This is me, sharing my life...transparently.
They knew the night sky well enough to notice a rogue star when no one else did.
They paid attention.
They were not Jewish but knew of the foretelling of the King of the Jews.
They were informed.
Even though they expected a King, they bowed at the feet of an infant.
They were humble.
When Herod told them a bold-faced lie, they went on their way.
They understood human nature.
When they had a dream telling them not to report back to Herod they listened.
They listened to God.
Prayer is such a mysterious thing…until you see an answer.
Luke 18:1-7 NIV Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me!' ” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?
Sometimes I think my prayers are unimportant or that maybe I’m praying wrong or that the answer is no and I’m not listening. But if Jesus bothered to tell a story instructing us to persist in prayer, and under divine protection this story has been passed along for over 2000 years, who am I to stop battling for people I know in prayer? And the most important part is that yes, I have seen my prayers answered. They are seldom answered instantly (although that has happened too). Some answers have taken decades. And it is a glorious thing because I know my Creator has heard and responded to my prayers even though I don’t deserve his attention.
Never, ever give up in prayer.
Recently there was an unusual situation where my heart burned to talk to someone about Christ but was not able to in this particular situation. I won’t go into the details here, but it was quite challenging to speak truth over desperation without referencing words from my faith. It made me wonder how people share their faith in places where they can’t freely quote scripture or speak the name of Jesus or God. Is there an effective way to preach the goodness of God and use no words?
It is said that living out your belief is so much bigger than mere words. And this isn’t said to chain us to rule-following performance. Performances are just that. They have an end. We can behave ourselves for only so long because we are easily broken and our real heart eventually shows. We are simply clay vessels. So how can clay pots show Jesus to a broken world other than rule-following and scripture quoting? How can we be transformed from clay to the embodiment of Christ so that we naturally reflect his glory? This scripture from Paul to the Corinthian church teaches how this is done. I love this translation by Eugene Peterson in The Message Bible.
2 Corinthians 3:16-18 MSG. Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are-face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
We must develop a closeness to God to reflect his glory. We cannot show Christ-likeness by that old constricting, rule-following lifestyle. And that is such a relief! That is true freedom! To me, this says that the only thing we need to do is to encounter God personally and frequently in a relationship. Also note that this change from clay to Christ-likeness is gradual, not a one-and-done thing.
How do we encounter God? It is really quite simple. If we know how to make friends, we know how to encounter God. And just like making friends, we have to push past the awkward and put ourselves out there. Unlike people, God never rejects those who want to be with him. To develop any relationship, we must let go of some things on our calendar and schedule regular time to be together. If we give God our precious time we will have the privilege of a growing relationship with him.
There are many books written about ways to encounter God but the most noted way is solitude and Bible reading. One thing is for sure: there is no specific place, time or method to experiencing God’s presence. If your mind is on things above, you are opening the door to let God in.
I have noticed that by removing hurry from my life’s equation there are so many more chances to encounter God. And the best way to do that is to schedule in “margin”. Margin is time in your day with nothing scheduled. Margin can also be one lovely day of the week where you ditch all your obligations. This isn’t a new concept. You will find it in those Ten Commandments. (We often think of it as nine commandments and one Sabbath suggestion.) It is the one commandment we feel free to break without being fired from our job or reprimanded in any way. Jesus often took the time to retreat to a quiet place to talk to His Father, yet he accomplished changing the world in three short years so surely we could take ten minutes a day in our busy schedule to be still. And in addition, maybe we can learn to take one day a week without work or phone obligations.
We think to become more like Christ we must add to our calendar. But in reality, we were never asked to check items off of a list to become like Christ. Counterintuitively, we must let go of our perfect performance to reflect his glory to a broken world. To become a vessel of Christ, is to relax and take time to encounter Him.
Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face.
The Message
The media has given us an alternative name for the upcoming holiday by inventing “Friendsgiving”. More and more you see people forgoing family time to have their own private holiday excursions. Holidays have become uncomfortable because we are forced to hang out and have conversations with folks from differing opinions. I believe this is a symptom of becoming a selfish society. We want our favorite food and our favorite opinions blaring from our favorite source of news. It is all about what we want. We have our rabbit hole and we don’t want to go into someone else’s. So we have become escape artists for family get-togethers.
Spending time with family members that we don’t enjoy doesn’t sound like an appealing way to spend precious vacation time. But if we don’t start building bridges now, our children will suffer the consequences. We must put aside our entitlement, learn to love the unloveable and show our children how this is done by example.
“But Uncle Fred is an intolerable bigot,” you say? Maybe we need to take the first step with Uncle Fred by letting him rant without our input. Maybe we shouldn’t try to fix Uncle Fred’s opinions and give him time to speak his mind in a safe environment. Oh, and did I mention that we need to look Uncle Fred in the eye and not stare at our phone or the TV? We need to engage with him. We need to pull some stories from his life and maybe we will discover a gold mine under his bravado. Or maybe we won’t.
Maybe we will only find our own personal gold mine of kindness. Maybe it is time to man-up and calmly sit and listen in a non-judgmental way to those with opposing values. Maybe this is where unity begins. If families can’t even sit down to a meal together in peace, how can we expect world leaders to fix this mess?
Have you ever had a moment of clarity where you see what your life might have been like had you not found a relationship with Christ and for a split second you realized that you owe it all to the grace of God? I had this experience last week and it was frightening and eye opening. It is an experience much like that tour of Bob Cratchit’s future, past and present with the ghosts of Christmas. It filled me with gratitude for how God has held me. It was an incredible gift.
I found a trusting relationship with God at the extremely young age of seven and I have followed him closely as a child, then loosely as a teen and young adult, then closely again as a “seasoned” adult. And although my path has been anything but ideal or even boring, I have clearly been held. Held in my decisions, thoughts and actions by a Father that loves me dearly.
It is hard for those of us who have followed Jesus our whole life to imagine our lives without him. And unlike those who came to Christ after hitting rock bottom, we don’t realize the depths from which we have been delivered. But last week in the glimpse of my life without God’s love, it was quite terrifying. I saw, in another person, my own weaknesses magnified to become my demise. I saw how things might have turned out for me and my family if I had to depend on my own easily fatigued struggling to make it through the tough times. And I saw how it would have been for me in the times where I felt unlovable. It would have destroyed me without that over-riding love from my Father.
Lauren Daigle’s song, Thank God I Do, expresses this perfectly.
You're my safe place
My hideaway
You're my anchor
My saving grace
You're my constant
My steadiness
You're my shelter
My oxygen
I don't know who I'd be if I didn't know You
Thank God, I do
I cannot imagine how anyone can live a life without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Life is a roller coaster and He has carried me though so many crazy twists and turns. My hope is to someday have the faith to let go of the bar and fling my hands in the air knowing He holds me.
If you are reading this and you are tired of a life of striving on your own power; know that God hears your humble prayer and will fill you with a new life of placing your eyes on him. You don’t have to earn this. It is free for all who ask. Then you can place your eyes on Him and let go of that load. This song expresses it beautifully.
Life is so unpredictable. In a time when I lost what I thought was the love of my life, I found so many friends and they pointed me to my true love.
It was my first teaching gig. I was hired by a small school district in a town 30 minutes drive from mine. I was married, had a kindergarten daughter and was pregnant. The guy who hired me didn’t notice the baby bump. I quickly found that I loved my students and teaching. But not only that, I found a friend next door to my biology classroom. Deryl was a quiet, kind, non-judgmental soul. He introduced me to his wife, Linda who was not so quiet but every bit as kind, and they took me under their wing after my daughter was born and my husband left me. I particularly remember two of their acts of kindness.
When my six year old daughter was sick and I had run out of sick days to stay home with her, Deryl offered to let her stay on the couch in his office connected to our classrooms. He was so thoughtful and would stick his head in and check on her periodically during the day. About a year later, he and Linda invited me to dinner as they so often did but this time they had someone for me to meet. He is now the love of my life and we have been married for 37 years.
Through the grapevine I heard that Deryl had pancreatic cancer and passed last Saturday. I lost track of Deryl and Linda except through that grapevine but I will always remember how their kindness changed my life.
Three years fly by in a heartbeat. If you have children, you know. Years that seemed so long and boring as a child, are gone in a flash in adult time. This is why it is so interesting to me to study the way Jesus used his three short years of ministry. He had a monumental job to accomplish in such a short time-frame! Yet many, if not most of the accounts in the Bible are of personal one-on-one interactions. Jesus never hurried and surprisingly, Jesus didn’t choose the most popular and powerful people to build his ministry.
Jesus spent his limited time with lost, lonely people who society rejected. He interacted with each of those people as if they were the most important person on earth. He had a massive job to spread the Gospel to an entire world for all eternity, had three years to do it, and yet he chose to spend his time one-on-one with lepers, widows, women with questionable pasts, liars, cheats and all around insignificant ordinary folks. Why did Jesus use this approach?
This leads me to the Greek title of this blog, Splagchnizomai. I know. This sounds like a word Mary Poppins invented. But according to my source, Lisa Harper, it means “from the gut compassion”. As I understand it, it was used in Mark 1:40-41 to explain why Jesus stopped to heal the leper. Jesus was driven with compassion for the leper who was a forgotten outcast of society. In Jesus’ personal encounters in the Bible, he gave his full attention to each individual as if they were the only person around. He didn’t stop to look at the clock counting down the moments he had left on earth then rush on to the next big preaching event. He took his time with people. And this is one of the many upside-down, counterintuitive ways that Jesus worked.
So what if we applied this same approach to our short life’s story? What if we valued our one-on-one time with people and spent less time trying to scratch and claw our way to a place with more influence? What if we quit worrying about how big, how powerful, or how orderly our life is and start each day with caring for each individual in which we come into contact, whether we deem them worthy or not? What if we made time for others and valued every encounter as holy and ordained by God?
My biggest block to this approach is that I don’t have it in me to love like Jesus with that kind of compassion. Nope, I just don’t have that. Anything I did would be contrived. So first, I must realize deep within my soul that Jesus loves me even though I’m not the prettiest, smartest or most popular person in the room. He doesn’t measure with the same stick that we humans use. He measures with splagchnizomai. He measures with his compassion and not my worthiness. It is so hard to imagine that Jesus would stop what he is doing to tend to me, yet he has never in my life of 64 years ever let me go. He has held me through my darkest night. It is his love and not mine that does the trick. Nothing depends on me.
So all I need to do is to keep my eyes on Him and let go of my earthly ideas of ministry. God did not create me to be another Billy Graham. I will not cure cancer. I will not solve the homeless crisis. He created me and placed me with those he chose for me to love. I must trust his plan. My role is to let Him love through my attention and presence, one person at a time.
While going through the museum, questions kept creeping into my brain. What led someone to think this genocide was ok or that it didn’t happen? So many drank the Hitler Kool-aid and they were who kept him in a power position. Why didn’t they realize that their unquestioning devotion was what placed him in that position? What were the precursors to this genocide? What led those who stood up against this carnage to do what they did? What, pray tell, made folks do nothing? And where would I have fallen in this scenario? I’ll let you research for yourself the answer to these questions. My questions were answered and it was eye opening.
What I want to share with you is that those who took a stand against this genocide were labeled “up-standers”. So I noted what the careers of the up-standers were and I was pleasantly surprised that the majority of the female up-standers were educators. But to keep a level-headed perspective on the situation also I note this quote from my favorite educational psychologist, Israeli, Haim Ginott.
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is this: Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
So according to Haim Ginott, an education does not immunize you against becoming an agent of hate. However, educating children on ethics and making children more human is critical.
Clearly, this puts educators in a pivotal position. Maybe the most important thing teachers teach each day is empathy, understanding, patience and kindness. Teach what you were hired to teach, but remember what is truly crucial is how you teach. It is how you handle yourself and others that speaks louder than any words that are preached from an old-school Baptist pulpit. Remember, as an educator, you are in a powerful position of influence.
As a young public school teacher who felt that teaching God’s love was so much more important than teaching science, I came to the following conclusion after a great deal of soul searching. There is no call to cease teaching reading, writing, science, history, athletics, ag, music and math to begin preaching because actions speak so loudly to students. A Christian education is taught when I do my job to the best of my ability, with integrity, showing children love and kindness regardless of whether I teach in a public or private Christian school. Children watch how their teachers interact and this is where ethics are taught. This is not taught from a textbook. Those eyes are on you, educators.
Pain happens in all of our hearts. Some days you wake up to a gnawing feeling that things are all wrong. Then you have to deal with it. You have a choice. My usual choice has been to deny it, ignore it and push it down. Then when it works its way out, I feel guilty about it. That is not honest or healthy.
For example, when I am lonely, I shove it down thinking, “other people are so much worse” and successfully shame myself for feeling lonely. This is how I deal with every other feeling that is negative. I shove it down then shame myself into faking it. I know I am supposed to be honest and often apply this to everything except honesty with myself and God.
You don’t have to read very far into Psalms to see the authors dealing with bad feelings in a much different way. They let it all out! In Psalms you will find the authors dealing with anger, sadness, blame, depression, sleeplessness, mistreatment, abuse, sickness, and injustice to name just a few issues. They even go so far as to wish their enemy’s children dead! This can’t be right. But seriously, it is in the Bible. We are taught that it is evil to express feelings like this. And we suppress it. We never admit it, we never deal with it and we shame ourselves for it. Well, it is the human condition. We are ALL sinners.
We all have bad thoughts and if we don’t deal with it we eventually act on them. The Psalms show us how to deal with it. The Psalms show us that we should pour them out to God. This is anything but denial. This is dealing with the negativity in a healthy way. Take it to the Lord in prayer. You can even write it out to him and let him know how you feel. He won’t be shocked. He loves you and he created you and he has done time in flesh-and-blood in this evil world. He gets it.
Check out this Psalm dealing with social injustice:
Psalm 12:1-5;7-8 MSG Quick, GOD, I need your helping hand! The last decent person just went down, All the friends I depended on gone. Everyone talks in lie language; Lies slide off their oily lips. They doubletalk with forked tongues. Slice their lips off their faces! Pull The braggart tongues from their mouths! I’m tired of hearing, “We can talk anyone into anything! Our lips manage the world.” Into the hovels of the poor, Into the dark streets where the homeless groan, God speaks: “I’ve had enough; I’m on my way To heal the ache in the heart of the wretched.” GOD, keep us safe from their lies, From the wicked who stalk us with lies, From the wicked who collect honors For their wonderful lies.
So I need to quit praying G-rated prayers. I need to get real. I need to learn to express my issues to my Father and Friend. I won’t shock Him. He already knows but I need to express it. I need to write it, vocalize it and sing it out to God just like the Psalmists.
I have nightmares about forgetting appointments and arriving late. Along with that goes my fear of Alzheimer’s. Forgetfulness is one of my biggest sources of anxiety. It comes from a lifetime of ADHD(don’t ask me where my phone is) and years of dealing with a mom with dementia. Should I get dementia, I have given my children orders to put me in a care center and for my oldest to bring me chocolate, my middle child to smuggle in wine, and my youngest to bring me puppies. Yes, I have issues.
As a small child, church attendance for me was not an option. At least three times a week I faced the pulpit looking at a table carved with the words, “Do This in Remembrance of Me.” I don’t think remembering what God has brought us through and remembering what he has done for us was a suggestion. If you have endeavored to read through the Bible you have found many instances in which God tells his people to remember what he has carried them through. I don’t think that so much of our Bible is dedicated to remembering by accident. In the stories of the Old and New Testament, our God is a God who reminds us. He knows our penchant to forget and he is a patient Father.
I believe God wants us to remember in honesty and not put lipstick on the pig. The history in the Bible isn’t shined up the way we shine up our history, telling the story from the perspective of the victor and not the victim. The Bible gives an honest account of God and his children without polish, applause or idolizing. People in the Bible are just like us. They are victors and victims. They abuse and are abused. They make stupid mistakes and they pay dearly for them. Yet when they turn to God, he shows them the path back into his loving arms. He didn’t just tell us to remember the good stuff. He told us to remember when we rebelled and went through hardship. I have to remember my stupid decisions based on my own inflated ego. I must remember what happened because of my rebellion. I also remember how God gently brought me back into a relationship to him.
Proper remembrance requires honesty that may be painful. We must take a path down memory lane even if it is a filthy alley, a lonesome road, or a dark valley with no end in sight. I realize that trauma makes it hard to remember. If you have suffered trauma, ask God to reveal his hand holding you through the trauma. He was there in ways you didn’t recognize at the time. I know He rescued you because he rescues me. And He asked us to remember. So here is your reminder. You are welcome.
I don’t know if you have ever had the opportunity to work with special needs children but it is an experience that I highly recommend. My experience began when, as a veteran teacher, I was assigned one class of resource science students. Resource classes are for students with a wide range of learning disabilities. I was honestly not looking forward to it since my favorite teaching assignments had always been advanced high school classes of college bound students. It wasn’t a week into this new assignment until I realized I had been missing out on so much joy all those years without them in my classes. I have tried to reflect on why they were so delightful to be around and this is what, I believe, it boils down to: humility and simple trust.
My resource students didn’t worry about all the things that other kids worried about. They were so much more free and joyous. They didn’t worry about what the other kids thought about them. They trusted and they were guileless. They let others look out for them. I will never forget the baptism of one of our special needs kids at our church. If you ever have seen baptisms, you know there is a procedure to it and it is very structured for safety. But when this dear child of God came up out of the water she did a full-on cheer with arms raised high and jumped up and down looking to the sky with the look of ecstasy on her face. She was radiant!
Luke 18:15-17 MSG People brought babies to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. When the disciples saw it, they shooed them off. Jesus called them back. "Let these children alone. Don't get between them and me. These children are the kingdom's pride and joy. Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in."
Can you imagine letting go and trusting God like this everyday? To step into this we must let go of any thoughts that we are superior to anyone else in any way. We must let go of our self reliance and adopt a God-reliant attitude. We must trust Him and give up trusting ourselves. I really think that it is those of us who are not special needs that have a handicap. We mistakenly think we are smart enough or experienced enough to navigate our day on our own power. We depend on no one and nothing but ourselves. After all, we have diplomas and college degrees. We have passed classes like organic chemistry for crying out loud! We have studied under professors that would make you cry. We are stinking brilliant in our own eyes. We know things.
But can we see our “brilliance” in the light of the creator of the universe? We don’t know what will happen next Tuesday, much less tomorrow or the next hour. We are handicapped and we have no idea. We need to realize it and lean into it so we can experience the Kingdom of God here and now. We need to let go of all thoughts of being self-reliant and become God-reliant. With that will come joy. How do I know? My resource students taught me this.
Many Christians like to wear t-shirts proclaiming who they are. I do not. But my reasons for this are not noble. Here is what goes through my judgmental little mind when I see a Jesus bumper sticker or shirt. “Look at how they drive! Look at how they act in line at HEB. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. And they have the gall to wear that shirt. 🤦🏻♀️ They are the poster child for atheism!”
So since I could be a poster child for atheism at any one point in my day-to-day life, I cannot and will not wear the Christian swag. But, in reality, can any of us? We are all so far from perfect. And most of us are far from joyful except maybe when we are filled with spirits that are not so Holy. How are we any different? None of us can live sinlessly and joyfully all the time. We are all repellant for recruitment into the faith at some point in our day.
Have you ever tried to live a perfect day? It is painstaking and joyless work watching our own thoughts and actions every second of the day. In a book by Steve Brown called Scandalous Freedom, he calls out Christians that are faking it. He says we are not living in the freedom that Christ gave us and we bind ourselves to things like rule-following perfectionism, sacrificing the joy that Christ followers were given. The author says we are wearing masks that we think the church people ought to wear to be acceptable. And he says that those masks are the very thing that repel folks from Christianity. After all, who wants to live a joyless life of rule following?
In the aforementioned book, the author says Christ followers need to focus less on sinning and more on Christ. He says we are still sinners and when we try to pretend we are not, we lose our freedom and joy. We will always lose in the battle for perfection in the eyes of the world. So quit trying. Quit beating yourself up because you don’t fit the Christian profile. Quit chasing joy and let it catch up with you.
The point is that Christ set us free when we humble ourselves and cry out to Him. He didn’t remove our penchant for sinning, He forgives them and covers them with His perfection. This makes us perfect in His eyes even though in reality we are riddled with sin. And His, is the only opinion that matters. In that, there is joy! In that, there is freedom. It is joy and freedom that makes folks want what we have, not a life of rule-following. So are Christians really any different? I have found the answer to be, “Christians are not better, they are forgiven.” I believe that saying is on a Christian t-shirt.
Galatians 5:1 MSG
[1] Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
If the Rapture were to be tonight, I believe tomorrow there would be scarcely a handful of teachers left in public schools. Yet, daily we are labeled as subversive and hear accusations of indoctrination and worse. They say we are teaching our students heinous things when in reality, we protect them, love them and make every effort to teach them to read, write, think and cope in this world. Public educators are being discredited, and slowly, slyly, gradually de-funded. And the worst is probably the looks of distrust we get when we admit our profession.
As a group we are the majority. We are also kind, trusting and compassionate and easily pushed around. This has left us vulnerable to political attacks and use as political pawns. As educators we can’t wrap our heads around why people would knowingly do this. That is because we are not running the same race as them and certainly are not motivated by the same things. If we were, we wouldn’t be educators.
So what can we do? Two things will help, the third is the real answer.
First, we must educate ourselves as to how the enemy works and who the enemy is and what is his motivation. Ignorance of the enemy is not acceptable. Read and enroll in online educator political discussions. This is non-negotiable.
Second, we must vote and vote only for those we know and trust. No straight ticket votes and no assumptions due to a D or an R or any rhetoric or promises. Vote based on actions, not words. And if you don’t know about a candidate, do not guess and vote. Just skip voting for that particular office. The ballot is not a STAAR test. You can leave some blanks.
Third, and this is the most important thing: pray. Pray daily and pray big and pray again. Pray for every child and every parent. Pray for our state leadership. Even if it is only five minutes, make time in the morning to bring it all to the Father. He is why we do what we do. He is all-powerful and you are His child who serves His precious children.
If you were to pick an animal to represent courage, what would you pick? I’m thinking it would probably be a lion or another fierce animal. If you were to pick a profession that is courageous, what would you pick? I would bet my husband’s pickup that you picked a firefighter or a cop and you are picturing a big beefy strong man. Ladies, stop that right now! This is not that kind of blog.
What if we have courage all wrong? What if courage is best represented by a tiny mouse? What if the most courageous career is a waitress, a teacher or a nurse? What if courage is more commonly found in women and children and not in grown men? Mind-blowing, huh?
So what is courage? Maybe a definition would be helpful. If you were to define courage, you might say that it is acting without fear. But that is actually the opposite of the definition in the dictionary. You might be surprised to know that both the Oxford dictionary and Webster’s include fear in their definition of courage. My favorite is, “Courage is the ability to do something that frightens one”. By this definition, courage and fear are tied together. If you are not frightened, how could you be courageous? This means courage doesn’t exist without fear. So those of us who are the most frightened are actually in a position to be the most courageous!
So if you want to see courage in biblical action, don’t look at Samson. Look at those in the most vulnerable positions like Rahab, the prostitute who led the Israelite spies to safety. Look at Mary the mother of Jesus, who had to evade folks trying to kill her baby and raise the Savior of the world. Look at Esther who had to stare possible death in the face and stand up to the King in a culture of manipulation and male domination. Look to those who lived in fear of being fed to the lions, who hid in caves and cellars but still continued on spreading the Good News anyway.
Oh what I would give to be one of those happy-go-lucky fearless people! But they are not courageous. They can’t be. Because without fear, there is no courage. Only the most fearful have the capacity for the most courage. This is quite upside-down to our accepted world definition of courage. It doesn’t take as much courage to be a mighty lion as it does to be a tiny “snack-a-licious” mouse.
Notice also in the definition of courage, it is not the ability to do something that frightens EVERYONE but the ability to do something that frightens ONE. It may be your own personal fear, something in which no one else takes issue. So next time you wake up fearing what the day ahead will bring, know that you have been placed in a position that demands courage. Pray to God for the ability to keep on keeping on. Trust Him to give you the courage to face your own personal giants. Then at the end of this day, celebrate the victory of being a courageous hero over your fear.
I never got poetry. Lord knows my English teachers tried. But when you throw in a melody, some harmony, and maybe even an orchestra, I am hooked. Music is the greatest gift! Music soothes and it heals. It changes a dull day to something joyful. And you don’t have to be talented to enjoy it. In my case, it is a tool God has used to comfort and inspire me time and time again.
One of the all time great songs in my life is Stephen Curtis Chapman’s Great Adventure with the Prologue on the album. Step back into 1992 and read a portion of what this song has to say.
We'll travel long, over mountains so high
We'll go through valleys so low
Still through it all we'll find that
This is the greatest journey that the human heart will ever see
The love of God will take us far beyond our wildest dreams
Saddle up your horses, we've got a trail to blaze
Through the wild blue yonder of God's amazing grace
Let's follow our leader into the glorious unknown
This is a life like no other, whoa whoa this is the great adventure
And here is a link to the song. Enjoy!
I love a good adventure story: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, that sort of story. The elements of an adventure are the following: they have a hero, a quest, a villain, an unknown dangerous environment, a big risk and a transformation. This also perfectly describes a well-lived life of a Christian. Christ-following is not a boring life. It is a life lived to the fullest.
Stephen Curtis Chapman, who wrote the aforementioned song suffered an incredible tragedy years after writing it. The highs come with lows. Many of my friends are blessed with amazing marriages that some people look for their entire life and never find. Some of those same people are now living in the reality of widowhood, struggling everyday to try to pick up one foot and put it in front of the other. And I have seen those who have been given the strongest bodies struggling to survive another day of cancer. It seems the higher our highs or the bigger the blessings, the more pronounced the lows. I cannot explain it. I can’t understand it.
Life IS a great adventure full of majestic peaks and low dark valleys, boring endless deserts and beautiful boundless springs of joy. So what can we do about it? Hang on for the ride of your life and follow your Leader into the great unknown. Celebrate the highs, mourn the lows and realize that you are not in control. Adopt an attitude of joy in the big adventure because we know how the story ends.
I have lived with the most innately discerning human for 37 years today. Being lacking in this area, I am ever-amazed at his abilities. He seems to see through to the motives of people and only on a rare occasion is he proven wrong. Discernment is like being able, at a glance, to recognize a beneficial snake from a venomous one, on the fly, while you are a little freaked out. I feel discernment is a very crucial skill in our world and especially for Christians.
How can we as Christians love everyone yet still have the discernment to know when someone is manipulating us? Because I am old, I have seen many instances where Christians were suckered in and manipulated by someone who does harm to them or to their church. I also have seen precious people who adamantly believe they should love and accept everyone be totally lost when they are forced to take a stand. They have no ability to discern. On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen Christians who build tall walls around them and their family because they aren’t able to discern the beneficial from the poisonous. These opposite approaches to living the Christian life have the same issue. We need discernment.
How do you determine a beneficial snake from a poisonous viper? It is through education and experience. Without education we either kill all the snakes, good and bad or we accept all the snakes and end up in the emergency room or worse. The analogy holds up for discernment. But the hard way to learn discernment is experience. Trust me, life is short and we really don’t want to learn everything the hard way. Thankfully, discernment also comes through education and the Bible is the ultimate source of stories of good and bad discernment and how to live as a Christ follower in an evil world. The problem for most of us is the Bible is tough to understand so we opt for an easier path.
Here is one example of the stuff that makes reading the Bible more of an adventure than a pastime, and definitely not for the faint of heart. In the beginning of Genesis, God designed one man for one woman. Then a few chapters later we see Ol’ Abraham taking more than his fair share of women. Yet he was flippin’ Abraham, the Big Kahuna of faith! So confusing! Mysteriously, if we prayerfully seek God we will begin to sort through the culture and sin and understand the important lessons about God in this book of stories of flawed humans realizing it doesn’t read like a novel. And it shouldn’t be read like a simplistic rule book either.
Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson is a book about how to read the Bible and is very helpful in understanding it. This book is challenging reading for me but I must say that I have begun to grasp some points that Dr. Peterson made. One of the main concepts in his book is that the Bible is largely written in stories(narratives) and should be read as such. We shouldn’t pluck a verse out of a story and call it quits. The very essence of God is expressed in each of these narratives. For example, Esther is a book of the Bible that never mentions God but the character and values of God are woven through this story. It is a wonderful story and I highly recommend reading it. However, if we approach this reading of Esther literally, we will be out skewering our enemies on tall poles. Each narrative in the Bible is set in a different time, culture and location. We must take this into consideration before we attempt to interpret any story of the Bible. So if we educate ourselves to the setting and culture in which the story is written, we will certainly begin to understand more about God and how to recognize a viper.
As Christians, we have to decide how to treat sin and our fellow sinners. I believe the best advice is in the actions of Jesus. He did not treat them all the same. He did not hug all the snakes. On one hand, Jesus said, “He who is without sin should cast the first stone” choosing not to condemn. But on the other hand, Jesus set his foot down adamantly against many proud pious folks, calling them snakes and broods of vipers. How did he know what to condemn? He was so brilliant. But He was God. He could look into the heart. And I am not and cannot. Thankfully he left us with the Holy Spirit and a Bible full of stories and advice. This is our resource so we must seek it out wisely.
Christians must be smart and discerning. We cannot accept everyone at face value. We must look through the facade. We must see past the fashionable clothing and alluring words and consider the motives of the heart. But we must also realize we are still sinners and not above anyone else. We have simply accepted a beautiful gift that others have rejected. It is like walking on a tight rope, there is always tension because it is not easy. If there is no tension when it comes to discernment, chances are we are choosing not to discern but choosing to accept all or reject all. We must discern the non-venomous snakes from the venomous and the best way to do that is through prayerfully, relentlessly studying the Bible.
We don't have the English word we need to describe what the Beatitudes called meekness. However, I saw an example of humility or biblical meekness the other night while listening to a a rock/country singer-songwriter, Jelly Roll. He obviously didn’t live a privileged life like mine but found his way to the stage of the Grand Ole Opry singing a song called “I Need a Favor”. The line from this song that caught my attention goes like this:
I only talk to God when I need a favor
And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer
So tell me, who the hell am I to expect a Savior
When I only talk to God if I need a favor?
These words contain honesty, transparency, relationship and not a hint of entitlement. In the act of making this statement there is freedom and strength. This expresses a level of humility that Christ would have us aspire to learn.
I find it fascinating that the Bible, a collection of books penned by so many different people across so much time, has unifying themes that run from Genesis to Revelation. The theme that has caught my attention lately is humility, also called meekness. It is pointed out over and over as a quality that God wants in us. But I feel like our culture has no clue what this important virtue is and has filed it under “niceties that no one cares about”. Yet it is held in high esteem in the narratives in the Bible.
Mother Theresa and Fred Rogers are examples of those who lived a life of humility. I have heard it said that if a person is truly humble, no one around them is aware of it during their lifetime. If you Google examples of humble people it will give you examples of famous people who fly economy class or had small private weddings rather than big extravaganzas. We all know humility is so much more. It is such an important concept and sadly, we don’t even know the correct definition of it. So how can we ever aspire to something about which we know so little?
The Webster definition of humility is freedom from pride or arrogance. I think Mr. Webster nailed it. I really like the “freedom” part of that definition. In humility there is great freedom! It is humble transparency that leads us to this freedom. Transparency is not being secretive or ashamed but being open about who you are and what is in your past. If you are transparent you don’t hide information that you feel would cast you in a bad light. Humble people don’t worry about what others think about them because they aren’t focusing on themselves. So humility knows its flaws and deeply regrets them and doesn’t try to hide them. If we daily accept the forgiveness Jesus offered us, we find such freedom! So I believe humility goes hand in hand with transparency and in this, there is definitely freedom.
Because its ego is not puffed up, the humble are not easily deflated. And because they do not focus on themselves, they are not easily deflated like those who are seeing only themselves and what they lack compared to others. Because of this, they are not fragile like the rest of us. The best kept secret of meekness is that there is great strength in it.
I have noticed the humble are secure, selfless and unhurried. Picture Mr. Rogers singing and slowly putting on his sweater. Humility doesn’t watch a clock because its focus is on others and not on a schedule. Humility believes it is owed nothing in this life and lives gratefully. It is delighted with any good thing that comes its way and sees blessings all around them. The humble are joyful. As created beings, this is the only stance we should take. We had nothing to do with our creation but we were amazingly designed. We cannot get puffed up about it but we can’t curse it either. We are totally dependent on our Creator. In this, there is honesty and no entitlement.
It is that time of year. The dreaded pleas for helpers in Vacation Bible School fill my soul with fear. True confession: I would rather go shopping in a rattlesnake pit than work in Vacation Bible School. Long story, but suffice it to say the last time I worked in VBS I ended up in the emergency room and was happier there. So why did I volunteer? What sort of insanity drove me to do it? Well, I think it was a mixture of several things including Baptist preacher’s daughter conditioning, guilt and confusion over what God wants from me. I thought He wanted me to prove my love for Him in the most sacrificial way I could imagine. That, for me, was VBS.
Jesus had a lot to say about motivations, especially in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. And He was always pointing out motivations behind actions like when he compared the prayer of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14. Both prayed but each with different motives. To God, clearly, motivation matters.
Recently, I was listening to an episode in the Things Above podcast called Abba Experience by James Bryan Smith. He was talking about the singer songwriter Rich Mullins and told a story from Rich. It goes like this. Rich was in Thailand and met a missionary and was talking to her. He said to her, “You know, I just want the Lord to use me”. And she said, “Well, forget it”. And Rich was stunned. And then she went on to say, “God doesn’t need you for anything. God doesn’t want to use you. He wants you to love Him”.
This is key. When I was serving in VBS, I was confused about what God wanted from me. I thought He wanted me to do the most sacrificial thing. But that is not what God asks of me. He asks me to love Him above all else. After all, that command made the number one position in the top ten way back in Exodus. And how do you show someone how much you love them? By spending time with them in conversation. By getting to know what they like and dislike, thinking about them all day long, allowing yourself to fall in love. By prioritizing your time with them over all else.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t serve Him. It means a shift in thinking and in our time. We must prioritize our own time with God before we begin to think about serving. Only then can we serve free from ulterior motivations of guilt, power, authority, approval, recognition or a desire to be needed. Only then, will our motivations be pure, filled only with humility and love. Then the realization will be that when you serve it is a privilege, accepting a blessing from God knowing if you serve for the wrong reasons you are taking a blessing from someone else. A sure sign that you are doing this is burn-out and frustration with other people while you are serving.
Also from the same podcast by James Bryan Smith was this quote from Dallas Willard, “You must arrange your days so that you can experience deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God”. This involves slowing down, saying no, creating space and margin in your day. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself. Arrange for time to be with God and cast your cares on Him.
I’m a mess. There, I said it. I struggle with issues like anger and fear. To top it off, I am a control freak. It is so hard for me just to stand down. And I find myself in a world that has lost love, kindness, sanity and is full of greed and depravity.
But…
I have hope and hope makes all the difference! My hope is in Christ. God wants to save us from our own destruction because He created us and loves us. He created us with the freedom to choose. All we have to do is believe and trust what He said. He said that God created everything and then sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to live in the flesh among us. And that Jesus was crucified over 2000 years ago on a real Roman cross to his death and that His body was buried in a real tomb and three days later He rose to life in the flesh. He returned to heaven after leaving behind the Spirit form of God to help us grow as believers. And He said that on a day that we have no idea about, Jesus will come again and gather up all of the dead believers and those believers left on earth and take us to live in an unimaginably beautiful place with Him to live a totally fulfilling existence without pain and death. And in this lies all my hope.
Here are the words of Jesus explaining to a guy named Nicodemus, who wanted to know why the Son of God came to earth to live as a human among us.
John 3:16-17 AMP
"For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world, that He even gave His One and only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him as Savior shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world that is, to initiate the final judgment of the world, but that the world might be saved through Him”.
So He clearly lobbed the ball into our court. We each must choose to participate by belief and trust. We must choose to volley our thoughts and beliefs daily with Him or to walk off and leave Him. But if we participate, we become the recipients of grace for all the messing up that we have done, are doing, and will do.
It is this hope that keeps me looking to God. My hope keeps me talking to him. My hope holds me up when the world knocks me down and consequently, love and compassion grow where there was none before. Everyday my hope is in Christ. Everyday I talk to Him about letting go of my anger, fear and control issues and I see that He is making improvement in spite of me. So I have hope for a bright future knowing someday, all these issues will be a thing of the past.
If you haven’t made this choice and want to, simply tell God in a humble prayer that you choose this hope and believe in your heart that He will do what He says He will do. If you have this relationship with God, may you find a way to share it with those who want it.
I love aha moments when I get to discover a new connection or all the pieces of the puzzle fall together. The feeling I get leaves me with joy that wants to bust out like Julie Andrews singing, "The hills are alive", on top of a mountain in Austria. I usually make everyone around me listen to my connection hoping they will get as excited as I am. I am annoying that way.
Yesterday I got that little thrill of making a new connection. I was in the Texas State Capitol building with my husband. He was there to visit with a state representative about school safety. He gave his business card to the representative’s aide. The aide commented that his school had the same mascot as ours and we quickly connected the dots and realized this aide was from my hometown in New Mexico. It put me in a happy place for the entire evening and I wanted to share it with anyone who would listen.
Another example of an aha moment has happened when I finally understood a difficult concept that I had been struggling with for a while. Or another was that wonderful moment when, as a teacher, I saw the lightbulb come on in a student and the student quickly began explaining to other students what they figured out.
Jesus disciples were clearly C+ students. They were witnesses to unspeakable greatness but just couldn’t put it all together. That is, not until the last moments in the presence of Jesus on this earth. After Jesus had risen from death, when he was beside the lake where he cooked, ate and talked with his disciples came the greatest aha moment in history. It can be found in Luke 24:44-48.
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms .” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
I can just hear the disciples’ collective, “Ooooh”! All the pieces finally fit together perfectly in their minds. And they had a front row seat the whole time. We can guess what their reaction was since we know what began there spread and continues more than 2000 years later. Thankfully, gratefully, we know they finally understood and became A+ students.
