What Once Was Dead

1 Comment

I haven’t written in a long time…that’s not quite true, I haven’t posted in a long time. I’ve written quite a lot but not things that I want to share with the world. I haven’t posted on social media in a long time (although I spend way too much time on Instagram) and there are a whole host of reasons for that but today I wanted to share my thoughts with whoever might be brought to this small corner of the internet.

When I first bought my house, 11 years ago, there was a beautiful, lush Japanese Maple tree in my backyard. My oldest niece, who was 4 at the time, was looking at the house with me prior to my purchase of the property and she announced “this will be my climbing tree and I will always climb it here”. She did climb that tree, as did her siblings and cousins. We put a sandbox at the base of the tree because it was well-shaded, easily viewed from the kitchen window and provided a safe place for the kids to play.

One spring a large portion of the tree didn’t develop any leaves. I was so sad that the tree would lose a large limb but I thought “it will still be beautiful”. The following spring most of the tree showed no signs of life. My arborist told me that it was a lost cause and that there were dozens of reasons that it suddenly died. I didn’t have the heart to cut it down. I decided to leave it alone for a while and think about what I was going to do about the tree. There was no life left in the limbs so it wasn’t safe for climbing anymore. The sandbox was moved to a different part of the yard where there was shade to be found, but it was far from the house and hard to spot from the kitchen window. It meant changes to the routine of being outside. I mourned the end of tree climbing adventures for my nieces and nephews. I thought about how long it would take for another tree to become as lovely. I felt like a little piece of me shriveled up with the tree. It was such an important emotional part of what made my home feel like home.

I finally decided that, at the very least, I needed to trim back most of the dead branches. My brother spent a Saturday helping to trim limb after limb that had once been full of vibrant burgundy but were now empty, barren. I left the weirdly, twisted skeleton in my yard and all winter my family asked me what I was going to do with it.

Spring came again, as it so often does, and with it a plan. I decided to plant wisteria and trumpet vine at the base of my dead tree. They need a framework to start growing on and the old tree became a natural trellis. It took a few years for my vision to spring to life but slowly, tendrils and wisps of green began to wind their way around the old dead limbs. We hung bird feeders from the places where my nieces and nephews used to dangle from the tree. What was once a glorious living thing became alive once again. It is a vastly different sort of life than what it once had but there’s something magical about the tree that it never had before. The wisteria blooms in early summer and the purple blooms hang like clusters of grapes filling the air with perfume. As the days grow longer and warmer, just as the wisteria blossoms begin to fade, the trumpet vine begins to display its showy coral trumpets. The tree buzzes with the sound of bees and hummingbirds. Every day is a spectacular display of bunnies, bluebirds, and finches.

In winter, we continue to feed the birds so even on the grayest of days, the tree is filled with color. Winter birds, like cardinals and blue jays, perch on the old gnarled limbs and bring a splash of cheer to the view from the kitchen window. There are squirrels and chipmunks and wise, old ravens who frequent the tree. The mourning doves always come just before sunset and coo to bid the day farewell.

I never saw so many little friends when the tree was full of its own beauty. It wasn’t until it had to make room for another kind of glory that I began to see all the creatures who frequent my old, dead tree. To put it another way, it wasn’t until it died that it could enter a new season of life.

When we talk about new seasons we tend to think of exciting new adventures. We picture fresh and green, beginnings and opportunities. We don’t often realize that some new seasons begin with a death. Some new seasons begin with dormancy. Some new seasons begin looking totally unfamiliar, leaving us unlike who we thought we were. Some new seasons tear us limb from limb, refashioning us into a different sort of life. New seasons can be slow in coming. They can take years and years to begin to unfold their colors.

I was talking to an incredible friend at church this past Sunday. She was about to celebrate her 90th birthday. She was telling me with great excitement about the Bible study that she’s been hosting for women in her community. They gather weekly for several hours to talk about Jesus. This little group is flourishing and vibrant. My friend’s eyes were sparkling as she was telling about her group of ladies, most new believers, and how God has been using them to teach her as much as she’s teaching them. When I told her how excited I was for her she answered “all this is happening because I finally learned to yield to God, and it only took me ninety years.” I remember a similar conversation with the same friend nearly 20 years ago when she’d been removed from leadership of a small group without notice in a very unjust fashion. It had caused her a great deal of heartache but she forgave and continued to pursue God, even though her limbs had been cut. Here she is seeing a harvest, in an unexpected way, from an avenue or branch that she thought was dead. Isn’t it just like God to revive our dreams in a way that is more than what we could imagine? More beautiful, more fulfilling, more inspirational, more joyful, more…well to put it simply, just more!

What dreams have become dead in your life? What season has ended in death? Are you feeling the emptiness of a dormant season? Take another look. What sort of framework is God preparing inside all the dead limbs of your vision? What sort of storehouse of life giving “sap” is He building in your dormant days? What reserves of “more” is He preparing for you? What sort of tendrils and wisps are beginning to swirl and twirl around the pieces of your soul that have long been barren?

We get excited when we hear verses like Isaiah 40:4 where it talks about “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places smooth”. We shout and say things like “won’t He do it” and while the answer is a resounding “YES!” We don’t often consider that leveling mountains and turning rough places into plains can be laborious processes with long stretches of what seems like barrenness and death. Can God do instant works? Absolutely! Does He always work instantaneously? In my experience thus far…no, He doesn’t always work instantaneously. I have noticed that He works patiently, over many years, moving us from one season to the next. With great care and gentle hands, lest the clay crack, He molds us.

If you are floundering and feel like you’re in a season where you are a dead tree I have a few final thoughts for you:

  1. You are not alone! I’m available to commiserate, just drop me a line and we can talk about barren seasons.
  2. Take a look around and take stock of the things you know God is doing in your vicinity. You might not realize that He’s been pruning you to be the framework of something spectacular.
  3. Tell Him your deepest thoughts about the season you’re in! He hasn’t forgotten your dreams but He might be refining them. He hasn’t been ignoring your emptiness, He’s been preparing to fill it. He is big enough to handle your frustrations and anger. He’s not embarrassed by your anguish and He’s not ashamed of your doubts.
  4. As my sweet nonagenarian friend said, yield to God. Once you’ve poured your heart out with all your wounds laid bare and told Him all the things you have buried in your deepest soul, listen! Listen to His plans for you. Start with the Bible. Listen to what He’s planted for you there. Get back to basics. Stop trying to find the specific verse that applies to your current life circumstance and makes you feel goosebumps for a moment, and focus on getting to know Jesus! Let getting to know Jesus be the core activity of your day. Seek Him and you will find Him! In the process you will discover that He’s been beautifying your dark season with light, wonder, and glory that can only come through rebirth. He’s been preparing new fruit that could only come after a severe pruning. He’s been making something completely new out of what you once were. Hallelujah!

New Year, Same God

1 Comment
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

I’ve never been a fan of the annual declaration “New Year, New Me”. I always wondered “what is so wrong with me that I have to be made into a new me every year?”. The declaration has fallen out of favor in recent years but that doesn’t stop people from making resolutions or plans to change. It makes sense, moving to a new year reminds us that time is not static. It reminds us that change is ever present, and it can feel like a good point to evaluate our lives and make decisions about how we want to venture into a new season. We make our plans to workout more, eat better, read through the entire Bible, learn a new skill, take up an old hobby, get together with friends, travel, finish that book we’ve been planning to read forever, etc. We make our plans and often, not always but often fall short. I have also seen a bunch of people joking that no one should declare that “this is my year”. The past few years have been a crap-shoot of misery and we shouldn’t tempt fate by being excited about what is ahead. We should enter the new year calmly and carefully.

There’s an old Yiddish adage that comes to mind “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht” which means “Man plans, and God laughs” or my personal favorite “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!”/ To a Mouse (Robert Burns). This line from Burns’ poem is often translated “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” but we rarely include the end of this thought “and leave us nothing but grief and pain instead of the promised joy”. Appropriate as these may seem in light of shattered resolutions, broken plans, and horrible years, I don’t believe that God laughs at our plans. I wonder if his heart is a bit like mine when I listen to my nieces and nephews concoct grand schemes for adventures. I love to listen to them dream up awe-inspiring building projects, weave fanciful stories, make glorious plans and set audacious goals, knowing full-well that they’ll never come to pass. There is a joy in hearing them describe their wild dreams and an even greater joy in helping them try to make something out of those dreams. The end result is never quite as fantastic as what they imagined but it is still beautiful, and watching their intense faces of concentration and hard work, followed by giggles and laughter are the gifts of those moments of plans gone awry. I love Proverbs 16:9 because I think it’s more like those moments with my little loves than the image of God laughing at our plans. In the Amplified version it says “A man’s mind plans his way (as he journeys through life), but the Lord directs his steps and establishes them”.

I love the word establish. It means “to set up or put on a firm or permanent basis”. Who better to establish something in my life than God. The Bible is full of verses about his faithfulness and constancy. James 1:17 tells us “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” Hebrews 13:8 says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Deuteronomy 32:4 calls Him “The Rock – his work is perfect; all his ways are just. A faithful God, without bias, he is righteous and true.” No offence to Dwayne Johnson but this is The Rock that I want to be established on. This is the one who directs and establishes my steps. Last year I started thinking about how to be more intentional about following his direction for my steps. What does that look like? The obvious answer is to follow the will of God…yay for church platitudes, she says with heavy sarcasm…following the will of God is an obvious answer but can be a difficult practice. People have driven themselves to near madness trying to discern the will of God for their lives. That is a weighty and personal conversation I’m not going to get into here but I will tell you where I started and how it has helped me to make my plans and trust his direction.

The second half of 1Thessalonians 5 is a little passage that, in my Bible, carries the heading “Christian Conduct”. It covers how we’re to relate to one another and carry ourselves if we bear the name of Christ. Verse 18 is one of those verses that gets quoted a lot and for me it was the key to finding God’s will. It says this (again in the Amplified version) “in every situation [no matter what the circumstances] be thankful and continually give thanks to God; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” So, the will of God for me is to be thankful and continually give thanks to God. Gratitude, consistent and earnest gratitude is God’s will for me. As I make my plans and I set forth my hopes and desires I do so fully recognizing that God will direct my steps and his will is that I walk with gratitude even when my plans and his direction don’t line up the way I want them to.

When we quote 1 Thessalonians 5:18 we often misapply it. We hear “for everything give thanks” but it says “in everything give thanks”. This is the power of words and an important distinction! For is one of those common words that doesn’t really get evaluated. For carries a vast array of meanings but when we talk about being thankful for something it carries the meaning “because of” or “with respect to”. Giving thanks for everything is not only difficult but very nearly psychotic. We expect to be thankful for happy things and desired outcomes but, if we go around telling people that we’re thankful for a devastating circumstance they might question our sanity. Being thankful for everything also makes liars out of us and a holy God does not call his people to be disingenuous. I’m not thankful for my Dad’s death. I’m not thankful for unexpected job loss or sickness. I’m not thankful for cruelty and pain. However, I have been thankful in those circumstances.

In is another word that we don’t bother to define. In “expresses the situation of being enclosed or surrounded by something”. To be thankful for God’s faithfulness while surrounded by difficult circumstances is how we can see his direction meet our plans without being crushed, disillusioned or broken. It is honest and genuine to say I’m not thankful for my Dad’s death but I am thankful that God carried me in that season. I can say I’m not thankful for the loss of a job but I am thankful that God has continued to show himself faithful while looking for a new job. I can be thankful in a surrounded place because, like the calm in the eye of a hurricane, God is with me, establishing me, growing my faith, showing me his faithfulness, while circumstances swirl around me like a devastating storm. Being thankful in everything takes practice. It is not easy to walk in God’s will over our own but like any habit the more we do it, the easier it becomes.

Last year I started a “Gratitude Jar”. It’s a quart canning jar that I keep by my desk. Whenever something happens that I want to remember I jot it on a scrap of paper and put it in the jar. On New Year’s day I opened my jar and read the blessings. Some of them were easy to be thankful for like “Anya (my niece) got baptized” and “my Crown of Thorns plant blossomed”. A lot of them were “in” moments of gratitude like this one “the whole house air conditioner died but was replaced quickly and God provided financing, and I am believing he will continue to provide the money to pay if off quickly.” I’m not grateful for my air conditioner giving out but in that circumstance I could see God at work and I am grateful for that. Here’s one that made me laugh; my mom had knee replacement surgery early in the year and one of my notes said “Mom is 2 weeks post op and we haven’t killed each other”. I am grateful for the surgery that has given her back her mobility and has been a life-changing gift for her. In the moment of recovery I wasn’t thankful for the frustrations of her post-op care but I was thankful that in the mess we were surviving by God’s grace.

So back to my original thought. It’s a new year and I have no need to become a “new me” because I’m already made new in Jesus; “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17”. I am going to call it, this is my year! (I don’t believe in fate or karma so I have no qualms about calling it my year.) This could be a horrible year filled with terrible circumstances for which I am not thankful; but it is my year of continuing to follow God’s will and have him direct and establish my steps. Gratitude in every circumstance is not the whole story but it is a great start. Over the past year of intentionally practicing gratitude I have noticed that I’m not as shaken when my circumstances are less than desirable. I can be thankful in them and see where his direction is better than my plans. Here I am at the start of a new year. The “Gratitude Jar” has been emptied and is ready for a new year of moments that I have been thankful in and I know that it will fill quickly because the year may be new but God is the same!

There’s a lid for every pot, but what if you’re a skillet?

1 Comment

They say to write what you know and I know being single. I’ve never been part of a couple, I am not dating Jesus and I am not self-partnered or in a season of singleness. When I do my taxes I check the box that says single. It’s a description but not a definition. I do not feel called to singleness. It’s simply that, in the words of my Uncle Van, I have yet to meet a man who deserves to be as happy as only I can make him. Truthfully most of the time I’m okay with that and occasionally I am not.

As life goes I am spectacularly blessed. I love my job, sincerely, I get to do things I enjoy with people I respect and get along with. I own a sweet cottage on an adorable street in a nice town. I have a small group of genuine friends, from around the globe, who make me laugh, hold me accountable, and support me when I need encouragement. I have a wonderfully weird family for who I am beyond grateful. They are the people who keep me grounded, and help me dream. All in all life is good.

It took me a while to get to a place where I could live my life in the moment without always being aware of what I lack. It can be an enormous challenge, in the culture I grew up in, to be a single person. What culture am I talking about…the North American church, specifically the protestant, evangelical, charismatic, North American church. In the culture in which I live, move, and have my being, marriage is the paragon of virtues. Please understand, I am not knocking marriage! I have a deep respect for marriage, for what it is meant to be, and would love to participate in that time-honored covenant. That being said, I believe we have put marriage on a pedestal it doesn’t deserve. Why would I say something so scandalous. Let me tell you why.

One of the great gifts of being an older single woman is perspective. I have moved through all the different age groups; nursery, Sunday School, youth group, Bible College, singles ministry, ladies groups, small groups, prayer circles, etc. I have watched as we have spent decades preparing people to grow up and have godly marriages. I have watched people, who were never prepared to simply grow up and be godly individuals, flounder and flail when they haven’t met their soulmate by their early 20’s. I have spent hours counseling young women who felt like failures, forgotten by God, because they were approaching 25 alone. I have seen fantastic young men try and fit into molds they weren’t made for in order to become the sort of prince that would catch the eye of this year’s model of an ideal Christian woman. Many parts of this culture are just beginning to realize that there’s more than just marriage along the narrow road.

I have been blessed with a litany of “when you’re married” thoughts by people whose simple possession of a marriage license suddenly made them sages. The same people who are still walking, talking disasters in desperate need of sanctification (just like me). These are thoughtful people who have said things like “you’re so lucky you’re single because you have time to focus on your relationship with God” or “use this time to let Him prepare you for your perfect mate”. These people inevitably forget that I knew them before they were married and am acutely aware of the imperfect state they were in when they married. It is not our marital status that should give us permission to speak into the lives around us. The only thing that qualifies us to speak into another’s life is the Holy Spirit working through us. FYI, marital status is not a qualifier for being led by the Spirit. Believe it or not, being single doesn’t mean I have any more time to focus on my relationship with the Lord. Being single means I have different responsibilities, not lesser, just different.

I suspect that should I ever marry, I will be just as rubbish at the start as my beloved brothers and sisters-in-law, who all married relatively young. Why? Shouldn’t my years of life-experience make me more prepared? No, I’m still just as human now as when I was an idealistic young person. I may be more aware of my faults and foibles but I’m still a cracked pot carrying the weight of glory. I suspect living closely with another human being requires as much grace when you’re in your 40’s as it does in your 20’s. That is why I spend time talking to my nieces and nephews about who they are, their character, their relationship with God. My oldest niece has begun to notice boys and daydream about her future. This is a precious thing and I will not squash it! I will, however, remind her that her worth in God’s kingdom lies not in her marriageability but in her availability.

I have experienced, in the church, the feeling of being lesser than, of being unworthy, of being some sort of consolation prize (dear married ladies please do not, for the love of all that is holy, tell single women that you told your husband “if I were to die before him I want him to marry you” – we’ve met your husbands and we’re not interested…no lie, this has happened to me several times). For those of you, who like me are still traveling this faith journey on your own, and don’t feel called to a life of singleness, you are not forgotten! You’re not lacking or less than. As we follow Jesus and walk in obedience, it is the faithful giving of our hands to do what we’re called to do that matters. There might be a lid out there for whatever sort of pot you are, but in the meantime you can still be useful. I have a small teapot that has no lid. I don’t use it for tea. I use it as a planter. It has a beautiful long vine that drapes over a bookcase. It is my favorite teapot. It adds a special sort of beauty because it fulfills its purpose in a unique way. I think I’m much like this teapot. There are days that I am intensely aware that I don’t have a lid and my heart yearns to have a lid and function the way teapots should function. Most days though, I realize that my life is filled to the brim with a different sort of usefulness. It is precisely my lack of lid that makes me perfect for this season. Dearest church, dearest single friends, dearest married friends, dearest divorced friends, and widowed friends and friends too young to pay any notice to things like this; let’s encourage one another not only to be godly spouses but to be godly people. To add beauty and wisdom, value and integrity, wherever we are, no matter our marital status, age, race, financial state, etc. Let’s simply encourage each other to run our race with endurance. We are not all in the same lap but we’re on the same track. What a beautiful thing to recognize that one day all we cracked pots, with lids and without, will be made whole.

Thanks to James Orr @orrbarone for making this photo available on Unsplash 🎁 https://unsplash.com/photos/I0EyZ02Ke3E

That First Line is a Doozy

1 Comment

When I was a kid watching Sesame Street I fell in love with the sketch where Smokey Robinson sang “U Really Got a Hold on Me” while the letter U put the squeeze on him. All these years later whenever I hear the Miracles sing “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”, I still picture Smokey Robinson being pursued by a giant letter U. Lately, I have been thinking about the first line of that song quite a lot. It starts with a rather shocking confession…”I don’t like you, but I love you”. When you read the full lyrics of the song you get a picture of a very unhealthy relationship but that’s not my point so I digress.

The Bible has a lot to say about love. There’s a lot about how God loves us and, over the past few years, I have heard many voices spending a great deal of time on the topic of God’s love. It took Google less than a second to return over 3 billion results when I searched “the love of God” and over 2 billion for “how God loves”. The love that we aren’t talking about quite as much is how we, the sons and daughters of God are supposed to love. When I looked up “how Christians should love” there were still a lot of results but only 1.9% as many as how God loves. It is critically important for us to know that God loves us. The knowledge that God loves us is what has drawn most of us into the family of God. To find out the Creator of all things knows you, warts and all, and loves you, is a life-giving revelation for which there is no equal. The problem with this disparity around how much we talk about God’s love and how much we talk about our love is that many of us have stopped at knowing we are loved. If the entire point of a relationship with Jesus was merely discovering that we are loved and transitioning from being a creation of God to a member of His family, wouldn’t it make sense for salvation to be immediately followed by passage into eternity. It would be cool! Imagine you have the revelation that God loves you, you repent of your sins and then are swept up to heaven in a flaming chariot a la Elijah; or you discover the intense, sacrificial love of Jesus, repent of your sins and then, like Enoch, you just disappear (Genesis 5:24 tells us Enoch walked with God; then he was not there because God took him). Tada…saved, instantly delivered into Paradise, eternal happily ever after. However, this is not the full intention of God’s love for us. Love is a multiplier. Love is meant to reproduce. That’s part of our responsibility as Christians (little Christs, little anointed ones) we are meant to reproduce the love that has been given to us by loving the same way we are loved.

Here’s a very quick look at how we are loved: 1 John 4:8 tells us that His love is perfect and expels fear, Romans 8:35-39 tells us that His love is secure and that nothing can separate us from that love, Ephesians 3:18-19 tells us that His love is so immense that we will never be able to fully understand the greatness of that love, Psalm 5:11-12 calls His love a shield in which we can take refuge, Psalm 36:5-7 tells us that His love is unfailing, Psalm 86:15 calls His love faithful and declares God to be full of compassion, mercy and patience, 1 John 3:1 calls us children of God because He has lavished His love on us, Ephesians 2:4 tells us that even though we were dead in sin, He made us alive with Christ because of His great love for us. These verses only scratch the surface of how He loves us.

Here’s a quick look at how we’re supposed to love: In John 13:34 Jesus tells us that we are supposed to love one another the same way he has loved us (just a quick reminder Jesus sacrificed himself to show his love for us, so you know big shoes to fill and whatnot!), 1 John 4:19-21 tells us that if we say we love God but hate our brother we are liars, because if we can’t love our brothers who we’ve seen we cannot love God who we’ve never seen, 1 John 3:16-18 tells us that we understand what love is because we know Jesus laid down his life for us, so we should be willing to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, we have to love with actions and truth, not just with words, Romans 12:10 says that we should love deeply and outdo one another in showing honor, Ephesians 4:32 instructs us to treat each other with kindness, compassion and forgiveness, Proverbs 17:17 tells us that we should love at all times, 1 Peter 1:22 lets us know we should love earnestly from a pure heart, John 13:35 tells us that the way people will know we are followers of Jesus is if we have love for each other. If the last few years are any indication, the little anointed ones have become very hard to identify. It can seem that in order to love each other we have to be the same in all things; beliefs, opinions, tastes and styles. We seem to have decided that in order to love each other we have to like each other and this brings me back to Smokey Robinson.

I Don’t Like You, But I Love You

Many moons ago, when I was a young, idealistic youth leader with my theology degree in hand, I set out to make an impact on the young lives entrusted to me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were some of the youths that were challenging to appreciate.

I was telling my dad that I felt like a failure because I should adore all of the kids when he spoke some of the most freeing words I have ever heard. He said “Baby doll, you don’t have to like everyone, you just have to love them.” Mind blown! I don’t have to like everyone. Well of course not. There are some genuinely unlikeable people in the world. Odds are pretty good that there are people who think I’m a genuinely unlikeable person (believe me I get it). Even Jesus seems to have found some people unlikeable, or at least found their behavior unlikeable. We see him challenging and calling out Sadducees and Pharisees throughout his earthly ministry. We find Jesus having a discussion with Nicodemus, a Pharisee in John 3. I find it incredibly powerful that it is to a Pharisee that Jesus speaks John 3:16, one of the very first verses that most of us learn. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. This cornerstone verse about the love of God and the life saving gift of Jesus Christ is given to a member of one of the groups that Jesus referred to as hypocrites and broods of vipers, love poured out on the unlikeable. In John 19 we see this viperous hypocrite, this same Nicodemus, coming after the crucifixion to help prepare Jesus’ body for burial. In a moment when many of the disciples were nowhere to be found, this unlikeable man was risking his reputation to honor Jesus. What a beautiful picture of how love moves.

In Mark 12 a scribe asks Jesus which of the commandments is the most important and Jesus distills everything into two points. First, in Mark 12:30, he says “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Secondly, in verse 31, Jesus says “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” In Matthew 7:12 Jesus gives additional insight into how we love others when he says “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Over time this has come to be called the Golden Rule, the gold standard for how we should treat each other. We are to put all we have into loving God and, out of that love, flows love to those around us. Dr. Michael W. Waters put it so beautifully in the documentary “Juneteenth: Faith & Freedom”, he said “I think you can be distant from movement where you’ve not fully embraced the command of God to love your neighbor as yourself. When you love your neighbor as yourself, that’s not just a child over there that’s hurt, that’s my child. That’s not just a community over there that’s ostracized, that’s my community. You feel the pain through proximity.” In Genesis 1:27 we are told that humanity was created in the image of God. Like a piece of pottery bearing the fingerprint of the potter, every person that you meet bears the image of God, regardless of whether or not they acknowledge Him! Every person is not a child of God, sonship is reserved for those who are in relationship with Him through the redeeming power of Jesus, but that sonship, that adoption into the family of God, is available to everyone. Lately I have been wondering how these not-yet-adopted image-bearers are going to see Jesus. I can’t think of a single day in the past few years where I haven’t seen Christians completely forgetting that our love for each other is the way that other image-bearers will recognize that we belong to Jesus. I have seen progressives taking swipes at conservatives and conservatives throwing punches at progressives. Mocking, scoffing and shaming have become our favorite tools. We point to Jesus and how he called out the Pharisees and Sadducees completely ignoring the fact that he rarely talked about them when they weren’t around, he primarily addressed them directly. We choose to hide behind our social media walls thinking that these platforms give us the authority to reshape our brothers and sisters in our image and forget that it’s not our image that matters. It is the image of God that matters, and how we interact with each other, while calling ourselves little Christs, shapes how image-bearers see Jesus. There’s nothing wrong in calling out sin, there’s nothing wrong in sharing our preferences, there’s nothing wrong in giving voice to our concerns and having disagreements. Paul seems to have been a font of disagreements, we know that he and Peter had some theological scuffles (in Galatians 2). We also know that Paul and Barnabus parted company (in Acts 15), not over ideological differences but over personal opinion. The beauty of these disagreements is that we see (in 2 Timothy 4:11) that the rift was healed. Paul and Barnabus differed in personal opinion but were united in the necessity of sharing the love of God. Their disagreement resulted in a doubling of the good news being spread. We can disagree but we have to approach each other with neighborly love, even if we don’t like each other. We don’t have record of Paul bad-mouthing Peter or Barnabus every where he went. We have no record of Barnabus creating anti-Paul followers. We have no record of these little anointed ones celebrating when their brothers floundered, but history will have these records of us. We seem to put a tremendous amount of effort into making sure that people know who we don’t like. It is high time for the little Christs to take a step back and make sure that we are being known by our love…for each other! We’re good at being known by our love for our platforms, projects and preferences but is that pointing lost-image-bearers to Jesus? If your delicate sensibilities are bothered by this then you are going to hate this next bit.

“You’ve heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Matthew 5:43-48

We aren’t just commanded to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, we’re not just commanded to love our neighbors, we are commanded to love our enemies! Not only is it possible to love someone we don’t like, we are explicitly told we have to love people we don’t like. The most vile tyrants to ever walk the earth are still made in the image of God. This means I have to love and pray for people regardless of political stance, theology, behavior, religion etc. We have this horrible habit of looking at people as our enemies. We scream at the “opposition” through our megaphones. We carry our picket signs and we vilify those we view as being against us. We make our stands against people bearing the image of God completely neglecting Ephesians 6:12-13 which reminds us that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” I have seen a tendency to behave like Peter during the arrest of Jesus. He tries to win a spiritual battle with human weapons and ends up hacking off someone’s ear. We are trying to wrestle with flesh and blood thinking that it will change the outcome and we forget that we’re in the middle of God’s great plan. Could you imagine what would happen if instead of shouting at each other through our megaphones to try and win whatever battle we’re fighting, the children of God crossed the dividing lines we created and threw our arms around the lost image-bearers in front of us? Loving like Jesus loves us requires action. Loving requires us to lay down our lives for our friends, it requires us to love our enemies, it requires us to pray for the ones who are persecuting us. Loving requires us to remember that we don’t fight by earthly means, “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4

I’m not saying that we don’t hold convictions or that we embrace actions that violate the Word of God. I’m saying that as we walk out those convictions we do so through the lens of 1 Corinthians 13. We mostly use this for weddings and we usually start in verse 4 but when we’re talking about how we interact with people who bear the image of God, how we love the children of God, and even how we love our enemies we really need to start with verse 1.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The next time you’re about to go into the world, be it virtual or real, ask yourself how you are showing love. Are you Peter swinging wildly and chopping off ears? Are you rude or arrogant in how you’re sharing your thoughts? Are you insisting in your own way, irritable, resentful? Are your actions pointing to Jesus or are you just a noisy gong? I think that’s my biggest question for you today, especially when you are dealing with people you don’t like, are you loving them to Jesus? Honestly telling someone “I don’t like you, but I love you” is going to get you more traction than the most persuasive speeches. Especially, when that love is supported by actions that point image-bearers to the One in whose image they were created. Who knows, if we go around loving everyone, even those we find unlikeable, we might just find ourselves liking people a whole lot more.

My Heroes Are Disasters

Leave a comment
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte By Georges Seurat – https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-dance/2016/09/01/huntington-two-georges-one-sondheim/OR1D4DPM8GsME67aXEjWiP/story.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11500785

Calvary (Golgotha) By Marc Chagall – provenance_object.php?object_id=79365 Museum of Modern Art, New York, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39032204

There have been several news stories in the past few months of well known Christian leaders whose lives didn’t measure up to their teaching. In the past, some of these people had been referred to as “heroes of the faith” and it is always a hard lesson when our heroes turn out to be fallible and undeserving of our acclaim. This sort of person always makes me think of pointillism, when you are far away there’s a grand and beautiful scene but when you get close up it is a chaotic mess of unconnected dots. I have met many pointillistic people in my lifetime, to the place where I am wary of people who seem too “put together”. If everyone is raving about someone I will be found sitting back and quietly observing to see if there is substance to the painting or if it is just a smattering of colored dots masquerading as a completed work. The news about the failings of these well-known examples of pointillism made me ask myself the question “who are my heroes?” I began to think about the people who inspire me and push me to grow in my life and especially in my faith. Of course, there are many heroes to be found in the Bible and I draw inspiration from their lives, as their stories have shaped me (I’m especially fond of Deborah for some inexplicable reason…teehee) but the heroes that came to mind are of a slightly different sort. They are no less impressive than great biblical characters and their stories are just as formative to my life. In fact, I think if we lived in a different time, these heroic tales would be the ones told around tables and fires along with the stories of Esther, Daniel, Ruth, Nehemiah, and Paul. I haven’t told my heroes that I’m writing about them so I’m going to be rather generic but these heroes have names like Jen, Ben, Kerry, Tim, Brooke, Angie, Rick. They aren’t names that would be recognized by the world but they are precious names that I speak with honor and admiration. My heroes haven’t performed great miracles or achieved heights of fame or fortune. What makes them heroic is that they are faithful! My heroes are people who have walked roads of trial and victory with steadfast, hard-won obedience to God. To me, these people are like the Chagall painting above. There are masses of color and shapes (am I the only one who sees Pacman in the top right corner) that don’t seem to fit together well but when you step back you see a life-changing image. There’s something about this type of painting that makes the scene more poignant because of the over-the-top use of color and unnatural shapes. My heroes are riotous messes who have opened their lives so that you can see the beauty of how all the colors have come together into a glorious whole.

One of my heroes left home as a teen and traveled to a distant continent never anticipating that home would never be home again. This hero became someone with great compassion for the wanderer, foreigner, and displaced, offering hospitality beyond measure and loving fiercely those who, like her, needed a mother close at hand. Another hero battles anxiety but refuses to let that stop them from living a life of service and care. This hero is a “behind-the-scenes” marvel who gives without expectation of return and is always on the lookout for more opportunities to serve. I have several heroes who have willingly turned their lives upside down to adopt or foster children who needed loving homes. These heroes have battled unexpected monsters of every variety to give a family to beautiful souls with no one to call their own. I have a hero who found herself widowed when her life was just getting started and has become a source of healing to others suffering loss and a mentor to young women who are trying to find their footing in life. I have a few heroes who lost beloved children before they ever had a chance to take their first breath outside the womb and these heroes have turned their pain into places of healing for others who have walked that path. They have become voices for the unborn and shelters for the wounded childless. I have heroes who have shepherded small churches in towns so tiny you didn’t know you’d been there until you’d left. These faithful servants don’t care if you know their name, they care if their flock is healthy. These heroes have worked multiple jobs because the congregation couldn’t pay them a salary. They have lived in falling-down houses that they have made into welcoming homes because the people they served were more important than the place they lived in. I have heroes who have opened their lives and shared stories of tragic choices they made before coming to Christ. Instead of hiding these stories, like private shame, they have allowed God to use their past pain to lay the groundwork for someone else’s healing. I have a hero who prayed and waited years and years for a child only to face the fight of their life when the cherished long-awaited child was struck by a horrific immune disorder. This weary hero has become a warrior unlike anyone else I’ve ever met, who fights for their child and others who are fighting a faceless monster trying to steal their childhood. I have heroes who have painfully walked away from abusive marriages, heroes who have raised their children alone to preserve those children from greater pain. I have heroes who have fought to rescue marriages on the brink of collapse and have become beautiful images of the restoration power of God. I have heroes who have watched their spouses walk away from a life of faith yet they have continued to live a life devoted to Jesus believing that their faithfulness will bear the fruit of restoration. I have heroes who have been beaten and misused by churches more akin to cults than the body of Christ who have allowed God to heal their hearts and are now paving the way for others to be restored from toxic leadership. I have heroes who wake up every morning and go to bed every night in chronic pain from which there is no relief. These heroes refuse to give up on a meaningful life and they pursue purpose with great intention because they know how much it costs. I could go on and on about my heroes because there are so many of them but I am crying buckets as I think about these precious people and should probably wrap this up before I turn into a pillar of salt.

Truthfully, part of what is so spectacular about these messy images of color and shape that I call my heroes is the fact that if they knew I was talking about them they would humbly refuse the title of hero. These remarkably ordinary people whose lives have such incredible impact would be quick to point out how often they fall and how desperately they cling to the grace of God. That’s one of their super-powers! These heroes, whose names will most likely never make the news, have changed the world one life at a time. They have allowed their failures and wounds, their tragedies and mistakes to become the very instruments that God uses to heal, inspire, restore and renew. They have given God the glory for their victories, never taking credit for themselves. These are the people who I aspire to resemble. Diana, Bev, Josh, Jeanne, Sarah, Andrew, Faythe…ordinary names that belong to extraordinary people. They are daily reminders to me of a God who can take our frailty and make something everlasting. They are living examples of a God who replaces the ashes of our circumstances with beauty, who gives us something praiseworthy in the place of despair. It is in the plodding on, slump-shouldered, gritting their teeth, determined-yet-not-defeated, trusting-what-I-cannot-see faith of these heroes that I see the mysteries of the love of God a little more clearly. They are my heroes; my beautiful, vibrantly colored, disastrously messy, absolutely breathtaking heroes.

A little P.S. I actually love pointillism as an artistic style (just not as a people group).

The Sweetest Days

Leave a comment

I had an excessively sheltered childhood. I went to a church where my dad was an assistant pastor and worship leader, so we spent a lot of time at church. I attended a small private school in that same church building. My dad was the principle and my mom was his secretary so we spent a lot of time at school. We literally lived next door to the church. Our driveway was separated from the church driveway by a small barn and a little strip of grass. Growing up I spent more time at that church building than I did in my own home and I absolutely loved it. I have beautiful memories of helping my parents get ready for school events, falling asleep under the pews during church music practices, “helping” Dad prepare classrooms for a new school year, and a million other things that were part of our very full ministry life. This weekend I spent my Saturday evening at church helping my brother, our worship leader, make some updates to our stage set up. While he was moving wires and adjusting lights, I was running the soundboard and projection. We do this every few months and it’s usually a long night. This time was a little different because my 9 year old niece decided to join us. As I was watching her excitedly offering to help with everything we were doing, my mind drifted back to my childhood nights in the very same building. It felt almost holy watching this next generation doing the same thing, making precious memories while “helping” dad and doing her best to serve. Her life is no where near as sheltered as mine was but her love for being at church, especially late at night when the building is quiet, is something we have in common (just like our brown curls and our identical chins). My prayer is that she’ll always love the house of God. I pray that she learns that the beauty comes not from the building but from the people who populate it. I pray that she sees far more sincere godliness and less hypocrisy than I have and I pray that her heart to serve grows more tender and resilient. I pray that when years have passed and she looks back she will have precious memories of nights like this, just as I do. It’s easy to lose sight of sweetness when things are busy, when life is full of difficult situations, when there is an uncertain world and unknown future. However, life is lived in moments and even the worst of times can be filled with the sweetest days if we pause long enough to notice. I’m grateful for nights with my family, long past and just a day ago. God is good!

O Be Careful Little Mouth What You Say

1 Comment

watch-your-mouth-snagit-300x297

I remember singing this song when I was little…”O be careful little eyes what you see, o be careful little eyes what you see, for the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little eyes what you see”. The verses continued with “ears what you hear”, “hands what you do”, “feet where you go” and finally “o be careful little mouth what you say”. Looking back it seems a little big-brother-esque but the truth is that it is a very gentle admonition that far too many of us have forgotten. God hears, sees and knows how we carry ourselves and what are the true intentions of our hearts. This is a sobering thought!

I have been spending more time than is good for me on social media. I find it incredibly fascinating to hear the differing opinions, points and counterpoints on the wide array of topics that are presented. I can find conversations on everything from the best sushi place in town and who’s ruining Star Wars this year, to play by play rundowns of any sporting event or political move. There’s a lot of fun stuff out there and there’s a lot of frustrating stuff out there but there is one thing that I find disturbing, heart-breaking and even anger inducing…the behavior of the Body of Christ on social media. Please don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful, thoughtful, challenging, inspiring, courageous things being said by the Bride on these forums. That being said, for every drop of sweet water there are buckets of bitter being poured out and that is where I take umbrage.

In John 13:35 (ESV) Jesus tells us “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”. He calls this a command, not a good idea if you feel like it, but a command “love one another”! He also makes, what I believe is, one of the most important statements of the new testament; “By this all people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It isn’t by the working of miracles that we’ll be marked as Christ-bearers, in the life of Moses we see where even Pharaoh’s magicians did miraculous things. It isn’t by our wealth or connections, Jesus said that greatness is achieved by being last and becoming the servant of all (Mark 9:35). Our identity is established by how we love each other.

In the current political and social climate of my home country, vitriol seems to be the only common language. Anger is the emotional go-to and understanding has become a forgotten quality. Civil conversation with people who share different opinions feels like it belongs to a different era, some bygone time populated with soda shoppes, lemonade on the back porch with the neighbors and milk delivered in glass bottles. Oh wait! Milk delivered in glass bottles is a thing again!!! Does that mean that tall frosty glasses of lemonade with the neighbors and civil discourse could also return? Yes, undoubtedly, yes. Respectful conversation, reasonable disagreements and dignified communication are possible. My brilliant cousin, Christy, put it beautifully when she said that we shouldn’t be as concerned with being right as we are with being righteous. When my desire is not to prove my point, impress my internet followers or go viral but instead to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with my God, what sort of beautiful treasure might I discover in the people I interact with? That last bit is from Micah 6:8 and I love how the Amplified Bible illuminates this verse:

“He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
Except to be just, and to love [and to diligently practice] kindness (compassion),
And to walk humbly with your God [setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness]?”

Be just! Love and diligently practice kindness and compassion! Walk humbly with your God, setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness! Micah tells us that this is what is good and goes on to say that this isn’t a suggestion or a fine, high-minded ideal. It is a requirement! In John 14, Jesus says multiple times that if we love him we’ll keep his commands or in a less KJV vernacular (the Deb Revised Version, if you will); if you love me, simply do what I ask you to do. When you meet people who have walked in love together you will often discover that their deepest love isn’t expressed in grand gestures but in the sweet day-in-day-out kindnesses that have been learned over the length of their relationship. They know that putting the socks in the hamper or giving a few more minutes to vanquish a gaming foe are intimate expressions of love because it’s simply what has been asked. Jesus is asking us to love Him, wholeheartedly, fully, with every ounce of who we are and then to do the same for those around us.

Over the past few months I have written multiple blog posts, tweets, FB diatribes and I have deleted all of them again and again because they didn’t speak with kindness or humility and there was certainly nothing just about my intentions. I have been quiet, not because I didn’t have anything to say but because I didn’t have anything kind to say. I have been so concerned with my thoughts and opinions that I wasn’t giving room for thoughtful disagreement and milk-bottle era compassion. So now I am finally speaking up, carefully, because I need to be reminded that love is to be my language. I thought maybe you could use this reminder too. I need to remember that even if you aren’t speaking in love, I can respond with kindness. I will have the lemonade waiting on the back porch whenever you are ready.

Love Like Manure

It’s Valentine’s Day and I couldn’t be more excited! I love this holiday. For a lot of people it’s a messy, pressure filled excuse to be guilted into spending money. For some it’s an anger or depression inducing reminder that they’re alone. For others it’s just one more thing to try and remember in the muddle of kids, work and home responsibilities. For me it is a celebration of glory, mystery, joy and wonder. As the possibility of romantic love seems to slip ever further from my path I find myself cherishing the love around me more and more. I have lit up at all the expressions of love that my friends have posted on social media today. On this day my feeds are full of loving spouses, proud parents and hopeful significant others who are taking a moment to applaud the loves in their lives and I am delighted to be allowed to bask in the glow that love adds to the world. Love truly is a gift from God and I so appreciate seeing it flourishing around me. To horribly misquote Horace Vandergelder and Dolly Levi (who were talking about money)…Love, pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around, encouraging young things to grow. Spread it around and see what blooms!

This was my Facebook memory today, from 5 years ago, and it feels appropriate to add it here: I haven’t posted a soapbox rant in a while and figured that today is a good day for one. I’mma let you talk but first…dear fellow single people, today is Valentine’s day. It happens every year. It comes and it goes and will do the same next year. Today is not “single awareness day”, “anti-valentines day”, “extortion day” or any of the other myriad names that float around protesting it. Get over it!!! As a 40-something year old, never been kissed, virgin I consider myself a pro at this being single thing and I have to tell you that I love Valentines day. I don’t get flowers, chocolates or jewelry, in fact, this day solidly excludes me but I still love it. Lemme tell you why I love Valentines Day…in this era of extreme selfishness, misogyny, abuse as entertainment, perversion of all that is sacred, terrorism and other vast and ever darkening evil; we set aside an entire day to celebrate love! All my life I’ve been told that the greatest of these is love and God is love. I’ve also seen that the deepest, blackest darkness cannot hold back even the tiniest flicker of light so who am I to pout, pity party and play poor me when I could add my little flicker to celebrate something so great, beautiful and powerful. I get that today is specifically about romantic love but that gives me all the more reason to want to celebrate and honor it. I want to see my friends being blown away by expressions of love and do everything in my power to see love flourish and blossom because I love them. I’m no more single today than I was yesterday or will be tomorrow so why not celebrate the very thing that I most want to experience. If the day ever comes when love finds me you can bet I’ll be unabashedly celebrating every day but if I don’t practice celebrating love now I won’t be any good at it then. Nothing good has ever been born of self-absorbed, bitter attitudes. Today I will be honoring, celebrating, rejoicing over every pic of red roses, romantic dinners and smooches that show up around me; remembering that for a moment love is pushing back darkness and I will bask in that hopeful light. Happy Valentine’s Day ❤

Olive, Friends of Job and the Word Until

Leave a comment
Photo by Billy Huynh on Unsplash

At least once every other month I see the people of God arguing on social media and I start a blog post but I step back and think “am I adding to the noise or am I contributing to peace-making” and then I usually delete my post. This time I’m not deleting because I have a unique perspective on this particular argument and I want to share. It could be that I’m just adding to the noise but this time I feel like my noise might be valuable so here goes…

Very recently there was a church praying for the resurrection of a precious 2-year-old, Olive, who stopped breathing. This church family gathered to pray for God to miraculously resurrect Olive back to physical life. I saw a lot of people on social media joining the call to pray for resurrection for Olive. I was also introduced, through social media, to a large number of people decrying the prayers, worrying about the mental and emotional health of the parents and disparaging the church leaders who allowed this. The questions that come to us, as believers who look with great anticipation to an eternity in the presence of God, are many; why would we ever want to call someone back from the face to face presence of God, isn’t Olive better off where she is now, how can this be healthy for her family, shouldn’t they just accept their loss and move on, how is this fair to other people who’ve lost children and on the questions roll. I absolutely understand how disturbing and weird it can seem to pray for resurrection. I understand how nerve-wracking, uncomfortable and even fear inducing it can feel. I understand because I spent a week in October 2004 praying every night for resurrection, just like Olive’s family.

This is probably the most personal thing I will ever share, and I have been pretty candid with my posts so bear with me as I tell this story. I’m not asking you to believe my story but if you’re here I’m asking you to listen. On a random October evening in 2004 my dad suffered a massive brain aneurysm. His doctor told us that it was the worst brain bleed he had ever seen and that we shouldn’t expect Dad to make it through the night. My incredible, loving dad defied the odds and, even after suffering a second brain bleed in the hospital, he made daily progress much to the doctor’s astonishment. For several long weeks my days consisted of a morning trip to the hospital on my way to work and a hospital stop on my way home so that Mom could grab a bite to eat. I would get home, fix supper for my grandmother and younger brother and then I would try to psyche myself up for the next day. I loved the quiet mornings with Dad in the head trauma unit. He would wake up and talk to me about anything and nothing. The conversations were short because it took a lot of energy to talk and he was on a lot of meds. I wrote down everything we talked about in a journal for which I am incredibly grateful today! On Sunday, October 17, 2004 the phone rang letting us know that a blood clot had been dislodged from behind his knee and had caused a pulmonary embolism. I will never forget walking into the trauma unit and seeing the tear-filled eyes of all the nurses as we came through the doors. That was how I knew he was gone. The rest of that day is mostly a blur. I remember some specific moments but overall I just moved along in a state of shock. After making a few calls to out of town family, our pastor and close friends; my mom, brother and I got back in the car and drove to church, it was Sunday morning after all. That was home for us and those people were our family. We sat and worshiped, we were wrapped in hugs, enveloped in prayer and held by comforting hearts.

*Important note: I am one of those wonderfully weird charismatic Christians and everything that follows is through that lens.*

That evening the calls and emails started coming in from across the states, Canada, Mexico and from as far away as Paraguay, Zimbabwe, and Israel…pray for resurrection! Some people had seen visions or dreams that my dad showed up somewhere saying that he looked at his watch wrong. Others just called to say that they knew that God was asking us to believe for something miraculous and they would stand with my family. Without hesitation, beginning on Monday night a small group of friends gathered with us at our church to pray for my dad to be resurrected from the dead. We prayed every night until Saturday when we had his memorial and buried his body. You might be saying “Wait! Your dad wasn’t miraculously resurrected?!” and I will answer “not this time” but stay with me, I promise that I’m getting somewhere!

Why did we pray without hesitation? That is a miraculous story in and of itself. I knew a little bit about the story growing up but Dad didn’t really talk about it because he didn’t remember it well. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I heard my grandfather tell the whole story while he was preaching on the resurrection power of Jesus at a little church in Louisville, KY. I’m giving you the short version of a very long story. My dad had seizures as a child and young teen which were thought to be related to a bad case of Scarlet Fever (it wasn’t until my youngest brother started having seizures that we realized it was a genetic thing). When Dad was 14 he was fishing in a Texas river with my grandfather, my uncle and a family friend. While standing in the river Dad had a massive seizure and drowned. It took over an hour and a half to get to any sort of civilization. He had been completely unresponsive, had taken no breaths and was declared dead. From the moment that Dad was fished out of the river until that pronouncement of death, my grandfather held my dad’s head in his hands and spoke into his ears. He declared over and over the words of Psalm 118:17 – you shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord, into my dad’s ears. He begged God to let his son live for the sake of my precious grandmother. You see my dad’s oldest brother had been killed in a car accident years before at the young age of 21 and it nearly destroyed my tender-hearted Grandma. Grandpa reminded God of every promise he could remember and refused to give up! He fought in every way he knew how for his son’s life and God listened! My dad, miraculously, coughed up buckets of sludge, sand and river water and began to breath. He went from a stiff, blue corpse to a warm, breathing, perfectly whole pink body in a matter of minutes with absolutely no physical evidence of what had happened. The only thing my dad ever told me about this event was that he wasn’t really serving the Lord at this time and he didn’t know what his eternal destination would have been and it was the grace of God that he was given his life back. In addition to my dad, I grew up being taught in both church and elementary school by an incredible woman, Grace, who was resurrected back to life. Grace was shown a glimpse of Heaven but she would only ever talk about Jesus and how his eyes were full of love and I have also known Joel for almost my entire life. He is a Haitian pastor who died as a child and was resurrected in the coffin on the way to his funeral. I always chuckle when I think of how shocked people must have been to hear the sneeze coming from inside his coffin.

My dad had already been resurrected from the dead once so it wasn’t a big leap to think that it could happen again. I mentioned that we gathered with a small group of friends but we weren’t the only ones praying. All our international friends, the kids at my brother’s college and other loved ones far and wide joined us every night that week in October. I was comforted by the routine of those nights; curling up on the floor under the pews I had grown up in, hearing familiar voices calling out to God, crying and hoping with people who had helped raise me in the faith, those nights spent seeking God strengthened me for what was to come. I was amazed at the great, expectant faith all around me but deep inside I was terrified. I harbored an intense fear that if I didn’t believe enough it wouldn’t happen. I believed without an ounce of doubt that God could raise my daddy from the grave but I didn’t know if He would. I didn’t know if I believed enough. I didn’t know if I had even a mustard seed’s worth of faith and it tormented me…until. I love the word until because it is pregnant with promise. Until means something is coming and my until was one of the singlemost revelatory faith-building moments in my life and it completely changed me. I hadn’t told anyone how I was feeling because I didn’t want to burden anyone or cause anyone else to feel afraid. I wanted to be strong for my family, honor my precious Dad and have faith in my Redeemer so I just kept going, planning a funeral, meeting people at airports, coordinating food drop offs, taking care of my grandmother who lived with us and so on. Eventually I mustered up the courage to tell my mom. She had given her bedroom to my grandparents and was sleeping in my room. I confessed my fears to her and she told me the last thing I ever expected to hear. She didn’t tell me that she shared my fears or that it was going to be okay or anything you might expect. What she told me was that she had awoken every night that week to discover me praying in tongues in my sleep. I have always been a sleep-talker, my college roommates could tell you some great stories, but this was different. Mom said that I was praying with intensity and she would lay there and join me. I had and still to this day have no recollection of praying in my sleep all those nights. That was my until, it was a recognition that greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world, I understood that my flesh was weak but my spirit was willing and for the first time I really felt like I actively understood Romans 8:26. I didn’t know what to pray or how to pray and my conscious self was struggling but the Holy Spirit was interceding for me and I could rest in the hands of the Comforter. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew that my spirit was in tune with the Holy Spirit and I could believe without fear that whatever God had in store would be for the ultimate good of those involved. I have sat under some of the most incredible Biblical scholars alive, I have graduated from Bible College, I have seen miraculous healings with my own eyes but this week of praying for something outlandish was one of the most important periods of growth in my spiritual walk. It has been a steadying point at times where I didn’t think I could keep going. It has become a reminder that I am not alone no matter what the circumstance. It reinforces every verse and promise about how God cares for me and guess what?! We buried my dad on October 21, 2004, he wasn’t miraculously brought back to life for a second time. But there is still an until!

So this brings me back to Olive and social media and the point of this post. As I got sucked into the morass of negativity on Twitter I kept finding myself thinking again and again of Job’s friends. They had the best of intentions but they brought him nothing of real value. They brought accusations and empty words when they thought they were giving him wisdom of the highest caliber. I began to feel deeply saddened for these people who seemed to have lost their childlike belief that God can do anything. This is the God who created all things, split the Red Sea, held the Sun in place during a battle, commands angel armies and provided salvation to all; just to name a few small things. I was heartbroken for people who seemed to be more concerned with labeling people as heretics than about following Romans 12:15-16 which says “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.” I understand the importance of making sure that our actions line up with the Word of God and in my own circles, with people I know and whose lives I can see, I am quick to speak up if I see something out of whack. I trust those same people to do the same if they see me going out on a spiritual tangent. I get exhausted with the way that we, and by we I mostly mean the North American church because that’s where I live, seem to feel like we have the right to share our opinion just because we have an avenue to share our opinion. I’m all about calling out foolishness and we have some great examples of people doing just that in the Bible (I’m looking at you Jesus and especially you Paul). The thing about Paul that is different from the Twitter-ranting crowd is pretty simple. Paul was an overseer with responsibility to watch over specific groups of people and he was writing letters to those under his care about immediate threats to their spiritual wellbeing. If you’re a pastor or parent who isn’t doing the same thing for your congregation or family then you aren’t doing your job; but if you are just jumping into public forums calling people out because you can are you actually protecting or training anyone or are you simply causing division. Whenever I see church arguments played out in public forums John 13:35 comes to mind “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It is absolutely possible to show love to someone with whom I disagree and still speak with wisdom, cautioning those who I know personally to carefully seek the Word for how to respond to potential heresies. What would it cost to publicly encourage Olive’s parents or others like them, mourn with them, rejoice with them and still privately share your thoughts and concerns with those who you personally know? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. What fruit might grow from a public display of love? Oh so much! What if our entire approach to social media was the classic “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all?”

Okay back to the until…Olive didn’t miraculously get up from her coffin like my friend Joel, Dad didn’t walk out of his grave but that doesn’t mean that all those prayers went unanswered! We won’t see them…until…but we will see them. “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words. – I Thessalonians 4:13-18. I can’t wait until…

Embracing Weird

Leave a comment
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

I love K-dramas (for the uninitiated K-dramas are scripted Korean television series)! I love how the dramas are constructed. I appreciate the fluffy rom-coms full of unrealistically beautiful people. I like that the series are usually just one season so I can get sucked in and still move on quickly. Most of the series I have come across so far are creative, quirky and self-aware, just like me.

Whenever I start a new series I pop onto Google first to get reviews and a little background information because I don’t really have many friends who watch K-dramas so I have to go to the internet to try and figure out if a new series will be worth my time (because we all know the internet is a reliable source of information). Recently, I was watching a series where the lead romantic couple are spouses in real life who met during the filming of the series. As I was watching a scene where this couple were on screen together I was hit by the thought that their marriage was in trouble. It was an odd moment but I have had enough odd moments to recognize when God is saying something so I shut off my television and started praying. I felt a heavy need to pray for them off and on all day, sometimes the pain I felt for them was so intense I couldn’t speak, I could only cry. I went to bed that night with a peace that I had obeyed God but a heart broken for these complete strangers on the other side of the globe. Imagine my shock the next morning when I turned my phone on and the first story in my Google news feed was an announcement that this couple was pursuing a divorce!

As I read the article, Ezekiel 22: 30 sprang to mind. God is speaking and he says “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.” Ezekiel talks about repairing walls in several different chapters. These passages speak to a lack of care in securing the cities and protecting those inside. They point out that weak places in the protective city walls were neglected and made accessible to enemies. In the church we speak colloquially of “standing in the gap” when we pray for people but I don’t know if we really think about what that means. It is a willingness to shore up and secure weak areas so that God is able to show mercy. He uses us to do his will here on this enemy occupied territory called Earth. He pricks at our spirits to obey and be that person who will build up and stand in the broken places so that He can give grace to the people behind the damaged walls. This is why it is so important to pray no matter how strange it might seem!

From a human perspective stopping what you’re doing to pray for complete strangers because you had a feeling that something is awry is very weird. It just is! Thankfully, those of us who have been made new creatures in Jesus don’t exist on a solely human plain. We have the gift of spiritual eyes. We see things from a different perspective. From a human point of view, I would have absolutely no way to contact this couple. I could try sending DM’s on Instagram but we all know they would never see them. I could fly to Seoul and hover outside their management agency in the off chance that I might see them passing by but then what? I could shout like a lunatic that I knew they were having issues before the news came out because God revealed it to me but I suspect I would find myself in a South Korean psych ward pretty quickly if that were the case. To me, this seems far more weird and certainly less productive than praying. 1 John 5:14 confirms that if we ask according to God’s will, he hears us. Psalm 145:18 says that the Lord is near to all who call on him in truth. Romans 8:26 is one of my favorite verses about prayer because it reminds me that even in praying I don’t carry the weight of responsibility. It says “…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Spending half a Saturday praying certainly cost me less than a trip to a South Korean mental hospital would. It genuinely seems more practical to pray!

I get how you could still be incredulous about the whole thing. Why didn’t God put it on my heart to pray for them months ago? Why didn’t I wake up to see an article that said they were contemplating divorce but had a sudden change of heart and were now reconciling? Why me and not someone who actually knows them and could talk to them? What if I prayed and they still divorce? These are questions far above my pay grade (but I will know the answers in eternity). I like to think that it falls under the covering of 1 Corinthians 1:27, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;”. It makes no earthly sense that an average woman from a small town in Pennsylvania could influence the lives of the famous and celebrated on another continent but I don’t rely on earthly sense. The long and the short is simply that I was available. I don’t believe I was the only one but what if I was? I was willing to stand in a broken place and give God the opportunity to be merciful. I was found ready to build up a damaged wall through the only means at my disposal…prayer.

I know that prayer isn’t popular in our culture right now. People tell us regularly that it is not enough and I understand the desire for more tangible ways of making change but you cannot convince me that prayer is not effective. I have had too many moments where someone reached out to tell me that they were praying for me right in the middle of a struggle I hadn’t shared with anyone but God. I have seen too many prayers be answered to doubt that prayer is powerful. I am alive solely as the result of prayers that my Grandpa Gill prayed over my Dad’s lifeless body when he drowned at age 14! I know that prayer works and that’s why I am willing to be weird enough to pray, anywhere, anytime, for anyone. If prayer is simply a conversation with the Father who loves me best than why wouldn’t I talk to him about all the thoughts that come to my heart. The Bible is clear about the fruitlessness of selfish prayers but a genuine prayer from an earnest heart will not go unanswered.

If you have a random thought cross your mind for someone, whether you know them or not, stop and send up a prayer. It costs nothing and accomplishes everything! What’s the worst that could happen…miraculous life changes, God at work in the lives of the ordinary and extraordinary, a simple perspective shift on a difficult circumstance…say it ain’t so!!! This world could use a few more weirdos who aren’t afraid to pray outlandish, audacious prayers. I embrace the weirdness that is talking to God about any and everything and my life is so much better for it. I become better by being weird!