Category Archives: God

Forgiveness in pieces

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The news article announced–a person guilty of mass murder in Rwanda had been forgiven after 20 years.

A cause for celebration?

Perhaps. If you don’t want the survivors to languish in the grips of anger and a desire for revenge–perhaps.

Beware of cheap forgiveness.

What do I mean? I mean that anyone genuinely harmed by another person has to forgive at a terrible price. The price of rape and murder is unthinkable.

It is too big a number. Too large a sum.

Which brings me to Jesus.

I understand that however we humans talk of releasing the debt of pain and loss caused by irrevocable harm, what we mean is let go of it.

We do not have the power to undo it. We do not have the power to expiate. We do not have the power to redeem.

Only Jesus can do that because he does and he did.

He has the power; he paid the debt.

Prophesy to the Breath

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Well, to start with you should know: Ezekiel’s life was no walk in the park.

Stroll in the bone-strewn valley, perhaps.

He lost people he loved.

He was constrained by God to do wacky, uncomfortable, challenging, and humbling things.

And in return–visions. Beautiful visions.

And here is God, taking him out to the dead husks of a human wasteland to challenge his faith.

Do you believe God can raise the dead?

Do you?

Sometimes people can still have a pulse and seem so dead. The idea that a murderer or child molester could be resurrected to a compassionate life?

Almost feels harder than Ezekiel’s bones.

But God makes the injunction:

Ezekiel 37:9-10 (NIV)
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, `This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” [10] So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

I confess, I believe God can make these dry bones live.

I believe Ezekiel can prophesy to the breath.

Lord, help my unbelief.

In You, dear Ransomer.

Adoption Stories

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You should know that no matter how old you are, I see you as the little girl you once were.

I say this because you tell me you can’t ask Yahweh because you don’t believe in Him.

Because you don’t believe in Him is exactly why you should ask Him. What do you have to lose?

Don’t worry, I know you do have stuff to lose. So let me phrase the argument as a parable:

In 1998 I lost a daughter. In my mind I lost 3. She was a triplet. She was taken from me because I was a foster parent in a place where the laws of custody and adoption were not held in high regard.

Her mother wanted the babies back. If she could not have them herself, she was willing to allow us to adopt them. Brave mama, tough story.

They took the babies. Broke my heart. Drove me to desperate measures.

The last desperate measure was leaving a record.

If you go to the archives of the federal court of western Pennsylvania you will find my record–a quixotic lawsuit I filed so that if I could not get her back, at least she could find me.

If she ever looked.

If she wanted the true story.

Because I was pretty sure she would not find it without a little help from the public record.

And since she was just a baby when they took her, I knew that they could erase me pretty easily.

But I am real and I love her. I was her mother for awhile. And I have never stopped loving her and her family.

God is like that. He is always our first mother, our foster mother, who can then be erased by another story.

But never forget. The story of His love for you is in the public record. It is your job to find it.

I have known for years that my daughter had a choice to look for me or choose to look away.

But I can assure you that I am real.

And I have loved her since the day I met her.

What does it cost?

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I struggle with a voice in my head telling me that a woman in my ramshackle physical condition has no business hitting ramps on a wakeboard.

It is a powerful voice.

And yet I cannot help thinking that challenging that voice and hitting those structures is a victory of the heart.

Victories of the heart are often costly victories. We are challenged to face our deepest fears of loss and humiliation, pain and failure for love.

And so with the even objectivity of a math problem you could say–the measure of our love is the measure of our willingness to overcome our fear.

Or better said by a Braver Man–perfect love casts out all fear.

Tell me you love someone and I will ask you, what dragons have you fought to preserve your beloved?

Community College

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You used to stand
In the doorway of winter
Receiving the Russian men
With their flowers and words of love
As transparent as their motives

Never letting on
You were a sucker
For their swarthy accents and abundant facial hair

But not that much
That you would fail

To mark each hour of rising light

Not yet
The full Twelve
He speaks of so casually
Before dark.

Unsay Me

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Unsay me
Uncall my name
Unbraid this coil of hair
Unspeak these things
Unspell these words
Untie this knot
Unhand me, fear
Unbreakable Love
Unquenchable fire
Undo this curse
Under this tree
Unbearable pain
You spoke for me.

A Terrible Christian

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The essay appeared to be heartfelt–urging people to brook the barriers of their resistance to organized religion and find a church, any church…because churches do good things.

Do they?

I spent the better part of my (Christian) life believing this. I still do, generally, on principal.

There was one thing missing from the impassioned church essay. One Person, actually.

You should go to church to see Jesus.

You should do everything to see Jesus.

“Christian” means “little Christ.” What happens to us when we excise Christ from our identity? All that is left is the “little” in us.

It is not easy to follow Jesus. Recently I gave a dramatic depiction of Jesus to someone who would definitely identify as a believer. This person rejected my gift with forthright disgust.

Did not actually watch the DVD….

I thought, huh…not an unusual reaction really.

How many of us would dare stand at the foot of his disfiguring Cross? How many of us have the courage to identify with our naked, broken, bloodied Savior?

I am a terrible Christian, unwashed and unlovely. But no one said redemption would be pretty.

Just absolutely essential for life
Eternal life.

The Alabaster Jar: what we used to be

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The story goes like this:

A woman who owes a great debt to Jesus takes her expensive dowry perfume and breaks it, then pours it over his head.

The scent wafts throughout the house. Beautiful, costly, extravagant.

She weeps and wipes his feet with her tears.

Humbling, intimate, kinda embarrassing.

Onlookers don’t get it.

Jesus does. He is the ultimate gift of love, she responds with the next dearest thing she possesses.

Because he has returned life to her.

Because he has redeemed her soul.

We have an impulse to scramble either to embrace or evade the expectations of our “love holiday.”

Perhaps we don’t need to do either.

Perhaps we already possess the most priceless gift of love–a perfume born of sacrifice and redemption.

More satisfying than chocolate, far more enduring than cut blooms.

The cost and burden of love is a Man who pours out the only life he has for us.

I have a theory about all of this–overpriced roses, fancy chocolates, even costly French perfumes are all nice, but the real symbols of love are often more like the tears at his feet–baby wipes, paper towels, mops, and detergent.

Often it is the daily, ordinary sacrifices we make, the humble and invisible things we do without any glory whatsoever, which in the end define love…

in the shadow of his Cross.

The Stories We Tell Each Other

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I am up too late looking for Jesus.

A friend of mine has lost someone she loves and I write about this kind of loss, knowing I tread on hallowed ground because I have walked there before, myself.

Took my shoes off and wept there. In the valley of the shadow of death.

I look at words, priceless words, captured in time by social media and I think of Malachi 3:16–one of my favorite verses and the verse that defines my faith in the power of us, telling our stories.

Malachi 3:1,7-8,10,16-17 (NIV)
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. [7] Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. “But you ask, `How are we to return?’ [8] “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, `How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings. [10] Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. [16] Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name. [17] “They will be mine, ” says the Lord Almighty, “in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him.

I find and grab more than I was looking for.

Sure, I need sleep. But I need Jesus more. We all do.