Category Archives: God

Paper Love

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I see an image of the word love written beautifully by a young woman I know who actually wouldn’t know real love if it walked up to her and slapped her in the face with a fish.

Not that love would ever do that, of course…

My point is: love is a potent magic. Actually, love is more than that. Love is a Person.

I know this because for years and years and years I have lived on a diet of scraps when it comes to human love. Many of us do.

Humans see our faults, boss us around, prefer second-hand shoes to our hearts and minds.

Humans: a rum bunch.

So I type in “God’s love” and begin to read the verses–I am on a quest for love.

I immediately feel the iron. God speaks to us of love as though it is the chicken wire that keeps out the wolves, the walls holding back the storm, a strong fortress against assaulting armies.

This kind of love is tough die-for-your-sins stuff.

Look-into-the-face-of-hell-then-dive-in-to-save-me love.

Yup. No flowers and chocolates here. Something stronger instead. They say if you bury gold for a thousand years it will not rust. They say honey never decays. We’ve all had loves that walked out or faded.

But this guy Jesus. He is gold and honey love. Tough as nails. The nails that pinned him down to the Cross…for me.

Worth the world entire.
The world in His eyes.

Love the Island

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You can imagine me
Being dumped
On a nearly deserted island
just for talking too much

And you can also
See me chafe
Not so much for myself
(I am quite capable of talking to flora, fauna, and God, thank you, very much)

No.

For the children in my boat
They don’t deserve this–
The extreme isolation
So many freaking
Hot piña coladas!

No.

They deserve community
Friends who see them through
A voyage through calm seas

I tell myself this
Too much
Until I remember a wee bit of sage advice–

If you are going to burn your bridges
You better love the island

Love indeed
Beautiful survivors

I Have Lost You.

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I would have written this as a letter
I would have used the proper
Format:

Dear You,

Only…
That is the point
Dear you, not me
Not God Himself, quite real

Your appetite for bacon
Recalls to me the reason
Why?

We are not family anymore
Friends with the devil
Need to count the flies
Attending him

I speak the oblique
Because you have a right to be angry
We all do
But only on the pallet in hell
we lie down…

So close to Jesus.

Fear

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My children have led me into courtrooms, hospital rooms, doctors offices. Psych wards. Juvenile detention centers. Places of both extreme light and extreme darkness.

Some of them look like me, others don’t. Some don’t even live with me anymore. Some may have never known I was their mother.

I was a foster mother. Hard. I adopted kids: hard as well. I lost children, hardest of all.

But this weekend my tallest son taught me how to paint on an extension ladder. He is nearly a foot taller than I am, so he makes it look easy, but what impressed me was his success in teaching me to challenge my fear.

He taught me by doing it–first and better than me, then by walking me through my fears (and why) then how to overcome them.

We both know from experience that I am a crabby old dog, disinclined to new tricks. But love will prevail.

After all it is love, they say, that casts out all fear.

Good news when it is a long flight down.

Unquenchable Fire

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Luke 3:17 (NIV)
His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

God is a patient guy, but we would all be prudent not to confuse patient with impotent or sloppy. He will not wait forever to fix what we have broken.

And it will take a very long time to burn all the trash we have amassed…in our hearts alone.

Make no mistake–

We will all be salted with fire.

Pentecost.

Authentic Friend

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I imagine the room is in a church basement. Worn wood, a coffee pot on a table, styrofoam cups, a rows of folding chairs.

Sparsely attended. I cannot see the faces of the other attendees. I know like mine, theirs will be worn, washed of something. Artifice. No room for that here.

I stand and tell them my story. All of it, unadorned, shocking. Only here, in this circle of (imaginary) truth it will not be held against me–my pushy honesty, my tenacious insistence on the whole story. Uncomfortable, impolite. I know. I got it.

Most places now I tell myself, shut up, you know now they don’t wanna hear this.

That is why I return to this picture in my head–a simple circle of truth, where every secret thing is revealed. So no one is shocked when the truth is what it is—

We all
Underestimate
Jesus.

About Pain

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Most people have run across CS Lewis’ quote about pain being God’s megaphone. We are risk averse. We don’t really even like to think about pain.

I dropped a roll of (heavy) butcher paper on my big toe. Dumb, I know. The pain was and is intense, binding.

It derailed my plans for a run. This in itself is a sticky issue. Exercise, especially running is my go-to, no-guilt stress reducer. If I could I would eat a lot of chocolate and drink vodka gimlets, but to paraphrase Tobias Funke–I don’t need the calories.

I guess I didn’t need the run.

The truth is my big toe was already a wounded soldier–bunioned, afflicted with frequent stubs, not helped by my penchant for running barefoot and in Chacos. That poor toe was already punished.

I am not really that fixated on my toe. I am fixated on why?

I know God well enough to trust that my clumsy accident is no accident at all. He has stuff for me in the midst of pain. Things like:

Wound care. I wiki toe breaks. Importune my doctor husband. Follow his advice…

Pain management. I take the ibuprofen with alacrity and gratitude. It just takes the edge off. Same with the ice…

Change plans. No run is a bummer. But this also means a real change in my dazzling and exciting plans to work on the exterior trim of our house. I went from looking forward to tackling the high places to envisioning myself doing most of the yard-and-under edges.

The little things. As I said, I was already neglecting this toe. Now I am not. I am grateful for all the thankless weight-bearing it does and very aware of how much I need my big toes.

Need. I am also going to need more help. My kids will have to be my team–helping with all the not-so-fun cleaning jobs.

Empathy.. Most of all I am aware that my small intense pain is nothing compared to the people I pray for–friends battling cancer, families missing loved ones, prisoners in terrible places, women whose lives have been stolen by…it is too easy to say monster.. Too easy to pile a decade of individual blows–each one vicious and deadly into a lump sum.

I would prefer to separate each into a blow of such force that to minimize or forget is to be less human, less alive.

Let us face these terrible things together, these monstrous griefs.

A Voice from Heaven

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Mark 9:7-10 (NIV)
Then a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” [8] Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. [9] As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. [10] They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.

So the voice of God…

We moderns do not often get to hear God that way–out of the heavens, direct-like. We don’t need to. We have His voice in the Bible and in the wind. His power and purpose in the night sky.

I like the timing of this narrative. The disciples are already awed by Jesus. The voice of the Father is not the emotional center of this story. His injunction is a corroborating authority.

Jesus stands alone.

Through most of the Bible he mutes the physical reality of his deity to do an unbearable job.

Why this story? Why so quiet?

The road of faith is bewilderingly painful. It helps to keep our glimpse of God at the center of our minds and hearts. It helps to know who he really is. It helps a great deal to see him.

Light on the water.