this is a parable
We are all parables
Stories of light and darkness
It takes only one
Candle lit in the dark
To make light
Someone always must be
Burning, held high
For all the dying
shadows to see
Don’t worry, I know we are all cowards
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Category Archives: God
Splitting the difference
According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.
It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all. But the human side was sub-par. The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs. But he did not.
Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King. Harder to face our own.
The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him? At the breakfast table or the DMV? In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?
It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.
Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.
Beneath a star.
In the presence of angels, so close to our King.
The other alternative
The sermon was lovely–feeding of the five (to 20 plus) thousand.
Five loaves and two fish expanding out to a feast for thousands.
Is it difficult to miss the metaphors? The abundance of God? Jesus providing through his own personality to satisfy all those souls by the sea.
But what if the boy had said no?
What if he had not shared?
Jesus never needed us to contribute. He tells us that if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out.
He doesn’t need our help.
But if we keep our lunch to ourselves? We miss our portion in the miracle.
We need Him to make us characters in His story, not the other way around.
Good reminder when I am hungry and not sure it is a good idea to share my lunch.
When Jesus gives, He pours it all out for us.
Down to the last drop.
Good Will Tenting
when I was wee-small I corrected the store name Goodwill to Oldwill. Also I once inadvertently hurt the feelings of a much-beloved pre-school teacher when I applied an age-equals-wisdom rubric to her chronological age.
She seemed exceedingly wise and kind and calm. So I told her she was 85. At the time this was the Nobel Peace prize of ages to me. I did not see wrinkles or old as a factor with humans.
Resale stores, absolutely, but people–not so much. My teacher was probably in her late twenties to mid-thirties?
I am going somewhere with this: assessment.
When I scan my junk mail for the misplaced real mail, I find message after message from hardworking Davises and Millers trying to give me some relief from student loans and a variety of entities using female given names and announcing their desire to date me or worse.
Oh, the anomalous anonymity of the Internet! These hardworking phishers and scammers just don’t get me.
We all want to be truly known and loved for who we really are, yet this is mostly a mirage. At least in my culture.
We are often not capable of deep commitment or unswerving faithfulness, and we are quite damaged by the sturm and drang of this flawed and broken world. We like empty images and cliches, not the challenges of maturity, restoration, and love.
Which leads me to Big Agnes tents…
After one disastrous night in a tent at the beach during a storm, I do not consider myself a camping girl, but when I saw the (again, junk email!) ad for Big Agnes tents it was love at first sight. Big? When seeking shelter, big is good. And Agnes? Agnes rocks. The name means pure but sounds a lot like the Latin word for lamb–agnus. Big Pure? Big Lamb? Lamb of God?
Lamb of God
Who takes away the sins of the world
Have mercy on us...
…damaged goods
Damaged goods in a storm
In need of shelter
I will run to the Lamb, find shelter in Him.
Forever
“I will never leave you nor forsake you”
Over the course of my life I have been booted out of a variety of clubs..oh…I mean communities of faith. Always for taking a stand on some issue, always with the subsequent silence and loss.
Financial accountability. Child safety. Confronting greed, lust or both–there are all kinds of ways to trudge down the “narrow road” in christianity.
Which is sometimes confusing and disorienting but never totally forsaken.
Jesus is there, saying what he says to all of us–I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
We will never get that kind of promise from anyone else. We humans are nothing if not forsakers. We bolt at a pin drop.
Not him. Jesus stays with us.
And always he says the same thing. “You are in good company, darling…always.”
Hey, Boo
See you
In the face of the girl dancing across the circle
So much so that I stare
Think I might have to tell her
The story of the lost you
Who reminds me
Of all the other Boos
So beloved
To their Mama
Missing still
Our ordinary demise
While the crucifixion of Christ is overwhelmingly unbearable, the deaths of ordinary humans are awful enough.
We are all certain things when we die.
The cessation of breath is a terrifying thing. Add to that helplessness and pain–most of us avoid death the way you would avoid the edge of an unforgiving precipice or an unguarded incinerator.
John the Baptist’s death is no exception. He died as a direct result of powerful people’s sin. He died in chronological and geographical proximity to Jesus.
The howl of the unfairness of it all is unmistakable.
Which is why I stick close to men like him. What if John had not questioned Jesus? What if his grief and doubt had not been recorded in the Gospel?
…I would have fewer answers for my lesser questions…and one fewer member of my support group.
And a narrower understanding of Jesus–no Santa Claus god. Jesus commands us to focus on both who He is and what He does for us on the most primal level.
He gives us back the one thing we can never get back ourselves–eternal life.
The death of every human may seem inevitable, but who we trust with the forever after makes all the difference.
To John the Baptist and every ordinary me.
He came in disguise
I have told my kids (on too many occasions) that I would love to see a spy movie in which the main character’s spy skills are demonstrated by the character’s thorough-going appearance transformations.
He would become she, young and handsome would morph into old and frail, fat to thin, and tall to short…by assigning entirely different actors to play the part in unbroken succession.
Then it occurs to me that is what Jesus did–He came in disguise. Clues for this theory are in the Gospels–the transfiguration (why take only three disciples?), the times when He prohibits the healed from blabbing about their transformations, the healing of Jairus’ daughter (again, only three disciples?) and then those times after His resurrection when people don’t recognize Him.
God in disguise.
It makes sense when you see Him described in other places in the Bible. Excuse my French, but Jesus in His “real form” is unmistakably bad-ass.
Which brings me to the most haunting part of this story of voluntary disguise.
The Lord of glory, Creator of the universe, Beginning and the End, Lion of the tribe of Judah, naked, eviscerated, gasping on the Cross.
My death. This is the purest place for me to see who I really am–the person who deserves this terrible end.
He wraps Himself in the vortex of hell to give us access to heaven–undisguised.
Light
light
With the exception (perhaps)
Of biolumescence
Always burns
Always the symptom, the result, the flood
Of fire
So when He says these things about light
They would have been connected in a way we are not
With the pure physical fact–
Where there is light
Something
Someone
Must burn
Older Brother
My son tells me his fears and I tell him mine are remarkably similar–fear of the tragic loss of love.
Sometimes he and I get to the end of an ordinary day and he says our crew is still together, Mom.
We are citizens of a dangerous and lonely kingdom.
But only because the true King travels in disguise.
He is this magnetic force–scarred forever by his tragic love for us, hole in the chest and again in each Vitruvian extremity.
Stranger at the party.
You should get to know this guy. His words and actions may seem either simple or radically divisive, but His gaze is irrevocable.
He is the perfect older brother, fierce in both love and justice. When I dread this fallen world I turn to Him.
Knowing He will never fail.
Carrying Light 