God Is Here

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?

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.

A Day Like Today

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.

Reduction

Last night, totally spontaneously, I made a red-wine reduction sauce.  Seriously.  (Those who know me don't believe this could possibly be true, but I'm telling you, it is.)  As I was making it, I was wondering what exactly was happening and why exactly it is called "reduction."  The recipe I was using said to reduce the liquid by half before putting in several other ingredients.  So, is it just reducing the amount, and if that's the case, why not just use less to begin with?  No, that's not all that's happening, just like a bulb of garlic is VERY different than a clove of garlic.

In cooking, reduction means thickening or intensifying the flavor of a liquid by boiling.  Through this process, flavors already in the liquid are concentrated.  This is why various cooking websites counsel you to use a "good" wine for this process.  If the wine doesn't have any good flavors to begin with, there is nothing good to intensify or concentrate.  So reduction actually increases the flavor.  This cooking lesson came at a good time for me.  I had spent all day packing up stuff and giving or throwing it away.  Reducing.

Why?  Beginning a couple weeks after I got back from Africa, I started feeling a dull ache of anger.  It arises at strange times, always unexpectedly.  I don't always recognize it as anger, and I hadn't been able to put my finger on its cause.  On Friday, on the train ride home, I finally got it -- I recognized the anger when it came and I knew exactly what caused it.

A young guy came aboard midway through the ride and by then, all of us who had gotten on downtown had gotten comfortable, spread out our things, stuck our earphones in, and tuned out the world.  This guy approached a man in a suit who was sitting in one seat and whose stuff was sitting in the other.  The young guy asked if he could sit where the man's stuff was.  Without looking the guy in the eye, the man said "No," stared out the window, and took a swig out of a giant Budweiser can.  You would think I'd just witnessed a serious criminal act.  Rage bubbled up from inside of me and I looked around to see if anyone else noticed.  I was incensed.  How did this man (and it's not just him) become this way?  How did this become okay to say, to do?  No one said anything.  No one else moved.  Because of where I was sitting, there was nothing for me to do, although I do wonder if I would have acted if in a position to do so.  But, how is it that we believe our stuff deserves a seat on a train, even when another person wants it, has no other seat to sit in, and asks politely?  At that moment, all the anger I'd been feeling came together.

I have been angry because of our excess.  My excess.  Your excess.  Excessive on the inside.  Excessive on the outside.  It's not just the excess, but the failure to recognize the excess.  To come to believe that excess is the normal, or worse, not enough.  Our excess is exemplified in two things: excess stuff and excess self.  And the excess stuff just feeds the excess self.  So much so that we have entire places, houses for our stuff (called storage facilities).  I recently pointed out to my daughter how ridiculous it is that we have little homes for our extra stuff.  Before I finished the thought she added: "Especially when there are people who don't have homes."  Good point, and this is where the excess self comes in.  What if I took what I spend to store my stuff and instead put it towards a home for a homeless person.  I'm not kidding.  I pay $139 per month to store stuff.  There is a men's hotel downtown where a person, who God loves just as much as He loves you and me (and that is an incomprehensible amount), and who has no home when it's 34 degrees, or 12 degrees, or 0 degrees to sleep, could stay for over two weeks for that price.  But so far, I have deemed my stuff more important.  I am concerned only that I have a home . . . self. 

Our external excess is distracting us from what God is wanting to do in us, the flavors He wants to enhance, concentrate, and intensify through a reduction process.  When He made us, He built into us all kinds of good things, good gifts.  Jesus said there is no greater command than (1) to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and (2) to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  (Matt. 22:36-39)  Right now, we don't even love others as much as we love our stuff.  And it is this that allows us to deny a person a seat on a train because our stuff needs the same seat.  Or to come up with reasons not to help those we walk by everyday.  To allocate resources to store and maintain things instead of people.  To believe we are too busy to have a conversation with someone who is too difficult, too needy, too different.  To refuse to buy coffee that is fair trade because the store that sells it is 5 miles farther away.  To be seduced to buy a new i-pod when there is nothing wrong with the one we have.  And, it is why Jesus said: "[i]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."  (Matt. 19:24)  

So, I have decided to reduce.  I will reduce by half before adding any more ingredients.  I will make less, or decrease, my excess.  I have started on the external excess, cleaning out the home I rent for my stuff.   I will also reduce on the inside.  This will take God's help, for sure, but includes continuing to try to love others -- and I don't just mean family and friends -- as I love myself.  Because what I want more than anything is not more stuff or more self.  I want God to intensify, concentrate, make stronger, the good things He planted in me.  What I want more than anything is, in the words of John the Baptist, that He becomes "greater and greater" and I become "less and less."  (John 3:30)  There's only one way this is happening: reduction.