is Good

I’m beginning to think we as Christians have developed a basic vocabulary problem that is interfering with our ability to proclaim the glory of God.  It goes something like this:

“God is good” we announce.

 “Oh Yeah?  Why does He allow suffering and hardship if He’s so “good?” Replies the world.

  “Umm, umm, we don’t really know,” We finish lamely, usually after some even lamer attempts at explaining away hardship by describing how God uses suffering for good, or people cause suffering with their sinfulness, or any number of other fairly valid, but horribly incomplete explanations.  No answer I’ve ever heard is really adequate to meet the agonizing “why?” that always comes with tragedy, so why do we meet the world’s skepticism with hollow explanations, instead of pointing out the basic difference in what they mean and what we mean?

               When I say “God is good,” I don’t actually mean it in the exact same way that I say my two year old is a good girl.  I don’t mean that I’m pleased by God’s actions or that I’m delighted that He’s made such good choices today.  I’m not expressing my assessment of His behavior.  I mean God is good like water on a hot day is good, or food when I’m hungry or medicine when I’m sick is good.  I mean that whether my circumstances are pleasant or unpleasant, glorious or horrendous, God is healing, restorative, beautiful, and that which makes life worth living.  When I feel cut off from God, it is difficult not because it lessens my belief in God’s goodness, but because it lessens my experience of that goodness.

There’s plenty of reason and need to address the problem of suffering, even though we’ll probably never sound the definitive word, the “aha” explanation of it all.  I just wish we could quit thinking that God’s goodness is somehow connected to whether or not He’s living up to our expectations.  It is precisely when life is difficult that I experience the goodness of God the most, just as it is only when I’m thirsty that I really understand how good water can be.  The question of suffering is a valid one, but not all that connected to God’s goodness.  Now maybe if suffering is raised in a conversation about His kindness, or His love, it has more relevance.

  Can we take more time to acknowledge though, that goodness, like holiness, is an accurate description of God’s eternal character that has nothing to do with how much I, or anyone else, is benefiting from it today?  How can we find ways to proclaim the goodness of God without getting sidetracked into arguments that miss the point?  We have to keep trying, because God is good all the time, and all the time… 

Blessings in Vain?

               I’m contemplating the beautiful injustice that is my life.  No one has any right to the blessings that fill my life, not in a world this full of suffering and darkness.  I didn’t earn my freedom, security, health, or love.  I’m blessed over and over again by the sacrifices and kindnesses of others, and not nearly everyone in this world is as blessed as I am.  There is famine, disease, persecution and oppression.  There is child abuse, greed, and selfishness, and senseless violence.  While others live in terror, I live in peace.  While others hunger, I live in plenty, and though sometimes it is easy to feel guilty, I don’t accept the idea that to have while others have not is a sin, although to horde while others have not is a different story.

               Every time tragedy or heartbreak strikes a life around us, our automatic response is that something must be done in the name of that tragedy to ensure that the suffering will not have been in vain, that the darkness may not have the final victory. It may be the establishment of a memorial charity or the passing of a new law, or the creation of a national day of remembrance, or it may simply be a lesson learned, but something must change in our reality in response to horror and tragedy.  We can’t bear the thought of all that grief and destruction and waste being for nothing. But what about our good days?  What about our gifts, our joys, and our successes?  Do we worry enough about letting our happiness be in vain? 

               I think we’ve gotten in the habit of believing that peace, joy, safety, and prosperity are ends in themselves.  Once we have achieved these things, we win!  Good for us.  How might we win some more?     I remember though, a quote from scripture.  One that usually makes me cringe when people bring it up, particularly in times of grief: The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21 b).  And another verse like it: If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord, so whether we live, or whether we die, we belong to the Lord. (Romans 14:8)  These two verses make me suspect that there is more to suffering then just avoiding it, and more to happiness then just achieving it.  It seems that whether our life seems to us to be “good” or “bad,” God wants to use our circumstances to reveal Himself to us.  So I have to ask, are all my blessings in vain?  Am I squandering joy selfishly?  Have I treated the goodness and mercy following after me as if it is there by my right and for my purposes?

               What might it be like to see all that has come into my life as something to be used for the furthering of God’s kingdom and the betterment of His creation?  We all know we should be using our money to help others and glorify God.  We could all be better financial stewards.  We know it, and we should be reminded of it often, and we should act accordingly.  I’m thinking though, of my tendency to horde non-financial prosperity.  Do I live in peace?  How can I spread that peace to others, instead of focusing on creating a perfectly stress-free lifestyle for myself?  Is my home a place of rest and joy?  How can that be extended through the ministry of hospitality to others?  Can the very walls and bricks and nails of my home become an offering to God?  Am I surrounded on all sides by amazing love?  Some people aren’t.  Could I make a difference by extending that love to one who is ostracized or alone?  I’m pretty sure that for any of you reading this blog (all three of you) have more blessings than burdens in your life, at least compared to the global scale of suffering and hardship.  Let’s think together of ways to make certain that what we have received doesn’t go to waste, that our joys are not for nothing, not hoarded up for ourselves, while others live in lack.  Any thoughts?

Feed the Movie Stars

       Yes, I know it's been forever since I've posted.  I'm very sorry, and I'm working on getting better.  So here's what's on my mind today:
      Have you seen any movie stars lately?  Am I the only one who thinks that the whole skinny=hot thing has gone seriously too far?  If you saw someone who looks like that in a commercial about poverty or a news report about some war torn country, you would cry.  Then you would send money to a charity dedicated to fixing their plight.  Isn't time for some well-meaning Christian organization to start shipping sandwiches to Hollywood?
      When you see someone who is clearly underfed because of their poverty, hopefully it not only motivates you to try to help them, but also gives you an intense feeling of gratitude for the food you are able to eat.  Yet, when we see an underfed actress or model, we feel a sense of guilt and self-disgust for eating the food with which we have been provided.  We berate ourselves for every bit of non-celery stick food consumed in the past week, and feel inadequate as women, because starvation has become the standard to which we are failing to live up.
      In a recent interview, I heard Portia Di Rossi point out that we are at the point where we expect grown women to maintain the body type of girls in their early teens.  I've heard other models/tv personalities discuss their struggles to conceive children, because maintaining the weight required to compete in Hollywood has decreased their fertility. Stop and ponder briefly the implications for the human race, given that we have begun to exalt characteristics that are tantamount to infertility as hallmarks of desirability.  I'm just sayin' is all...
     It makes me think of Brian Mclaren's description of today's culture as a suicide machine.  We are all caught in it, to some extent or other, and if anyone has any ideas about how to break the world out of this insanity, please share them with me.  In the meantime, clean your plates.  People are starving in Hollywood.

Back to Basics

   I've been neglecting my blog pretty badly of late.  So many great blog topics have come and gone through my mind in the last month that I sort of got buried under them, including some further exposition on the idea of Christian giving and what is really asked of us.  I promise I'll take that topic up again later, as well as many others, but today I just want to get back to posting, starting with what's on my mind today.
      Do you ever just want to have less?  Everywhere I look, on TV, at the grocery store, at church, even on my own calendar, I seem to be drowning in a sea of excess:  Excessive calories, complex activity schedules, and overwhelming choices.  I have closets in my house that I hardly dare to open, for fear that a mountain of mostly forgotten excess clutter will topple onto my head.  In all of this, I know I'm not alone.  Everywhere around me, the cry goes up for a simpler, less stressful life, but is anyone achieving it?
    I think there's a definite limit to how much we can actually simplify our lives.  I'm all for getting rid of stuff and saying no to over scheduling.  Each of has to listen to the Holy Spirit's guidance in our own lives to find the wisdom to determine what we can let go of, what we can take off our plates.  However, I think we're being called to something even more revolutionary than simply cutting back. 
     For me, this is a big "be in the world, but not of the world" moment.  The world in which we live is frantic, complicated, and materialistic.  God has called us to minister in this world, just the way it is.  He wants us to be salt, light, and ministers of His reconciliation.  That means that we have to be able to walk in the midst of this chaos, and yet not be ruled by it.  Jesus doesn't always calm the storm.  Sometimes he wants to help us walk on water!  Even if our lives can't always be peaceful and well-ordered, by the grace of God, our souls can be.
      By all means, simplify your life as much as you can, but the things you can't simplify still should not be allowed to become objects of dread and anxiety.  While you work on getting rid of the clutter in your home, also enjoy the blessing of having what you need, and remember that whether you ever get that stuff cleared out or not, you belong to God, not to your stuff!! If your schedule stays stubbornly busy despite your best efforts, all is not lost.  Enjoy the event you have to go to tonight, the people you'll be with, the things you'll do, without allowing yourself to mentally rehearse the things you have to do for tomorrow's event.  Just because we can't always make our lives look like the picture in the magazine (or the picture in our heads) doesn't mean we can't live our lives with freedom and joy. 

What's mine is mine...I mean Yours

      So here I am, trying desperately to get some worthwhile thoughts gathered and shared before the baby wakes up from nap.  I don't think I'm going to make it, but I'll give it my best shot.  I've been thinking a lot about giving, lately.  Specifically, I've been thinking about how I can change my lifestyle to reflect the fact that what I have is really God's, and that He gave it to me to be used for His Kingdom on earth.
      Isn't it funny that the first question any group of Christians wants to answer when they begin to seriously discuss giving is always "When can I stop?"  "How much is enough?"  "Surely God doesn't want me to give up all my material possessions, so where do I draw the line?" Then we start coming up with all the reasons why only certain people deserve to be the recipients of our magnanimity, remind ourselves how much more frugally we already live than most, and conclude with a resolution to put a little extra in the plate on Sunday.
      Of course, if you go to Brook Hollow, you already know where I'm going with this.  I can just hear you now saying "Aha, Penny's finally catching up on reading Radical."  Even if you aren't engaged in our study of Radical, by David Platt, if you know the Bible at all, you know that the problem with our way of thinking is that Jesus repeatedly commands people to give up everything they have and follow Him.  The New Testament is full of evidence that Christ's first followers thought nothing of selling their valuables in order to meet the needs of others.  Can we really be so sure that God wants us to have all the stuff to which we cling so fiercely?
      Here's where I'm at right now.  It's less about relinquishing things than about relinquishing control of those things.  God may want you to move to a smaller house and give away what you save on the mortgage payment.  On the other hand, He may want you to keep the house so that you can show hospitality to His children.  Either way, the point is that the house isn't yours to be used for your purposes according to your whims.  Everything I have, whether it's my material possessions, my relationships, or the air I breathe and the sun that shines, belongs to my heavenly Father, and so do I, and so do all the needy and broken people of the world.  If He says to give it away, I should give it.  If He says to keep it, I should do so with the attitude of one holding something in trust for another, still asking the question "How can this possession be used to serve God today?" 
      By the way, giving isn't the same as surrendering.  I think we all know of times when someone feels that because they contribute a great deal to an organization, they are entitled to run it!  As long as we continue to cling to our right to "have a say in how our money is spent," the heart-work of surrender isn't done, and the command is only half obeyed.
      Obviously, knowing what God is calling us to do with His gifts isn't as easy as 1-2-3.  However, I'm watching Lora learn to count right now, and it seems that 1-2-3 probably didn't come easily to me at one point in my life!  What changed?  I used counting every day until I figured it out.  Learning to discern God's direction is a process too. It requires us to pay attention to our circumstances, opportunities, and the still, small voice of God.  It requires asking not just before every purchase, but before every action, "God, is this part of Your purpose?"  Don't forget that sometimes God's purpose is simply that His children might rejoice!  But even when He gives us gifts so that we might delight in Him, that delight is not for us to hoard, but to share.
      All of this has to do with something Chesna has been teaching about right now, the idea of needing to "remain in the Vine" (see John 15:4-5) as the only viable means of accomplishing anything Christ asks of us.  I had meant to do some writing today about how our giving is kept on track when we remain in the Vine.  Unfortunately, this post is already oppressively long, and I think Lora is about to wake up.  I guess that just means that today is part 1 of a 2 part series.  More thoughts on this to come in the future. 

Just Passing By

     This morning on my way to drop Lora off at school I saw something rather disturbing.  Posted in the yard of a home in south Abilene was a sign reading "Vote-Muslims will."  Now, I suppose this might have been intended as a catalyst for a little friendly, interfaith competition.  "Muslims will vote, and so will Christians, Jews, and Buddhists and whichever religion gets the biggest turn-out wins a pizza party."  Do you think that's it?  Yeah, me either.  As much as I hate jumping to conclusions, there are some pretty easy ones to draw here, and they're troubling to say the least.  Where, oh, where do I start?
  Let's start with the basic implications of the sign.  I assume whoever posted that sign meant that Christians, and possibly other non-Muslims should turn out in force to vote down whatever it is that Muslims want to accomplish this year at the poles.  Furthermore,  they are implying that God-fearing American Christians are automatically on the opposite side of the political fence from Muslims, and I honestly don't think it's a stretch to conclude that in the mind of the sign-poster, the "Christian" side is the conservative Republican ticket.
     Here's the part that does seem like a huge stretch to me.  If politics are now a matter of Christians vs. Muslims, and the Christians are on the far right, that has to mean that the Liberal Left Agenda is the refuge and mission of radical Islam in America, to which I can only reply "???????"  Now, I'm sure that there are Muslims who are Democrats, but on the whole, Islam is at least as conservative a religion as Christianity.  I just find it hard to swallow the idea that I have to go out and vote to stop radical Muslims from pushing through gay marriage, abortion rights, and condom distribution in public schools.  It seems as though this sign was made by people who simply consider Muslims to be the enemy, and therefore believe that their political enemies must also be Muslims, despite the lack of any visible evidence to support this claim.
      That's my logical objection to the sign I saw.  Now, here are my idealogical objections.  First of all, the idea that Muslims are the enemy and have to be stopped is an absurdity to me.  To be sure, there are Muslims in the world who wish or plot harm to America on the basis of their religious beliefs.  However, as a minister in the Christian church (Disciples of Christ), I appreciate not being held personally responsible for the Jonestown massacre (Jim Jones was originally a minister in the Disciples of Christ).  There are hundreds of good and faithful Catholic priests in this country, and we don't blame them for the abuses committed by others in their position.  By the same token, I think that mainstream Latter Day Saints would not like being tarred with the same brush as their polygamist cousins.  My point is this:  Unless you are comfortable with personally bearing total responsibility for every wrong or wacky thing done in the name of your religion, lay off the Muslims.
     Finally, if Christian votes are going to cancel out the Muslim votes, that must mean that all Christians, at least all good Christians, are going to vote the same ticket.  Again, I say ????  My objection here is really too long to cover in a single paragraph of a blog.  Suffice it to say that I believe that the habit of employing religious rhetoric to peddle the agenda of either political party is deeply degrading to the Christian faith.  I can't bear to see Jesus reduced to a campaign slogan, and I promise you, whatever party you belong to, your political leaders are doing that very thing.  Christians should participate in the political proccess to whatever extent they feel called to do so, because that is our responsibility as citizens of this country.  As citizens of heaven, however, we are called to live out God's agenda in the world regardless of who is in power, not to call on the power of God to subvert our government to His will as we interpret it.  In fact, I can think of someone else who believed that Christ's mission was political revolution.  Jesus told him to put away his sword, and ultimately charged him not with leading a revolt, but with nurturing a flock of believers. 
       Maybe if we put away our political swords, our angry words, and our accusatory signs, and instead humbled ourselves and prayed, we could hope to some impact on this world for Christ.  Maybe then we could see souls saved and lives changed.  Maybe some of those lives would even be Muslim.  Who knows what might happen if we all worried a little more about what we are doing and a little less about what everyone else is up to.

What's Been Missing in Worship

Last night I had the chance to hear Casting Crowns live in concert.  This was a great experience, and very different from what I expected.  Over the course of my life, I have spent more than my fair share of time in church.  I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to how many different worship services I have attended.  Contemporary, traditional, charismatic, blended, contemplative, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, I could go on and on.  Basically, if you've ever heard of anyone having a worship service in any style for any occasion, there's a really good chance I've been to one.
A lot of those supposed worship services turned out to be much more like Christian concerts.  The worship leaders and musicians were talented, well-rehearsed, and full of love for God, but they had not a clue as to how to actually enter into a state of worship, or even what the difference was between an inspiring performance and an act of worship.
Last night, I got to attend an event that was clearly intended to be a Christian concert, but was actually a powerful worship service.  All the trappings of a concert were present, but Casting Crowns has such a strong heart for worship that when they step onto the stage, they just begin to reach out to God.  They walked straight into His throne room and invited us to come along with them (which is what a good worship leader is supposed to do), and I'm pretty sure not everyone in the room totally understood what was happening.  I mean, there was still plenty of "concerty" stuff to enjoy, even if you weren't sure how to get into the worship aspect.
So I worshipped Jesus harder than I have in years, and when we were done, I was able to see clearly one essential element of worship that I have been missing for a long time.  As worship leaders, planners, and attenders, we focus entirely on making certain that everyone gets something significant out of worship.  We call it being fed or growing spiritually, or any number of other churchy terms, but the attention is always on what we receive from God. 
This morning, I couldn't tell you any specific thing I received from God last night, but I can tell you that everything I had inside me when I got to that arena was poured out before Him, and by the end of the evening I was spent, rather than fulfilled.  It turns out that being empty before God is just as much a holy experience as the highest of spiritual highs.  Have we forgotten that if worship is to be a relationship builder between us and God, then what we give to Him matters just as much as what He gives to us?
I come to church on Sunday morning with good intentions.  I want to spend time with God, and I want Him to be glorified, but I haven't been prepared to come and love God with all the heart, strength, soul, and mind He has given me.  It's easy to do it at a concert, when the music is so loud and the room so dark that I don't have to worry about anyone else intruding on my time with God.  It's very daunting to consider putting all of myself into worship at church, where everyone can see me, and everyone knows me, and for some reason that escapes me, emotional displays are uncommon. 
To be clear, when I talk about giving to God, I don't really mean giving praise, like we're so comfortable saying in church.  I'm talking about giving me, whatever I have inside me when I come.  It may be love, joy, or some other fruits of the Spirit, but often I'm nothing but a broken, sticky, mess.  Is it possible that God wants that too?  I only know that if He doesn't, then I'm out of luck.  I guess for me it's suddenly come down to this question:  How can I possibly expect to receive anything from God during worship if I'm just as full of myself when I leave as I was when I came?