Out of Fire
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Category Archives: God
The narrow road
We talk about the two roads: (notice there are no others) one narrow, one broad.
I picture the broad one littered with neon signs, carnival-lit and well-paved.
The narrow one is hard to find, off the the side, obscured by overgrown vines and branches. Because, let’s face it: not much traffic.
You climb through the overgrowth to get there and once on the Path the going is any but easy. Rocks, besetting ills, humiliations, and the echoing loneliness of it all.
But always the figure of the Man in front of us. Stick close to Him. After all He is the way itself. The narrow path to life–home waiting at the end.
There we will belong.
Foley and Sotloff
I grieve for these lost men
Think about their brokenhearted mothers
Avoid an accounting of the days and the pain and dogs of souls
who could exact such cruelty on…ordinary men
It is easier not to go
To the places these men went
And the place where they were
Cut to pieces
But we must
Ask ourselves what has become of
Us, the Geneva Convention, the boundaries of
Words, only words
strung words together
No guns, no knives, no ammunition
Pictures taken of war
If you can even call it that
They say they got Capone for tax evasion
Not murder
And I wonder if these boys who hide their faces and play “gods and men”
Like a game without a score
Know the second commandment (say nothing of the 6th)
Still applies to their eternal souls:
Forget all else you have done
And understand you owe God for life
For these pictures you have taken
Of Foley and Sotloff
There will be
Forever
Nowhere to hide.
My Monster
My monster sits
At the kitchen table
Gnawing on the hollowed bones
Finding scraps of meat left on them
they say you can choke on these broken shards of wings, thighs
The breasts of flightless birds
Few eat their filigreed
Hearts
But when they do you can see through
Each vivisected chamber
He mutters only phrases
Like girl, you know…girl if only…
If only you had..
He is so very clever to leave out
All the
Proper nouns
Dependent clauses
Merciless verbs
years and years of completely merciless verbs
Ellipses for teeth
Never dulled to the task
Of separating bone from marrow
You tell me the vultures
Are being decimated
By poison and other modern perils
Leaving the dead all alone
In their towers of silence
And I know this must be true for Rizpah will shoo them off
Until God chooses to relent…
This drought will define us
Cotton-mouthed and bone-dry
So cavalier about our own now-
Forgotten prayers
For rain
The lottery ticket paradox
I have a bag of parables and pet theories I used to bore my youth group with…regularly.
One of them was the lottery ticket theory, which goes something like this:
If a rude person verbally assaulted you in a parking lot and insisted that they were handing you a winning lottery ticket you might be put off by the assailant, but you would be a fool not to take the ticket and check the numbers.
Jesus is that ticket.
We Christians are absolute morons–rude, pushy, myopic, prejudiced, morally flaccid.
You name it, we flub it.
But Jesus did not. He flubbed nothing. He gives us back our lousy, flea-bitten lives, whole and restored.
Why bother restating an old story from my former life?
Because I believe.
Because I still believe.
Perhaps if birds
Perhaps if birds
Could bring the rain
We would seed our yards,
Learn their calls
Keep the cats inside.
/beckon to them with fields of sunflowers
/covet their myriad congregation along electrified wires
Build their houses
Guard their nests
Stay all our empty words
For a mated call to water
My children play
Duck, duck, goose
With rich adjectival muster-
medium-sized duck, superhero duck
Yell Goose! and always be prepared to run
Anthropomorphize these missing storms
See sparrows in each laden cloud
Sow the fields with barley
Surely they will love barley
And swoop down toward us
“with healing in his wings”
All our science is naught
Fruitless and pendant
Cotton in the mouth
We cry
medium-sized rain, superhero rain,
Or no rain at all
Because we have forgotten…
He said fire the next time
Bring the Rain
I have a short story I recite with my son–
It rains
And then the worms come out
Then the birds eat the worms.
You will notice it is both a celebration and a cautionary tale.
The worms don’t fare so well.
But at this point the story is almost entirely mythic. It does not rain here. My son does not know rain.
I have written about my misguided annoyance about this drought, this lack of rain. I used to think God was not listening to me. Now I know we are not listening to Him.
This is our drought.
Both California and Texas are experiencing historic droughts. Here in Texas we squander our water on fracking. In California they are paying people to remove their lawns and deep water drilling is big business.
And in our churches we ignore our glorious interventionist God.
We must pray for rain.
But first we must pray for the reign of God. Our lack of water is merely a sign of the drought of holiness that defines this generation of believers in Christ.
The message is simple and incisive and begins with a question not an injunction, an invitation to love, not a list of rules.
Ask yourself–
Are you in love with God? Do you long for Him the way a man in the desert longs for rain?
And if the answer is yes then the result will be apparent to all who know you.
You will bring that rain. You will bring that water.
The water of life. The city of God. A Man, a Word: Jesus.
There are no deserts of either holiness or love when He is close.
So keep Him close.
Bring the rain.
Clouds without rain
Two days this week we had beautiful storms. There were dark clouds full of rain. Thunder. Lightning.
Only the rain never came.
I told my kids that I had to hope that it rained somewhere in the state of Texas. But the lack of rain makes my heart ache. We need it.
I think of Elijah, praying for God to hold back the rain because of the sin of his people. Mine are no better than his, am I praying the wrong prayer?
This week I heard a story of ordinary sin and degradation. Well…several. This one particular story was disheartening because a number of people who claim to ascribe to a clear moral code registered little or no willingness to apply that code.
When our moral code lapses we are clouds without rain.. The phrase comes from James. He is exhorting a young church to be active in applying the good news and power of salvation to a broken world.
If we don’t because we are uncomfortable we are as useless and sterile as clouds without rain.
Hydrate, Darling. Hydrate.
Do something (brave)
My blog is littered with drafts. I haven’t published anything for awhile because I struggle with–why bother?
In the aftermath of what happened to my family, a lot of people let us down.
It could have been because I was too vocal. It could have been because we were too risky. It could have been a lot of things.
It took a toll on my evaluation of humans. How could so many “nice people” run like rabbits? Or worse. There was always worse.
I battled insomnia. If a person you have fed peanut butter sandwiches can hurt children, the world feels permanently unsafe.
I wrote. I wrote and then wondered why?
Then I began wakeboarding.
I like wakeboarding because no one tells me I can’t do the things that terrify me. In fact, they show me how.
I like it because the people there are brave.
Not just spin-in-the-air brave, but also push-yourself brave.
Many of these brave people restore my faith in our broken world.
Which leads me to “ordinary brave”–
Men who are faithful to their wives are brave.
Judges who prosecute pedophiles are brave.
Health officials who fly into an Ebola epidemic are brave.
Paying your bills and your taxes on time
Holding a lackluster job to provide for your family
Befriending the powerless–
All brave.
When I see brave, I want to be brave.
The Ebola epidemic
I have been praying for the victims of the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
My prayers have led to fasting and also web research. The result of that research is so disheartening that I am not linking.
Ebola is a plague with the devastating symptoms and prognosis of a plague.
People die horrible deaths and the death rate is high, very high.
So I am asking for prayer. Please pray for the people exposed to the disease and their families.
Pray for healing, but pray for this as well–
Many people in the countries this virus inhabits do not believe in it or believe health workers are infecting them.
So pray for healing and truth as well.
And thank you.
Carrying Light 