The Proof of the Cross

Christ our Passover.....
As I type this I hear the roar of the fire engine as it comes down my street. The lights were flashing today, that means there is still hope they are alive, though the siren wasn’t on. In a retirement community this happens a lot. Living here there are more than the usual reminders of the thin line of mortality. That can be a good thing. The residents here keep a healthy attitude about it, we all call it the meat wagon. Yes, it is kind of sick but a healthy sense of humor goes a long way, and behind the humor there is caring. It’s a close-knit community.

This morning, after I lit the heater in the shop where I pray I went out briefly as I always do to gaze at the stars. I felt the Presence of God there with me and I was thankful once again for the gift of seeing Him, feeling Him. I grabbed my coffee and settled in my chair, the heater sputtering warmth on my feet. I opened to the story where Abraham goes to the mountain to sacrifice Isaac and for the second time in two days I run into another speed bump in the Word.

As I read, I felt my faith shrink and shrivel away to almost nothing.

Who on earth could measure up to that? And what kind of kid would go along with it and how much faith did he have to have, and wouldn’t he have argued? Wouldn’t have he refused to get up on that pile of firewood? And how could God even ask such a thing, even knowing He wasn’t going to make Abraham go along with it.

I wrestled and I wrestled, as I always have with this passage. And there in the flickering light, I asked God how it is that He can love me, knowing I will never do anything as big as that. Knowing how small my faith is?  And then the answer came and nestled softly in my heart. “I love you because my heart is big enough for everyone, even those whose faith is small.” Then I remembered the mustard seed and I smiled through my tears.

The God who loves Abraham loves me too. And suddenly the story all fit together, it all made sense. It was all meant to be and I have my own small part in eternity just like Abraham had his.

God loves me, the proof is in the cross.

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29

“Jesus, your words are troubling me again.”

Come away.....

Jesus, your words trouble me. Just started a new Bible reading plan and ran into my first major speed bump on day 7. I have read these words so many times and yet when I read them today I had to close my Bible and have a conversation with God.
 
It’s funny how I breezed through all the other verses so easily. It was all black and white, all so right, that is until I got to this verse: 

“But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.”

It is one of those many troubling things that Jesus said, and I could not seem to sail over it as easily as I did all the others.  

It’s because when I read it, I kept thinking of an incident that happened just recently in my hometown. A 91-year-old lady was beaten within an inch of her life, one very well-known in the community and known to my family, when two thugs broke in to her home. She had just come in from watching a bicycle race that was going by her house when they followed her in.

I think they got a TV but that’s about it.

Her husband was home at the time but out in the back doing work in their orchard when it happened. She managed to live through the terrible ordeal after spending weeks in intensive care.

I am having a hard time reconciling the events I hear about each and every day with this verse. I hear about someone breaking into a store and I want to cheer when I hear the shopkeeper had a gun and they used it. I want to defend what is mine, what I have worked for. And I want others to have the right to do the same.

I am struggling with this hard saying today, because I look at all the evil in our society and I think that they are taking over and we have to take it back.

I think of places in my childhood that used to be safe and they aren’t anymore and that’s sad; so many places taken over by thugs and gangs and drugs.

And what if, God forbid, something should happen to my own folks like what happened to Mrs. Kezsler? Could I truly forgive?

No doubt the Israelites struggled with what Jesus said too. After all, they were an oppressed people, ruled over by an evil empire for hundreds of years up until then. They thought He would free them, and He did, but not how they were expecting, but with love, forgiveness, the cross.

And today I guess He came how I wasn’t expecting either.

I realize again, that all battles start and end in the heart, and I only have to look as far as the cross for my answer.

I didn’t plan for this message today, but it seems fitting, the day we celebrate Martin Luther King’s life and legacy. His message still rings clear after all these years:

” Hatred paralyzes life; Love releases it. Hatred confuses life; Love harmonizes it; Hatred darkens life; Love illuminates it “

Join me at the foot of the cross today, in prayer for our nation. I am thankful that no matter who is in the White House, my God is still on the Throne.

Minimizing regret

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Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14

If there is one thing that pain and loss and life have taught me it’s that if I live each day with the goal of  wanting to please God more in thought word and deed, I greatly minimize the things I regret.  

I never seem to regret doing the right thing in hindsight, only the wrong things.

Anger, resentment, worry, selfishness…..all those petty little things I let come between myself and others mean nothing in light of eternity.  And now, when time and God have mellowed and aged me, well, more like knocked me upside the head, I would give anything to have those years back.

Time that should have been cherished is forever tainted and that can’t be changed, but I can do something about the time I have right now.

I can cherish it. So today I will gather my loved ones close around me like a precious bouquet. I will inhale deeply, appreciating the sweetness they bring to my life while I still have them. And if they are not near, I will remember to write or call.

Dwelling on the past is never healthy,  and yet not all looking back is bad, because it can inspire us to change how we live now. Though my heart aches with scar tissue memory of words I never should have said and things I never should have done, I don’t waste my time punishing myself because there is too much love to give now.

And there is no time to waste.  Because time is precious and years have wings.

When you need to find your way home

Food for the soul

Sometimes it is very easy to get lost amidst all the traffic online. Being engaged in social media can be a good thing, but it can also make you feel lost in a crowd. You look around and all of a sudden you are in a dark forest full of words and soup and you feel like yours disappear as soon as you hit.

Publish.

You remember when there was light on the path, sunlight filtering through the trees. You were encased in warmth of community, of comfort. You were there once, but you aren’t so much now and you are not even sure how it happened.

You didn’t notice at first just when the sun went behind the clouds. It all got to be confusing and noisy and you noticed less and less peace and more and more pressure.

But there is always a way to get home.

As a writer, as a person, as a believer.

To me, that is the best thing about what we believe. With God, there is always another chance to get home. Every moment, every day. We just need to be reminded how easy it is. How easy to remember that we are already wearing the ruby slippers.

My three taps……..

Getting alone with God in a quiet place.

Remembering who I am writing for, and why I am writing.

Open the pages of the Words He wrote to light the path again.

And really, the truth is, we are all daily prodigals aren’t we? Every day we confess our failings and once more He cleanses our hearts, clears the way for progress, and we get strong enough to go on.

He is just over there in fact, standing right beyond that thick stand of trees you can’t see around. It’s amazing just how close He was all along. “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17:28

When I lift my gratitude and focus back to Him, I realize that,  like Dorothy, I had everything I needed all along. All I had to do was remember.

And just like that……. I am on a hillside sitting in the Narnian sun with my arm around my Aslan.

Home once more.

Aslanlucyreunition

Brothers and sisters

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My eyes graze over it, and then rest on it for a while. It’s the book my brother got me this past Christmas. I am taking down the last bit of decoration, the little tree that has graced my antique dresser for so many years. We adults stopped exchanging gifts years back, but he cheated this year. It was a book on digital photography because we both have the same camera. He also got me a Seinfeld T-shirt and two beautiful ornaments, hand painted cats from a local shop. He is a good gift-giver, my brother.

My memory traced a line back in time and it was tethered to a snapshot taken of us in the driveway, long ago.

When we were in school, he would always look out for me on the playground. He used to let me ride on the front bar of his bike, before I got my own, and never hesitated to hold my hand on the way to my classroom. I wanted to be like him when I was 4. I even insisted on my own pair of black high top sneakers and to my parents credit, they bought me a pair and let me wear them.

In middle school and high school we passed like two ships in the night, both at home and school. He was the popular jock, and I was the nerdy girl in choir. He teased me for leaving a permanent imprint on the couch and I got mad at him for eating my Taco Bell leftovers when he came in late. And yet, he came to my concerts and I went to his swim meets.

Then we went our separate ways. For years I think I was invisible to him. I wanted a relationship…….for him to see me as a person, not just a little sister, yet I always knew that if I needed him he would be there.

I remember the fender bender I had one year on Christmas Eve, how he was first to show up on the scene, driving in from a neighboring town.

Years later, thick in the battle of recovering from anorexia there came a letter from him. I can still see it resting, fluttering, on top of the bicycle basket where it rode on my way back to work……..tangible hope when I needed it most.

As years passed, every now and again I would get another letter and it would be pages long……..letting me know what was going on in his life. Somewhere I still have them.

And then there was that very worst of times. I still remember him having to climb 14 floors to reach me in the stifling heat of Mexico after my husband died. He was soaked with sweat and red in the face, but he was there. I was never so relieved to see anyone.

Nightmare Days passed with me in a fog. I would be okay and then with no warning I would collapse with grief. And one time he broke down, this big grown man sobbing tears I had never seen him cry, and in a voice choked with emotion he said, “All I wanted to do was take him fishing.”

That was June 1987. In February of 1998 he would face his own shadow of death when he would lose his wife of 12 years to ovarian cancer.

Years have flown by and its hard to believe they have been singing with the angels for so long already.

Life and grief has left its mark on both of us as it does everyone. No one gets out of this life without some battle scars. But we have emerged stronger, and it’s amazing but sometimes I think that pain and grief have a way of eclipsing differences in a way nothing else can.

As I sit here at the keyboard I get a text message…..the first one says, “Rsuctxjcwxvc” and it’s from my brother’s phone, and I smile.

The second one says simply, “Lauryn.” I smile again because what better way to punctuate the end of my story. She misses her Auntie.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:37-39

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My brother and me, (and Thunder) circa 1965 or so

Taking back my joy

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Lately I have noticed I have stopped doing things I enjoyed last year. Somewhere along the line I started listening to a voice telling me I didn’t deserve it, that what I was doing wasn’t good enough to warrant the joy. I became my own worst critic. Life does that sometimes. It just saps your strength until all the joy is pressed out. I used to come to my own blog for comfort, and lately I just see the things I want to change in it. I have fallen into the pit of comparing myself to others again.

There is a problem with that kind of thinking though. All it leads to is a distorted view of ourselves and others around us. The Bible warns us about comparing ourselves to others:

We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.

So I am done with that, as of today. I am permitting myself the joy of creating again. No matter what. I may never take my camera off the automatic settings, but who cares? I give myself the freedom and permission to enjoy it anyway.

Yesterday, I remembered a time not so long ago when I danced around with my camera, capturing every sunset, every sunrise, chasing the light. I remembered the joy and freedom I felt and it almost made me cry. I miss that me. I am taking that me back. As of now.

I am carving out my home again on this blog too. I miss my old blogger platform, but I am committed to making this one the best it can be, for you and for me. I will write in such a way that is honest and in such a way that it lets His light shine through,  and I will lift up praise to my God, because He is worthy.

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

Clay jar or crystal pitcher?

Spirituality versus Religion

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There was a song by Aaron Tippin called, “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.” I was thinking of these lyrics the other day when I heard about the study done just recently in England. The study was done on people who readily identified themselves as “Spiritual” as opposed to those affiliated with an established “Religious framework.” This one concluding statement encapsulates the results of their findings:

“People who have a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework are vulnerable to mental disorder.”

I usually take studies with a grain of salt. I think we take too many studies that mean nothing. We waste money we don’t have on studies that most people will never know about. However, this one I found interesting because in the last 10 or 20 years I have noticed that “spiritual” demographic growing. I couldn’t count the many times I have heard it in conversation. It is somehow okay and permissible to be “spiritual” but not okay to be “religious” and especially not Christian. That stirs all kinds of moral and ethical questions we would rather not deal with. So being spiritual is for many a good alternative.

But there is a problem with being just “spiritual.” There is no one definition or set of values associated with it. Or is there? I have noticed some things about people who embrace spirituality but not any form of organized religion or belief system. They usually say that all religions are the same. Or they reject it altogether.

They also say that there are many paths to God and that all religions lead there. And if they are not religious at all, they will say that as long as they follow what they define as right they will be okay in the end. So if they follow some golden rule of ethics and rules of conduct they will measure up to God’s standards. But they are not really sure who God is either. They reject the idea of the God of the Bible, because what they have heard or read about that God seems mean, vengeful and outdated.

Their God is better. He is more manageable, more palatable. He doesn’t expect them to do anything except be themselves. He is a big, fluffy fuzzball of love. And being Spiritual doesn’t cost them a thing. And the thing is, I can understand why they have arrived there.

I am afraid for this group. I know some people in it. Too many people. And far too many of our young people. Sorry to say, many of them have watched their parents who have been lifelong churchgoers. They have seen a cheap and easy grace and a faith that makes little or no impact on how they live their lives.

Yesterday sitting in church, I felt just a little bit like Paul felt. My heart ached for those without roots. Those who think they are so solid in their belief system they convince others to go down the same shaky path. They are seeking the peace and rest that only Jesus can provide. I want to tell them their desire to be spiritual is right. It has been grafted into all of our hearts like a seed, planted by none other than God himself.

But Jesus is the only one who can make it grow.

I want to tell them how incredibly good it is to love God. And how nothing in this world compares to the joy of knowing He loves me and there is nothing He wouldn’t do to reach them……. just like He has reached me.

I want to tell them not to hang their whole eternal destination on a false definition of Christianity, on what they perceive about Christians.

Because one glimpse of Jesus is all they need.  One glimpse of God on a cross silences any argument we could ever have about whether or not God loves us.

The roots of the cross go deeper than anything this world has to offer.

Meet me today at the foot of it with Jesus.

We can heal together.

He quiets us with singing

 
Something we can all do....
 
I was asked the other day if I thought Jesus sang…….like did He ever walk down the road and break into song? I said I thought He probably did. The Bible says He sang songs of worship with His disciples, and He was filled with the Spirit so, yes I believe there were times when He spontaneously burst into song. And the Bible says He sings over us.  Just imagining that set my mind in motion. Can you imagine hearing Him sing, or laugh? Seeing His face light up with a smile?

I think sometimes it is hard for us to think of Jesus as fully human. But I love to imagine Jesus doing the simple things of life. Walking down the road with His friends, or maybe helping His Mom with a task around the house, sitting down to dinner with His family. It is hard for us, for me anyway, to imagine Him being silly or joking around. Did He tease His Mother? Pull a practical joke on His brothers or sisters? I like to think He did. He was after all, fully God but also fully man, and fully human. 

I like to imagine those simple times when He greeted His friends with a smile or put an arm around them while walking, lifting His face to Heaven while He prayed, or sang a song, swung a child around just to listen to them laugh.

I like this form of meditation, imagining Jesus and how it was….. I think that many times He probably felt very burdened when He looked out over the crowds, at the immensity of the need, the desperation. I think it made Him sad many times, when people just didn’t get the message, couldn’t grasp His love for them.

But I also think there were times when Jesus had to lighten the mood by cracking a joke.

 
The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

The grace to keep walking

Evening bird

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Matthew 23:12

Another step was taken down this lonely road we have been walking for the past 2 years. The social worker came to perform an assessment on Elaine’s Mom to determine what kind of facility she can quality for. It was a big step and one taken after much prayer and I will say, agony on the part of a daughter.

And no matter what anyone says and no matter how much the other family members support you? The decision still feels like a sack of cement on your shoulders. Yours and no one else’s. It is overwhelming. It’s a lonely place when you feel like fingers are all pointing at you.

The caseworker was late. And I was not being very understanding. “It’s not like they don’t know what kind of havoc this causes.” I said, not very graciously. Elaine had to be back at work at 1 and she was supposed to be there between 11 and 12. It was now 12:15. And Joyce was perturbed. She asked what time “the warden” was coming. We had to laugh a little at that.

I made myself scarce when she did show up. It is painful enough to have two people listen to how you can’t remember the answers to simple questions, let alone 3. So I bowed out as gracefully as I could, still being available if needed.

She asked all the usual questions….”Do you know your address, do you know whose house this is, do you know what date it is, what day of the week it is”……and over and over again. It was fail, fail, fail.

And haven’t I said over and over again since we started this that I felt a failure myself? A failure at patience, a failure at loving, a failure at showing enough kindness, extending enough grace?

From the other room, fiddling with my phone, I heard snatches of this and that, and I know that she looked to Elaine for the answers, and that she was prompted not to answer for her. They needed an honest assessment.

And it’s there I need to stop when I think of how tragic it all is, to end up where she is right now, and how terribly sad. I wonder how would it be to have strangers ask you questions that will determine where you go for the remainder of your life? Plumbing the depths of a mind that has become cloudy and knowing the answers aren’t there?

Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes has a way of bringing it all home.

And yet it is the best thing, the only thing. It is no longer safe to leave her alone. And it is the best thing for a  daughter, who is bending under the strain……who has almost forgotten how it is not to live under a dark cloud.

It has brought me to my knees over and over again, and Elaine much more than I. She has had tremendous grace through it all. She has treated her Mom with the kindness and nurturing that she herself was never given, even as a child. Now that’s what I call true grace. Jesus grace.

And really, unless we grasp firmly onto the Grace that Jesus offers, we are all sunk. So again and again, I can only thank God for giving us the hope that will never fail.

And for each new day, which comes with its own supply of fresh manna grace. I had to learn it again when I found out the case worker, bless her heart, has her own tale of heartache, which spilled out while she and Elaine were talking out in front of the house.

I feel the loving reprimand of God once more.

Grace, more grace, I pray.