Go back
Go back to the place you lost
Your courage
The battle
The war with fear
People were never intended
to walk on water/
Raise the dead
It requires things of us
We do not possess
Gravity
A voice to calm the storm
And turn ghosts into this
Man who calms the sea
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
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.
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 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.
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.
Been working on the Sermon on the Mount. Tonight it was:
Matthew 6:32-33 (NIV)
For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. [33] But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
I look for signs of God in the world. I look for signs of love. But I also carry with me the people I love.
Some of them are pagans.
So now I have my touchstone verse–for the pagans.
If you read the whole passage it is hard to ignore.
All our pagan hearts.
Matthew 4:12-17 (NIV)
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. [13] Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— [14] to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: [15] “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— [16] the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” [17] From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
Have you ever had a friend who you trusted completely? For reasons of time and circumstance you thought–this person has my back.
Or something…
Most of us would like it if God were a glorified Santa Claus, providing winning lottery tickets and easy answers.
He is not. He is “not a tame lion.”. And this is a dark world.
But if you get to know Him well, you learn something–God is completely trustworthy.
Lucky for us His love never fails.
The first question this morning: when will it be Christmas again?
365 days can seem like forever. A long time to wait for Christmas.
It has been about 736,570 days since the first Christmas. And it was about 1.46 million days of recorded history before the first Christmas.
Suddenly a single year doesn’t seem so long. To wait for a Savior? To wait for hope?
The good news of Christmas is the gift of a child–precious, poor, unlikely, who shed his light over us.
Every day Christmas when Jesus is with us.
How will you celebrate salvation?
Carrying Light 