Understanding Paul's Laments

Lately I have reconnected with some former members of my youth group on facebook. As I began checking out their profiles to see what they've been up to in the years since I've seen them, I found myself saddened to see that one listed his religion as 'atheist;' some of the others had descriptions that were more ambiguous but based on some of the language used and the pictures posted, I had my doubts about where their faith was headed as well.

I've found myself thinking about it a lot over the past few days, and it has made me feel very sad. I worked with these kids about six or seven years ago when they were in high school and middle school -- now many are in college or working. I thought about the lessons taught, the church lock-ins, the mission trips taken -- and wondered -- was it all for nothing? What happened? Or did they never really get it in the first place?

I don't know -- but I now have a deeper appreciation for Paul's letters in the Bible. I'm reading his letter to the Corinthians now, and I can feel his pain as he laments the poor choices the believers in Corinth have made and how they have turned away from the gospel to follow idols. Not only have they rejected the truth of the gospel, but in many ways they have turned against him as well -- despite all that he did for them.

But it doesn't matter. Paul's love for them remains strong. In fact, he says:

I will gladly spend myself and all I have for your spiritual good, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me. -- 2 Corinthians 12:15

Paul doesn't care how much they offend him or hurt him, he only wants them to be in a good spiritual place -- to have right relationships with the Lord. This is a convicting verse for me because I think of how often we want to give up on people or turn our backs the first time they offend or hurt us. But the gospel teaches us another way -- to love even those that don't love us; to love even when we are hurt and offended.

It's been eye-opening for me to see how much the college or post-high school years are formative in terms of religious growth. I think these are the years where we really determine what we believe and how we are going to live. My own college experience has had such an impact on where I am now and the person that I am that I could write a whole book about it. Thankfully, I was rooted in a solid fellowship of believers that helped me to grow in faith and challenged me and held me accountable. I wonder where I would be without this group that truly was heaven sent!

In high school, many kids are still going to church because their parents make them or at times because it provides a social outlet for them. But once out of the house, the choice becomes entirely up to the individual. I think the college years are make or break in a lot of ways. I'm not saying that if someone drifts during these years that they will never come back, but I feel that the likelihood is much less.

My sister is going off to college this year. She has chosen a Christian college, I think in large part because she fears losing her faith after high school. She goes to a Christian high school where she stays in the Word, must attend chapel services, etc; and perhaps she fears that once that structure is gone, she wouldn't be strong enough to make the choice to continue seeking God on her own. I don't see her choice as a sign of weakness, but rather of maturity. All of us are weak when it comes to the things of the spirit. Christ said: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." I think my sister understands that the pull of the flesh will be great, especially in college, so it's best to be in an environment where the pull of the spirit will be encouraged -- especially during the years that may be the most crucial to her further development as both a person and a Christian.

How I pray that the youth that I work with now would understand the gospel and cling to it! And how I pray that the youth that I worked with before would remember the gospel and return to it! For there is no greater joy than living for the Lord, for apart from Christ there is no life. As Colossians 3:3-4 says:

Your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And . . Christ. . is your real life.

Looking for Donkeys

I have to laugh sometimes at God's sense of humor and the irony of some of the happenings in the Bible. Like take 1 Samuel 8 for example. Lately, I can't stop thinking about it. In this chapter we meet Israel's first king, Saul. Only at this time, he's not a king -- just a regular boy from the smallest tribe of Israel, and he readily admits that his family is the least important of all the families in his tribe! Basically, he's on the bottom of the totem pole!

Saul is out looking for his father's lost donkeys when he meets Samuel --the priest and judge who tells him he is going to become king. Imagine, you're out looking for donkeys when you receive the completely unexpected news that you're going to become king! I don't think looking for donkeys was any more glamorous in Saul's time than it would be in our day. So I had to laugh at how ironic the whole thing was. Saul leaves the house a donkey hunter and returns a king! Weird, huh?

As I read that passage, I thought to myself -- I bet there are a lot of people 'looking for donkeys' right now (ie; doing something that seems relatively unimportant to them and feeling like they are on the bottom of the totem pole). And yet, who knows what God has in store? Who knows how God might meet them and turn their whole life upside down when they least expect it? After all, that's what happened to Saul -- why couldn't it happen to you?

Reconciled

Well, the season of lent has come and gone. Although supposedly a time for reflection and stillness, it seems this lenten season was busier than most for me. I had set out with the intention of blogging every day, and yet, just couldn't make that happen. I ended up having to give myself some grace on that one as oftentimes it was a choice between blogging or spending quality time with my husband.

At any rate, the past few days have been truly amazing as I've considered the sacrifice of Christ. As with most stories that we've heard before, we fall into the mentality that we already know it, and the story loses its power. Even with a story as amazing and incredible as the resurrection, we often fail to see how miraculous and mind-blowing it was just because we've heard it so many times, celebrated it so many years.

But God has been doing something in my heart these past few days and I'm trying to figure out the best way to live it. This lenten journey has taught me that I have a lot of things to figure out still, and that life is about trying to figure them out. It's also about taking action. We can have the best of intentions, but if we don't do anything with them, it doesn't matter.

At any rate, on Sunday morning before heading for church, I happened to read 2 Corinthians 5. The whole chapter is fascinating -- talking about how we will one day be given new bodies in heaven, etc. But what stood out to me most were verses 18 and 19 which say:

And God has given us the task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others.

What an appropriate reading for Easter Sunday. Christ's death was all about reconciliation. And it struck me that our ministry as individuals and as the Church is one of reconciliation as well. I think the church has become good at telling the world everything that they're doing wrong, and clearly there is a lot of sin in the world. But Jesus came to bring reconciliation -- not to count people's sins against them. How many times in the church are we guilty of counting people's sins against them instead of setting about the ministry of reconciliation, instead of sharing the wonderful news that we have been given?

The night before we had a friend over for dinner, and he happened to talk about how Jesus was always eating with sinners. He made the comment that sinners back then were certainly no different than sinners today. Their language was probably foul and laced with expletives, their topics of conversation enough to make 'religious' ears blush, and their activities reprehensible. But that didn't stop Jesus from eating with them. He didn't expect them to clean up their act before He shared a meal with them. He could eat with them and He could see beyond all of that stuff to the soul of the beautiful person that He created. The religious leaders of the time often criticized Jesus by saying: "This man eats with sinners!" And I had to ask myself, would anyone describe me that way? Would anyone say of me: "This woman eats with sinners?" Because if they wouldn't, maybe I'm not doing something right. If they wouldn't, maybe it's because I'm too busy surrounding myself with people that are just like me, people who talk the way I do, believe what I believe, act the way I act. And if so, maybe I've been guilty of turning Christianity into a club for people that already have it figured out instead of a hospital for sinners, which is what Jesus had in mind.

On Thursday night, my husband was invited over to the house of one of his co-workers, his superior. My husband works for an electric company, and he has told me that his co-workers swear like sailors, talk about women in demeaning ways and drink too much. He accepted the invitation of his superior and went to his house along with another co-worker. The man lived out in the country and had a bunch of guns. Apparently at one point, he got out the guns and was shooting them into the woods and allowing my husband to do the same. It sounded like a strange way to pass the time to me, (especially after the man had had a few beers!) but I guess this was something he enjoyed and there was really no harm in it. At any rate, as my husband was describing his visit, I said, "I wish I could picture these people you work with. I have no idea what they look like." "You will," said my husband. "I'm sure you'll meet them soon." Then he told me that his co-worker had invited me to come along the next time. At first, I thought that I might feel a bit uncomfortable with the language and the guns and the whole nine yards -- and then it occurred to me that being uncomfortable isn't a bad thing. It's part of being an ambassador. Also, it would really be no different than being in another culture, which is something I love. When I go into another culture, I don't immediately understand their way of doing things. But while we may speak a different language and have different ways of doing things, that doesn't stand in the way of me trying to develop a relationship with the people. And I do that by listening, trying to learn from them and loving them.

I realized that I have been shamefully arrogant in the past. I have actually said that the people my husband works with are not the kind of people with whom we could be friends with. I said that thinking of their vocabulary and conversation topics and how their values didn't really mesh with our own. But shame on me!! I am ashamed of my attitude. These are exactly the type of people we can be friends with. These are the type of people that Jesus was friends with. Shame on me because I am a sinner saved by God's grace and given the ministry of reconciliation! But praise God for revealing to me the error of my ways and reminding me that I still have so much to learn.

I want to be an agent of reconciliation in the world. That is the purpose of the church! But this can only happen when we stop counting mens' sins against them and focus on the wonderful message Christ has given us to tell others. Judment for sin will come, but it is not our job to judge. We can leave that to the Righteous Judge who judges without partiality.

Will you tell others the wonderful news that by Christ's death on the cross they can be reconciled to God? Will I?

Inspired!

I haven't written a blog post in the last few days, but it's with good reason. You see, on Friday morning I woke up knowing that I had a show up in Cleveland so I'd have to leave the house around 11:30am. I had plenty of things to do -- clean the kitchen, do my daily devotions, do some paperwork, check emails, etc, etc -- but I sat down to pray and as I did a story just popped into my head. The strangest part was that the story that came to my head wasn't just a random story, but rather it was very clearly the sequel to my first children's book, Lily and the City of Light, which I wrote back in college and which is going to be coming out this summer.

Now, I never set out to write a sequel for this book, never really even considered the possibility -- but as I sat there I was just flooded with images. I saw the characters and what else they needed to accomplish and why this story needed to be told -- so I grabbed a pen and paper and started to write. and the ideas just kept coming. I had practically the whole story, written in snippets with a few wholes still to be filled in when I looked at the clock and realized that I'd better get in the shower and get ready to go or I was going to be late for my show! It was hard dragging myself away from my pen and paper because when inspiration strikes, the last thing you want to do is squelch it -- but duty called!

The crazy part was that as I drove up to Cleveland, all the holes in the story seemed to come to me and filled them in as well. The result being that by the time I got out of my car to go into the library, the rest of the story was fully formed in my head. I had a very full day and later that night got home and scribbled furiously all of my ideas onto paper. It wasn't until Sunday that I actually got to sit down with all of my pages and begin typing it into the computer. I kept marveling at the whole experience because I've written a lot of books, but very rarely do they come to me like this. But both this book and its predecessor came to me in their entirety with almost no pause for thought on my part. In both cases, it was as if the story were writing me instead of me writing the story.

In the Christian church we say that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. That, yes, men wrote it, but that God inspired them to write everything that they did. Now, I certainly don't put my works in line with those of the Bible, but I believe that my experiences of writing both of these stories have helped me to understand this whole idea of the Bible being inspired. In the end, I'm not sure where the ideas came from or how or why they came to me in that moment. I just knew that they were significant and that I had to take them down right away. I believe wholeheartedly that they were inspired -- and I believe that God is still inspiring men and women today. I have no idea how God is going to use either of these stories, but I have a feeling that He is because they are more His than mine.

The other thing I've noticed is how, subconsciously, the things that I'm learning about in regards to my faith and my daily devotions begin to seep through even my fiction writing. I was reading in 1 Corinthians when Paul says that he doesn't do what is best for himself, but rather what is best for others -- on Thursday. I actually journalled about it in my devotional journal. Then on Friday I was incorporating that same idea into my story without even really thinking about it. The Word has a way of getting inside of us and coming out when we least expect it. I believe it's the work of the Spirit, and it's awesome when you can say, "Yes, I saw God working at that particular moment in my life, with that particular verse, etc."

Last Friday morning after having furiously penned as much of my story as I could, I hopped in and out of the shower and took a look at the Psalms portion of my daily reading. It was from Psalm 47, but for some reason I kept reading and read Psalm 48:1 & 2:

How great is the Lord, and how much we should praise him in the city of our God, which is on his holy mountain! It is magnificent in elevation -- the whole earth rejoices to see it! Mount Zion, the holy mountain is the city of the great King!

I could only stare in amazement! My story is about a great city, set on a hill for all to see, in which lives a great King! I had incorporated all of these Biblical truths into my children's book without even thinking about it really. I guess the Spirit knows exactly what He is doing even when I don't have a clue!

The Brake-Check of a Lifetime

Have you ever been brake-checked before? If you're unfamiliar with the term it refers to what happens when you are driving down the highway, usually at high speeds, and someone pulls in front of you and intentionally, without notice, slams on their brakes or slows down considerably, forcing you to slam on your brakes in order to avoid a dangerous collision. Well, yesterday I was driving on the highway on my way to a performance when someone two cars in front of me hit the brakes without warning, forcing me and the car in front of me to hit our brakes. Now I don't think this car was trying to do a brake-check, but for some reason the experience got me thinking about them. And I found myself smiling as I wondered if God would ever like to do a brake check on any of us.

See, most of us live life in the fast lane, as the the famous song reminds us. We are speeding from one task to another with no time to stop or even slow down. And I wonder as God watches us racing around, trying to fit more and more activity into the same 24 hour period, if He ever doesn't get the desire to do a brake-check on us -- to throw something in our path that makes us slow down, that makes us hit the brakes, that makes us remember that we have more than just a gas pedal at our disposal.

Strangely, not too long after I began thinking about this, I turned on the radio and was listening to a broadcast about Phil Visser, the creator of Veggie Tales. He was talking about how one night, while Veggie Tales was at the height of its popularity and he was working very hard to produce more and more videos and DVDs, he was sitting in his bed reading his Bible. He came upon the verses in Galatians 5:22-23 about the fruit of the Spirit. He read them and realized that he didn't have any of them. He said to his wife, "If this is what makes you a Christian, than I don't think I am one!" Here he was spending his life (and all his waking hours!) producing and creating videos for Christian audiences, and he wasn't even sure if he was a Christian himself. He had more stress and worry in his life than peace and joy.

Not long after that, I think God did a brake check on him. The Veggie Tales empire he had created came crashing down. He went from having realized his dream and seeing it reach the pinnacle of success to watching as it all came tumbling down around him. Over the next few months, he spent a lot of time in the Word and in prayer. He said that he finally discovered what it meant to walk with God. He'd been so busy trying to do something for God that he had never discovered what it meant to walk with God. Because Veggie Tales was his dream, the desire to see that dream come to fruition had practically consumed him, making him stressed and worried all of the time.

He shared that there are some questions that produce stress in our lives. They are: "How much? How many? How soon?" He said that if you are asking yourself these questions than you are probably going to become a person who is stressed out and worried rather than peaceful and joyful and all of the other good things that are gifts of the Spirit. He shared that those questions are often part of the building of a human empire rather than an empire based on God's values.

God doesn't want His children stressed and worried all the time. He knows that in that condition we cannot be a blessing to others. I know that I've asked myself some of those questions in just the last few months related to my own life and dreams, especially the how soon. I'm not always the most patient person, and I want everything to happen now, even if it means trying to do too many things simultaneously! I'm going to remember those questions though, and I'm going to use Galatians 5:22-23 as a touchstone. If something is getting in the way of me producing the fruit of the Spirit, then it has to go. Hopefully, I'll learn how to hit the brakes in the areas in which I'm going too fast or wanting too much so that God doesn't have to do a brake-check on me.

But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
-- Galatians 5:22-23

Put Your Feet in the Water

So if you read the last post I told you I'd come back with some ideas -- ideas on where to begin in making a difference in the poverty and injustice in the world. I think sometimes we don't get involved in the solution because we become overwhelmed by the problem. It's so big that we often think: "How can I do anything about it?" It seems like all that we might do (whether by volunteering or donating money) is just a drop in the bucket, and so sometimes our good intentions outweigh our actions. But the good news is that enough drops in the bucket will fill up the bucket and pretty soon it will be overflowing with momentum. This is the attitude we need to assume. As I've heard quoted -- "I will not let what I cannot do get in the way of what I can do."

The world's problems seem like an unsuperable obstacle -- but for God and God's people, there are no obstacles, just opportunities. I love the story from Joshua chapter 3 where God's people are ready to cross into the Promised Land and claim it. There's only one problem -- the Jordan River. It's wide, and it's springtime, so the water is overflowing its banks already. But God tells the people through Joshua that all that has to happen is this -- the priests should put their feet into the water and as soon as they do the water flow will be cut off upstream and pile up in a heap allowing them to cross over. It's simple -- just put their feet in the water. Just take one step of faith, and God will do the rest.

I believe the same is true with many of the obstacles facing us today -- including poverty and injustice. If I focus on the fact that I can't change things, I'll never put my feet in the water. And if I never put my feet in the water than I'm inhibiting God's ability to work through me. We need to take the focus off of ourselves and say, "God, I know that what I can do seems small and insignificant, but what you can do with my small and insignificant offering is beyond what I can imagine."

I believe that if enough of us have faith enough to put our feet in the water -- to do even something that feels small to us but that through God can become great -- that we will begin to see change in this very generation. May it be so!

We can do no great things. Just small things with great love.
-- Mother Theresa

The Good We Ought to Do

Something interesting occurred to me yesterday while I was standing in line at the bank to deposit my husband's weekly paycheck. As many of you already know, over lent I've been reading the book, The Hole in Our Gospel, so issues of poverty and injustice in the world have been on my mind a lot lately. Well, for some reason as I stood there looking at his check, I thought about the multitudes of people living on $ a day. Estimates say that 1 billion people in the world are living on less than $1 a day, while 3 billion people (or nearly half of the world's population) are living on less than $2 a day. I looked at my husband's check and realized that in one week -- five days -- he had made more than a large percentage of the world's people will make in 365 days! It was quite sobering to realize just how inequitable things are in the world.
Today I filled up my gas tank and thought: "With the swipe of my credit card, I just spent someone's salary for a whole month in the developing world."

Often, I'm not sure how to deal with this. I find it hard living in the US with the knowledge of what it's like everywhere else. I walk into a grocery store and see aisle after aisle of food, all readily available for my consumption, and I wonder how it can be that there are places where people are literally starving to death. In fact, every three seconds a child dies because he or she didn't get enough to eat. This is unfathomable while I am able not just to meet my needs but to go to restaurants, to buy tubs of ice cream and candies, essentially, to have whatever I want.

27,000 children die each year from starvation. And yet, that's just a statistic. A number that doesn't mean much. I mean, sure it's a big number and we all say, "Wow! That's a lot!" But what if it was a child close to you? What if each one of those children were someone you knew personally -- your child or a friend's? What if you had met them instead of just lumped them into a category of statistical casualties? We have to be able to make poverty personal in order to care.

I am of the mind that the gospel is more than just the good news that Jesus has secured a place for us in heaven. The more I read God's own Word and the more I learn, the more I realize that it is also wrapped up in the words of Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me,
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from the darkness. . .

As the author of the book of James would put it, the gospel is also wrapped up in caring for the widow and orphan.

The Bible is full of passages asking us to care for the poor, to share, to bring equality. In fact, I've read about a man who set about cutting out every passage in the Bible that related to the poor and needy. He did this because he felt that most Christians ignore these passages. Ask yourself: How often do you hear sermons about our responsibility to the poor? At any rate, when he was done cutting out the passages, the Bible was in tatters. It wouldn't even hold together! If the Bible can't hold together without all that God has to say about the poor, how can our faith hold together without some commitment to them?

It's interesting because the Church has become known for everything it's against and for criticizing people for those things that they shouldn't be doing -- whether it's the abuse of drugs or alcohol, murder, adultery, sexual promiscuity, gossip, lying, the list goes on. The author of my book calls these sins of commission --things that we choose to do that violate God's commands. Because of the church's zeal to condemn these sins, the church has earned a reputation of being intolerant and judgmental, defined by what we're against instead of what we're for.

But then the author brings up another kind of sin -- sins of omission. These aren't things we do, but rather things that we know we should do and don't. And he makes the interesting point that throughout the scriptures these are the sins that seem to grieve God the most. (See the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 for a good example of this.) How many times do we break God's heart not becuase of what we've done but because of what we've failed to do? One of the greatest commandments, to love our neighbor as ourself, sounds good until you really stop to consider what it's saying. Then you realize just how hard it is to do, being that we are selfish, sinful human beings.

If I've got $50 in my pocket and want to buy myself a new pair of jeans when I've already got three and know that someone else somewhere in the world has only the clothes on their back, how do I reconcile that? What do I do when my culture tells me I can have more but when my conscience tells me enough is enough? These are the questions that I am wrestling with and trying to find answers to as I'm surrounded by my affluent culture but immersed in the stories of those living in the most desperate kinds of poverty.

James 4:17 says, "Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it sins." Those are tough words. And I find it harder to keep myself clear of sins of omission than sins of commission because there is so much good that needs to be done and yet it's so easy to turn a blind eye to it when all of my needs are met and I'm doing just fine.

I don't want to end this post on a bad note. I don't want you going away feeling guilty for all that you have (although maybe that is the place where some of us need to start), but I do want to raise the questions. And I do want all of us (myself included!) to realize the great part that we can play in writing a history that has hope for the hopeless.

I leave you with this quote:

"Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering and injustice when He could do something about it."
"Well, why don't you ask Him?"
"Because I'm afraid He'd ask me the same question."
-- Anonymous

Coming tomorrow. . . some ideas on where to begin!