Tag Archives: Jesus

Nothing Wasted

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Scientists (at least the social ones) love to navel gaze at the belly buttons of the religious.

I get it. We are a messy, heterogeneous bunch. As I get older I get less and less religious but more and more convinced in the power of the God of Love.

Take this week for instance. This week we threw our all at trying to save a litter of kittens from panleukopenia.

Wrenching.

When my children poured out their grief in each loss they said, I just want them to know that I love them. I just want her to know I love her. I just want him to know I love him. Or directly to the dead–

I just want you to know I love you.

When you believe in a compassionate, omnipotent God, getting love notes to kittens is no biggie. He keeps what we have committed to Him against that Day.

Even if the day is Friday.

Even if you thought the last one might make it through.

Even if the patient weighs less than a pound.

Impending demise might make some pragmatic, other it pushes on to say, no matter what

I love you

On earth as it is in heaven.

A Letter to “Family,”

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I was born into a traveling family. Growing up I struggled with issues of identity and loss. What was home? What was this nagging sense of displacement?

I remember traveling in Italy as a young child and looking for the face of my grandmother in the crowd–despite my knowledge that she was not there. There was no chance that my middle-aged grandmother had jetted off for a Roman holiday in the spring of 1977

I had family members who I loved who did and said and believed things I did not. I found their beliefs deeply painful. How could I love them but not their way of seeing the world?

I settled on loving them but not the faults in their world views, and uneasy, precarious compromise, and one I have not much improved upon in all the years since.I struggle with disappointment in the collective institution of “family,” just as I have with “church,” “friendship,” “community,” and “club.”

People fail each other in big and little ways all the time, but Jesus never does. He is this extraordinary voice for justice, for love, for honor, for hope. His family resemblance marks the best of us.

Jesus does not look like a white guy in a flowing robe. He does not look like any of the famous pictures we have of him.

What he looks like is Love. Love that protects. Love that shelters. Love that never fails.

And that kind of family resemblance is hard to miss…when we find it among us in this broken world.

Matthew 12:48-50

1 Corinthians 13

The Women in the Story

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Matthew 1:3,5-6 NIV

[3] Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, [5] Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, [6] and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

It can be tempting to ask why all their names are not there.

It can be tempting to ask why Uriah never got a son, or why Judah was such a freaking loser but still got to be on the list.

But they are there–the prostitutes, the good girls, the chronically misunderstood. Most of them anyway, because the God of Sarah, Leah, and Mary told the Israelites keep all the babies, they all matter to Me.

One

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Matthew 1:1 NIV

[1] This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

Matthew seems pretty confident that Jesus is the Messiah, a word with so much power to reckon with us and all that has captured us that I am not sure how big or long or loud our explanations of Messiah could be and still be only an approximation of the real.

Some synonyms: King, Anointed, Savior, Redeemer, Ransomer, Hero, Deliverer, Protector

The Reckoner.

Small Prophets

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Sometimes I can hear them through the digital quilt of my son’s smartphone, San Antonio songbirds not unlike the full-throated prophets I hear in the backyard, not minor prophets, like Micah or Nahum, although come to think of it these would be good names for the night birds. No. They are small, easily overlooked, not altogether heard which leads me to my theory about Isaiah, not a minor prophet at all but must’ve wanted to be for awhile in the naked days when his voice competed with the spectacle of it all–ordinary-man-naked, not rendered complete until the blood-and-agony Redeemer he sang about

Proves true.

A.D.

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Matthew 28:5-7 NIV

[5] The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. [6] He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. [7] Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

Leaves the 99

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I have always marveled at the risk involved in the parable of the lost sheep. In fact, I can actually see the economists in the crowd shaking their heads and coming up to J. afterwards and trying to convince him that it just doesn’t make sense.

One lost sheep? Who is gonna watch the others?

I have a tendency to worry about all the sheep. What if there are wolves? Wolves stress me out. But J is unswerving. He leaves the 99 and goes to find the one. lost. sheep.

Of course he knows some secrets.

Like: the 99 are actually supposed to watch out for each other.

Like: a few stubborn jackasses in the flock help keep the wolves at bay.

Like: I am the one lost sheep. You are the one lost sheep.

We are all lost without him.

For J every last flipping one of us is that solitary-witless-easily-confused-fluffy-lost sheep.

Sometimes the only thing one needs to do to be found is to admit that one is lost.

Real lost

Without him.