life

Death and Taxes

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Today’s blog is by a special guest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As far as the taxes are concerned, good luck. I got mine done early this year and I’m grateful to have that behind me.

Here’s what Bonhoeffer had to say about the subject of death, expressed better than I’ve ever heard it or read it before:

“No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. what are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up – that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? … Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”

Teachability, Vulnerability, and Constructive Criticism

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I hate public speaking. Whenever I had to do any kind of a presentation in class, I got the sweaty palms, mysterious flu-like symptoms (so I could get out of having to speak in public), and a strong desire to be a desert monk who has taken a vow of silence.

Most people are with me on this. I think people are more afraid of speaking in public than they are of dying. I know this to be true, because I found it on the internet, which is the bastion of all things credible and trustworthy. Especially Wikipedia.

I also hate giving criticism. I am a people-pleaser, so I hate to do or say anything at all that might cause tension in the relationship. In the past, my way of giving criticism was easy– avoid it like the bubonic plague.

But I’ve been thinking lately. If there was a way I could be better at something, I would want someone to show me. If I could improve in an area of my life, I would love for someone to tell me.

Criticism isn’t telling someone how bad they are. It’s telling them how they could be better. It’s not “Hey, your feet smell and you are a lousy, no-good blah blah blah,” but “Hey, I notice that you are really making an effort and doing a good job. Here’s a better way you could do this one particular thing. . . . ”

The Bible tells us to speak the truth in love. If it’s not truth, we’re enabling their mistakes and bad behavior. If it’s not spoken in love, then it’s condemnation and more likely to do more harm than good.

The best way to address a problem I see in someone else is to fix it in me. After all, we tend to project our faults onto other people and notice more readily in them the same weaknesses we struggle with (that’s my Union University degree paying off).

Actions speak louder than words, so the best way to change someone else is to tell that person how they are wrong, but to live out the right way. That person may not listen to you and may cut you off in mid-sentence, but you can show them the better way by listening to what they have to say.

The best way of all is to strive to be more like Jesus. If the people in our lives see us living out our beliefs in humility, authenticity, and transparency, they are more likely to listen to what we have to say. As I heard it put, preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.

Your New Name: A Good Reminder from Kairos

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In Revelation, Jesus promises that if you hold on to the end, you will be given a white stone with a new name that only you and Jesus know. That will be the name that trumps all the other names you have been given. That name will be your destiny.

What do you call yourself? In those moments when you screw up and make a mess of things, what name do you give yourself? Is it Stupid or Idiot, or one of those names that’s so bad you can’t even say it out loud when you’re alone?

What do other people call you? Are you Lazy or Slow or Hopeless? Do you carry those names around with you like a tattoo ingrained in your brain and you have come to see yourself by those names?

Jesus has come to give you a new name: Beloved.

Where you were once a Failure, you are now Redeemed.

Where once you were a Stranger, now you are Family.

Where once you were an Enemy, now you are a Son or Daughter of God.

Where you were Without Hope, now you are a Child of the Promise.

Where once you were Lost, now and forever you are Found.

Keep these names in your mind. Let them define you and your future. Because these, and not the other names, are who you are from now on.

I am the Beloved of my Abba, and He is very fond of me. So are you.

Ain’t it great?

Musical Memories

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For me, picking out the right music for any trip in the car is a big deal. I can’t just pick up any old CD willy-nilly and be satisfied. Sometimes, I’ve been known to hunt down a particular album for hours just because I feel it would make the best possible soundtrack for the places I’m about to go in my car.

Tonight, I went with David Crowder Band’s Sunsets and Sushi. It seems like everytime I hear that CD, I’m immediately taken back to 2004 and to very vivid images of friends I knew back then and a Bible study/worship experience I went to back in the day called Ecclesia.

I can hear certain 80’s songs that take me back to my 8th grade dance. I get pictures of me with my yellow square tie and my bad hair dancing with a girl I’d had a crush on but never had the nerve to talk to. A girl I’ve never seen since, whose name was Lucy (and that’s the extent of what I remember about her).

I hear Silent Lucidity by Queensryche and I am immediately back to the Subway on Exeter Road in Germantown next to the Kroger’s I worked in. I was with yet another girl I had a crush on. This time, it was Carly, who just so happened to live a few streets down from me. I think I may have walked by her street a few (hundred) times, hoping to “accidentally” run into her. It never happened. And no, I don’t remember at all what sub I got that day.

I hear All I Want is You by U2 and my mind immediately goes to the movie Reality Bites and the scene where Winona Ryder is desparately trying to find Ethan Hawke and tell him she loves him. And yes, I still have a crush on her even 18 years later.

For me, music conjurs up images in my mind like nothing else, except maybe the smell of rolls fresh out of the oven or burning candles at Christmas.

For those of you who are music nerds like me, what albums or songs bring back the most vivid memories? Where do those songs take you?

Enquiring minds, i.e. me, want to know.

For When You Can’t Sleep

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Right now, it’s 12:49 am and I’m not even close to being sleepy. Maybe it’s the chicken sandwich I had from Sam’s today (which was great) or maybe the caffeine.

I think it’s just thoughts that won’t lie down and rest until I get them written down.

I think I have to let a dream die.

It was a longshot to begin with and I thought I had already let it go, but now I really am saying goodbye.

I think I always knew that the person I was interested in wasn’t interested in me the same way. At least 99% of me did.

But that 1% kept hanging aroud, hoping against hope, looking for some kind of sign where there were none to be found.

So now I’m officially 100% sure. And I am glad we’re friends. Honestly, that’s enough.

Still, letting that dream die, knowing the finality of it all, is still hard.

God, help me always to guard my heart and to know that all my times are in Your hands.

I trust that You still work all things together for good for those who love You.

Now I think I’ll go and try that whole sleep thing again.

 

Thoughts on Job

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When I was little I used to pronounce the book of Job like it rhymed with rob. For Psalms, I made the s silent and called it Palms. I did some goofy things back then and it’s a good thing I’m past all that now (said with very heavy tone of sarcasm).

I read through Job again last night (and now I know it’s pronounced like Jobe as in Kari Jobe, the singer). It was not an easy read for me and most of the time, left me feeling more uncomfortable than uplifted.

In case you’re not familiar with the story, Job is a righteous and wealthy man. Satan taunts God and says that Job is only faithful because God has blessed him so much. “If you take all that away,” Satan told God, “your so-called servant Job will curse You to your face and be done with You.” So God allows Satan to take away Job’s possessions, then his children, and finally, his good health.

True, Job never curses God. Job never abandons God. But Job questions God’s motives and comes very close to maligning God’s character. That’s the part that makes me uncomfortable. Because I have asked some of the same questions and made some of the same accusations toward God.

I never bad-mouthed God in front of anyone or even out loud to myself, but in my head, I would have rants against the seeming unfairness of God’s ways. In my heart, I sometimes felt that God was not really for me and had something other than my best interests at heart.

The truth I have been learning is that God is big enough to handle my questions and accusations. He is not obligated to explain Himself to me. His ways are higher than mine and His thoughts way above mine. That comes with a finite mind trying to grasp what is Infinite.

I love Job’s final response, because it’s what I want to be able to say to God and what I’m striving toward in my daily walk of faith:

“Job answered God: “I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything.
   Nothing and no one can upset your plans.
You asked, ‘Who is this muddying the water,
   ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’
I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me,
   made small talk about wonders way over my head.
You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking.
   Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
   now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!
I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!
   I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”

God, I know that You are for me, with me, and in me, even when everything I see and feel and think says otherwise, because You promised You would be. If You say it, that settles it– whether I believe it or not.

I do believe. Help my unbelief.

A Letter to Kim Kardashian

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Kim,

I don’t know if you will read this or not. Realistically speaking, I’m pretty sure you won’t, since you probably don’t have time to read blogs by people you don’t know who aren’t famous. But if by some extremely remote chance, you happen to stumble on this quaint little blog, I hope you know I’m rooting for you.

I know a lot of people will look at your decision to start a Bible study and question your motives. They will say you just want to hook up with Tim Tebow or give some other reason why you can’t legitimately want to read God’s Word for its own sake.

I am not one of those.

I hope you read the Bible and find all that God has for you in there. I hope you find God’s love letter to His people, including you, and how much He loved His people and what great lengths He undertook to win back His people lost to sin and death.

I hope you will find that true beauty is in what God says about you, not what some magazine or television producer says about you. God says, “I made you and that makes you beautiful, because I made you in My image.”

I hope you will know that Jesus loves you just for you, not because of what you do or what you wear or who you know. I hope you can find joy in the fact that Jesus looked at you in your worst moments and thought you were still to die for.

I hope you fall in love with God’s Word and want it more than anything else. I hope you are transformed by what you read and that every time you read the Bible, you put it down a different person than when you picked it up. More than that, I pray you will take what you read and live it out in compassion for the needy and love for those whom God loves.

I hope you understand that no matter what you’ve done in the past, God has a purpose for you. He can work in and through you to do some pretty amazing things that will blow you away.

Like I said before, I’m rooting for you and hoping you find the peace you’re looking for.

Signed,

A Ragamuffin who is just trying to tell others about the grace of God that he’s found

PS It’s still not too late, no matter how messed up your life seems right now. Jesus can still turn your mess into something beautiful.

Revisiting Forgiveness

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“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasinly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family” (Henri J.M. Nouwen).

When you don’t forgive and hold on to bitterness and anger, it’s like you’re drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. Whoever hurt you may be completely unaware that they did anything and living in blissful ignorance while you’re still stuck in the moment of your hurt.

When you forgive, you open wide the doors to the prison cell only to discover that you were the one being held prisoner all that time by the past and by the pain you held on to for so long. The shackles you unlock were your own, the chain you forged in life while you nursed the anger and bitterness and were held captive by your hurt.

Forgiveness is where you realize that the wrong done to you pales in comparison to the wrongs you did to God, and the debt owed to you is like pennies in comparison to the millions you owed. You could never have hoped to even begin to pay for the debts your sin incurred, yet God freely and completely forgave you. How can you not forgive someone else who has wronged you?

Forgiveness is not easy. In fact, it’s humanly impossible. Only a heart regenerated and transformed by Jesus can forgive. Only those who have experienced the amazing unmerited grace of Jesus can extend it to those who don’t deserve it. Only those who have been forgiven can forgive.

But if you call Jesus not only Savior, but Lord, forgiveness isn’t an option. Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.” In the parable of the ungrateful slave, Jesus points out that we get forgiveness only as much as we are willing to give it.

Learning to forgive is a lifelong process that we never really master. Some things and some people take longer to forgive because the hurt runs deeper and the scars are more fresh. But if you have been truly forgiven, then you will seek to forgive others. Sometimes, the hardest person you will have to learn to forgive is yourself.

Lord, give us each day more and more of Your heart that loves the unloveable and extends grace to those who need it most but deserve it least. Help us to forgive.

Trust

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Trust is so easy to talk about, but not as easy to live out, particularly in the arena of faith.

I pay all sorts of lip service and sing about how much I trust Jesus, but in the moments when I can’t see my way, that trust is hard to find.

It’s in those moments when friends seem most distant and my dreams seem unreachable that I find out how much I trust and in what or whom my trust is placed.

If I’ve learned anything lately, it’s that God is trustworthy. God alone is trustworthy. If I put my trust in those around me, they will let me down. If I put my trust in an expected outcome, it either won’t come to pass or I will get what I sought after only to find it wasn’t what I really wanted after all.

Jesus alone has been worthy of my trust and proved Himself to me over and over. He has a history of coming through for me in just the right moment, when I needed Him most but often expected Him the least.

So I ask you? Do you trust Jesus? Do you trust Him in the dark as well as in the light? Do you trust Him when everything in you is telling you not to?

Maybe you think you can’t. Maybe you can’t find it in you right now.

Maybe the only thing you can do is simply say the words, “Jesus, I trust you with my life.”

They might sound phony in your own ears and you might not feel any differently. Keep saying those words over and over. Make them the mantra of your heart.

If you don’t have the whole faith thing figured out, neither do I. We mess up more often than not in this walk toward maturity in Christ and often turn to anything and everything but Jesus in our neverending search for meaning and significance and fulfillment.

I may not always trust what I see and feel. I may not trust in my own abilities or in the way I’m going. But I can most assuredly trust in the One who is leading and know that He will never lead me astray.

So can you.

 

Still Thankful for Grace

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On the days when I’m feeling spiritually strong and I am seeking God with all my being, I need grace.

On the days when I barely make it out of bed before I fall into temptation and the rest of the day is spent digging out of one trap after the next, I need grace.

On the days when I hear God speaking to me though His word and I feel my purpose more clearly, I need grace.

On the days when I read a bunch of words that I forget the moment I put my Bible down, when I feel like my existance is pointless and futile, I need grace.

When I’m asking for forgiveness for something I’ve already done, or worse yet, something I’m about to do, I need grace.

No matter how faithful or faithless I’ve been in the last 24 hours, I still need grace.

I will need grace to sustain me and save me every single day for the rest of my life.

The more I see my need for grace, the more thankful I am for it and the more willing I am to extend it to others around me who need it as much as I do. The more I see that I just can’t do it alone and that I need brothers and sisters who will walk beside me and encourage, challenged, rebuke, and spur me on to continue in the faith.

May you see your need of grace all the more each day and come to be thankful that where you are weak, His grace is still very much sufficient. May you see that at the end of the day, all that you can say that got you through will have been grace and only grace. May you not only reach out to take it, but also to extend it to those around you who certainly don’t deserve it, but need it just the same.

Kinda like you and me.