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something worth waiting for

something worth waiting for

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We are impatient people. We are used to solving problems, not living with them. If we can’t solve the problem, we move on to something else. If we can’t “fix” the relationship, we move on to someone else.

But sometimes, things take time. Things like raising children, building character, growing faith, building trust. Sometimes, you have to wait to see how things turn out. Sometimes, in the long run, you see that all the pain and hard work and frustration and seeming failure were worth it after all.

And that’s just from our limited perspective! But what about God’s perspective? We fret about everything in our world that is not as it should be, and question God’s goodness in “allowing” such evil to persist. Is it possible that God is waiting … waiting for us to grow up, waiting for us to get it right, waiting for us to learn virtue and justice and love, instead of doing it for us? Is it possible that what we sometimes interpret as God’s indifference is really God’s patience?

That’s what faith is: taking the long view, seeing things from God’s perspective, putting trust — complete trust — in God’s wisdom and goodness, believing that the power that raised Jesus from death is indeed even now at work among us. We may not always see the results we want when we want them, but faith believes that God’s power is at work and will one day bring to us and to our world new life — a new life, a new existence, a new way of being, a new way of being with God — that will last forever! Now that’s something worth waiting for!

filled with power

filled with power

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When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me …

That’s what Jesus promised his first apostles: you will be filled with power … and they were:

  • power to boldly proclaim a message of good news
  • power to heal broken bodies and broken souls
  • power to stand up to fierce opposition and harsh persecution
  • power to see what they could not see before — the ever-widening circle of the Lord’s embrace.

You will be filled with power …

Do you feel powerful, empowered, filled with power? Sometimes it seems that for us faith is more about comfort and assurance than about power, more about belief than about action, more about what Jesus can do for us than about we can do in Jesus’ name.

What can we do in Jesus’ name?

  • Can we boldly proclaim good news to a world that is cynical, hurting, despairing, splintered?
  • Do we expect to bring healing to broken souls and broken bodies?
  • Will we stand up and not back down in the face of doubt, derision, scoffing, verbal attacks, political isolation?
  • Will we see the still-widening circle of the Lord’s embrace?

I don’t want to be part of a church that is innocuous, self-absorbed, timid. I don’t want to be content with a faith that promises future blessing, but makes no real difference now. I want to know what it is — to explore with you, my fellow believers, what it is — that we can do here and now in Jesus’ name!

Do we believe the good news? Do we believe Jesus is alive? Do we believe Jesus is alive in us? Do we believe that we are filled with power, and are we ready to exercise that power in love, in Jesus’ name, for our neighbor’s sake?

making beauty

making beauty

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(Originally published Saturday, December 31, 2005)

I have been doing a bit of ranting lately … about the horrors of the death penalty, about the scandal of an administration that is reluctant to expressly disavow torture, about the shortsighted greed that would rather despoil an untouched wilderness than spend the time and money to develop alternative energy sources or to find ways to use our present energy resources more efficiently.

But I want to end the year on a positive note! Because in spite of all its ills and all our failings, the world in which we live is filled with much that is beautiful, most of it brought into being by the God who brought the universe into being, but some of it brought into being by us, creatures made to be like God. We are very much like God when we are making beauty. In just these last few days I have had the privilege of enjoying great beauty …

… the beauty of a sanctuary lighted by a hundred handheld candles and filled with the sound of a hundred voices singing of the dawn of redeeming grace.

… the beauty of the aroma of poached pears, a dish new to me prepared by our eldest son.

… the beauty of language, powerful and intimate, words describing feelings, words describing grief, words crafted by Joan Didion to document and make sense of a year of grieving the sudden death of her husband, beautiful because even words of grief reveal the wonder and mystery and majesty of human love.

… the beauty of giving gifts and receiving gifts when the one giving and the one receiving both know, and know each other know, that it isn’t about the gift!

We are at our best when we are making beauty. When we praise beauty and preserve beauty and especially when we make beauty, we show ourselves to be true children of the God who delights in beauty …

a road in the wilderness

a road in the wilderness

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Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord!
Clear the way in the desert for our God!

The Lord comes from the wilderness. God comes to us out of the desert … not from the midst of our cities and towns. God is not domesticated, but wild! The Lord is not confined to or defined by our religious edifices and symbols.

We would do well to get ourselves into the desert, to follow a road into the wilderness, to meet the Lord there. It is not that God is not present in our cities, in our houses, in our schools, in our offices, in our theaters, in our churches. It is just that surrounded by everything that we have fashioned with our own hands, our imaginations may fail to recognize the God whom we did not make.

It is a good thing to make retreat from familiar and comfortable places, to clarify our vision, to clear our minds, to open our hearts to the God who comes to us!

transforming memory

transforming memory

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We are a product of our memories …

I heard someone make that comment a few days ago. It’s true. We do not encounter the present moment with a “clean slate,” but with the blessing and the burden of our memories. Our memories shape the ways we interpret and react to the situations we encounter. And our memories direct our steps. We try to create or find situations that will duplicate our good memories and we try to avoid situations that may duplicate our bad memories.

When we accumulate enough of one or the other, they become solidified, as it were, into a mindset, an outlook, a way of being. Enough good memories encourage us to welcome the future with open arms, expecting more. But enough bad memories make us fear the future and despise the present.

So how do you change a mindset? Are we prisoners of our memories — good or bad?

Memories cannot be altered, but the way they are put together may be. A mindset is not the product of the memories themselves, but of the way we interpret them, the way we retell the stories. That is the key — storytelling. The story is the means of making sense of the memories, of understanding and assimilating their meanings. But we can learn a new story! We can retell our old stories in new ways!

That is what forgiveness is about … not changing the past, but changing the way we feel about it, changing the way we think about it, changing the way we tell its story. I once was lost, but now I’m found! Faith is about learning to see ourselves through the eyes of Jesus, of learning to see ourselves as Jesus sees us, of learning to love ourselves as Jesus loves us.

We cannot change our memories, but they may become good memories as we begin to comprehend the “big picture” of our lives and see the hand of God at work from beginning to end. It’s a good story … with a most happy ending!

words with(out) meaning

words with(out) meaning

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So much of language is just “fill” … words to fill empty space, words to comply with the rules and expectations of social interaction, words to avoid an awkward silence, words to avoid a more threatening eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul contact. We have to use so many words just to get through a day, words not well thought out, revealing nothing particularly profound, revealing nothing much of what is “really real” about ourselves.

And yet, even these “throwaway” words carry meaning. Even these “lightweight” words make a real and valued and valuable connection to another human being. The words we may “toss off” may well be received as a true gift and a blessing.

The same is true of the language of prayer. So much of my praying to God may be “going through the motions,” words to comply with the rules and expectations of a viable faith, praying so as to be able to say I have prayed. Not well thought out, not particularly focussed, not fully engaged.

And yet … To have prayed, however we have prayed, is to have made a real connection to the living God, a connection I dare say that brings delight to God and untold blessing to us.

So pray! Don’t wait for the right time or the right words or the right mood. Just talk to God. And when you do, those startling moments of profound self-revelation and unexpected intimacy that happen from time to time in your human conversations will happen too in your conversation with God.

So much of language is “fill” …… but not all of it!

genuine faith

genuine faith

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Genuine faith can be such an elusive thing …

So much of what we believe derives from childhood experiences, from our parents’ faith or lack of it. We “inherit” our faith just as we inherit so much of what we think and feel and believe. Or we learn when we are young to despise or distrust the protestations of faith that seem so disingenuous. We want to be like mom or like dad, or we want to be anything but like mom or like dad.

Faith can be a hedge against fear or doubt, a way to avoid staring into the emptiness … of a vast and incomprehensible universe, or of a dark and incomprehensible soul. Faith can be a security blanket, a means of cobbling a sense of order onto the chaos of our lives. Faith can be a tool of denial, a means of avoiding questions and bypassing uncertainty.

Faith can be a wall, a wall to stand between us and our shame, a wall to stand between us and those parts of ourselves that baffle us and frighten us and resist our control.

Faith can derive from so many different roots and thrive for so many different reasons. Which makes it all the more amazing, truly amazing, that genuine faith does exist among us! Faith that is unselfish, that is humble, that seeks above all else simply to honor God and follow where God leads. Faith that knows itself, that knows its weaknesses and fragility and acknowledges them. Faith that is teachable and agile and always enlarging. Faith that does not have to have all the answers because the presence of God is answer enough. Faith that does not have to maintain control, because it knows enough to know that it can’t. Faith that is gentle. faith that listens … to God and to other human beings. Faith that is full of joy, not because all is well or all is in order, but simply because God is. Simply because God is …

Genuine faith is such an elusive thing. But it does exist … and it is a beautiful thing indeed!

just enough

just enough

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Is it sinful to spend money on yourself? I don’t think so …
Is it sinful to spend money only on yourself? Yes, I do think so …

Is it sinful to want more than you have? I don’t think so …
Is it sinful to be ungrateful for what you do have? Yes, I do think so …

The gospel is about grace, about freedom, about freely enjoying the blessings of this world and sharing freely them, about living day to day without anxiety and with generosity. Things, money, wealth may come and go; let them! We cannot serve both God and wealth. We make an idol of wealth both by having to have it and by having not to have it! If we are preoccupied with accumulating wealth or preoccupied with guilt about having “too much,” in either case, we are preoccupied with things and not occupied with serving God.

Paul knew the secret, the secret of always having “just enough.” The secret is Christ. Having Christ is enough.

    I know what it is to be in need and what it is to have more than enough. I have learned this secret, so that anywhere, at any time, I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little. I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.