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.
I linger over little bits of cake. My gentile version of honey cake, my American girl version of lebkuchen, all thanks to Peg + Cat.
The honey on the cake reminds me of John the Baptist’s least emulated diet ever.
I think of him scooping honey from the hives of desert bees, dipping his locusts in the honey. Wild food for a wild man? Or deliberate food for a grave robber? Was he eating that way as an afterthought or a prophesy?
At table with our enemies.
I don’t know when I began to identify the enemy of Psalm 23 as death and his minions–sickness, pain, grief, and loss, but I do.
These are our true enemies. And the answer, the only answer I have when the pain of this world’s griefs become unthinkable is to look at Jesus at the head of this table and know that he owns the meal: bugs and honey and all.
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.
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?
This morning I listened to an excellent sermon.
The pastor had a great pastor voice–warm, sincere, sonorant.
The text was a biggie–Abraham and Isaac and the God who provides.
The sermon points were worth writing down, like a good recipe.
But.
But if my calculations are correct the sermon was delivered when the pastor was sliding down a hill of temptation, sin, and loss that he would not survive.
Good sermon. Worth playing at a funeral.
The truth of the sermon does not change if the speaker is not following the recipe.
But his willful hypocrisy will make the valley harder for his community, his family, his children.
By contrast Jesus preached a sermon and then exceeded the scope of that sermon by miles, years, eternity, and hell.
That is right: Jesus was damned for us.
We will be judged by the measure of our lives or his, our words or his.
I choose the God of life because he walks a path of sacrifice and love and then looks over his shoulder and says,
c’mon, follow me.
Follow Him, walk the hard road all the way to life…everlasting.
Of course I have wracked my brain about this–has it always been there?
Have there been generations of attachment disorder kids? I don’t think so. I think that RAD is a mostly modern problem, ushered in with the advent of formula for infants, ushered in as quickly as nursing mamas have been ushered out.
Up until the invention of fake breastmilk everyone had assumptions about the survival of infants: for at least the first few months someone with breasts was required.
We see nursing mothers (and surrogates) in great art and ancient sculpture. The baby who survived survived at the breast, able to spend crucial hours close to the face of love.
Attachment disorder is the opposite of that.. At the very most crucial time in a baby’s life, detaching a child from a consistent, nurturing presence is deadly–if not for the body, then absolutely for the soul.
Lots and lots and lots of people have been nurtured and loved and bottle-fed. But make no mistake–the advent of bottle-feeding is at the heart of the change that has robbed our poorest and most vulnerable babies of the love that would grow their souls.
The easiest way to “solve” the problem of attachment disorder is to make nursing a priority in our culture, and start valuing the power of nurture–breast or bottle, babies need snuggle time and a regular source of love.
There is no substitute for love.
This was over a decade ago. A small storefront church, a young mother speaking.
She spoke about a children’s song–
Jesus loves me this I know/for the Bible tells me so/little ones to him belong/they are weak, but he is strong/
The song is so simple, so elemental, but it is only a portion of a longer hymn few of us know or sing.
We like the idea of Jesus being strong until he requires something of us.
We like the idea of Jesus being strong until he requires us to acknowledge our weakness.
We are weak. All of us. There is not a living creature on the planet who can stave off death, yet we cling to the illusion of our self-sufficiency.
The young mother that day was focused on the call of the Gospel–one man able to save us from death forever, and how to bind that good news to her children, all God’s children.
How many times have you heard a person cry out in grief and pain and then seen people answer–
stay strong/you are strong.
No. You are not. None of are. We are weak. That is the point–we are weak. He is strong.
So when sin and grief and pain hit you hard remember this: the song is true.
We are weak
He is strong
Only his strength can save us
From the swirling darkness of this
Dying world
Carrying Light 