Just Hanging On To Grace

Nothing Else To Say, Nothing Else To Do

2012-02-23T10:23:00.000-06:00

There are times when there is just nothing else to say, nothing else to do. A time to circle the wagons, lock the doors, hang on tight, and trust that what he says and all he is, is true.

Way Before Good Enough

2012-02-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

Not too long ago, I ran into a woman who saw me with my Bible and asked me why I carried it. Her question was so direct, it took me slightly off-guard. I said something like, “I never know when I might need it.” She looked curious and so I sat down next to her and asked her what she knew about the Bible. She told me she didn’t go to church, but knew about Jesus. I asked a few more questions: “What do you know about him? How come you don’t go to church? Do you have a Bible?” Then she told me that she can’t go to church yet. I was struck by this word “yet,” so I asked her what she meant. “I still do bad things. I’m not good enough yet.”

It is easy for me to forget the state of my life when God’s grace first appeared to me. I look back now and see the destructive road I was traveling. At the time, it seemed like the only road. I don’t remember seeing any exits, or rest stops, or caution signs, though I’m sure they were there. I catch glimpses of what God watched me do and heard me say, and I am so ashamed that to bring it to mind is almost too much to take. He saw everything I did, everywhere I was. He saw the very, very bottom.

But it was there, at the bottom, that I was first overcome by his grace. I had never seen it before. I had not been aware I needed it. I had not been aware of its power and its gentleness. It did not wait for me to stop doing bad things or to clean myself up. It did not wait for “good enough.” It was just suddenly there, mysteriously closer than my own breath when I was at my worst.

I must encounter people in my day-to-day living who, although they might not say so explicitly, are at or very near their bottom. They are starting to see what they are capable of and how their own hearts can lead them to do things they are ashamed of when they are alone in the dark. I might be the one God will use to show his grace to them in this very moment at the bottom. I might be the one, if I would only be available, that God will use to reveal how his love and grace can cover every deed, every word, and every thought. I might be the one that God will use to show that his mercy simply knows no bounds and reaches in when we are at our worst. I might be the one that God will use to say that Jesus saves now, when we are not good enough, when we still do bad things. (Romans 5:8)

The only way for me to be someone God uses to show that his grace doesn’t wait for “good enough” is to never forget where grace came to me: way before good enough.

On The Inside

2012-02-10T11:19:00.000-06:00

Last week, I took my daughter and her friend swimming at the local park district pool on a Saturday afternoon. I swam some laps and then sat on the side in a patch of sunlight that was pouring through the windows. I watched them play and talk while holding onto blue kick boards. My daughter's hair was slicked back by the purple goggles perched on her head, the girls' laughing was swallowed by the high ceilings, and splashes of water echoed like intermittent waves on the shore. The undeniable beauty of this moment struck me suddenly and I realized how much I loved the slowness and smallness of it. I often think of God in big moments and great tasks. I often think of Him on the outside. But here He was inside of this little moment at the pool. Here was His grace and love, strong enough to conquer even death, on the inside of the laughing and splashing. Here He was on the inside of my family, the inside of my life. And, for some reason then, I began writing a list, a list of other small, slow moments that I want to experience with Him on the inside.

I Know, My Love. I Know.

2012-02-01T08:48:00.000-06:00

Psalm 139

I heard it from my bedroom, a violent retching from deep down in her soul. I ran to her room and saw her sitting up, crying, shaking and looking at me with teary, apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom. I couldn’t make it to the bathroom.” It is true, there was a mess I hadn’t experienced before, but what I noticed more was the way she shook and the way the pain overtook her. “It’s okay, my love. It’s okay.”

I lifted her weak body off the bed and escorted her slowly to the bathroom, where she sat in front of the toilet. I whispered to her that it would be okay and she was going to be better soon. She shook her head, disbelieving my words because they were so obviously inconsistent with her current state. After hours of cramped legs near the white porcelain and the yellow bath mat, I still rubbed her back and closed my eyes from tiredness. I opened them at one point and looked at this sweet, pained girl who had by miracle of all miracles come from my body.

She sat slightly hunched, shivering, and mouthing words silently. Curious, I tried to read them, and leaned in to hear if any sound came so I could share in what she whispered into the dark. I couldn’t make out the words, and so I asked if she had been praying. “Yes,” she said quietly over a now-sore throat. “What did you say?” She said, “Lord, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.” My eyes welled with tears and I brushed her hair from her face, realizing that I hadn’t prayed. I hadn’t asked for God’s intervention. I wondered why this hadn’t occurred to me, and at the same time felt endlessly thankful that it had occurred to her. I echoed her prayer, knowing that this was the only thing to do: “Lord, have mercy on her. Have mercy on her.” Then, I noticed a tiny vein on the outer part of her ear; a small mole near her hairline; eyelashes that could sweep the floor they are so long; her warm, feverish skin; her fingers that look like my sister’s fingers.

She cried every half an hour or so, “Mom, I don’t want to throw up. It hurts too much. Why do I have to?” All I could do was to rub her back and say, “I know, my love. But there is something inside that your body knows it needs to get rid of in order for you to get better. Once it’s out, you will feel better. I promise. And I’m right here.” She leans into me. I couldn’t have loved her more in those hours by the toilet. I couldn’t have felt more heavy-hearted as she got rid of what was making her sick. But I have seen this before, experienced it myself, and so I knew, even though she couldn’t see it, that she would get better. I knew that the only way she would begin to heal was to hurt.

There is something deep in my soul that needs to come out. It is hurt from so long ago, when I was about my daughter’s age, and just recently, it has begun to sting my insides, to occupy my waking thoughts, to invade my sleep. This injury prevents me from trusting anyone but God with all of who I am. This old hurt emerged just as suddenly and unexpectedly as the stomach flu. And I make the same protestations and ask the same questions of God that my daughter asked of me: “I don’t want to feel this. It hurts too much. Why do I have to?” I say the same prayer that she whispered into the dark: “Lord, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.” These are the only words that come.

God sees my tears, hears my cries, carries me gently where I need to go. His heart breaks for the pain, but he will allow it to come, all the while, rubbing my back, hemming me in. He knows that once the toxins are out, I will feel better. He promises me this is so and he sits next to me holding me fast. I lean into him. He studies the hands that he made, the eyelashes he planted, my inmost being that he created and that he alone knows. He sees light where I see only darkness. He could not love me more in these painful hours. He could not feel more heavy-hearted as old hurts arise and are exposed and expunged. But he sees what I can’t see. He knows, even though I disbelieve because it is so obviously inconsistent with my current feeling, that I will get better. He knows that the only way I will begin to heal is to hurt. And so, he leans close and whispers, “I know, my love. I know.”

The Local Church

2012-01-23T08:19:00.000-06:00

The hungry orphans from the local community.

The chicken feed.

The chicken coop.

The baby chicks.

The teenage chicks.

The chickens to sell and to lay eggs.

The money.

The crops.

The food.

The fed orphans.

The local church.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

You Said You Would Be There

2012-01-18T08:50:00.000-06:00

The problem was that I wasn’t quite ready to let go of that. All else, yes. I had already realized that I lacked control over those other things, so they were easier (not easy, but easier) to let go of. This was the last thing it seemed. I knew I was on the verge of turning it over. You felt so close. And I could foresee the day when I would relent, and release it to you. I wasn’t sure how it would happen though. My grip was so tight and there were so many unanswered questions that I needed answered before I was willing to even consider loosening my hold.

Then things began to look a little less like I thought they would. From the outside, the expected and the real did not match and the more I walked, the less lined-up it all seemed to be. Where I was headed, was where I was sure you wanted me, but not where I had come to understand someone like me should go. So, deciding which path to take, felt, not paralyzing exactly, but hard. Almost impossible, actually. The one way, the status quo, was defensible, perfectly acceptable. I could continue marching with some slight modifications. People would say: “You did the best you could.” I would say, “I was smart, cautious, rational.” The other way, the way to which you were calling, seemed at first like giving up, or heading the wrong way, backwards even, risky.

But you said you would be there. You said we would not be separated. You said that if I trusted you with all my heart, you would direct my path. As I took the first tentative step forward on the road to which you pointed, a dam inside my soul broke open and I saw that this was the only way worth going, and I realized I knew this all along. Anxiety and fear and anger and sadness rushed out, and joy, peace, goodness, and grace fell lightly like snow, covering every inch of the newly opened space. I don’t know where this road leads. I don’t see the next step ahead. And there are all these questions, mostly from without, about where I’m going and what the future looks like. Yet, I don’t need the answers like I did before to keep walking. In fact, I haven’t heard even a single answer to the questions I had been asking, or the ones that pop up unexpectedly in the day, but everything I see has your touch and it is impossible to ignore. The eyes of my heart have been enlightened. Within, there is stillness, and time has expanded.

Off-Center

2011-12-28T10:39:00.000-06:00

I am off-center. For the last three days, I have gone to a local chapel to kneel before God just to try to find my way back. At home, I can’t pray, can’t concentrate on Scripture, and can’t locate the stillness. Plastic inflatable nativity scenes and snowmen, unwrapped do-it-yourself crafts, and new books seem to be crowding in. I want to be present and engaged, but am unfocused and distracted. I have checked Facebook, Twitter, texts and email more often in the last five days than maybe ever. And, there are fewer posts on each than normal. I have watched movies that remind me of a different time in my life. I am looking for something, searching desperately.

I wonder if I’m not the only one going through this kind of disconnectedness. I wonder if you too have wandered around Facebook in the last few days, updating your photos, reviewing the timeline feature, reading the “info” about your high school friends. I wonder if you have looked around at the new stuff you have and somehow feel less whole than when you didn’t have that stuff just days ago. There is such restlessness of soul it is hard to even put into words. Something is reaching out, but missing, like trying to grab the next monkey bar with sweaty hands. I am with family and friends, at home, with home-cooked turkey. Why are things just slightly off? Isn’t this the time when I should be most connected and grounded, most fulfilled?

Has something suddenly, yet imperceptibly, disappeared…or surfaced…or shifted? Where is the center? Where has it gone?

Maybe I was never on-center to begin with. Maybe much of my work, my ministry, my life is really about the affection, affirmation and acceptance I seek from other people. So, when I am not experiencing any of these, I am discombobulated and aimless because what normally keeps me afloat and seemingly on target is missing.

Henri Nouwen said: “When you experience a great need for human affection, you have to ask yourself whether the circumstances surrounding you and the people you are with are truly where God wants you to be. . . If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning. Ask yourself whether this situation is truly God-given. Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain. . . .

Every time you do something that comes from your needs for acceptance, affirmation, or affection, and every time you do something that makes these needs grow, you know that you are not with God. These needs will never be satisfied; they will only increase when you yield to them. But every time you do something for the glory of God, you will know God’s peace in your heart an find rest there.” (Keep Living Where God Is, The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen)

I have not, over the last number of days, felt safe or at peace. I have felt so far away from God. I think my center, much of the time, in my everyday work/ministry/living life, is me. And so when there is no work, ministry, or normal living, I feel off-center because the center is off.

The Dark Side Of Christmas

2011-12-23T17:43:00.000-06:00

"Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humankind. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart, because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.

For those who believe in God, it means, this birth, that God himself is never safe from us, and maybe that is the dark side of Christmas, the terror of the silence. He comes in such a way that we can always turn him down, as we could crack the baby's skull like an eggshell or nail him up when he gets too big for that. God comes to us in the hungry people we do not have to feed, comes to us in the lonely people we do not have to comfort, comes to us in all the desperate human need of people everywhere that we are always free to turn our backs upon. It means that God puts himself at our mercy not only in the sense of the suffering that we can cause him by our blindness and coldness and cruelty, but the suffering we can cause him simply by suffering ourselves."

--from The Face in the Sky, Frederick Buechner

My Favorite Anniversary

2011-12-20T08:28:00.000-06:00

I am not a big birthday or anniversary fan. No reason, I just never really got into them that much. But today's anniversary is something different altogether. December 20, 2008 was the date I committed my life to Christ. So, today marks my three-year anniversary knowing, loving, walking with, and living for him. As I read these words yesterday morning in Zephaniah 3:17, they struck me as the most appropriate description in so many ways of my experience over the last three years.

“The Lord your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with
singing.”

I will spend the day thanking God not only for finding me in the first place amidst lots of wreckage and ruin, but for lifting me out, delighting in me (in me!), quieting my soul with his love, and rejoicing over me. Living with and for Christ is not a series of do’s and don’t’s. It’s not a life of rules and regulations. It is more like dancing on the water with your arms lifted high and your mouth open in laughter under the sun.

Come And See What The Lord Has Done!

2011-12-12T09:13:00.000-06:00

Africa, Days 6 and 7

I still do not know why God asked me to go to Kazungula, a border point between Zambia and Botswana, and share the love and message of Christ with truck drivers there. I know only that he did and I went in obedience. The result was an awesome display of God’s faithfulness, goodness, grace, and desire to seek after those who are lost. What our small team (me, Chris, Martha, Mary, Enala, and Howard) saw in Kazungula on December 9 and 10, 2011 is not like anything we have ever seen before, or may ever see again.

We talked to about 90 truck drivers in our two days in Kazungula. When we arrived the first day, 62 trucks were lined up to cross the border (one at a time on the single working ferry) and most wait 5-6 days for their turn.

At first glance, there appears to be nothing there that is familiar except the sun above and the earth underfoot. And the sun is so hot, sweat runs down your back just standing still. The earth is so dusty, you are covered with grime and dirt within the first few minutes. Exhaust fumes from the starting up and slight movement of the trucks in line fill the air. Empty water bottles, wrappers, and cans litter the ground. Children anywhere from 5 to 17, boys and girls, walk up and down the line of trucks by themselves selling eggs, fish, CDs and DVDs. Flies swarm. There are no bathrooms and there is no water. Women and girls go truck to truck offering themselves for money. The truck beds are loaded with copper, hydroxide, tobacco, and other things. Men gather on the side of the road cooking nshima and chicken that they have bought in the market. Many have been drinking beer since the early morning because it is the only way to face 5 days in line in this place. Truck drivers are one of the primary carriers of HIV and AIDS. Sixty-five percent of the population of Zambia has HIV or AIDS.

When you see Kazungula, you may be tempted to believe God has left it, or perhaps was never there. Each truck driver faces unbelievable loneliness and boredom. They are away from their wives and families, sometimes for up to a year at a time. Each confronts overpowering temptation. Most of them doubt God could ever want them. Most of them believe they have fallen too short and too often. Most of them question if God is even present in their world. They seem to have concluded that they, either by choices made or circumstances, are beyond God’s reach and unable to be saved.

But, you see, no place and no man (or woman) is beyond God’s reach, not even in Kazungula. No one has made too many bad choices or finds themselves in circumstances that cannot be redeemed by God. I, and the members of the team (all from Zambia), had been praying for weeks that God would go before us and prepare the hearts of the truck drivers we would meet for the love we had for them. When we arrived at the border, we prayed again, together, and broke off into teams of two. Our mission was simple: approach the drivers, introduce ourselves, and ask them about themselves – where they were going, where they had come from, what were their struggles – and then tell them we were there to let them know that there are people in the world who care about them and a good God who loves them.

It did not take long to know that God had indeed gone before us. In just minutes, we found not the eyes of dangerous, untouchables, but the eyes of Jesus. The first day, 28 truck drivers committed their lives to Christ. We gave each of them New Testaments and bright-colored bracelets that said “God loves me,” “Saved,” “I love Jesus,” “Forgiven,” “John 3:16”, or the one they all wanted most: “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do). Word of our presence spread quickly; we stood out, after all. And, if you looked around Kazungula on December 9, you saw many men wearing their bracelets, prompting further conversation no doubt. Suddenly, it was like light had entered Kazungula. We listened to their stories: how painful it is to wait for days to cross the border; how the heat makes sleep nearly impossible; how much they long to be home with their families; how they cannot attend church because they are always moving from one place to another; how they have failed God in so many ways; how they feel incapable of resisting sexual temptation. One man, who was a Christian already, told me he was so relieved to see us because it reminded him of God’s presence.

Our second day in Kazungula was similar. Twelve more drivers gave their lives to Christ and dozens of seeds were planted, which we trust God will germinate and grow in his own time. On our way back to Livingstone, which is where we stayed, both days, we could not find words to explain what we had experienced. So, all we could do was to sing loudly with clapping hands and smiling faces: “Come and see, oh! Come and see! Come and see, oh! Come and see! Come and see what the Lord has done! Come and see what the Lord has done!” None of us on our team could have done what we did in our own power. Only God could have and did accomplish the reconciliation of 40 individual souls to himself through Christ. And with each one, all of heaven celebrated. (Luke 15:7)

There is, of course, still no bridge that connects Zambia and Botswana at Kazungula, but because God used us to demonstrate the sufficiency of his grace, his far-reaching and overflowing love, and his overwhelming presence, there is infrastructure there that is stronger and longer lasting than any bridge that could ever be built.

For the truck drivers in Kazungula, I pray:

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord;
O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
And in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

O Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

(Psalm 130)

Amen.

White Butterflies

2011-12-08T11:29:00.006-06:00

Africa, Day 5 (yesterday)

Some things on the 12-hour drive from Ndola to Livingstone:

a brown dog hit on the road by a van;

a little white dog surrounding the brown dog in mourning;

fresh mangoes;

yoked oxen (my yoke is easy and my burden is light);

6-8 police stops and two border stops;

1 police stop in which we are cited for not having a fire extinguisher;

the police officer who says: we have nothing like forgiveness here;

stop in small town to buy a fire extinguisher;

a debate about whether people in a field were weeding or planting maize;

discussion of our favorite person in the Bible other than Jesus (Nehemiah, Jeremiah, David, Philip, Paul (2));

watermelons, tomatoes, fruits, pots;

cactus;

open land green land;

irrigation systems;

fluffy, majestic clouds;

a Subway sandwich shop;

the trampoline at The Fig Tree Restaurant;

Chips Ahoy and Ritz Bits;

samosas;

using the 1000 Kwacha (20 cents) bathroom with no door;

fresh air blowing through the van;

sharing stories of our encounters with Christ;

cold Coke;

an overturned truck;

prayers for protection and expressing thanks;

and white butterflies going ahead of us all the way.

Marching in the House of God

2011-12-05T11:40:00.000-06:00

Africa, Day 3, Ndola, Zambia

I think the days here are longer, or perhaps it just seems that way because of the expansive life, song, and beauty in every moment.

Last year, we went to New Hope Christian Centre, a ministry that cares for, feeds and educates orphans and vulnerable children, many of whom have HIV themselves. I loved these children and I wanted to give them something, but I hadn't brought anything with me. Instead, they gave me the most amazing gift -- they sang I Love You Jesus Deep Down in My Heart in the most angelic, beautiful voices. That song, sung by those sweet voices has stayed with me for the last 14 months. I have heard their voices resonating inside me and when I tell Jesus I love him, I often do so through that song. This year, I wanted to give them a gift in return for what they gave me. So, before I left the US, I ordered a hundred colorful bracelets that say I Love You Jesus, or God Loves Me, or WWJD. I brought them with me to hand out. Today was delivery day!

I slid a bracelet on each child's arm (there were about 45 of them) touching their hands and arms, looking them in the eyes and telling them, "God loves you;" "Jesus loves you." Some whispered "thank you." Others smiled. Still others just stared at me with curiosity. But they sang a song again: We are marching in the house of God. They marched around their little one-room schoolhouse, dancing, singing and laughing. I have not experienced the house of God in this way before, but let's just say you may see me marching around at church very soon.

"Jesus called the children to him and said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." (Luke 18:16-17)

Guess I'll have to go back and bring another gift . . .

Walk in Love

2011-12-04T08:36:00.002-06:00

Africa, Day 1

It is 2:48 a.m. I have been awake for 25 minutes now, tossing and turning. My body thinks it should be up doing instead of down resting. I am simultaneously cold and hot. Bug noises rise and fall outside and I remember Michigan summers with my bedroom window cracked open to the warm air. My heart and mind can’t quite hold the fullness of the day that has passed, every moment of it overflowing with life. After the very long plane journey, I arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa at 7:30 a.m. I said goodbye to my seatmate Bruce, a white Zimbabwean who now lives in Calgary, Canada, and with whom I shared 12 hours in the sky running from London to South Africa.

Straight from the airport, I went with my pastor friend Edgar to the home of a man named Mike. Two little dogs greeted us and the rich earthiness of the summer air nearly took my breath away. At home, the warmth of this sun will be veiled for months. Mike and his wife run a ministry called Dumpsite. Each Saturday morning, they make a bowl of meat, rice, and vegetables for, on average, 200 people who live on a large landfill, collecting, sorting, and then selling garbage scraps and recyclables. They also make two large tubs of juice. Edgar and I helped load the bowls of food into a van along with the juice and black plastic bags filled with shoes and clothes.

Mike explained that when we arrived at the dump, he would preach the gospel and then everyone would gather in groups of ten. Then, we would give each group a palate of food bowls, a black plastic bag, and a cup of juice. Distributing the food, drink and clothes this way creates community and accountability, preventing line-jumping, pushing to the front.

We followed Mike and his team in their van to the dumpsite where people had already started to gather. Mostly women and little children. They gathered in a semi-circle around the van the massive dump looming large in the background.

Mike shouts praises to God and those gathered echo his praises. He passes out a single sheet of paper to each person, which includes the text from Ecclesiastes 3:1-14, part of which promises that “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” (v. 11) This was quite a promise to contemplate among a crowd suffering from deep, abiding hunger, deathly sickness, chronic foot and belly pain. God has made everything beautiful for its own time. Has made. Everything. Beautiful. I can’t help but wonder how any of this is beautiful, this aching hunger, this living amongst garbage, and this lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation. I can only agree that I cannot see the whole scope of God’s work and it must not be time yet. Mike tells the group that if any among them has AIDS, God loves them. If any among them has HIV, God loves them. He tells them that though their pain and suffering is so great now, God has planted eternity in their heart and through belief in Christ, eternal, everlasting beauty is on the way.

After preaching his message and praying, Mike asks the people to disperse into groups and we hand out the food, drink and clothing. After this is done, a line forms and Edgar explains that those in line had prayer requests for Mike. Mike listens to each one, types each prayer into his mobile device, and then lays his hands on the shoulders, on the feet, on the stomach, on the eyes depending on the request. He asks God to heal, to provide, to protect. For some, he thanks God for answered prayer. Mike will forward these prayer requests to a team and he and the team will pray for each person all week. Next week, he will come and do this again.

Next, we travel to the other side of the dump where hundreds of people have set up “homes” among the garbage.

Mike has brought us here, where he will distribute fresh vegetables and heavy-duty nails in an effort to keep the homes standing. As we walk through this village, scraps of garbage, colorful plastic bottles and caps, and animal bones litter the ground. We walk a winding path looking for residents to tell them we are here with nails and food. Faces begin to appear in doorways and people come out to see us. We shake hands and exchange names and greetings. Their hands are warm and dry in mine. They call out Mike’s name from afar, smiling broadly when they see he has come. He touches them and asks them about their families. One man approaches Mike and explains that he needs to see a doctor, pulling down his shirt over the shoulder revealing large red sores that he says cover his chest and back. He has AIDS and it is eating him from the inside out. The man looks at me and says he needs a doctor. Another man staggers behind us, talking nonsense, younger men holding him up as he walks. Mike says this man will die in a few days.

“Many of them are drunk and have HIV and AIDS. We cannot judge them. We don’t know how it is to live here,” Mike says as we walk back to the van. “I only can love them.” By now, there are dozens following us to get the vegetables and nails. As we walk, Mike shows me homes that have collapsed and not been built again. “The person who lived here probably died and they just leave the home like this.” There are two well-built structures that Mike raised money to have built for two elderly men so that they can live the remainder of their lives with protection from the rain and some amount of dignity. I say my goodbyes to Mike and ask what will happen with the man who needs to see the doctor. Without hesitation, he says “I will take him now.” And suddenly I see the beauty.

Before I left home, my 11-year old daughter handed me a stack of letters she wrote for me to read while I am away, one for every other day. When I return to my lodging after the visit to the dumpsite, I read today’s letter, in which she instructs me to read 2 John 6: “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.” This passage allows me to piece the day together and see how we can and so often do walk through life, and love only on the side, only when the opportunity to love finds us or arrests our movement. But, in Mike, I see that to walk in love is a whole other thing. It is to go where love is needed and provide it. Where this need and this provision collide, there is the beautiful.

Dot-Dot-Dot

2011-11-18T10:56:00.001-06:00

Being committed to Christ is the re-orientation of an entire life. It is not a Sunday commitment, a retirement plan, a hobby, or a part of a whole. It is the whole. It is everything. There are deep parts of us that love the idea of such a makeover. We get a sense of real rest. Indeed, God planted this desire in us. But, the idea of giving our entire life to anything is pretty scary and unfamiliar. A life that is not devoted to me, but to someone else is about as foreign as would be rolling out a red carpet and a special entrance to board the least-sophisticated, lowest-mile, three-carry-on-bag travelers onto an airplane first. Unheard of. I mean, unless it’s opposite day.

Jesus once encountered a man who, without being asked, said: “I will follow you Lord; but first let me go back and say goodby to my family.” In response, Jesus said: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 10:61-62) Many of us, when presented with the Gospel would say, and have said, “I will follow you Lord.” It is quite easy to say. We often then say, though, “but first let me . . .” I know this “dot-dot-dot” very well. I bet you do too.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … see a clear sign that what your word says is true, that your promises will hold up. Let me know that if I buy what you’re selling, it won’t, in the end, be for naught.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … grasp fully how the whole thing works. There are so many books out there, I don’t know where to start. The Bible is really thick and I don’t understand so much of it. I want to understand every detail first so I can defend my decision if asked.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … know that my friends and family will not think I’m weird, and will still accept me. I want to be liked and admired and if I commit my life to you, I’m afraid I will lose friends. My family won’t understand. The people I’m trying to impress may find me less impressive.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … visualize what my life will look like if I do. What are you really asking of me? I know your Word says I must live like you did (1 John 2:6), but the way you lived seems a little uncomfortable to me. You had no home. Your people rejected you. You were spit upon, crowned with thorns, beaten and laughed at. Your path was constantly interrupted by those who lived unworthy lives, did bad things, and suffered from disgusting diseases. You were nailed to a cross and killed. I have plans, Lord. This would get in the way, I think.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … explain to you that I’ve got things under control. My finances are in order, my health is good, my family is thriving, I’m moving up in my job, and my golf game has really come a long way.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … tell you that I can’t abide any more rules and instructions to follow. Each year at work, I get an employee handbook and although for the most part these are pretty easy to follow, I have to remember and follow them. There are speed limits, tax requirements, bills to pay. If you add on another set of rules, I just don’t think I can do it. I know the Ten Commandments and I have failed them over and over and over and over. And I have tried really hard, but I keep getting tripped up, often by the same ones and there seems to be no end to the resulting frustration.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … help you to understand that I can’t get ahead in this world if I am not fully devoted to getting ahead right now. I know you said you were here and experienced the world, but I think it was different for you. After all, you are God, and it just had to have been a little different. I am climbing a ladder, you see, and there are people just at my heels. If I stop, they will surpass me and I won’t get the promotion or the raise or the praise or the offer to speak. Without those things, I will be nothing.

I will follow you Lord, but first let me … get a few things straightened out, you know, clean myself up a bit. I still do some sinful things. I’m just on the verge of overcoming them, I just need a little more time.

I will follow you Lord and let me confess to you that

I see what you’ve done in my life, the times when there is just no other explanation for my deliverance but you; I look at my children and know that there is something more here than the effort I’m putting in.

I don’t know how it all works, but you have shown me enough for me to believe, and in fact, sometimes when I’m alone, I can actually feel you inside me.

Sometimes living just for me feels a little narrow and I get tired of myself and all the consuming and doing. When I do things for others, it actually feels pretty good.

I’m a little tired of trying to keep up and often look for a place to be alone and sit still, you know, to just be. The things I'm seeking happiness in don't seem like they're helping. I just want more and more of them.

On the outside, there is much comfort, but to be honest, there is restlessness in me and some uncertainty about what this has all been about.

I’m not so sure I’m in control. I look around and see things fall apart in other people’s lives and know that I’m next. I know that my finances, as safe as I may try to keep them, are subject to things I just don’t control. And recently, a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. But she was really successful and healthy. My family has had some disputes lately and things are a little rocky when certain issues are raised.

I think I need some help. I keep sinning and can’t seem to stop no matter how hard I try. I think I might need some help to get it all straightened out. And I have done some things that I would give anything to let go of and be forgiven of because they have become so heavy.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:28-30)

No more dot-dot-dot.

God Is Here

2011-11-07T09:10:00.001-06:00

At church, our worship leader said, “God is here,” and I began to cry. I repeated this phrase to myself. God is here. God is here. I wiped the tears, feeling the deep truth of this suddenly and unexpectedly.

Then, as a body, we sang “Holy, holy, holy.” The tears continued. I looked around, wondering if it was just me, so touched in this moment. Those around me did their own adjusting to His presence. Couples moved closer to one another. A mother wrapped her arm around the teenage, rebellious son. God is here.

I listened to words about the kingdom of God and our lives within it and a rush of perspective moved through me, over and under and around. What is real is that God is here.

I walked in a daze to the bookstore to find a book that includes a map of where Jesus was teaching as described in Luke’s gospel. My daughter and I read it together every night – one night she reads and the next I read. But, we really need a map. Where is the Sea of Galilee? Where is Capernaum? And where are these places in relation to Bethlehem and Nazareth? She asks me these things as we read and I just don’t know. I find a book with maps and pictures, broken down by each book of the Bible. At the beginning of the section on Luke, there is a map of the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. Tears formed in the backs of my eyes and my throat ached slightly as happened. These are real places. I ran my finger over the map, stunned. God is here.

I sat at a high table reading and waiting for my daughter to return from her weekend retreat with the junior-high ministry. I watched people come and go, mostly in groups of two or three. They held things – coffee, Bibles, journals, bags, purses, children, hands, tragedies, triumphs, hurts, healings. They talked about the afternoon game and their favorite coffee flavor. God is here.

My daughter’s purple suitcase sat sandwiched between two others with a little green tag with her name. I pulled it out, “This one is mine.” The yellow buses pulled up and kids poured out. “Where is mine?” I saw her small-group leader and searched the sea of faces for the one I knew so well, the one I saw take its first gasp of air. And there was the face! My breath caught in my throat and tears rushed in again. I shouted her name over the noise and she turned, knowing my voice. She smiled and ran to me. I smelled her hair and felt her fingers and knew again. God is here.

On the way home, she told me of some verses in the Bible she had discovered. She told me that she underlined them and read them during her “solo time.” When I asked her which was most meaningful to her, she said it came from Matthew 6. And from the back seat, she read it slowly as if for the first time:

Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who
sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to
temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.

God is here. Yes, God is here.

If It Is God Asking, What Else Can You Do?

2011-10-22T11:22:00.001-05:00

In just over a month, I leave for Livingstone, Zambia to set up church on the side of the road for long-haul truck drivers who wait to cross the Zambezi River for up to six days because at the point that connects Zambia and Botswana, there is no bridge. This is a crazy assignment. I have met one long-haul trucker in my life. I am a white woman mother lawyer writer from the Midwestern United States. What sense does this make? Not much. And yet, I have no choice in the matter. Really.

See if it makes any more sense once you know the background: In September 2010, I went with a team to Ndola and Lusaka, Zambia to teach pastors. (If you want to read more about that, see entries 9/13-9/28 here: Trip) While there, we had an opportunity to go to Livingstone, which is at the southern tip of Zambia, on the border of Zambia and Botswana. (See Map)

As we got close to the border, I noticed that there were between 50 and 60 long-haul trucks lined up on the side of the road.

When I asked about this, I was informed that there is no bridge across the Zambezi and so trucks line up and wait to get taken across on a ferry one truck at a time. What? Yes, these truckers wait 5-6 days on average to get across the River on this ferry:

Something took root in me at that moment. Why doesn’t someone build a bridge? How much would it cost? How many additional days are these truck drivers away from their families because they have to wait here? Doesn’t the stuff they are hauling spoil? Does it get to where it needs to go on time? What happens at night when loneliness sets in for these truck drivers? What about their families back home? Can they survive for the weeks that these drivers are away? How are the drivers spending their time as they sit and wait? Are they eating?

I could not let this go. And I began to see this little border crossing as a microcosm of what was wrong on a much broader scale – a lack of infrastructure was causing all kinds of social problems: a breakdown in the family, sexual promiscuity, loneliness, the spread of HIV/AIDS, hunger, and despair. I wasn’t sure if I was right about this, but it is what I began to see. For the rest of the trip, I talked to anyone and everyone who would listen about the fact that there was no bridge and what could be done, what was being done. I prayed about it just about every day. I learned that Zambian presidents had been promising to build a bridge across the Zambezi in Livingstone for 60 years. And yet, in 2010, there was no bridge.

Now, keep in mind that during my visit to Zambia, I also learned about HIV/AIDS projects that care for dying people and their families, orphans who cannot afford school uniforms to go to school, huge villages that have no access to clean water, and more. These things started to feel to me like they had their cause in something else – like the absence of infrastructure, the absence of bridges.

Just days after I got back to the U.S., I told a colleague of mine that I felt strongly that God was calling me to form a church on the side of the road for the truck drivers. My colleague said: “Don’t do that. Build the bridge.” For months after that conversation, I researched bridges and what was being done to build a bridge. Turns out that much is being done and it is a very complicated process because it involves the sign-off of three countries – Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. The project will cost $100 million and all sorts of engineering, social, and economic studies have been done. In fact, the proposed bridge looks amazing.

So, a bridge will be built. Problem solved, no more long waits, no more loneliness, hunger, despair, right? That is not the sense I got. A steel bridge, no matter how spectacular, will not relieve the loneliness and despair, the thirst of the soul. Something even more fundamental is needed: the One who gives living water. (John 4:10) Otherwise, the thirst will return somewhere else, sometime else, with someone else. (John 4:14)

And so, I will meet a team of Zambians there and we will set up on the side of the road, serve food, sing music, and preach the gospel to truck drivers in Zambia and Botswana. This is the call, and I have no choice. What a privilege! Have I ever felt more purpose, more fulfilled, more loved? As Dietrich Bonhoeffer explained the immediate response of Levi when Jesus called him to follow in Mark 2:14, when “the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself,” we follow at once. (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship at 57) Or, as a close friend said to me as I described to him a feeling that this project seemed out there and that no one really understood why I was doing this: “If it is God asking, what else can you do?” Indeed.

God, With A Flashlight And A Shovel

2011-10-01T13:00:00.001-05:00

My heart is like a house. It has many rooms. And in those rooms, there are some pieces of furniture that sparkle as the sun shines through the windows. You know those little squares of light where a lazy cat might lie all day? Like that. There are other pieces of furniture that never get any natural light at all because they are too far from the windows and too heavy to move. There are several closets in my heart where no light ever goes and random old junk piles up, collecting dust in the darkness. Then, there is the basement. Down there, it is cold most of the time, kind of damp and musty. And it is dark. I don’t even know what is down there. I have lost track and maybe it is best not to know. None of the stuff in the basement ever moves into the light unless it is forced up and out.

God is walking around in my heart with a flashlight and a shovel. He is in the closets and in the basement, shining a bright light on all the old stuff that has piled up and wanting to dig it up and force it out. He doesn’t point the light into the many shadows and dark places all at once. And I can go days sometimes feeling like perhaps the basement and closets have been cleaned out and everything inside is sparkling in the sun. But then, he goes farther into the basement, another step down, another crevice found.

Yesterday, God pointed his flashlight with cutting precision into a really dark place. I was reading Isaiah and came to chapter 60, verses 19-21:

"No longer will you need the sun to shine by day,
nor the moon to give its light by night,
for the Lord your God will be your
everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.

Your sun will never set;
your moon will not go down.
For the Lord will be your everlasting light.
Your days of mourning will come to an end.

All your people will be righteous.
They will possess their land
forever,
for I will plant them there with my
own hands
in order to bring myself glory."

Now, most of this sounded wonderful to me as I read. Something weird happened, though, when I got to the part that says “for I will plant them there with my own hands in order to bring myself glory.” I had a twinge of discomfort and resistance. I couldn’t place it at first, so I read the passage again. And it happened again – a pushing back or a closing down at the idea of God doing something to bring himself glory. This was a really hard thing and I feel saddened and ashamed by it. Something so deep and dark in the basement of my heart, outside of my consciousness, resists that God should be glorified. If someone gets glory, that means that someone else does not, right? If God gets the glory, then I do not. If God is worthy of the glory, then I am not. This diminishment of my self hurt and I resisted it without even realizing it. My desire to protect and prop up my own ego is deeply engrained and powerful and dark.

The reality is that there is a desire in my own heart for God’s glory. To admit this, well, you try it. See how it feels. Perhaps it will bring to mind this description of Satan:

"How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
'I will ascent to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of
assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred
mountain.
I will ascend above the tops of the
clouds;
I will make myself like the Most
High.'"

(Isaiah 14:12-14) This is fall-to-the-ground, face-down, ask-for-forgiveness darkness of the soul. This is the essence of sin:

"Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, 'I AM.' That is sin in its concentrated essence; yet because it is natural it appears to be good. It is only when in the gospel the soul is brought before the face of the Most Holy One without the protective shield of ignorance that the frightful moral incongruity is brought home to the conscience. . . . However painful, it is precisely this acute moral consternation that produces true repentance and makes a robust Christian after the penitent has been dethroned and had found forgiveness and peace through the gospel."

(A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy)

I have places in my heart that sit in soft shadows – my deception, and lust, and unkindness. But then, there is the bottom of my heart, which is utterly without light, buried in darkness, seemingly never to be claimed or acknowledged. It is so far down that I couldn’t even identify it. Before yesterday, I could not have articulated my desire for God’s glory. I didn’t know it was there. I would not have thought it was. And then God came in with his flashlight and a shovel. Today I feel bruised and sore, dethroned and brought low. I have been convicted, guilty-as-charged. I am so sorry. But most of all, I feel something inside being transformed and made new, like Christ is reversing the very essence of my self-centered, self-aggrandizing nature so that I am capable of fully honoring God and sacrificially loving others. In other words, by shining his light on my darkness and shoveling out my deepest sin, Christ forgives me and then works to transform me to be more like him. (Philippians 2:5-11)

The Idea of Him

2011-09-22T19:32:00.001-05:00

Last night, I walked into a worship service at church in which hundreds of people were singing in full voice to God. I stood in the back and just listened to the words: “Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.” I felt suddenly and unexpectedly overcome, believing something was penetrating the defensive shell I had grown during my day at work. But then, a line from a movie I have seen many times came into my mind: “You love the idea of me, but not me, not really.” Then, my heart tightened slightly and I was reminded of being warned as a kid to look both ways before crossing the street or not to talk to strangers. I had not done anything wrong, but was headed into something and I needed to be cautioned.

I don’t know exactly what busy street or stranger-filled environment I’m walking toward, but I heard Jesus’ warning to me: “Be careful about loving the idea of me instead of me.” “Do not take your eyes off me.” I started to feel alert and saw some things I had not seen before about where certain relationships or tasks could lead me, the hard-working, overachieving, perfectionist that I can be.

Jesus has given me the tools to know the difference – the difference between loving the idea of him and loving him. According to the exchange between Jesus and Peter after Jesus had been resurrected, to love Jesus means to take care of and feed his sheep and to follow him. (John 21:15-19) John said: “This is love for God: obey his commands.” (1 John 5:3) Jesus described the greatest command as a two-part command: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:37-39) Jesus lived how to love, so there is no ambiguity there. Every person he encountered, he met with love, truth, and grace. He touched the untouchable. He ate with the uninvited. He saw the invisible. He heard the silenced. His heart broke for the brokenhearted. He opened his arms wide to have his wrists nailed to a tree, dying for the sinner.

I know what it is to love the idea of Jesus: I love that he died for me. I love his example. I love his wisdom and his parables. I love that he was able to engage with the least desirable of his time. I love to tell the story of Jesus. It’s fascinating. I love to encourage others to live like him. I love to hear stories of the people who have given up everything – not just possessions, but control – to follow him. I love to read and learn about how to love him and how follow him.

And I know what it is to actually love Jesus: It is all of the above . . . but it is so much more. It is dirty. It is hands-on. It is hard. It can seem illogical. It is not a list of rules that I can just check off and move on. It is freedom. It is life-giving and life-living. It is purpose. Every person I encounter, I meet with love, truth, and grace. I touch the untouchable. I eat with the uninvited. I see the invisible. I hear the silenced. My heart breaks for the brokenhearted. I care for and feed his sheep. It is not a part of my life, it is all of my life. I open my arms wide and I follow him wherever he goes and whenever he calls.

I find that loving the idea of him is easier and more comfortable, especially when I’m tired, worn thin, sick, lonely, hungry, removed, or busy. So, he has warned me: keep loving me, not just the idea of me.

A Book Never Intended For Me

2011-09-07T20:00:00.000-05:00

Many months ago, a friend of mine gave me the John Ortberg book called “Love Beyond Reason.” This past Friday, for whatever reason, I picked it off my crowded shelf and began reading. By Saturday morning, I was 50 or so pages in and I went to get a haircut. I took the book with me just in case I had to wait. When I arrived, there was no line and I went to the available hairdresser pretty quickly. Now, this haircut establishment is one of those in-and-out places. I don’t mess around with salons typically because my hair is short and, well, there’s not a whole lot that can go wrong. Plus, I am generally not into talking while my hair is being cut. I don’t know where this comes from because I usually enjoy conversations with complete strangers. In any event, I put the Ortberg book and my purse on the counter in the little haircut stall area.

“Whatcha reading?” the stylist asked me and before I could get any words out, picked up the book, looked at the back. “Good?” she asked. If you know me at all, you know that this question kicked me into gear. To me, this is an opening to engage in a conversation that matters, not just one about weather and coupons and hair products.

“Yeah, it is good. It’s about moving God’s love from your head to your heart.” (This is what the cover of the book says.) She nodded and seemed mildly interested. We talked for the rest of the time about the fact that she prefers a traditional church service to the more modern services. I listened to her and understood what she was saying, but got the sense that maybe she preferred the traditional service because she was used to it, but that she’d been struggling to really connect with God in her life. We talked a bit about that and she acknowledged that it may have been the case. But, she was a little hard to penetrate and I didn’t want to make her too uncomfortable, seeing as how we’d just met.

When she finished my hair, I paid and left. As I climbed into the car to pull away, I had this sense that I should just go ahead and give her the Ortberg book, like it might be what she needs. I was not clear on it though, I felt unsure. Usually, when I’m feeling prompted by God, I don’t sense much, if any, uncertainty, so I took note of the uncertainty and drove home. I continued reading the book Saturday and then some on Sunday and Monday. All the while, though, I had this nagging feeling that this book was never intended for me. It’s not that I didn’t like the book. I did, very much. But something was off. I have never had this feeling about a book. Remember when you were a kid and you got your allowance, or found five bucks, and you could not wait to spend it? We have a saying for this: the money “is burning a hole in your pocket.” This is how I felt about this book! Like I needed to give it away.

Yesterday, I got on a plane to Phoenix for a court hearing there. I read the book much of the way. Then, Tuesday evening, I was talking to a friend and told him the story of the hair stylist and the book. I told him I thought I would take the book to her when I returned from Phoenix. At the end of our call, he said, “Well, I can’t wait to hear what the purpose of your trip to Phoenix is.” We hung up. What he meant was that he couldn’t wait to hear what God’s purpose for my trip was. He and I both knew there was one, but we didn’t know what it was yet. I did have this lingering sense, way back in my mind, that the purpose had something to do with the book.

My hearing this morning went as predicted. I got on an earlier flight home than anticipated and was at about 37,000 feet, finishing the last 10 pages of the book, when I realized the trip was coming to an end. Perhaps there was no divine reason for the hours of flying and the evening in 106-degree weather after all. I was in a middle seat and the woman to my right seemed bored and antsy. She was well-dressed, very tan, in her 60s probably. She played various games on her I-phone, closed her eyes, and looked out the window. As I read the final few words in the book, I stole a glance at her and thought maybe I should tell her I finished my book, and ask if she might be interested in reading it. Like I had been with the hair stylist, though, I was hesitant, unsure. My hands started to sweat as I played this out in my mind, wondering what she might say, whether she would think this was a ridiculous idea. She would think I was a little nuts to even talk to her. The best plane etiquette, everyone knows, is to keep quiet.

We sat shoulder-to-shoulder for another two hours without words and she continued to bounce from one activity to another. I couldn’t pull the trigger, couldn’t find the words. We landed and pulled up to the gate. We stood up with the “ding” of the seat belt sign and as we were standing there, I turned to her and said, “I finished my book. Any interest?” This was the best I could come up with. She asked what it was and I showed it to her, telling her, “It’s about God’s love.” She pushed her hand toward me and said, “No. No thanks. I’m not into religious stuff.” I said, “Oh, sure. No problem. Just thought I’d ask.” “We are going to need a lot of love from God, though,” she said. Unsure of what she meant and with no more time to discuss it, I muttered, “Yes. Have a good visit here.” We parted.

And still I had this book with me. And still it was burning a hole in my pocket. The reality was, though, that there were not likely to be any more encounters. I’ve done the arrival at O’Hare deal many times and after I step off the plane, there are no more conversations. The path is clear: walk through Terminal C, down the escalators, through the colorful, moving walkways, back up the escalators and through Terminal B, down the escalators to the baggage claim area, down another set of escalators to the parking garage, more moving walkways to elevator center 3, out the doors, to the car. And this is precisely what I did today.

I pulled up to the parking attendant window to pay the exorbitant O’Hare overnight rate and caught a glimpse of Antoinette, a young, African-American woman in a blue or black uniform. I couldn’t tell because her booth was dark. Her name tag was posted outside the window. I handed her my parking ticket and credit card. Keep in mind that no one ever talks to the parking attendants. Okay, I’ll speak for myself: I don’t. Not for any malicious reason, but usually by this point in my trip, I’m anxious to get home, the price tag is always so high and I tend to think the parking attendants set the rates (they clearly don’t), and there is always a long line of cars behind me. Anyway, as I handed her my parking ticket, I noticed something. She was reading a book. Before I knew it, the words were out of my mouth, “What are you reading?” She looked startled and kind of mumbled the title. I heard only “Terry McMillan.”

“Is it good?” I asked. Now she was looking at me. Something passed between us. Something like: “Hey, we’re both human beings and we can talk to each other. How cool!”

“Well, I just started it. I’m only on page two.” Then she offered a beautiful smile. Really. I suddenly felt drawn to her presence. She returned my credit card and receipt.

“Are you looking for more books?” I asked. This time, I felt no hesitancy in my spirit. I reached into my briefcase and pulled out the book. “I finished this one on the plane. Want to give it a try?” I handed it to her and she looked at it, flipped it over. “It’s about God’s love,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, “Yes, thank you. Thank you so much.” Again, with the amazing smile. Again, something passed between us. Love, I think.

“You’re welcome,” I said and drove away. Tears came into my eyes, as I understood what I believed to be God’s purpose for my trip to Phoenix.

That book was never intended for me. And it wasn’t intended for the hair stylist or the lady next to me on the plane. It was for Antoinette. I don't know why. I don't know what impact it will have. I only know that it was intended just for her.

Looking Into A Mirror

2011-08-31T08:27:00.002-05:00

People have asked me why I am so taken with the undocumented immigrant. There are law-abiding people who need your help, they say.

Good point.

Why do the stories of the undocumented immigrants touch the deepest parts of my soul? Why do I remember their stories more vividly than all the others I have heard in my work at the Willow Creek Legal Aid Ministry? Why is it that I can still see the eyes of the undocumented immigrants when I close mine? Why do their stories, so different from mine, seem like part of my own story? After all, I grew up downtown Chicago in a upper-middle class white family. I have never gone without anything I need. I attended the best schools and enjoy any number of privileges. The undocumented immigrants I have met have experienced a very different kind of life, one with very little schooling, if any, and even less privilege.

For example:

Mario grew up poor, in a tiny village in Mexico. At age 16, his alcoholic father disowned him because he was not “manly” enough. His father beat him and told him to leave and never come back. He even told the corrupt local police to arrest Mario if he was ever found near the house again. He was told to leave and never come back. So, one night in the darkness, Mario crossed the border illegally into the United States, a place he had heard about since he was a kid. Now, four years later, he wants to become “legal” so he can go to college.

Louisa is a single mom who, along with her two kids, lives with friends. She left Mexico because she had no way to support herself and the kids after her husband left them. They were smuggled into the United States, hidden in a dark, suffocating truck bed. She came to the Legal Aid Ministry asking what to do about the traffic ticket she received. She had failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign and was also cited for having had her youngest strapped into a too-small car seat, a car seat she was able to afford only because a neighbor had put it out on the curb as garbage.

Leo dreamed of coming to the United States for better work. So he did, but without working through the normal, legal process. The prospects here were just too tempting. Now, twenty years later, he has a wife and two kids, each of whom is a citizen. But he lost his job and can no longer provide for his family. He wants to know what his options are for citizenship or residency.

Despite our vast apparent differences, the expression of hope I saw on Mario’s face is etched into my brain. Louisa’s heartbreak feels like my own. Leo’s desperation seems familiar to me. Why? Why can I not turn away? Why do I love Mario, Louisa, and Leo? Because when I look at them, I feel like I am looking into a mirror.

I have been undocumented. And there was nothing I could do to bring myself into compliance with the law. No amount of paperwork or legal arguments would secure my citizenship. I had broken the law and the longer I lived, the more laws I broke. Sometimes I felt justified by the circumstances, which were beyond my control. Sometimes, I was just too tempted and gave in to the prospects. At times, it was as if certain laws were enacted just for me to break them. So incapable was I to remedy my situation that someone else had to intervene on my behalf – to the point of death on a cross, nails through the wrists, blood running freely. All of this when what I deserved was to be deported, sent away, never to be reclaimed.

Instead, I received eternal citizenship and an all-access pass. So how can I tell the undocumented immigrant, “I can’t help you because you broke the law”? How can I say, “You’ll have to just figure this one out on your own”? How can I feel anything but compassion? How can I turn away?

Why am I so taken with the undocumented immigrant? Because I have encountered the grace of God and it has brought me to my knees.

(See this post on undocumented.tv also! http://bit.ly/nqyU9W)

Lord Jesus, Have Mercy On Me

2011-08-22T23:28:00.002-05:00

A few months back, my daughter asked me if I thought I would have believed Jesus was who he said he was if I lived during the time he lived on earth. I wish I could have answered very strongly: "Of course!" But sometimes I wonder if my role wouldn't have been a little more like this:

Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And I began to accuse him, saying "I have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king." Then I began shouting: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" With loud shouts, I insistently demanded that he be crucified and my shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant my demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one I asked for, and surrendered Jesus to my will.

The governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetoreum and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. I stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. I put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" I said. I spit on him and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After I had mocked him, I took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then I led him away to crucify him.

As we were going out, we met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and we forced him to carry the cross. We came to a place called Golgotha (which means the Place of the Skull). There, I offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall, but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When I had crucified him, I divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, I kept watch over him there.

I hurled insults at him, shaking my head and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" I mocked him. "He saved others," I said, "but he can't save himself!" I continued to heap insults on him.

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. For the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.

Something To Celebrate

2011-08-14T10:50:00.001-05:00

If you watch television, you will come to believe over time that your calling in life is to buy and consume – food, cars, technology, clothes, hair products, movies, music, books, sex, alcohol, and more television. These things are so seductive. They are salve. You know that feeling of putting your hand under cold water after you have burned yourself on the stove? Instant relief. The pain ceases immediately and all you want to do is hold your hand under flowing faucet until the burn heals. This is how I am with consuming. Other than food that I actually need to survive, most of my purchases (sometimes even food) are made to relieve some burn I have. This is not always a conscious thing, but I think probably almost always there. For a moment or even many moments, consuming feels like satisfaction of some deep need. I take something into my life and the space inside is filled, like the cold water rushing over a burn.

When I was a kid, I lived in an area of Chicago called the “Gold Coast.” And, it was as it sounds. People there had the means to consume whatever was advertised. Just to the southwest of the Gold Coast was one of the most gang-, drug-, poverty-, and crime-infested projects in the country at the time: Cabrini Green. During this particular period in history, we all had a hero, whether we lived in the Gold Coast or Cabrini Green, named Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan had a product line, you’ll recall, called Air Jordans. One pair of these shoes was over $100, which was quite high during that time. But to have these shoes meant something about your status, your allegiance, and your worth. Despite this high price, many people who lived in Cabrini Green and in other impoverished areas wore these shoes. The people who could “afford” these shoes complained about how sad it was, and what flaws it exposed in the character and perseverance and values of the poor, that they would spend what little they had on these expensive, unnecessary Air Jordans. No wonder they were poor, they said.

Today, those who can “afford” smart phones – i-Phones, etc. – make these same comments about those who cannot afford such things. I have heard people complain that poor people should use the money they spend on i-Phones to buy healthcare and then at least that problem would be fixed. If people would save their money and spend it on the things necessary for survival instead of on these unnecessary things, then they would be better off. There are homeless people I know who have been screamed at by passers-by for having new shoes or expensive looking jackets or bags. How can you be begging for money on the street and then using it to buy such things, they ask.

Unquestionably, people make bad, illogical purchasing decisions. This is true of poor people and wealthy people. And, I cannot explain every poor choice, clearly. But I am willing to bet all I have on this: most of our poor purchasing decisions (and by this I mean purchases we make that we cannot afford or that we simply do not need by any objective measure) are driven by a burn that we would do just about anything to relieve. The people who lived in Cabrini Green and bought Air Jordans and the people who lived in the Gold Coast and bought Air Jordans suffer from the same affliction. They have a huge space inside of them and when a salve that offers the hope of alleviating the pain appears, they will take it at any cost. This is true whether it ultimately undermines healing, busts budgets, causes longer-term pain, or looks like the most illogical choice one could make under the circumstances.

Last week I hosted a dinner for about 25 people in my life with whom I have experienced the presence of God. We gathered to celebrate God’s goodness and from the outside, a description of this collection of individuals sounded a little like the beginning of a joke: a lawyer, a homeless guy, and an ex-prisoner walk into a bar . . . We were from all walks of life, literally. As one friend said, you could not have come up with a more diverse and unlikely group had you simply taken everyone on a local city bus and put them at a table together. We shared communion together, prayed together, shared a meal, and then shared stories about the work of God in our lives. There are simply no words to describe the holiness of that night, and my head is still reeling from it. I have struggled to understand all that happened and all that I felt for days. I only realized this morning, while reading my Bible, some of what I believe God showed us the night of our gathering.

1 Corinthians 8:1-3 says this: “But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church. Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognizes.” Each of us at the table had our own Air Jordans at one point in our lives. These Air Jordans came in different sizes, shapes, and packages, but we all had them, we all fell for them, we all sought their immediate relief from the deep burn in us. We also all at one point in our lives came to the realization that these Air Jordans did not heal us. They only made the burn deeper and more painful. We came face-to-face with the fact that nothing we consumed could heal the deep burning in us. No amount of cold water, no immediate relief, no Air Jordans and no cell phones, would suffice.

We sat with each other at that table, each having had experienced this naked and terrifying moment. And, for each of us, it was in this naked moment that the real healer showed up and recognized us. Every person had a story about the day Jesus Christ came into his or her life and brought healing of the long-term and transforming kind. By this I don’t mean someone said they once lied and after they confessed it, they were healed. I mean each of us had incredible darkness in our hearts, inexplicable pain, and inexorable trappings. You know, the same stuff that’s in your heart and your life if you dare to look closely. But each of us, in the very moment of deepest despair, was met with recognition from Christ, the one who created all things, “is before all things,” and in whom “all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-17) With his recognition, the deep burn began to be healed for the first time.

To be sure, each person at the table last week has a long journey to becoming fully transformed into the likeness of Christ. Darkness still rears its ugly head in us and we still fall for quick-fixes and temporary salves. Daily, we need to surrender the open spaces and burning places to Christ. His work has begun, though, and he will not stop until completion. (Phil. 1:6) This is something to celebrate.

The One Thing

2011-07-20T09:34:00.002-05:00

If you were to ask me how I would describe myself, one of the first things out of my mouth would be “hard-working.” All my life, I have relied on this aspect of my character, if it can be called that, as the one thing that could differentiate me from others with similar skill levels. It is this that could allow me to climb the ladder of success. I have never thought I am smarter or more savvy than anyone else. What I have come to believe, though, is that I can achieve simply by outworking everyone else. This is true at work, in ministry, in love, in everything. It is a source of pride. I work hard and no matter how far I’m pushed, I can always find more energy. I will not be outworked!

Not all of this has been part of my consciousness, but rather, has been the way I have moved through life. It has a long history in my psyche because growing up, I was led to believe that I was not as smart, not as talented, not as good. Second-rate, really. And I believed this. Believe this. So, I allow the thing that is within my control -- my ability to muscle through with effort -- to define me.

What happens then, when someone says of me: “She is not a hard worker”? Gutted. Cleaned out. Emptied. The one thing I know to be true about me, the one thing that sets me apart, the one thing that has always been reliable and controllable, the one thing that defines me, gone with the breath of another. Now, I know that what someone says about me is not necessarily true and I know that how other people perceive me is not definitive of who I am. I know these things in my head. Tell this to the deepest part of my heart, though. It does not believe you. Tell me a thousand times that my worth does not depend on what someone else says or how I am perceived. I will hear you, I will understand what you are saying, I will want to believe you. But, I will not. Not ever.

It is here, in this place of utter emptiness, that I meet God, or, should I say, that God meets me. He is there telling me, through His Spirit, “I am here;” “You can rely on me;” “I am faithful;” “I will not leave you;” “The one thing that defines you is Jesus Christ.” This indwelling of Christ in my emptied-out heart has power behind it. The power of the One who created all, the power of the One who raised the dead. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an overnight transformation, and I have my doubts at times. To allow Christ to redefine me requires surrender and trust. It requires letting go of a piece of me that I have believed is central to who I am. Not easy. Painful, actually, because I think, "well, if I am not this, than what am I really?" Parts of me want to do something a little (seemingly) simpler – disbelieve the sentiment that I am not a hard-worker and go back to relying on the fact that I am.

How unreliable faith in this perception or self-definition is, though. How much more reliable is faith in the living Christ: the One in whom I have the assurance that I can do all things not because I am a hard worker, but because He gives me strength. (Phil. 4:13) The shell that I am without my self-definitions is filled with living water. (John 7:38)

What is your one thing?

See Things

2011-07-18T10:08:00.001-05:00

At the end of last week, I developed some kind of eye problem that has caused me to go without my contact lenses until my eye is healed. I am wearing my glasses, and unfortunately, because I have become so reliant upon my contacts, these glasses are two or three prescriptions behind. No one's life is in danger, but let's just say, I'm not at my seeing best. This morning, as I made my way off the train, though, I saw things I have always missed somehow even with better vision. When you get off the train at Union Station in Chicago at rush hour, there are mobs of people, all marching to work. Mobs. Some days it's worse than others because several trains, although scheduled to arrive just the right amount of time apart, come in all at the same time. You feel a little like you're part of a herd and your best strategy in finding your way out to the open air is to keep your head down and make sure your feet don't get tangled.

I noticed two things today. Every single person carries, pushes, or pulls something -- a coffee travel mug, a briefcase, a backpack, a suitcase, a stroller, a box, a book, a child, a wheelchair. There is not a person who is free-handed. And it turns out, everyone has some kind of ailment. The lady in front of me has an Ace bandange around her elbow. The woman next to her has a black wrist splint on her right arm. Another woman has a foot that bends inward and she walks crooked as a result. A man up ahead limps. Another man cannot stop coughing. All these broken bodies. If these were computers or mobile devices, we would trade them in, demanding a free replacement.

Then there's all the internal ailments. The guy who sat next to me on the train bit his nails down to the quick as if he has not eaten in days. Anxiety. It pulled his eyebrows down, wrinkled his face, and quickened his breath. The father and son who ride together everyday sat apart today. There were people all around who carried hurt with them along with their briefcases, bags, and books. There were hearts broken this past weekend and deep, lasting pain that resulted. There were parents walking to work who haven't seen their kids in years because of something that started small, or something that was really big. There were Sunday nights that ended in marital fighting and turned backs. There were regrets for things said and done. There were heavy hearts for things unsaid and un-done. There were those who were so happy this morning that Sunday night ended so that at least for a few short hours, the loneliness will abate. And there are those who are headed for a day in which their deepest insecurities will be exposed, their longest-held fears realized, or their hardest choices made.

These people I saw today are the ones that bump into me on the street, who cut me off in traffic, who go too slow in the left lane, who walk too absentmindedly, who don't go fast enough when the light turns green, and who haven't decided what to order by the time it's their turn in line. These people I saw today are you and they are me. They need grace. They need love.

"So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective. . . . chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it." (Col. 3:1-3; 12-14)

It Means Living

2011-07-06T22:00:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago, I had lunch with a close friend and told him I had made the decision to devote my life to Christ. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. He asked (only partially tongue-in-cheek): So, can you still play golf, or do you have to give that up? He smiled and said, “Seriously, though, how has that impacted your life? Are you different?” Hmmm. Was I? I knew the theological answer. But, how was I different, really? What difference does it make to be a follower of Christ? How is my life different? How would my life be different if I were to follow Christ? Maybe the answer to this question is what’s holding you back.

Lots people think that what it means is to give up stuff you love doing. Give up all your possessions. Follow tons of rules that lead to failure and disappointment. It’s a reservation system, an insurance policy so that when you die, you’re going to the good place instead of the bad place. Your Sunday mornings are blocked off and sometimes you miss the first quarter of football games. Doesn’t this sound a lot like dying? I had an experience yesterday through which God showed me what following Christ means. It means living.

As I was leaving the Willow Creek food pantry, I met a guy named Allen. He is homeless and jobless. He is 25, African-American, and has long eyelashes and dark brown eyes. His thin frame barely holds up his pants and as of yesterday afternoon, he could not remember the last time he slept. Allen had nowhere to go and nothing to eat, so my friend Sue volunteered to drive him to a local place that could provide shelter. She asked me if I wanted to come along. Yes! But before we took him to the shelter, we took him to lunch.

He ordered a chili-cheese hamburger, fries and lemonade. While we waited for our food, we asked him questions and he answered them shyly, but honestly. A man he didn’t know drove him to our area from southern Illinois months ago and he just happened to walk into the food pantry on July 5, 2011. He was born in Cook County, but grew up in Tennessee. He used to go to church with his grandmother who laughed a lot. He and his brothers were separated from each other and their mother when he was about 12 years old because his home was unfit for children. When he was a young teenager, his only goal was to graduate from high school. And he did. He worked for some time at a Proctor & Gamble factory. His mother has a drug addiction and his six-year old sister died recently in a car accident as a result. What he wants to do most of all is go to college and major in psychology. Allen’s only clothes were the ones he was wearing – a green Whole Foods t-shirt and gray Puma sweatpants. He had no identification, no wallet, and no money. As far as I could tell, there is not a person on earth who would claim Allen as theirs, none who would take him in and love him. No family. No friends. I don’t know, but suspect that no one has hugged Allen in many years. I do know, because he said so with quiet confidence, that every day when he wakes up, Allen thanks God for the gift of another day and another breath.

As we sat in the restaurant booth, I totally lost track of time. We laughed at ourselves and told stories. Sue told us about her relationship with Jesus and her years of struggle to understand what that relationship could be like. Allen and I talked about regrets and anxiety. When we finished eating, we made our way to an organization called PADS, which we understood might help find a shelter for Allen. I sat in the back of Sue’s car shaking my head and marveling at this remarkable adventure. The day I had planned was so different than the one that was unfolding slowly before me. I didn’t know what was to come, didn’t know how things would turn out, didn’t know anything other than at that moment, we were in the car headed to find out. We stopped at PADS and learned quickly that there are no homeless shelters in the suburbs of Chicago during the summer months. So there we were in a large conference room full of eclectic pieces of furniture and cold pizza on the table wondering what to do next. Sue and I both prayed separately for God’s guidance and direction, but for the moment, heard nothing. Sue tried to help Allen come up with ways to find his wallet, where he had his state identification card, which would allow him to get a job and open other doors for him.

Then Rachel came into the conference room. PADS was her address and she had come to pick up her mail. She looked like she was in her early 20s, short and thin with brown bangs hanging in her eyes. She told Sue she looked familiar and as they swapped names of places where they may have run into each other, Allen rubbed his hands over his face, resting his elbows on his knees. I sat next to him, helpless, but present. Rachel was homeless too. She’d had some sort of falling out with her family. This unfolded in slow motion and I could see so clearly the pain in her deepest parts. I glanced at Allen and knew his pain went just as deep. I asked Rachel where she stayed and she told us the name of a motel down the street.

Sue and I stepped outside and stood next to the building. The bitter smell of hot tar from the asphalt burned our noses and we laughed, asking “What do we do now?” I prayed silently and she put her arm around me. We laughed again. We had no idea what time it was or what was next. We just prayed for guidance. The motel down the street that Rachel had mentioned was the only option and it would be our next stop. So, we all climbed back in the car to find the motel and to ask about rates. When we arrived, we were told there were no rooms. Of course. More laughing. To see Allen laugh made my soul soar. I asked if there was another place and the attendant told us there was, a little farther down. So, that’s where we headed.

The second motel was smaller, less appealing, but there were rooms available and a weekly rate. We got a room for Allen and carried two bags of food he’d gotten at the food pantry into his room. The room reeked of stale smoke. Sue adjusted the air conditioning and I fiddled with the refrigerator. Allen sat absently on the bed, overwhelmed or grateful, or both. I thought maybe he would sleep tonight. He would be safe and he would have privacy. Before we went our separate ways, we needed to get Allen to a place where he could order his birth certificate and begin the process of obtaining identification. So, we drove him to the Cook County courthouse and as we pulled up, we all knew we were nearing the end. Sue stopped the car and she prayed for Allen. I put my arm on his shoulder from the backseat and Sue described how much Jesus loves Allen. She looked at him, praying for him and into him. She reminded him that if he were to turn to Jesus and ask for forgiveness, Jesus would forgive him. And then Allen got out of the car and we watched him walk up the ramp to the courthouse entrance.

I don’t know what will happen to Allen. I don’t know if he was able to apply for his birth certificate. I don’t know if he made it back to the motel. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. I know he’s claimed now, though. He knows he is claimed and he knows he is loved.

Jesus said: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) And, the author of Hebrews described it this way: “Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.” (Heb. 9:15)

What difference does it make to follow Christ? How is my life different? Present. Seeing. Deep Laughter. Surprises. Unknown. Fullness. Fearless. Freedom. Wide Open Heart.

Living.

Not Like Anything Else

2011-06-29T10:21:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I was driving to an appointment and without warning, images of Jesus began to flood my mind. He was being beaten by large, sweaty, yelling men. They spat on him, punched him. Blood ran down his face. He was dirty and sweaty, streaked with dark red and black markings. He looked exhausted and on the verge of collapsing. Then I saw his hands being pounded into the cross, then him hanging on the cross. The images came fast, chaotic. I couldn't concentrate and felt a sense of loss rise in my chest. I wanted to cry out, to make it stop. I wanted his pain to end. Tears came quickly and before I knew what was happening, I started to cry right there in the car. I was not sobbing, but was overcome. I shook my head slightly, trying to get the images to go away and return my focus to driving. I felt silly and surprised, confused about what I was experiencing. After a few minutes, the images were gone, but they left a sense of deep loss and regret. It was like I’d had one of those powerful, horrific nightmares that feels so real you can’t shake it for days and don’t fully understand why it has left you so scarred.

What came to mind next was a memory from about ten years ago. I was living downtown Chicago and my mom lived nearby. One day, I had to work late, and so I asked her to walk my dog, a black Labrador mix named Peat. Peat was not so skilled on a leash and would pull and panic at the slightest sound. Shortly after the time my mom was supposed to have walked Peat, she called me saying that Peat had pulled her down the stairs near our apartment building and she fell on her face. She had scrapes on her chin and nose. She had cut her cheek and sliced her hand. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and my knees weakened. I felt momentarily like I might faint. I pictured my mom, whom I loved so much, laying on the sidewalk. I imagined how much this would have hurt her and how I wished I could have been there to catch her, or pick her up, or comfort her, or something. I wished I had never asked her to walk Peat. It was my fault that her face was scratched, bruised, and bleeding. It was my fault that she was hurt. Her hurt was hurting me. More than anything, I wanted a do-over, to rewind the day and not ask her to walk the dog.

I spent much of the rest of the day yesterday trying to sort out what images of Jesus being beaten and crucified had to do with my mom being hurt by my anxiety-ridden, skittish dog. I realized this: although I have read in the Bible about Jesus’ suffering, heard the story of his crucifixion all my life, seen pictures and statues of him hanging lifeless from the cross, and watched movies of his unspeakable suffering, for the first time yesterday, Jesus’ suffering became the suffering of someone I love. At first, feeling this hurt me and was as real as the hurt I felt so long ago when my mom, who I love deeply and unfailingly, was vulnerable and bleeding. Jesus' pain was hurting me. In that moment in the car, Jesus became someone I love, and not just with my head, but so deeply in my heart and soul that what hurts him, hurts me. But then, in the same moment, Jesus' pain healed me. I actually felt what he endured for me. This was no longer an abstract concept. Someone I love so much loves me so deeply that even though he knew all the ways I would one day betray and ignore him, he volunteered for pain and death so that I would be spared. This is love. (1 John 4:10) This is grace. (Rom. 5:8) This is not like anything else.

He Lifts It Off Of Me

2011-06-18T22:49:00.001-05:00

When I was 10 years old, I struggled deeply and constantly with the idea that I would die and that everyone I knew would die. My mom would die. My dad would die. And death was permanent and not something I had made up or could get out of. I don’t know why this suddenly hit me at age 10. Nothing in particular brought it on and nothing in particular made it go away a year later. I thought about the world around me and how I’d never see it again. I couldn’t wrap my brain around this and couldn’t understand how I could ever cope with this idea. I couldn’t believe that all the people I saw at the grocery store, on the bus, at school, could possibly continue living knowing that death was on the horizon. I cried myself to sleep some nights. Other nights, I couldn’t sleep at all, kept awake by fear. Sometimes during the day, I could not concentrate at school because I was so preoccupied with the fact that one day, I would simply not be anymore. Today I am, tomorrow I am not. After a year, adolescent and teenage stuff took over and my obsessive fear of death faded. Every now and then, though, if I thought about the fact that there would come a time when I no longer existed, I could throw myself into a paralyzing and momentarily debilitating panic mode.

Given this experience in my own life, when my daughter approached age 10, I thought often about whether she would go through what I did. I thought about what I would say if she talked to me about fear of death. I asked myself whether I could raise it with her and feel competent or satisfied with the way I might advise or comfort her. I watched her and listened to things she said, keeping a keen ear out for signs she might be struggling. Then, several months after she’d turned 10, she called me upstairs one night after I had put her to bed. She had gotten into my bed and was shaking and crying. I knew when I walked into my room that the fear of death was upon her. And I was so unprepared despite all of my thinking and anticipation that this day would come. I sat down by her and wrapped my arms around her heaving fear-filled body as she told me that she was thinking about death and dying. My heart sank and I didn’t know what to say. I knew the grip this fear could have and what I would have given for her never to experience it. At first, I rambled about how good health and long life run in our family, and pointed out her youth and vibrancy. I told her how much I loved her. But I couldn’t tell her anything that would change the underlying fact that death is real and that she would die. I rocked her and finally better words came to me, by God’s goodness and grace. I explained how much God loves her, and that no matter what, he would not leave her. And that, in the end, although it was true that we all would die, she would be with Jesus and I would be there with her. I really thought I was onto something now and she seemed to calm down a bit, the tears coming a little slower.

She pulled away from me slightly and looked at me with wet eyes. “I know that God loves me. But, Mom, what if God loves me so much that he wants to take me to be with him now.” Like so many other parenting moments, I was not ready for this one. I thought, “Hmmm. Good point.” She cried harder now as if her death was imminent because of how much God loved her. I then mumbled something about God needing her here so he could bring his love to others through her. Eventually, exhaustion took over. I think just talking and getting her out of her own head helped the most. Nothing I said seemed useful really.

Several months later, the fear returned. I couldn’t come up with anything new or better to say. I had no answers as to how to deal with this fear. Death is a fact. How do you make a 10-year old okay with this? So this time, I just said: “I’m sorry you’re scared. I think we need to ask Jesus for help.” To my great surprise, she said: “Yeah, that’s what I usually do.” I smiled and asked: “Does it help?” “Yes,” she said, “it really helps. He lifts it off of me.” This rendered me speechless. I have no idea what God is doing inside my daughter’s heart and mind when she turns to him and asks for his help. The fact that he brings her peace and lifts off the fear, allowing her to fall asleep, is almost too much to take.

Whenever the fear returns, and it does, she asks for Jesus’ help and if I am with her, we ask together. Just the other night, we did this and I realized that although I don’t struggle with the fear of death anymore, I struggle with other things. And so often, I try to think my way out of them or become resigned to the fact that they will simply burden me until they don’t anymore just like the fear of death. Sometimes I don’t even think to ask Jesus for his help. Sometimes I think certain things I struggle with are just too insignificant and it’s better to save my requests for something really serious. What peace I am foregoing. No more.

“The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:5-7) I will ask Jesus for help. No big explanations needed. No big words, no philosophical thoughts about why I am fearful or anxious. Like a child, I will just say: “Jesus, please help me.” He is near. He will lift it off.

My Times Are In Your Hands

2011-06-09T20:42:00.002-05:00

This morning I prayed a very short, simple prayer. It was "use me today, Lord, in whatever way you will." Tonight, as I sit staring out the window into the backyard watching the green leaves blow frantically in the cold breeze, two stranger’s faces haunting me, there is a big part of me, bigger than I care to admit, that wishes I hadn't prayed that prayer just so I wouldn’t have had to have seen what I saw.

As I walked to lunch with a colleague today to celebrate a legal victory, the lives of two people changed forever. We had walked several blocks and when we came to the corner of Adams and LaSalle, and were discussing various deadlines in our case, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving very fast hit something standing still. And then a man with short hair, a summer-weight sweater, a gold wedding ring, and casual pants fell to the ground. I looked down at him. Blood bubbled out of his mouth, his body was motionless, his eyes rolled back into his head. His life will never be the same. Another man lay next to him, a bicycle under him. He jumped up and looked at the man he'd hit, saying, "Oh my God. Oh, are you okay? Are you okay?" His life will never be the same. Several people gathered around. Only thirty to forty-five seconds had passed. A woman squatted down and cradled the man's head. He was unconscious. I reached for my phone and called 911, begging the person who answered to send an ambulance. "A man has been hit. He's bleeding from his mouth. He's unconscious. Please send an ambulance. Adams and LaSalle. Please send an ambulance."

The bicyclist leaned against a light pole on the corner, his eyes were filled with tears and his face was shrouded in fear. I glanced at him briefly and turned back to my colleague. We wondered what more we could do. An ambulance was on the way. A traffic police officer stood to divert traffic as cabs and buses and cars whizzed by. Some people said to turn him over so he didn't choke, some said not to move him. Standing there was not helping so we walked on to the restaurant a half block down.

As we walked, we were both silent, shaken by what we'd seen. The face of the bicyclist, all alone in the chaos, was everywhere I looked – his watery eyes, blank stare, deep fear. The restaurant was busy and we sat at the bar because of the long wait. I needed to go back. I needed to go back and check on the bicyclist. I ordered a lemonade and stared at the menu. I began to pray silently for both men. I thought of the phone call the injured man's wife would receive. I thought about his kids. I thought about all the stuff he probably had and how in a single instant, it lost all significance. I prayed that he would live, that he would be okay. But the bicyclist’s watery eyes pierced me again. I couldn't concentrate. I thought about the sadness and guilt and fear he must be feeling, not knowing whether the man he hit would die, not knowing what his life would be like if he lived. I thought about all the stuff he probably had and how in a single instant, it lost all significance.

My colleague and I talked; I'm not sure at all what I said. I saw the ambulance speed by outside, lights flashing, siren sounding. I needed to go back. We kept talking. I kept praying. Finally, in the middle of our conversation I excused myself: "I'm sorry, I just need to go back." I rushed out of the restaurant and walked down the block where the ambulance still sat. The man was not on the street anymore and all the people who had stood around him were gone. A police officer stood on the curb and the bicyclist stood exactly where he had when I left, against the light pole, staring straight ahead.

"Are you okay?" I asked him as I approached slowly.

“Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know," he said, making brief eye contact. He was young, quiet.

"I was here when it happened," I said. He nodded. “What do you have to do now?”

"I think I have to give a statement or something. I don’t know," he said. So much unknown. Everything unknown.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Danny," he said softly, looking at me again, but just barely.

"Danny, I would like to pray for you if that's okay." This felt so awkward to say. Part of me wanted to pull it back in. I had no idea if Danny was a Christian, had thought about Christianity, or if he was an atheist or a Buddhist, or what.

His eyes met mine directly now. I stared into them. "Yeah. Yes, that would be great. Thank you."

"Okay, Danny." I looked at him in love and put my arm on his shoulder. I walked back to the restaurant and with each step, I asked God something, but I’m not sure what. I couldn’t formulate a coherent thought. I started and stopped. They were half prayers, half thoughts. At one point, I just said: "God, he is in your hands. Danny is in your hands." I couldn't formulate words anymore.

Thirty minutes later, after eating, as we left the restaurant, my colleague went in one direction, and I started back to work in the other direction. As I approached the corner where these two lives were changed forever, a police car pulled up and Danny got out of the back. I wanted to go to him and provide comfort in some way. I wanted to just hug him or stand near him or do something. I stood nearby for about three minutes and asked God to give me guidance as to what to do. I thought he might tell me to go pray with him, to comfort him, to say something. I heard nothing and people stared as they walked by because I stood still in the middle of the sidewalk.

I looked at Danny and then looked away. There had to be more I could do, more I could say. There had to be more. I couldn’t just leave him standing there with his bike, a weapon on that day. Then I heard in my mind: "Let him go." I crossed the street and heard it again: "Let him go." God had used me as much as he wanted and my job was done; he would take it from there. I walked back to work.

Now, hours later, I can’t stop thinking about Danny and all that I saw in his eyes, and all that I didn’t see in them. I can’t get the image of the injured man lying on the pavement out of my head. I can see every crease in his face, the color of his eyes, the bright red coming out of his mouth. I probably will never know how these two lives have been changed by the instant they collided. But I cannot heal the man who was hit. I cannot take away Danny’s guilt or fear. There is nothing left but to let go. They are both in God’s loving, gracious, merciful hands. And how I realize anew today that I am too. “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands.” (Psalm 31:14-15)

Which One Brings Life

2011-06-04T11:29:00.001-05:00

On Thursday at lunchtime, I decided to go sit at a nearby sandwich place to eat and read my Bible. This is not something I do everyday. More often than not, I speed through my food at my desk as I work. (Probably not the healthiest habit.) Anyway, I was feeling a need to connect with God, thirsty to hear from Him, so I thought reading part of one of the gospels or a Psalm might be the way to do it. I went out, holding my Bible by my side and thinking about what to read. I breathed in the warm air outside and reveled in the cool breeze as I made my way to the restaurant. Time with God as I had planned in my head was sounding like just what I needed. I crossed the street and saw my friend Steven sitting on the sidewalk with his military bag. He was trying to get enough money for food, relying on the compassion of passers-by. I would go say hi on my way back from lunch, see how he’s doing.

As I approached the revolving door of the restaurant, I felt a strong prompting from God to go back and sit with Steven. So, I turned around and walked back to the little spot on the bridge where Steven sat and where we had had our very first conversation just over two years before (Take the Marine to Lunch). I sat down next to him on the concrete in my black, pressed work pants. I put my Bible down next to me, my purse between us, and wrapped my arms around my knees.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

The sun blasted down on us and the wind blew across our faces as we talked about a full range of topics: his health, my work, some painting I needed to do at my house, that he was reading Revelation, a guy we know named Thomas who sells newspapers, a guy we know named Prince who lives on the street, but whom we haven’t seen since Thanksgiving. For much of the time we were just quiet. People in suits scurried busily by, staring down at us. Tourists with kids skipped by, looking at us with curiosity. Time slowed almost to a stop. Sometimes Steven and I talk about our faith, our doubts, Christ. This day, though, there was no need to talk of these things. Christ was right there with us. His presence and His peace settled on us, grounding us in Him and lifting us to Him. I could have sat there forever and thought that heaven would be like this. In those minutes, we could foresee the day when Steven’s pain would be no more. His nausea would be gone, never to return. He would not be losing weight; would not be worried about more chemotherapy or radiation or that more cancer would be found in some other place in his tired body. In those minutes, we saw in each other the place where God dwells in us. In those minutes, Christ was with us, just as He said He would be. (Matt. 18:20)

About thirty minutes later, it was time for me to get back to work. I picked up my Bible, smiling to myself with a grateful, joy-filled heart, made a quick stop for sandwiches, gave one to Steven, and took mine back to my desk.

“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40) It is easy to sit at a table at a sandwich shop and study Scripture, to know what it says, to be able to identify what book says this and which says that. It is something else entirely to come to Christ. If you have tried both, you know, without a speck of doubt, which one brings life.

A Day Like Today

2011-05-25T09:42:00.001-05:00

There is something about a dark, pouring-down-rain day like today that makes me feel like God is closer than ever. The sky is nearly touching the ground, you can't see beyond what is right in front of you, and it is as if the distance between us and Him has grown smaller. My thoughts tend to turn inward on these days. I am more contemplative and prayerful. I am thankful for the smells of wet soil and green trees, and the sound of drops pounding the roof. I think of old loves and how though some involved pain, the love that was there was real and came straight from the hand of a good God. Moments of time that seem more like poetry flood my mind and bring a smile motivated by joy.

We carry umbrellas, on a day like today, cover our shoulders with raincoats, and wear rubber boots to our knees. But sometimes we need to be soaked to the middle of our thighs, walking in puddles with inside-out wind-broken umbrellas just to feel God in the cool, relentless rain drops. We need to be reminded that nothing bad happens when we are pelted by rain, not really. We get wet. We feel uncomfortable. But we are here and we feel something, we feel God.

Sounds are muted on a day like today. A plane flies silently overhead. Birds hide in nests. Trees bend in the wind, but without a noise. Really the only thing we hear is thunder. Deep, roaring, overpowering, unpredictable thunder. In between these eruptions of sound, there is silence. It is a silence we do not create, but that he gives, wanting us to hear something other than the interruptions and busy humming of our own lives. This silence makes me lean in, makes me stay attuned. Let me hear you, Lord.

Everyone looks a little tired on a day like today. We were all jarred awake by the alarm ringing because this morning felt much more like the middle of a night than a new day. There are lots of closed eyes on the train and I can't help but wonder what kinds of work God might be doing behind those lids and in the quiet hearts -- what he is doing in me to draw me closer. The open eyes that I do see seem deeper somehow on days like today. Maybe none of us are quite in control as we thought on the bright sunny yesterday. And love seems urgent today, but harder to hand out, harder to give than on the days the sun and birds and endless blue sky cheer us on. What we want most is to collect the ones important to us, the ones who hold our hearts in delicate hands, and ride out a day like today behind closed doors.

Things slow down on a day like today. The breaths are deeper -- both coming in and going out -- our thoughts more thorough, each minute longer than the same minute on a sunny day, every word more meaningful and longer lasting. I want to fall in love; listen to jazz; hold a mug of hot coffee and a long conversation; cuddle under warm blankets; savor a good book; fill my soul; still my mind; and slow my heart.

Pain feels broader on a day like today because it feels a little like adding insult to injury. But in a strange way, a day like today is a reminder that a day like yesterday, bright with sun and hope and color, will come back. Everyday will not be like today. We know this for sure if the the past is any indication of the future.

And perhaps this is the key to all the other stuff that a day like today uncovers: that something deep and long-lasting and beautiful happens in the rain, but not everyday will be like this day. The sunny day that floods warmth, hope, joy, uncomplicated, unending love is on the way:

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.' He said to me: 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all of this, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.'" (Rev. 21:1-7)

Thank you, God, for a day like today and the tomorrow it brings.

All Three Wishes

2011-05-20T08:56:00.001-05:00

Remember when you were a kid (or maybe you still do this) and you would play those question games like: If you could be any animal, what would you be? If you could marry anyone, who would it be? If you could live anywhere, where would you live? If you had three wishes that you knew would come true, what would you wish for? On this last one, you might say $100 million, a new car, a new job, a new brother or sister, whatever. Maybe you would use one wish for someone else – a cure for cancer. Maybe you’d try the old trick of using one wish for three more wishes. Clever. You’re probably a lawyer or something now. Rarely though would you use all three wishes for the benefit of someone else. This would just be nuts. I mean, they’re your wishes. I have to say, sometimes I pray this way, don’t you? I spend lots of time praying for healing, courage, strength, patience, love, mercy. In. My. Own. Life. I do pray for others, but if I’m honest, my strongest, most time-consuming, most regular prayers are for me. I mostly use my “three wishes” for me, just like when I was 10. Perhaps this is why the Holy Spirit has been guiding me lately in some pretty specific ways about how to pray, what to pray for, and who to pray for.

I met with a woman this week who is going through a kind of pain I can’t imagine and which penetrates every single minute of her life. Her daughter died at a young age two years back and her granddaughter, who is a little girl, is suffering physically and emotionally at the hands of an alcoholic and abusive father. The grandmother has been cut out of the granddaughter’s life and spends most days on the edge of despair wondering what might be happening to her granddaughter at any given moment. Sorrow preceded her as she sat down with me and we talked through her legal options. She had deep brown, watery eyes. As we talked, and came up with a legal strategy, I was overcome by a persistent whisper from the Holy Spirit to pray to God for His power to be applied to this desperate, broken situation. Not His grace or mercy or love, His power.

So, at the end of our legal discussion, I held my hands out to this woman, who, in the span of this short consultation, I had fallen in love with – no other way to put it. I then proceeded to pray the boldest, most direct prayer I have ever spoken: “God, we approach you with confidence and ask that you apply your incomparable power to protect the granddaughter, that you give the grandmother the words to say and the courage to say them to take the steps she needs to take in court.” At this point, I felt another nudge to pray for the abusive father, and continued: “Lord, please make the abusive father stop his drinking and abuse, and transform his heart and heal whatever pain is causing him to act the way he is. Please Lord, only your power can relieve the pain here and we trust you to make it so.” By the end, both of us were undone. Tears flowed freely, dripping down our cheeks. Then we embraced like a mother and daughter might. But, our tears were not of sadness. They were tears that come in the overwhelming, holy presence of the Lord. Even though nothing had changed in this woman’s life or the situation of her granddaughter that we knew of, we cried tears sparked by the hope and love God supplies at the instant one of His children is presented to Him for healing.

In the gospel accounts, there are many stories about Jesus healing individuals he encounters. Over the last week or so, I have been stuck on one story in particular: the story of the centurion, or commander in the Roman army. (Matt. 8:5-13) Remember this one? This centurion is the most faithful man Jesus encounters in all of Israel. His faith is so strong that Jesus is described as being “astonished.” But, get this: the centurion didn’t go to Jesus and ask that something in his life be fixed or healed or that he be forgiven. The centurion went to Jesus and asked that his servant be healed. And he was. This guy used all three of his wishes on someone else. Can you imagine? One shot at a request to the Lord in the flesh and his request is not for some kind of healing in his own life, forgiveness of his sin, eternal life, a private meeting. His request, made from a place of complete confidence that it could be granted, was that his servant be healed. We don’t even know whether the servant knew or asked the centurion to ask Jesus for healing. And, we don’t know whether the servant believed in Jesus. All we know is that he was healed and he was healed because of the centurion’s act of faith in presenting him to Jesus. Remarkable. Think what it must have been like when the centurion saw that his servant was completely healthy and no longer on the brink of death. How close must he have felt to God at that moment! How loved must he have felt! How his faith must have soared! I imagine he and his servant must have cried together, tears dripping down their cheeks.

There is another story in which a group of men carry their friend, who is paralyzed and can’t walk, on a mat to a house where Jesus is teaching. (Luke 5:17-26) Because of the crowds, they can’t get in the front door, so they climb up on the roof carrying this friend, and then lower him through the roof, presenting him to be healed. This seems like quite an effort to me. It’s hard to even picture what this must have looked like. They had to think there was a pretty good chance this was going to work. But what’s so amazing is that once the man is before Jesus, and his friends are standing around him, the friends do not ask Jesus to heal anything in their lives. Their one and only request is for their friend. The text says: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’” Later, Jesus says: “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” When Jesus saw the faith of the friends, he healed the paralyzed man. And when the friends saw this, they didn’t themselves say: “Wait, what about us? Please forgive us too, please heal my marriage, or my this or my that.” They used all “three wishes” for someone else. Their friend was healed because of their act of faith in presenting him to Jesus. How their faith must have expanded when they witnessed their friend’s healing! How Jesus’ love must have filled their souls! I imagine they and their friend must have cried together, tears dripping down their cheeks.

My own experience earlier this week with the grandmother in combination with studying the stories in Matthew and Luke got me thinking about the fact that at various points in our lives, we all need someone else to carry us to Jesus. Theologically speaking, this is called “intercession” – that is, a prayer to God on behalf of someone else. For some reason, I have a hard time connecting with this word. It seems too formal. There is something so much more intimate and loving in describing intercession as carrying someone to Jesus. And we all need this. Sometimes our faith falters, or we are too weak in sin or in health to walk ourselves into the presence of Jesus for healing, or we are blinded to the fact that we even need healing. During these times, we need someone else to act in faith for us, to carry us, to use all “three wishes” they have for our benefit. Conversely, there is someone you know who, right now, needs some kind of healing in their life, but their faith is faltering, they are too weak to bring themselves into God’s presence through prayer, or they don’t even realize, for some reason, that they need help.

Would you act in faith and present them to Jesus? Would you carry them for miles, hoist them up on a roof, and then lower them into Jesus’ presence so that they can be healed? Would you go to them, even though you’re busy and it would be a long drive, just to join hands with them, and pray boldly and directly, knowing with confidence that God will intervene? There are times when someone you know and love needs you to exercise whatever faith you have solely for their benefit. They may not ask, they may not even know. They may not have faith. But when you use your three wishes for them and bring them into the presence of Jesus, it is a gift, plain and simple. And not just for them, for you. It brings you into the presence of the Lord and plants hope and love in you. It builds your faith and brings you closer to God. It is nothing short of a miracle.

How are you using your three wishes?

PS: If you need someone to carry you into the presence of Jesus, I would love to do that. Email me: kellye.fabian@gmail.com

Come, Lord Jesus

2011-05-06T13:08:00.002-05:00

Many months ago, I read the book of Revelation cover to cover on my way to the office on the train. This was a strange way to start my day, and you know what I mean if you've read the book of Revelation in one sitting (or at all). Since that day, though, there is one particular line, which appears at the very end that has been seared into my soul, haunting me at times. Jesus says: "Yes, I am coming soon," and the text then says: "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." Come, Lord Jesus. I sometimes wonder what kind of emotion was behind this simple, power-packed prayer. John, the author, knew and loved Jesus in the flesh. What must saying these words have evoked in him once Jesus had been taken up to be with the Father? Tears well in my eyes when I say it or pray it. There are stories I hear from others or on the news to which I can only respond with three words: Come, Lord Jesus. There are also deeply personal struggles I face to which there is only one prayer I can muster: Come, Lord Jesus. And what incredible sustenance and indescribable holiness calling on the name of the Lord Jesus brings. Try it sometime. A recent encounter with this prayer:

Come, Lord Jesus

A wine glass and my book with cracked binding
teetered on the edge of the bathtub
as I floated in the warm, still water,
breathing out the end of another day.

And then you were there, sitting beside me
with an endless grace in your eyes that
was meant for me in just that moment
of lonely struggle and pain.

Without words, I understood you knew
the source of each tear that ran down my face,
how my heart cried to you for strength
and pushed you away in my weakness.

You knew the heaviness I carried
and worked unsuccessfully to overcome.
You knew my darkest moments and most
hurtful, deceptive deeds and considerations.

With your mere presence, love rushed in,
swallowing in an instant all loneliness and pain,
all guilt, shame, and sin,
as if they had never been born or indulged.

My eyes fixed on yours.
How you love me.
Yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Walking To Be Still

2011-04-29T21:47:00.001-05:00

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

“Be still.” Being still is not one of my gifts. Multi-tasking, though, now that is a gift for sure. If I don’t have more than one activity going on at once, I get antsy. So, best to have three or four things going, at least. This leads to a kind of frenetic pace of life and prevents presence and patience. I have a sense you know what I mean.

“[K]now that I am God.” I know that He is God, almighty, all powerful. I talked to Him this morning. I feel His presence right now. I meet Him in others, in serving, in praying, in reading, in . . . doing.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Combining these two has the tendency to stump me a little. What does this mean exactly?

Sometimes I think God just wants to show me stuff about who He is and how I can know Him better and I don’t slow down enough to let Him. Seems like everything I do is so that I can do something else or so that something else will happen. There is always a goal or a destination to the task at hand. Rarely do I do anything that is to appreciate the thing itself. All this so-that living leaves little room for taking in what God provides to re-fill me. When my hands are busy, my feet are moving, my brain is solving, and I become unknowingly convinced that I control outcomes, it is hard to really know that He is God, and neither I, nor anything or anyone else, is.

God is working very deeply in my life right now, in different areas, in different ways. I feel like an old house being torn down in order for a new one to be put in its place – all that is in me is being torn down and out and off, right down through the foundation. Sometimes it resembles a gentle reconstruction, a piece carefully taken out and replaced here and there, and other times I feel like I’m surrounded by bulldozers, cranes, and wrecking balls. This process requires extreme discipline, suffering, prayer, grace, trust, faith, and deep breaths. And it’s not like I exercise each of these successfully all of the time, or even most of the time. I’m beginning to understand that this a life-long deal, which can start to feel slightly overwhelming. I am tending to want to hold on to all the stuff in the old house – the judgments, resentments, anger, jealousies, little hurts, big hurts, sinful habits – just because I know them so well, you know? We have been friends for a long time. Let me put it this way: I would not want God’s job rebuilding me. I’d throw me into the impossible pile.

I've started to sense that if I would just slow down and live in God’s presence instead of bracing against the rebuilding I might start to enjoy the process and recognize it as the miracle that it is. If I could understand this not as something I am doing or have to accomplish, but as something to which I am submitting so that someone much bigger, stronger, and more loving than me can do. God would replace the old stuff with new stuff. And the new stuff is Him, His love, His grace, His mercy, His glory. The judgments, resentments, anger, jealousies, hurts, and sinful habits can be put into industrial-size garbage bags and set out on the curb for disposal. Even just a couple steps into the process, I have caught glimpses of extreme grace, freedom, peace and contentment.

So, as a way to submit to rebuilding, I’ve started walking around outside. This may not seem like a huge step, but it is; for me, it’s huge. I never really understood just walking around. What is the purpose, the goal, the point, the destination? I am walking so that . . . what? But already, it is resulting in a centeredness, connectedness, and certainty in God’s promises I have never experienced. The other day, God showed me something amazing. I went for a walk and though my feet were moving, I was walking just to walk, and I started to notice all the things that grow and live and move and hang and shine and smell without me. I mean everything. I began to feel in a concrete way my smallness in comparison to God’s bigness. I was walking, but there was a sudden stillness in my mind and heart that opened me and allowed God to show me how much I need Him to live.

“Be still” is “rapha” in Hebrew, which means “let go” or “be weak.” Let go and know that I am God. Be weak and know that I am God. It is God saying go ahead and be weak; I am strong. In your weakness, I am strength. Let go of all the old stuff you’re clinging to because it will not bring you life. But I will, I am God.

Whatever The Cost

2011-04-22T08:33:00.005-05:00

At first, I didn’t want to write this. I didn’t want this part of the story to be real. But the rest of this story matters.

Over the last few days, I began feeling like God was whispering to me to follow-up with the woman I led to Christ last week. (See The Party In Heaven On April 12, 2011) I had been praying that He would work in her life, become real to her, transform her. Truth be told, though, I was a little nervous about calling her. Our conversation had been so volatile and I wanted to believe that once she accepted Christ and we prayed together (despite the very words I had myself said to her about the fact that all of her external problems would not go away) all of her external problems would go away and all would be well. One person to whom I related the story said to me: you never really know how things will turn out after you lead someone to Christ. It was in that moment that a bunch of things – fears really – collided in my head and heart. This woman is alone in the world. She has no family, no friends. She is homeless and believes deeply that she has been wronged. She is physically sick. She is not employed. And perhaps worst of all, she does not feel loved. Becoming involved in her life would be . . . well, time consuming, hard. A voice in my head said to be careful, and asked if I really wanted to get involved with this woman with so many different problems.

I didn’t answer that voice and just took one small step: I called her and asked how she was doing. She said: not well. I asked how she was feeling about what we had talked about on Tuesday. She said: “Everything you said to me was a lie. That you felt love for me. All a lie.” My head started to spin, my heart sank. I screamed out in my head to God: “What?? Why, God? What can I do? Please, Lord, please intervene! Show yourself to her! Please!”

I collected myself and calmly asked her why she thought that. She said, “Well, I thought if you did love me like you said, you would have helped me. But, just like everyone else in my life, everyone else I’ve ever talked to, it was just a lie.”

I opened my mouth to say something and she interrupted, “That’s what I thought. Until just now. Now you have called me just to see how I am doing. I may have to re-think things. Maybe you weren’t lying.” And there it was.

It would have been so much easier not to make that call, to simply believe that the story ended when we hugged and cried and she walked out the door. I could invent all kinds of outcomes that would be great to tell. To lead this woman to Christ and then walk away from her, though, would not have been following Christ. I would have been saying one thing and doing quite another (which, believe me, I do more than I would prefer to admit). Following Christ is costly, it’s inconvenient to my own desires, it takes from my claims to my time, it is scary and makes me step into things that are messy and broken. But it is everything.

As Bonhoeffer said, there is cheap grace and costly grace:

“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate . . . Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship at 44-45)

I’m in something now that is messy. I don’t know how long I’ll be in it. I don’t know what it will look like. I don’t know what will happen. But it is beautiful, it feels like life, and it is everything. Following Christ is loving one another as Christ loves us. “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12) You know the rest of the story, what Christ did, how He loved.

Loving someone as Christ loves us is not walking away from them, it is walking to them, whatever the cost.

The Party In Heaven On April 12, 2011

2011-04-14T09:50:00.005-05:00

I have not been a part of anything like this before. And I tell the story only because God gave it to me to tell. The risk in telling it is that one could read it and believe it is something I did, but I can assure you that this is God's story, not mine. If you, or someone you know, have wondered if God still works, still intervenes in the lives of people living today, and still searches desperately for those far from him, or, if you wonder if God could use you to draw others to him, this is a story meant for you.

I got word Tuesday that a woman was angry because of the service she received in a ministry in which I serve and she wanted to talk to someone. So, I met with her in a private room. She walked in, anger seared across her face and even in the posture of her body. I introduced myself and said I'd heard she had had a bad experience and if she would share it with me, I would love to see if I could help. I asked her to tell me the issue in a nutshell. She began, and to say it was complicated is an extreme understatement. As I listened, I became overcome with a deep and truly inexplicable love for her. But she was far from me and had a very hard shell.

After nearly an hour, she said she had no options; she didn't know how to solve the problem she was facing. We talked this through and she began crying, overwhelmed by the bigness of the problem. At this point, the Holy Spirit took over in a way only one who has experienced it could understand. What I mean is that I no longer felt in control of the things I was saying and everything going on around me and inside my head was turned to this woman. There were no distractions, no desires to be elsewhere, there was total singlemindedness. I asked if she had a relationship with Christ. She immediately burst with tears and began to shake, her head down, eyes closed. She lifted her face to me and slowly opened her eyes, shook her head, and with a sense of embarrassment, said "I'm Jewish." Without hesitation, I practically shouted: "I love that! I think that might be one of the things Jesus loves most about you. What a rich history you share with him." She looked at me with shock. And, I must say, I shared the feeling.

From there she told me every reason under the sun as to why she could not believe: her family, fear, loss of control, apathy. I confronted her on each point, asking what she feared, what control she had, what her apathy did to her heart. At one point I asked her if she felt loved. She said no. Not by anyone. I asked if she felt loved by me. She said: "No, to me, you might as well be that chair. I feel nothing from you or for you." I said: "Really? I feel such love for you. And there is something about your tears that tells me that even though we've just met, you feel love stirring in your heart. Maybe for the first time in years. Feel it. It's real and it's safe."

She then told me that she thinks God was with her once -- when things were good. She thanked him then, but now he had abandoned her. We talked more about that and then I asked if she had invited Christ into her pain and abandonment, to walk with her and comfort her. (At this point, I knew where we were headed and I asked God to give me the words and I said to myself: I will stay here forever if that is what it takes). She said she hadn't. I told her that a relationship with Christ did not mean that all her problems would disappear and that her external circumstances would suddenly different. I told her a relationship with Christ meant that a peace would come into her heart, a love she could not understand would envelope her, a transformation of her entire being and identity would occur. The Holy Spirit would strengthen her and give her courage and confidence and hope. These are things I have come to know in my own life.

I asked if I could help her invite Christ into her heart. After an interminable pause, in which she undoubtedly struggled with all that held her back, she said yes. I scooted my chair close to her and held out my hands. She said: my hands are covered in tears. I said: it's ok, mine are sweating. We laughed and locked eyes, locked souls. I had no idea what to say, having never experienced this before, so I opened a conversation with God and thanked him for Christ and the fact that we have a bridge, a way back into relationship with God because of Christ. I then asked her if she wanted to invite Christ into her heart to reign and guide her life. She said quietly: I do. We went from there.

Then came a moment in which there was nothing left to say, but the presence of God was more palpable than I have ever felt. I told her God was present with us, and said to her she could say anything to God or me if she wanted, that she was totally safe. After a few moments, and as we continued to hold hands, she whispered through tears: thank you.

I gave her some things to read in the Bible and then read Psalm 139 aloud to her based on a clear prompting from God to do so. This Psalm describes God's love for her. We hugged, and she left. I have never loved someone so quickly, so deeply, so actively. It is only because God has loved me first and loves her that I am even capable.

This story would be quite enough to last a lifetime. But, when I got home, my Bible was still open to what I had read that morning before going to the legal aid ministry: Luke 15:1-32. You can read it for yourself, it is the three parables Jesus tells of the desperate searching a shepherd does for one lost sheep, a woman does for one lost coin, and a father does for a lost son, and the party that results when the lost is found. In the Bible I had read that morning, these words were typed in bold: "In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven't strayed away!" (You can look in the Tyndale "The One Year Bible" and see this on April 12th.)

There was a party in heaven on April 12, 2011 for a lonely, brokenhearted woman who repented and turned to God, a God who had been searching and longing for her return since the day she was made.

Whether Your Heart Is Full Or Empty

2011-04-11T10:50:00.004-05:00

Prayer is a tricky thing for me. At times, I don't feel like I totally understand either how to do it or what it is. This something that I have been struggling with for a long time and it wasn't until just recently that I realized it. I have several distinct memories of prayer before I dedicated my life to Christ in 2008.

When my mom told me and my sister that my parents were getting divorced, I said to myself (at 6-years old): "Please God let us be okay." I don't know how or where I learned to say such things. We didn't go to church and as far as I remember, my mom didn't pray in my presence. It was just inside of me; He was just inside of me. And I somehow knew then to ask God for His help.
My next recollection of any prayer was in my Catholic grade school. At that time, prayer became a race, followed by a reward as opposed to a conversation with or worship or request of God. We would recite the "Hail Mary" as we rubbed our fingers over plastic rosary beads, or the "Our Father" to begin the day. I never took the time to understand the words I was saying and my only goal, as was most of my classmates', I suspect, was to get done the fastest.
In high school (also Catholic), I began to understand personal prayer more and would, at times, though very rarely, turn to God in prayer. During these times, I fumbled through and couldn't find words to express what I wanted to say. So, I abandoned prayer altogether.
At certain family gatherings, we would join hands and say: "Bless us O, Lord . . . ." I can't even type it here because the only way I can say it is at break-neck speed aloud. I don't know the actual words, unless said in a rhythmic, hurried incantation.
Last, when I was about 4 months pregnant with my daughter, I was taking a shower and my back was bothering me. I turned to crack my back to see whether that would relieve the pain and when I did, I felt a pop not only in my back, but in my stomach, where this baby was growing. I panicked, believing I had somehow hurt this little life inside me and I said to God: "Please God, let this baby be okay. Let this baby be okay, and I will never do anything again to hurt her." This was almost 12 years ago and it rings in my head like it was yesterday.

I have a feeling that many pray this way: Years go by without prayer and in times of desperation, we turn to God because there is just nowhere else to go. What I have found more recently, as I've begun to be with others who are devoted to Christ and all that He is, prayer is still tricky. Less common is no prayer and more common is wandering, direction-less, rambling words disguised or referred to as prayer. Of course, there are books written about prayer -- what it means, how it works, how to do it, when to do it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer defines prayer as finding "the way to God and [speaking] with him, whether the heart is full or empty." (Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible at 10) What has been interesting is that the more I have studied prayer and read books about it, the less I am able to pray. I will sit in silence, with my hands turned upward and words will not come. And this drives me crazy. I stand up, pace the room, ask what is going on, say: why can't I pray? Sometimes this alone is my prayer -- this crazed questioning pacing. I am praying about why I can't pray. Now that's something. Bonhoeffer also says, though, that "[n]o man can do that [speak with God] by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ." The logical place to start in understanding prayer or praying, then, is with Christ and the way He instructed his disciples (and us) to pray:

"When you pray, say:
'Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.'" (Luke 11:2-4)

This, we know, is referred to as the Lord's Prayer. Bonhoeffer says that all the prayers in Scripture are summarized in this single prayer and "are contained in its immeasurable breadth." (Bonhoeffer, Psalms at 15-16) Martin Luther said that the Psalms penetrate "the Lord's Prayer and the Lord's Prayer penetrates [the Psalms], so that it is possible to understand one on the basis of the other and to bring them into joyful harmony." God's words are so much clearer and powerful than our rambling. In my human-ness, if I am honest, the Lord's Prayer becomes for me too easy to recite, too easy to memorize, and thus too easy to remove all meaning. I hate that this is true, but it is. I know it by heart and like so many other things I take for granted from overuse, this too has become true of the Lord's Prayer. I need to understand it or see it in a new way. And so, I turn to the Psalms and other passages of Scripture to, as Luther said, help me understand and soak in the Lord's Prayer and vice versa.

As Thomas Merton quoted in his book "Contemplative Prayer," St. Macarius explained a loss of words in prayer this way: "Only stretch out your arms and say: 'Lord, have pity on me as you desire and as you well know how!' And if the enemy presses you hard, say: 'Lord, come to my aid!'" This is enough. I have compiled and set forth below the words from the Psalms, or elsewhere as noted, that have of late become primarily my prayers as framed by the Lord's Prayer. There are so many more you could put into these categories.

Father, Hallowed Be Your Name

"You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you." (Psalm 89:86)

"I love you, O Lord, my strength." (Psalm 18:1)

"Praise the Lord." (Psalm 135:1)

"Abba, Father," I belong to you. (Rom. 8:15; Brennan Manning, the furious longing of God, at 46)

Your Kingdom Come

"O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for your, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." (Psalm 63:1)

"Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you." (Psalm 143:8a)

"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matt. 26:39)

"Come, Lord Jesus." (Rev. 22:20)

Give Us Each Day Our Daily Bread

"Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge." (Psalm 16:1)

"My soul finds rest in God alone;
my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken." (Psalm 62:1-2)

God, may you give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that I may know you better, that the eyes of my heart may be enlightened in order that I may know the hope to which you have called me, the riches of my glorious inheritance in the saints, and your incomparably great power for us who believe. (Eph. 1:15-20)

Father, stop my worrying. You know what I need. I will seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, and all I need will be given to me as well. (Matt. 6:28-33)

Forgive Us Our Sins For We Forgive Everyone Who Sins Against Us

"Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I call to you all day long." (Psalm 86:3)

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love." (Psalm 51:1)
"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)

"Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am faint; O Lord, heal me,
for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in anguish.
How long, O Lord, how long?
Turn, O Lord, and deliver me because of your unfailing love." (Psalm 6:2-4)

Lord, help me to forgive those who sin against me not seven times, but seventy-seven times. (Matt. 18:22)

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

"Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me." (Psalm 71:2)
"Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck." (Psalm 69:1)

"Set guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.
Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with
men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies." (Psalm 141:3-4)

"Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name." (Psalm 142:7)

"Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul." (Psalm 143:8b)

***

If you find yourself asking why and how to pray, or if you have lost your words and your prayers just seem to ramble without end or direction, think about the prayer you would pray as a child: simple, straightforward, blunt. See if praying these words doesn't spark something and open a conversation with God whether your heart is full or empty.

Remember, if you still can't find your way: "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." (Rom. 8:26-27)

How Can You Love Me?

2011-04-04T09:14:00.001-05:00

God loves me.

Several days ago, I knew this to be true based on several things (the Bible says so; God sent His Son to die to atone for my sins; He has worked miracles in my life; He has revealed things to me and used me in ways that I can interpret as nothing other than love; He has blessed me immeasurably), but I had not actually felt it. For me to understand love in my heart as opposed to in my head, you see, has been a lifetime struggle. Perhaps it always will be. When people disclose to me how they feel the love of Jesus, I have a hard time understanding it. I want to, desperately, but can't quite get there.

I can relate it only to the way I feel love in human relationships, which, in large part, is more like need. In other words, when other people need me, I interpret that need as love. In this way, love becomes more like a business deal, or an exchange of some kind: I do good work, you love me. I excel at sports, you love me. I buy you a piece of jewelry, you love me . . . or how about this one: I love you, so you love me. Not every relationship is like this and not all the time. But we often are loved and love people in this way. And generally, this kind of love can sustain us for periods of time. What happens, though, when you are not needed; there is no one who needs what you have to give? Isn't that where loneliness and darkness set in? We feel an emptiness, a uselessness or even worthlessness. It is often in stillness, that I feel least loved and often unloved. Worse yet, when I am feeling unloved, I cannot love others very well, if at all. I suspect I am not alone in all of this. There are others out there who associate love with need, or who believe subconsciously or consciously that love is what you receive in return for something else. So when there is no one there who needs what you have, you cannot expect to receive. You give nothing, you get nothing. And when you get nothing you give nothing.

I sat alone in my car last week watching a masterfully drawn sunset (above) and suddenly, despite myself, felt within me: God loves me. It hit me out of nowhere and it was a feeling of deep sense of fulfillment, one I hadn't felt before. This was followed immediately, however, by tears sparked not by joy and delight, but by overwhelming regret, shame, and embarrassment. I asked God through my tears:

How can you love me?

I am disobedient, unfaithful, sinful.

How can you love me?

I am ungrateful, forgetful, prideful.

How can you love me?

I don’t do enough, I could do more.

How can you love me?

I go my own way, I turn from yours.

How can you love me?

I fear, worry, and distrust.

How can you love me?

I do all of the things that you hate.

As soon as I ended this cross-examination/self-condemnation, hands shaking, eyes swollen, nose running, there was a moment of silence followed by a whisper from God, impossible to miss:

One has nothing to do with the other.

In this moment I knew God had revealed to me not only a major flaw in the way I have been understanding His love, but also a new understanding of the way I am to love others. To understand His love, I had to first tear down my construction of love. His love is not an exchange. Ever. There is nothing I can do or not do that will make Him love me more or less. One has nothing to do with the other. He just loves me, unfailingly (Psalm 6:4), unendingly (Psalm 100:5), perfectly. The way Jesus loves me is not based on whether I am faithful to Him, always trusting, always at peace, always fearless. His love for me is not based on accomplishments or whether I come through on something. His love is not dependent upon whether I love Him. Indeed, God demonstrated His vast and unconditional love for me by sending Christ to die for me in my unfaithfulness, sinfulness, ungratefulness. (Romans 5:8)

This matters for two interconnected reasons:

First, I can stop striving to earn God's love. It is there no matter what.

Second, I must love others the way God loves me. Jesus said: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35) Jesus did not say love others the way they have loved you. Perhaps it's just me, but this command, though I've heard it thousands of times, suddenly feels pretty impossible. But God's perfect love enables us to love the way He does. "God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. . . We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:16-17, 19) By accepting God's perfect love for us, our love for others will eventually come to resemble God's love, a perfect love. And in our human relationships, if someone were to ask us the questions I asked God (above) or if we were to ask these questions of others, the answer would be: one has nothing to do with the other. Imagine.

Being Good Versus Following Christ

2011-03-28T11:45:00.002-05:00

I had an experience recently that made me, for the first time, understand the difference between being good and following Christ. God prompted me to apologize to someone, but not just apologize, apologize and tell that person I was apologizing because I am a follower of Christ and in this particular encounter, I had not represented Christ well. This was the hardest thing God had asked me to do. I could apologize, I've done that many times. It is noble, shows character. But to say I was sorry to this particular person, an adversary, and to explain why? No. This was not something I thought I could do. Doing it the way God asked would be to divert attention from "how good I am" to apologize, to something else entirely.

I had wondered before whether there is really a difference (and what it is) between doing good things (being good) and following Christ. I know there are millions of people out there who are not followers of Christ who do good, indeed, dedicate their lives to help the poor and bring justice for the oppressed. They apologize when they have offended someone or acted in the wrong. Yet, God's word says that unless you confess faith in Jesus Christ, you are not saved and will not spend eternity in fellowship with God. This is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, fact to understand, at least from my perspective. Is it really the case that all of the good non-believing people in the world would not find themselves living eternal life, while those who have done what we consider very bad things their whole lives, but in the end turn to Christ, will be in paradise one day?

The way I understand Scripture is that when God created us, we were in fellowship with him. We lived in perfect peace and joy in his presence. He created us in his image and with the ability to freely choose to obey him or not. And then we decided we wouldn't obey him and instead sought to go our own way, sought to gain wisdom that was not intended for anyone but God. (Genesis 2-3) Since that time, God has been seeking to get us to turn back to him and be again in perfect fellowship, peace and joy with him. God's redemptive plan, it is called. That is, God's plan to get us back into relationship with him.

God first set forth the law (the Ten Commandments). (Ex. 20:1-17) If one obeyed the law, one would be in right standing before God. (Deut. 6:25) But once the law was revealed, it became clear that we could not keep it. And with each trespass, God required repentance and a sacrifice to redeem, or buy back, the right relationship with him. There was so much disobedience to the law, though, that all the people did, it seems, was to constantly sacrifice to get back to right, only to fall away again the next minute, or hour, or day. In other words, nothing we could do (other than complete obedience to the law, which we were incapable of) could make us forever right with God. This inability to make ourselves right with God was part of God's redemptive plan: "The law was added so that the trespass might increase." (Rom. 5:20a)

Then, God sent Jesus Christ, God in human form, to obey the law for us and to be the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. "The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:20-21) While on earth, Christ obeyed the law perfectly and yet offered himself as a sacrifice to redeem our (not his) relationship with God. Christ was sacrificed despite having committed no transgression so that we could be forever in right relationship with God (Matt. 20:28), if only we repent and believe. (John 3:16-21) No longer would sacrificial offerings be necessary. Grace is what was (and is) offered. A free gift for us to accept. No more striving, no more climbing. When Jesus resurrected, he told his disciples: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matt. 28:18-20) Here, Jesus revealed to us what role we have in God's plan.

I recite all of this because it reveals the difference between being good and following Christ: to do good for the sake of goodness, to draw attention to yourself or your goodness, or to make someone else feel good momentarily does not lead anywhere in the long run. To do good as a way of revealing Christ to others, to get them to turn to him and repent in order to be reconciled with God, fulfills your purpose in God's redemptive plan. Jesus said: "[L]et your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (Matt. 5:16)

As Oswald Chambers said:

"Goodness and purity ought never to attract attention to themselves, they ought simply to be magnets to draw to Jesus Christ. If my holiness is not drawing towards Him, it is not holiness of the right order, but an influence that will awaken inordinate affection and lead souls away into side eddies."

Beware if your good acts result in someone saying: "What a good person you are! I am so impressed!" That is you becoming greater. But, the goal is that "He must become greater; I must become less." (John 3:30) To do good in order to draw others towards Christ is the purpose; Christ alone leads to eternal fellowship, peace and joy with God.

Been There

2011-03-21T21:26:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I spent the week with this on my hand. It is "UN", meaning Undocumented. This temporary tattoo is from undocumented.tv and the idea was two-fold: (1) to step into the shoes (as much as I could) of someone who is undocumented in the United States to get a feel for what it might be like; and (2) to spark conversation about the issue and see where it might lead.

For the first day and a half, not one person said anything to me about the tattoo. I rode the train, I went to the coffee shop, I was at work all day. Not a word. Part of me thinks people just didn't know what it was -- did it stand for the United Nations? Had I been out at a dance club and this stamp meant I was old enough to drink? (Later someone mentioned that because of the way I put the tattoo on, the only one who could see it clearly was me. This led to other thoughts about my egocentrism, etc.)

Just the fact that no one noticed initially kind of annoyed me. Here I was conducting this great experiment, expecting to have challenging, life-changing conversations, and nothing was happening. I was dying to be noticed and to tell a story, but instead I was standing around as if everything was normal.

My thought process then shifted to what being known as my worst sin (or, at least what others believed to be my worst sin) would be like. What if, instead of tattooing "UN" on my hand, I wrote the sin I last committed in black permanent ink. Not just the sin, though, I would have to identify myself as if my sin is who I am. So, I wouldn't write, for example, "Lie" but "LIAR" in big black print. Or, not "cheat" but "CHEATER." "ADULTERER" "GOSSIP" "SELF-CENTERED" "THIEF" The thought of this made me cringe. Made my stomach sink. What if I started walking around as my worst sin? The worst thing I have done written on my hand for all to see. Might I start believing that this sin defined me, was all that I was, all that I had to offer? And any conversation would have to be about that and not about who I am or what I do, how I serve, who my children are, where I go to church, that I am a child of God, made in His image.

Over the last days of the week when people began to notice, but the conversations didn't go anywhere, I started to imagine great conversations instead. I dreamed of setting forth a powerful closing argument that I might give to a jury of those deciding whether to deport all 12 million illegal immigrants. What would I say, how could I say it? I believe we should have secure borders. I believe people who have broken the law should be accountable. I thought of answering the question: Why not just deport everyone? What was my answer? I know the statistics. It would cost in the billions. But, is that really why? I probed deeper and concluded that no, the cost of it is not the why for me. The why is not even that it would break up families and that for many illegal immigrants, "going back" is like going nowhere at all because of how long they have been away.

The why for me is much less logical, indeed illogical: it is grace, plain and simple. And to defend grace, well, how does one do this? People ask: Why should we give grace? Why should we provide a pathway to legality? They broke the law. They don't deserve it.

Yeah. Been there.

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

Reach Down

2011-03-12T09:54:00.002-06:00

Sometimes we think sin has a grip on us when really we have a grip on sin.

"So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a miserable man I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death?" (Romans 7:21-24)

Reach Down

My hand grips this sin.

My knuckles turn red and white.

My palm chafes from the pressure.

A slow ache creeps up my wrist.

Reach down, O, Lord.

Reach down.

Pry my fingers free.

Relax the hold.

Part the palm.

Relieve the ache.

Reach down, O, Lord.

Reach down.

Who Are You?

2011-03-07T08:59:00.001-06:00

I have signed up for match.com, eharmony, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter; I have started a blog, been interviewed, endured first dates, gotten to know new colleagues, introduced myself in a small group, talked to people on the street. All of these encounters start with, or even have as their entire purpose, describing who I am.

Who I am, or who I say I am, depends on who I'm talking to and who's hearing what I have to say. To my daughter's teachers and friends' parents, I am the mom. To my parents' friends, I am the daughter. To people at work, I am a litigator. To courts, I am representing so-and-so client. To people at church, I am the lawyer who helped start the legal aid ministry. To the people at the oil change place, I am the person with the Nissan. We all define ourselves by relating ourselves to something or someone else. You were the star of your high school football team. You the the woman who walks with a limp. You are the guy who got the last promotion. You are the woman who aced her SATs. You are the one who got an A on the impossible biology test. You speak French. You have four kids. You are married to a great guy. You live in a small town. You are single. You are divorced. You are a Republican. You are a Democrat. You read literary classics. You read romance novels. You buy books. You go to the library. You are the one who takes your recyclable bags to Jewel. You are unemployed. You are on disability. You are undocumented. You are overweight. You are never skinny enough. You make a lot of money. You got the best review this year. You have a Porsche. You have a Cobalt. You have an Apple. You have a PC.

When we answer questions about who we are, it is more like answering questions about what stuff we have, where we live, what we have achieved, where we have been, and who we know. What stuff we have says how successful we are. Where we live says how successful we are. What we have achieved says how successful we are. Where we have been says how successful we are. Who we know says. . . well, how successful we are. All of these things identify how we identify ourselves and how we allow people to understand who we are. How we allow ourselves to understand who we are.

This weekend, I started thinking about who I am if all that I have and all who I know go away. If I was not employed, had no home, had no daughter, no parents, no relationships, no things. Would I still say, I am a lawyer? I used to have a job. I had a home. I was a parent. I had parents. I was loved by this person. I had a storage space full of things. I had boxes in my garage of pictures and stuffed animals and candle holders and beer mugs. If I had nothing at all, would I still say what I have is who I am? Do I only describe myself today as liking wine and movies and coffee and being near the water because I have those things and access to them? In answering the "my favorite things" or "things I can't live without" sections on the latest social network, what would I say if I had nothing? "None"? Or would I say my favorite things are: a safe place to hide; clean sheets; a blanket; a day free from foot pain? In other words, would I still describe who I am based on what I have or do not have? Probably.

Trying to figure out who I would be without all the stuff and people that currently surround me is just another way of trying to figure out who I am today. If I really am only what surrounds me at a particular point in time, then I am nothing at all. If I am what exists only outside of me, then I am constantly shifting and amoeba-ish. I become what my circumstances are. When I look in the mirror, I will see only all the stuff and people reflected behind me and I'll start to think that that stuff and my relationships are me.

I am afraid of what I will find if all the stuff behind me in the mirror is not there and all I had to look at is me. What if there is truly nothing at the core? Nothing holding it all together? Isn't this what we are all afraid of and why we constantly seek to fill the core with stuff and people and knowledge? What if we take a close look, slow down enough to stop all the noise? If you stopped filling your head and your life with news and books and stories and people and work and i-pods and tweets and Facebook news updates and achievements and dates and drinks and food, what would be there? What is there when all that you are in reference to is gone? How would you describe yourself if you had nothing to use but what is on the inside as a reference?

Who are you?

Blameless

2011-03-03T09:23:00.001-06:00

I have been studying prayer over the last several months. Tough subject. Really tough. Recently, I discovered a hole in the prayers that I pray. My prayers generally consist of expressions of thankfulness, repentence, and submission, and requests for intervention in other lives and my own. I would never even have considered coming before God to proclaim my blamelessness and righteousness. I have never said to God what David said: "I was blameless before him and I kept myself from guilt." (Psalm 18:23) How could I? This is simply not the case. I have no right to say such things, and to say them to God, the one who knows intimately the darkness in my heart?  No. If I'm really being analytical and thinking critically, David had no right to utter these words either, did he?

I have no problem searching out and praying the Psalms to express my guilt, my worry, my fear, my repentance, my praise. Sometimes I feel like shouting or singing the Psalms of thanksgiving and praise. They just seem so full of life. And God's goodness in my life compels me. But to pray Psalms that presume my rightness before God, my goodness and lack of wickedness? I don't think so. This would be lying. These Psalms do not belong to me. They must have been intended for someone else, like Mother Teresa. The things I know about myself prevent me, indeed, prohibit me, from claiming to be other than sinful, wicked, forgetful, unfaithful . . . on and on. I wonder if you skip these Psalms too. Or, when you do read them because they are part of the daily devotional you receive, you think: "Yeah right!" or "No one can honestly pray that!" or "Maybe one day, I'll clean up my act enough to say something like that." or "I wish I could be that, forgive me Lord for all that I am not." You put the kinds of expressions in these Psalms, as do I, into the ever-growing category of traits that simply do not, and never will, characterize you.

Let me share something with you: These Psalms -- the ones that proclaim your righteousness and blamelessness before the Most High God -- are yours to pray, to shout, to sing. If you are skipping over them, believing they do not apply to you, you are missing something fundamental and critical to who you are as a follower of Christ. You are foregoing a freedom of spirit that is yours to hold on to. You are believing things about your standing before God that are not true. Despite all inclinations and appearances to the contrary, you are, I am, blameless before God. I am right with God. You are right with God. You can stand before Him with a clear conscience. And that this is so, you know all too well, has nothing to do with anything you have done or anything about your individual make-up.  It has solely to do with what Jesus Christ did for you and for me:

"God made him who had no sin to be sinfor us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corin. 5:21)

"But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith inJesus Christ to all who believe." (Romans 3:21-22)

"But to the one who does not work, but believes in the one who declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is credited as righteousness." (Romans 4:5)

"How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,so that we may serve the living God!" (Hebrews 9:14)

I know you know this. I know this. I've read it, heard it in church. But how many of us have actually prayed at all, let alone with confidence: "I am blameless before You." "I am right before You." And if we haven't, why haven't we?  From my perspective, it is hardly understandable, it stretches my mind beyond what it can comprehend. How can I say I am something because someone else is?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: "[I]t is characteristic of the prayer of the Christian to hold fast to this innocence and justification which has come to him, appealing to God's word and thanking for it. So not only are we permitted, but directly obligated -- provided we take God's action to us at all seriously -- to pray in all humiliation and certainty: 'I was blameless before him and I kept myself from guilt' (Psalm 18:23); 'If though testest me thou wilt find no wickedness in me' (Psalm 17:3). With such prayer we stand in the center of the New Testament, in the community of the cross of Jesus Christ." (Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible at 53).

What is it like to say this prayer to God? To know exactly the darkness within you and yet proclaim with confidence and boldness your blamelessness and rightness before Him because of what Christ did?  For me, it has caused such deepening of faith and gratefulness and understanding. It has decreased the volume and persistence of the condemning voice in my head. It has freed me in a way I could not have imagined to do what God asks, to play my role, however imperfectly at times, in his redemptive plan. See what it does for you.

Let Me Carry You

2011-02-26T11:48:00.001-06:00

When I was a kid, my family used to take car trips. We went south mostly because my grandparents lived in Texas. So, frequently we would meet them halfway between Texas and Michigan. I have a very distinct memory from one of our trips. We were driving along in the blue van. I was in the back seat and at some point I happened to catch a glimpse of a little orange light on the dashboard that said “low fuel.” I thought that this might mean we were running out of gas and we needed to stop, but I figured my dad had everything under control. We’d never run out of gas before. As we passed exit after exit, I started to feel a little nervous. I leaned up again, thinking my mere presence would make my dad realize he should stop and get gas. No such luck. We hurtled down the highway as if all was well. But, I couldn’t shake the anxiety and so I decided just to ask.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?"

“What does ‘low fuel’ mean?”

“It means we’re running out of gas and need to stop to get more.”

***

Yesterday morning I came home from a business trip to Phoenix. I had been there for four nights (it was supposed to have been three, but something ran late and I missed the last flights out). I had been involved in some super-intense work stuff and had not slept much. I awoke before my alarm went off at 4:45 and had been watching the hours tick away on and off since midnight. I believe I saw all of them except 3:00. I had a cup of coffee and was out the door by 5:02 to catch my 6:35 flight.

On the way to the airport, my GPS kept losing its signal; the line to return my rental car included 10 people in front of me and about 8 behind, so I had to leave it without checking it in to avoid missing my flight; the bus to the rental car building took forever; I tried checking into my flight with Delta when I was flying American; I got in the wrong security line for 10 minutes; I had no time to use the restroom before boarding; and the woman in front of me leaned her seat all the way back for the entire three-hour flight. You get the picture. I know you have had these days.

Here’s the thing, though, every single person I encountered was a barrier to what I needed to accomplish. I caught myself every time, but couldn’t stop. I hated doing it and yet, it just came out of me. I felt like I couldn’t control it.

The woman with the two young kids in front of me was not moving up in line fast enough and this annoyed me. I have been through the airport with a young child and know how hard it is. Yet, I struggled to have sympathy. My thought: Move up! We’re late! The woman behind me was talking to me about how she had gotten in the wrong line and she wasn’t sure she’d make her flight (which was the same flight I was on). My thought: I don’t want to talk to you right now. I’m in a hurry, don’t you know? A barrier. The line at the coffee shop was long and the guy in front of me couldn’t make up his mind. My thought: How hard is it, come on! A barrier. The American Airlines attendant checking the passengers onto the plane asked me to turn my suitcase sideways to see if it would fit on the plane. My thought: I have been taking this bag on planes for 6 years. It fits. Please leave me alone. A barrier.

I could go on demonstrating my ugly thoughts. This lasted much of the day. I realized that the worst stuff in me comes out when my low fuel light is on. All of my selfishness, uncaring, lack of sympathy is exposed. When I am well-rested, when I am not under stress, and when I am in familiar surroundings, I can be so good and peaceful, caring and giving. But put me in a hard spot with little sleep and I don’t even recognize the person God has made me to be. And worse yet, I see people who God has created in His image as a barrier to achieving my own goals and needs.

So often we think that if we are not committing the “big sins” – murder, adultery, stealing, for example – we are pretty good, acceptable to God. But then you have a day or two (or more) with your low fuel light on and you realize how far from God’s holiness and perfection you fall. It’s like looking into one of those super-magnified mirrors they often put in hotel rooms (for reasons I don’t understand at all) that show each and every blemish on your face. Low fuel exposes so many blemishes in my heart. I can barely stand to look. So, what I do is to attempt to resolve these feelings on my own – to beat myself up, try to fix my heart by yelling at myself, or push the feelings down and chalk it up to being tired.

This time, though, I reached a point where I couldn’t help myself. I actually got angry at a car in front of me who I let change lanes, but then did it too slowly to my liking, and I yelled (inside my car): “Come on!” -- with a contempt-filled spirit. I tried to calm myself, tried to collect my thoughts and talk myself into better behavior. But, this contempt and irritation continued to build. There was only one thing to do: pull off onto the nearest exit to re-fuel.

I turned to God in despair, embarrassed by my contempt. I said: “Lord, I am so sorry. This is just coming out of me, I can’t stop it. What is going on? Why am I doing this? I’m just so tired. I’m so tired.” Do you know the response I got? Not: “Stop behaving this way! Figure it out. Get some sleep. Straighten things out. Pick yourself up.” No.

I immediately heard (not aloud, but it might as well have been): “Let me carry you.” This broke me. Tears filled my eyes. I could only say: “Ok. Yes. Please, Lord. Please do. Thank you.” I can’t explain the relief this brought. Something had cleared out. I suddenly knew, I mean really knew, what David meant when he said that God is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.” (Psalm 145:8) You see, I can't reach God's holiness and perfection. I cannot bridge the gap. Nothing I do can get me there. Jesus bridges it for me though and instead of pointing out all the ways in which I fall short and condemning me for my inadequacies, He will simply carry me and give me His strength where mine fails.

If your low fuel light is on, it means you are running out of gas. Take the nearest exit. There is someone who will carry you if you would only turn to Him.

In All That I Do

2011-02-23T08:09:00.001-06:00

The crush of busyness has been weighing heavily on me over the last several weeks. It stems from work-related tasks primarily -- lots of hours, travel, conference calls, small battles, etc. And, in the midst of this, I have stuck with my morning prayer and reading routine (Old Testament, New Testament, Psalm, Proverb, devotional), which sets the tone for my day. At times recently, though, I have unintentionally rushed through the process, needing to move on to the work that awaits anxiously for my attention. I try to slow myself down, reading Scripture aloud, for example, but this has been a struggle. I can't force my relationship with God or fit it into a neat 15-minute time-slot (and isn't this true of all relationships?). Nor do I desire to, but, well, that's how it has been going lately.

I have begun to see God in smaller joys instead of deep connections of late. This is not to say I don't desire the deep connection, but I just can't get there right now. Yesterday, I had a very busy, stressful day. I talked to God frequently throughout, but felt a little like I was just talking into the air. Late in the afternoon, I went and got a cup of coffee, knowing I would need to work into the night. I had been holed up in conference rooms and my hotel room (Phoenix again) all day. I stepped outside and the warmth of the sun momentarily took my breath and I smiled. I walked to the coffee shop and as I approached the door, I heard coming from the speakers above (people sit outside in Phoenix in February! Imagine!) one of my favorite songs of all time. A song that for reasons that aren't relevant now makes me feel an overwhelming sense of home: Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald singing They Can't Take That Away From Me. (Louis and Ella) Maybe you have a song like this, and you know the feeling when you hear it unexpectedly. It brings such unexpected joy and peace.

After getting my coffee, I talked to a good friend. I described what I was struggling with -- this sort of disconnection caused by busyness. He asked about my prayers. I said I pray for focus and strength. I pray for courage and peace in stressful situations. He asked whether I prayed that I would reveal Christ through my work, whether I prayed to God and asked that in my work today, let someone who sees me think or say to themselves: there is something different about her, something I am drawn to. Do I pray that God would use me even in my work to reach others and bring them a step closer into a relationship with him?

Such wise counsel. I had been (yet again) so self-focused. I haven't been feeling deeply connected because I have been doing all the talking and almost no listening. I had been asking God to do for me, yet not asking what I could do for Him. God got to me anyway -- through the sun, and a song, and a friend. Today, before I venture off to my next battle, I will still pray for peace and focus, but I will also pray that God will use me to reveal Himself to someone else, to glorify Him in whatever way He asks and in all that I do. "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." 1 Corin. 10:31. What a blessing it will be to be used by the Most High God.

Justice, God's Way

2011-02-15T07:46:00.001-06:00

I spent this past weekend in Bend, Oregon at an incredible conference called the Justice Conference. I can hardly explain all that I came to understand there. Here are four things:

1. The local church is the hope of the world. (This may sound familiar, see I Didn't Know Until I Knew).

2. There are at least 1050 people who love God in a way that leads them to irrational love, self-sacrifice, and humility.

3. The best thing to do with the best things you have is to give them away.

4. Injustice is the norm.

The most important thing that happened, though, is that I came to a better, more palpable understanding of the Gospel. And this understanding came in struggling with the idea of justice. Something about it makes me queasy, uneasy, anxious. This seems weird to say for a couple reasons.

First, I am a lawyer. And some might say that lawyers exist to promote justice. Whether this is true I will save for another day.

Second, justice seems pretty easy to get behind. If someone asked me: what do you think about justice, I’d surely say: “I’m for it!” I don’t know many people who would say they aren’t. We do act in ways that undermine justice, either unintentionally, or in reckless disregard of the facts (to use a legal phrase). Example: we demand goods (coffee, chocolate, clothes, etc.) cheap and fast. This feeds the human-trafficking and sex-slavery industries. Yeah, it really does. As a concept, though, justice is hard not to support. So what is my issue? Why does justice talk rattle me?

In trying to answer this question, I reflected on the definitions provided at the conference. One speaker defined justice as “giving that which is due.” Another: relationships that are in balance. Another: “rendering to each person that which is his or her right.” Another: people experiencing what they have a right to. The dictionary says “rightfulness” or “lawfulness.” No argument on any of these.

I also attempted to examine the relationships between certain other concepts and justice. In other words, what is the relationship between the Church and justice? Jesus and justice? Worth and justice? Value and justice? Rule of law and justice? Love and justice? Mercy and justice? Grace and justice? And then it hit me. There are two sides of justice: the offender and the victim. I realize this seems quite obvious, but it was this realization that led me to understand my anxiety about justice. If justice means balance in a relationship and injustice means imbalance in a relationship, then to achieve justice, there must be a leveling. The offender must be brought lower, or humbled, or even punished. And it means that the victim must be lifted up, lifted out.

The Justice Conference was about understanding justice, identifying injustice, and determining how to lift the victim up. There was less discussion about the other side of the equation – the lowering, humbling, or punishing of the offender. This is okay, I am not complaining, justice is a big topic. But it is on this side of the equation that I came face to face with my anxiety about justice.

What made me uneasy was that grace – a concept I cling to, rely upon, hang onto desperately – and justice, seem inconsistent or incompatible. And what I need most of all is grace and forgiveness. But does grace undermine justice? Does it devalue the victim of injustice to forgive the offender? Who has the right to forgive or give grace to an offender? Only the victim? Who has the right to impose punishment and sanction? How exactly do these concepts fit together? Did Christ’s message remove justice from the lexicon altogether and replace it with grace? Very smart biblical scholars disagree about the answer to this question. I don’t attempt to answer it here and not because I’m afraid to venture my view, but because this conceptual debate is not the source of my justice anxiety.

The source of my justice anxiety runs deeper. You see, I don’t want justice, at least not in all circumstances. If I am a victim of injustice, I want to be lifted up, lifted out. In that circumstance, I want justice. And where I see others subject to injustice, I want to lift them up and out. But there is someone I have most offended. There is one upon whom I have foisted immeasurable amounts of injustice. There is one who has the ability to bring about the harshest, most terrifying rendering of justice. There is one who has the best claim to punish me. And from Him, I do not want my due. I do not want justice under these circumstances. It would be more than I could ever bear. Thus, my fear and anxiety about justice.

Turns out, the most offended and most unjustly treated one, instead of giving me my due, forgave me. The one who could punish me for all of eternity in ways that I could not imagine in my worst nightmare has cast my offenses, my transgressions, my injustices, as far as the east is from the west, buried them at the bottom of the sea. The one who has the best claim to punish me, died a most gruesome and painful death for me. All of this He did while I still sinned, while I still offended, while I continued to pour injustice upon Him. Jesus Christ has leveled my previously unjust, imbalanced relationship with God; he has made it just by punishing himself, humbling himself, lowering himself, the innocent, instead of me, the offender. This is the good news. This is the Gospel.

Justice, God’s way.

The Other Blog

2011-02-11T18:55:00.002-06:00

So, this blog was finally restored today after having been down for over three weeks for reasons I still don't know. I'm so relieved and thankful. For now, I think I'll keep them both running.

The other one is http://justhangingontograce.wordpress.com

Thanks for hanging with me. I did add a couple "pages" on this one (under "More Stuff") -- "Scripture that got me today" and "About." Also, posted the entries that I had posted on the other blog while this one was down: "The Unseen," "When You Forget About Grace," and "Mine And Yours."

Mine And Yours

2011-02-11T18:28:00.001-06:00

This is the little placard sitting on the desk in my hotel room in Phoenix. I'm not exactly sure what it's trying to tell me. I know I think this often -- three for me, one for you. If I had four dollars in my pocket and you needed money, three for me, one for you. You never know, I could need the three dollars. But what in this picture is "mine" and what is "yours"? And who is the me and the you, anyway? There is no explanation of any of this on the placard, believe me, I looked. On the back is a menu for Rico's American Grill. Is the girl mine? The martini? The olives? Then what does that leave you? Or, is all of it yours and you are saying I can have it? I don't get it. Somebody somewhere came up with this advertisement and concluded that it would have a desired result. Why a person would look at this ad and go to Rico's, I can't tell you, though. What's mine is yours? I don't know.

Anyway, this prompted me to consider why we have such a need to classify everything as either "mine" or "yours"? And why does advertising that reinforces this idea work? What is it in us that wants not just dominion, but dominion followed by exclusion of all others? You rarely see any advertising that says: "This could be ours! Come see!" Most of us often think, from the very smallest thing, to the very biggest thing, "if I only had that, then I'd be happy." I recently watched the new Wall Street movie. There is a line in the movie: "What's your number?" one of character asks a big-shot Wall Street guy. The guy looks at him and asks what he means. The character says: "The amount of money you would need to be able to walk away from it all and just live happily ever after. Everybody has one -- it's an exact number -- what's yours?" The response: "More."

When you see this, you feel disgusted. But we know it all too well. It may or may not be money, but there is something you are focused on and you think that if you only had more of it, you would be happy. Not all of it is "bad" per se, some is good, but the trick is in the more: more kids, more electronics, more dates, more sex, more space, more fame, more opportunity, more time, more beauty, more freedom, more quiet. This "more disease" comes from, most often, seeing others with the more that you want. Others have two kids, a boy and a girl. I want more than just my boy. Others are more beautiful than me, they look happier. I want to be more beautiful. Others have more time than me. I want more time.

You have had more before, though, and it never gets you any closer to the "then I'd be happy," at least not for very long. In fact, sometimes having the more makes things worse than even your longing for more. So the goal ultimately becomes not more kids, more electronics, more dates, more sex, more space, more fame, more opportunity, more time, more beauty, more freedom, more quiet, but just more. More for more's sake.

What to do with this constant state of wanting more? I don't know the answer to this at all. I suffer from this "more disease" too. It's discontentment, dissatisfaction with the present, the now. Imagine: all we have is now, but we are discontent and dissatisfied so much of the time. It is a constant struggle for most of us. But, what if we started by stopping all the "mine" and "yours" talk. Isn't it this that causes the "more disease"? What if we loosened, just a little, the grip on the things we have? What if we gave or shared more of what we have to those who do not have the thing that we do have? Instead of giving one and keeping three, give all four (or, if you want to take it slow at first, give three and keep one). What if the fear of how you might feel if you lost something important to you no longer had a hold on you? What if your sidelong glances at what others have became just a little shorter because you know that there is a more in their life too and just a little more won't get you to happy?

What if we focused just a little bit more (pun intended) on where we are right now? There is so much right here. Such richness in what we do have. And none of it is ours in the first place. There is only one who can say "mine" to all things. As Abraham Kuyper said: “In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare,'That is mine!'”

And, as the Psalmist reported:

"The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who lives in it;
for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters." Psalm 24:1-2.

It is not mine. It is not yours. It is His. He has been so generous to you.

When You Forget About Grace

2011-02-11T18:26:00.001-06:00

When I feel run down and in need of restoration, I am compelled to be near the water. I don’t mean when I’ve had a bad day, or feeling a little stressed. I mean when I’ve reached a point where I cannot find calmness anymore, the point where unrest has defeated rest, the point at which I might describe myself as a tortured soul – preoccupied with sin, anchorless, incapable of perspective. A few minutes near the water and I am, at least for some period of time, centered again. This past weekend, I went away to restore my soul with water. As soon as I left, I had as my mission to take in whatever God presented to me. I would not search for Him, or demand an encounter (I’ve done this before and it didn’t work). I would just be and whatever happened, I would soak in and enjoy. I felt blessed just to have the ability to seclude myself with my daughter, knowing that millions of people in the world have no such opportunity, ever.

While away, a special convergence in my soul occurred. It was an encounter with God that, as usual, was unexpected. You see, in the last several months, I think I’ve somehow forgotten about grace. I mean, not really, not in the ultimate sense, but sort of. I do not doubt my salvation. But I had stopped allowing God’s grace to reach me in the everyday sense.

So this doesn’t become too esoteric, let me provide an example: I heard of a friend of a friend’s husband who has had some serious health problems. I was told he may not make it for much longer and he needs prayer. I said I would pray. I do pray. But, do you know what the very first thing I thought was? “I hope the funeral isn’t on one of the days I’ll be gone because then I’ll have to change my trip and I’ve really been looking forward to that trip.” Can you believe this? Such depravity of heart. The beating to which I subjected my soul after I thought this was legendary, immeasurable, unstoppable. “What kind of person says this? How can you call yourself a follower of Christ? Can you imagine if others knew this about you? Who would listen to you then?” This goes on and on and on. It is toxic and became so normal (and not just about this one expression of my own heart’s un-goodness, but many others) over the last several weeks that it turned into a focal point: the depravity of my heart. So secret, so clear, so prevalent, so hopeless.

You see why I needed to be restored. I needed a reminder of grace, but I couldn’t get there intellectually. I couldn’t talk myself into it. I start every morning by reading a part of the Old Testament, a part of the New Testament, a Psalm, and a Proverb. Then, I read the daily reading from Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost for His Highest.” Yesterday, I was in such a rush to get to the water, on my last day out of the tundra that is Chicago, I decided I would do my reading on the plane home. I sat before the waves, listening as they crashed so rhythmically, eyes closed, and remembering the reading from the day before about Eli and Samuel, I said: “Speak, Lord.” Then I said it again, desperate to hear. “Speak, Lord.” A few minutes later, after concluding I would not hear from God in that moment, I heard this:

“Stop focusing on your sin. You are free of it. Focus on what I want you to do.”

That was it! That was the problem! I had cut off (or quenched, as Paul would say (1 Thess. 5:19)) the Spirit. I had entered a new kind of self-centeredness. I had become so focused on my lack of goodness, not in acts necessarily, but in heart, where it really counts, that I had lost focus on what God had called me to do. I recalled a favorite passage from Hebrews that I have studied and repeated to others as encouragement: “And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.” (Heb. 10:21-22) My spirit lifted, and I felt new. Like I had heard about, and felt deep within me the power of, grace all over again.

Then, I got to the daily Oswald Chambers reading and it was upon reading this that everything came together.

“Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the Gospel of God. The one thing that is all important is that the Gospel of God should be realized as the abiding Reality. Reality is not human goodness, nor holiness, nor heaven, nor hell; but Redemption; and the need to perceive this is the most vital need of the Christian worker today. As workers we have to get used to the revelation that Redemption is the only Reality. Personal holiness is an effect, not a cause, and if we place our faith in human goodness, in the effect of Redemption, we shall go under when the test comes.”

Later, he says: “As long as our eyes are upon our own personal whiteness we shall never get near the reality of Redemption. Workers break down because their desire is for their own whiteness, and not for God.”

I had my eyes upon my own personal whiteness. And, in this way, I was far from Redemption. I was broken down, in need of restoration, because I was desiring my own goodness, holiness (and frightened by the lack of it), instead of desiring God. Living with a desire for my own goodness and holiness is living outside of Reality. No wonder I felt so tortured and restless.

When we have trusted our lives to Christ, we may go right into the presence of God because our guilty consciences have been washed clean by the blood of Christ. We need not, indeed, should not, for it is insulting to what Christ did for us, to focus on our sin. We are free of it. We need only focus on what God has called us to do – to preach the Gospel in whatever way He has called us to do it. Not to state the obvious, but there is freedom, true, reckless, glorious freedom, in the reality of redemption. Live there. When you realize you’re not, when you forget about grace, step back in.

The Unseen

2011-02-11T18:21:00.001-06:00

Last week a man in his late forties came to see me for assistance with a traffic ticket. He had already retained a lawyer so we could not consult with him. But, I wanted to make sure he knew that if he had any kind of immigration issue, he would make his lawyer aware of that. This man was broad-shouldered, had a dark, lined face. His hands looked calloused from labor. He had been in a car accident – someone hit him from behind. When the police came, they gave him a ticket for not wearing a seat belt. And, they gave him a ticket for driving without a license. He explained to me that he had come to the United States unlawfully nearly twenty years ago. As he explained the situation, he wanted to be sure I knew a few things: he had not caused the accident and this was the first time he’d ever gotten a ticket; he had paid taxes for the entire time he had been in the U.S.; he wanted to be here legally. As he defended his presence to me (unnecessarily, in my mind), he asked some questions. “If I get the ticket cleared up, can I get a license?” I looked in his eyes. “No.” “I’ve paid taxes for years, does that benefit me in anyway?” I looked in his eyes. “No.” “I’ve been here for a long time, never been in any trouble. Can I become legal here?” I looked in his eyes. “No.”

As I gave him these blunt, honest answers, I watched his eyes fill with tears. I saw right before my eyes everything that he is – a man, a father, a husband, a worker, a son – evaporate, disappear. It was as if all of what made him who he is slowly faded, like the closing shot in a movie. By the time he left, he was a shadow of himself, a shadow of what God had made him to be.

This disappearance reminded me of a passage from a book I have read four or five times, Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. The passage is this: “I am an invisible man . . . I am a man of substance of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

So many of us, in our homes and neighborhoods surrounded by others who look just like us, refuse to see the undocumented immigrant. They are underground. We turn our heads. As a result, there is an entire group of people at risk -- at risk of dissolving, disappearing, becoming invisible men and women. This dissolution should hurt the deepest part of any soul who follows Christ because it is those at risk, those who others refuse to see, who Christ reaches for, and says “I see you and blessed are you.”

It is not just the immigrant for whom Christ reaches and invites. It is not just the immigrant that Christ instructs us to care for; it is also the oppressed, the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, the unclothed. But, as we look around us and ask, who do we refuse to see? Who do we lump into a category and see not as individuals who God knitted together as masterpieces? Who do we judge? To whom do we refuse to extend grace? Who is it that we refuse to see? And who is on the verge of invisibility, dissolution? It is the man who stood before me last week and disappeared before my very eyes.

The poet Emily Dickinson said “hope begins in darkness.” We are in a dark period for the undocumented immigrant. What an opportunity, then, for hope to arise. What an opportunity for the church to reach into this darkness, open our eyes and hearts, and pull out the unseen, the disappearing, and say, “I see you; Christ sees you. Blessed are you.”

For This Time And This Place

2011-01-17T17:08:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to live during a different time. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have been born somewhere else. When I was in Africa and upon my return, I thought a lot about why it is that I was born here in the United States, brought up in a privileged environment and a little girl I met in Ndola, Zambia was born there with so little. Or, even 25 years later, I think about a girl I knew in grade school named Sonja. Sonja's father abused her in ways that are unspeakable and she wore this abuse all over her body. I saw whip marks on her neck and ears and face. But she had a broad, sweet smile that I can still see if I close my eyes. Why was Sonja born in her place at her time? And why was I born in my place in that same time?

Psalm 139 says: "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." This phrase is easy to pass by, to ignore, to not let sink in. It is one line in a long Psalm that includes all kinds of amazing statements. But this one is stunning and moves me to assessment and action. Days were ordained for me (and you). Days were "conferred by holy order" to me. In advance. Before. Even before my days began, they were conferred, ordained, decreed. And, not only the number of days I have, but also the particular days at this particular time in history. These are the days for which I was made. I was not made for any other time, any other place, or any other actual days. I am most able to serve and glorify God right where He has placed me.

Martin Luther King, Jr. explained it this way:

"[I]f I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" -- I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.

"But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance did for the cultural and esthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I"m named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.

"But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

"But I wouldn't stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, 'If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.' Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion is all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars . . .'"

--from I See The Promised Land, MLK Jr.

I don't know why God made me for these particular days in this particular time and place. I know only that He did. And make no mistake: He made you for exactly where and when you are. So when it is dark in my time and my place, I will be the light as a star is in the dark night. And when it is light, I will not be afraid of the darkness. I will, as Jesus commanded, go into the darkness and shine the light. (Matt. 5:16) I was made to illuminate the exact darkness that I find around me.

Unbelief

2011-01-12T22:27:00.002-06:00

I am nearing the end of my eighth day with a migraine headache. Last week marked its arrival. Since then, I have taken all the medication that there is to take. I have tried every home remedy -- hot baths, ice packs, dark rooms, quiet spaces. The pain is not in one place. One moment a piercing comes on the right side above my ear. The next moment, above my eyes. The next moment, on the left on top of my head. Each morning I wake up and before I open my eyes, I know the pain is still there. There is no sign as to when it will let up. I have kept myself busy serving, speaking, working, reading, writing. The pain remains. I am exhausted and it won't go away. I made dinner. The pain is still there. I answered emails. The pain is still there. I write this sentence. The pain persists. I lay down. Still there. I sit up. Still there. I stand up, walk around. Still there. Still there.

All of this has gotten me thinking about pain and suffering. I know this headache, and the ones I've had before, and the ones I am yet to have, do not compare to pain others suffer. And yet, it is impossible to ignore. So, I've been trying to sort out how to respond to this pain. In Philip Yancey's book "Where Is God When It Hurts?" he says that suffering involves two primary issues: cause and response. On the first issue, we ask: why am I suffering, and who did it? On the second issue, we ask: how can I respond? I don't feel particularly concerned with the first issue. I don't know the answers.

The second issue, though, is very important to me. How can I respond? Or, how have I responded so far? To get at the answers to these questions, I have to really dig down to identify what exactly I’m feeling about the pain. Alone, I think. Very alone in the pain. I surrounded myself with people today and yesterday, but felt like I had an ongoing, unseen battle waging in my head. But nobody knew. I talked to a few friends about the pain, but I simultaneously saw myself as weak and inauthentic because I was hurting more than I was letting on. Also, helpless, out of control, no ability to impact the outcome. These feelings, in combination, are very tough for me. I don’t like either of them when I experience them separately. Together, with the pain on top, makes them almost unbearable.

Where is God in this? I have been struggling with this question for days. I have been trying to figure out what God might want me to know about myself or about him from this experience. Compassion? Understanding? Patience? Strength? Brother Lawrence, in Practice of the Presence of God, says that “[w]e ought . . . to submit ourselves to [troubles, temptations, oppositions, and contradictions] and bear them as long as God pleases, as things highly advantageous to us.” What is the advantage of this headache? Paul said: “just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.” (2 Corin. 1:5-6) A headache so that I might feel Christ’s comfort? That’s a possibility.

I wish I could report that an understanding of Christ’s comfort in suffering is what I have come to have during this headache. I wish I could report that I have learned peace in suffering. Neither is so. Nor have I become more patient. Or strong. No, instead, what I have been surprised and saddened to realize is that I have doubted God. Not his existence. His authority. For days I did not pray that he would heal my headache. When the pain let up, even a little, I did not thank him. This morning, when I woke up and the pain was absent for nearly an hour, I did not believe that it was he who healed me. I did not believe that he responded to prayers from others. These were not conscious thoughts. I did not think: God, you are not the reason I’m feeling better. I did not think: I am not better because of answered prayer. But I know this unbelief was in me.

It is not that I have disbelieved that God exists. It is that I have, in my heart and mind, made him smaller than he is, less capable, less powerful, less. I have acted as if he is not who he says he is: “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.” (Isaiah 46:9-11) I have doubted Jesus’ words: “Ask and it will be given to you.” (Matt. 7:7-8) I have doubted that “[e]verything is possible for him who believes.” (Mark 9:23)

Let me be clear about something. I do not mean to say that if only I had believed more, my headache would have gone away. That is not at all the point. The point is that I didn’t believe God had even the ability to make the pain go away if it was his will that it would. This is a much more serious condition than a headache, even one that lasts eight days, or nine, or weeks, or months or years.

This doubt or unbelief has left me raw because I generally score myself pretty strong in the belief category. I have been deceiving myself. When things get hard, or painful, or scary, I go back to my old ways of relying on myself. I turn inward and wait out the pain in a quiet solitude away from God. I don’t invite him into the pain and pray that he would deliver me from or through it. I don’t get angry with him for allowing me to suffer. Instead, I turn away until I am pain free, and the passage of time has changed my circumstances. In the meantime, though, I am so alone in the pain, something that God does not want for me. Or you.

So many of us do this; it is part of our make-up. Couldn’t you come up with a list of things that you have not prayed for because they seem too big? Peace in the Middle East. Doesn’t that seem just too big of a request? The end of homelessness. The end of domestic abuse. The end of loneliness. The end of the years-long anger built up in a relationship. We have all thought, perhaps not consciously, but certainly implicitly by not asking, that there are things beyond the reach of God, requests that are just too big. To believe this, though, is to disbelieve who God says he is and it is to disbelieve what he says he can do.

I want God to transform me so that in my darkest times and for the biggest issues, when what is at stake is more than a headache, I turn to him as “my rock, my fortress, my deliverer,” the one in whom I take refuge and have complete confidence of his authority over all things. (Psalm 18:2) For now, I scream out to God, as the father described in Mark did: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) Over the last day or so, I have begun to think less of the pain in my head and more of the state of my heart toward God. I have asked for forgiveness for not believing him and for reducing him. And, I have begun to pray two simple prayers over and over, like child might, asking that God help me overcome my unbelief and trust what he says about who he is and what he can do, and that he would make the headache go away.

Surrender Is Stronger

2011-01-06T22:00:00.002-06:00

Today while I was driving home, the song Undone, by FFH came on the radio. The chorus includes this line: "Come undone, surrender is stronger." This line has been ringing in my mind ever since. Surrender is stronger. Surrender is stronger. Surrender means to yield to the possession or power of another. It means to submit, to relinquish, to give up, to abandon. What could surrender be stronger than? Holding? Fighting? Conquering? No, this can't be. Holding is strong. Fighting is stronger. Conquering is stronger still.

God's Word is full of direction to us to submit to Him and to submit to others: "in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:6); "Submit yourselves, then, to God" (James 4:7); "Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!" (Hebrews 12:9); "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:21). And, Jesus' words: "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34) What do these words mean? What does it mean to submit or surrender all of my ways to God? How do I submit to God?

In considering these questions, a chapter in a book that I read in 1999 came to mind. 1999. I am amazed and perplexed as to how this happened. Ok, not really, only God. But come on, I read anywhere between twenty and thirty-five fiction books a year. I read this book twelve years ago -- 240 books ago. Maybe more.

Anyway, the book is White Noise, by Don DeLillo. Makes my top five of all time list for sure. Chapter 16. Just to give you an idea, this book has 40 chapters. So, chapter 16 is not at a memorable spot. It starts this way:

"This was the day Wilder started crying at two in the afternoon. At six he was still crying, sitting on the kitchen floor and looking through the oven window, and we ate dinner quickly, moving around him or stepping over him to reach the stove and refrigerator." Wilder is a young boy in the book and the entire chapter is about just what the topic sentence says -- the day Wilder cried (for more than seven hours in a row). The narrator describes how he and his wife exchanged "drained and supplicating" looks. The mother spoke to Wilder "soothingly", "hefted and caressed him, checked his teeth, [gave] him a bath, examined him, tickled him, fed him, tried to get him to crawl into his vinyl play tunnel." The narrator describes the crying as a "rhythmic", "measured statement of short urgent pulses." He says: "At times it seemed he would break off into a whimper, an animal complaint, irregular and exhausted, but the rhythm held, the heightened beat, the washed pink sorrow in his face."

Any parent knows how painful and frustrating this experience has to be. You cannot figure out what is wrong. You have tried everything and nothing works. The narrator and his wife take their son to the doctor. He has no solution. Nothing physically is wrong. And after the doctor's visit, the crying "changed in pitch and quality. The rhythmic urgency had given way to a sustained, inarticulate and mournful sound. He was keening now. These were expressions of Mideastern lament, of anguish so accessible that it rushes to overwhelm whatever immediately caused it. There was something permanent and soul-struck in this crying. It was a sound of inbred desolation." The parents are at the end of their patience, on the brink of meltdown. They have no idea what is wrong and they don't know what to do to make it stop. Yet, making it stop is all they can think about.

Then something remarkable happens. The father sits with Wilder on his lap in the car. "I held him upright with a hand under each arm. As the crying continued, a curious shift developed in my thinking. I found that I did not necessarily wish him to stop. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit and listen to this a while longer. We looked at each other . . . the inconsolable crying went on. I let it wash over me, like rain in sheets. I entered it, in a sense. I let it fall and tumble across my face and chest. I began to think he had disappeared inside the wailing noise and if I could join him in his lost and suspended place we might together perform some reckless wonder of intelligibility. I let it break across my body . . . I entered it, fell into it, letting it enfold and cover me." Then, the crying stopped "suddenly, without a change in tone and intensity."

The crying was over and afterwards, "[i]t was as though he'd just returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges -- a place where things are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingled reverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions."

This is one of the most beautiful chapters in all of literature. And in re-reading it, it strikes me just as it did the first time around, in a deep part of my soul. The reason it does and the reason I believe God brought it to my mind today is that it is the most concrete description of surrender that I know. When the father finally submitted to the crying, stopped trying to fix the situation or control it, and instead entered into it, let it crash over him, he was free. And what he saw in the moments of surrender was holy, wondrous, and sublime, things he could not have experienced but for the letting go, but for the surrender. While he tried to control, hold, conquer and fight, he felt nothing but fear, anxiety, impatience, aggravation and unease.

If I am feeling fear, anxiety, impatience, aggravation, or unease about something, I have not submitted it. I have not surrendered it. I am still holding on tight and I cannot be free. If I let go, there I will find the peace of God, which transcends all understanding. (Phil. 4:7)

Surrender is stronger.

In Tens (Number Four)

2011-01-05T21:52:00.000-06:00

Every now and then, maybe more often than not, God gives you a little gift that just knocks you over. This summer, I became enthralled with sunsets. I believed God was giving them to me as a special gift of His presence and His goodness; His light and His magnificence. It was as if He was saying: "Look what I can do!" And I would say, "Wow," shake my head and ask, "Who am I that you would show me Your glory in this way?" I began to wonder what my life would be like if I never missed another sunset for as long as I live. And then I thought about clouds and Chicago and how I could go months without seeing a sunset unless I flew somewhere. That would get expensive. So, I committed that I will always take note of any sunset that God presents for me to see. And I will always thank Him for the wonderful gift.

Here are ten from 2010 that made me say: "Wow, God. Thank you for that."

In Tens (Number Three)

2011-01-04T20:11:00.001-06:00

Ten Questions I Asked In 2010 And Will Undoubtedly Ask Again (Or Already Have) In 2011

1) How can I serve more?

2) What do I need to let go of and give to God?

3) Why has God blessed me with this?

4) Why this pain?

5) Who can I pray for today?

6) Does this honor God?

7) Who do I need to forgive?

8) Who do I need to ask for forgiveness?

9) What is God redeeming in me through this?

10) Your grace is sufficient, even for this, Lord?

In Tens (Number Two)

2011-01-03T20:29:00.001-06:00

Here's the second of my lists of ten.

I started this one yesterday and what a way to start each day!

Ten Words I Will Start Each Day of 2011 Saying Out Loud.

1) Praise

2) You

3) Lord.

4) Show

5) Me

6) How

7) To

8) Serve

9) You

10) Today.

In Tens

2011-01-02T19:12:00.003-06:00

With a new year comes all variations of the top-ten list. How did the top-ten list come about, I wonder? Google doesn't seem to know. TIME Magazine issued a "The Top 10 Everything of 2010." Top ten campaign ads, crime stories, oddball news stories, political gaffes, tweets, quotes, food trends, fleeting celebrities, toys, numbers (yeah, numbers, odd), etc. Take a look -- this may make number one on your top-ten time wasters list: Time Top-Ten.

All the top-ten talk got me thinking of things in tens. Not really top-ten because I don't like the idea of ranking things. But, I came up with some lists of ten. They are not my favorite celebrities or dresses worn to the Oscars.

Here's one. Try reading through these and letting them speak to you today. Or, read one each day. I think I might just read through them everyday.

Ten Scriptures I Really Relied Upon In 2010, And May Need Again In 2011

1) “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40

2) “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40

3) "To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corin. 12:7-10

4) “Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

5) “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” 1 John 4:10-12

6) “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5:20-21

7) “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

8) “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

9) “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

10) “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:17-18