silence

God, I’m Sorry

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

God, I’m sorry that I took even a single moment of the time I had today for granted. I’m sorry I forgot that every moment of this life is sacred, for You inhabit all of it.

You’re in every frame of every scene in my life, speaking to me through the Word, through your people, through circumstances, and loudest of all, through the Silence that echos the calm before the storm.

I’m sorry I failed to give you as much room to work in the lives of my friends as You took to work in mine. I’m sorry I doubted them and mistrusted their motives instead of looking for and believing the best about them and giving them the benefit of the doubt, as You taught and showed me how to do.

I’m sorry that I listened to my fears instead of to You, and they lied to me. I’m sorry that I believed what they said: that eventually all the people in my life will find out what I’m really like underneath my plastic smile and decide that I am simply not worth the effort and they will walk away. I name that lie and give it to You for good.

I’m sorry I was living my life at the I-level, living in the me-story and focused on all things Greg. I forgot that what You have for me is so much bigger than me and what my little world can hold. Your plans are God-sized and the God-story You are telling me is so much better than mine (thanks to Karla Worley for the imagery).

I’m sorry that tomorrow, I will need to be reminded of this all over again. I will forget You and how constantly You have taken care of me.

Thank You that You are slow to anger, steady in love, and ever patient with me, never wearying in reminding me of who I am and Whose I am. Of how much stronger Your voice is than all the other voices that speak to me and that Your voice is saying good things about me and calling me Beloved.

Thank You that You won’t give up, give in, let go, let me down, or turn on me. Thank You that you will absolutely finish what You started in me and then it will all have been so much more than worth it.

Thank You. Amen.

For All the Phonies in the World

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Let me ask you something. Just between you and me (and the world wide web). Do you ever feel like a phony?

Do you ever hear yourself giving Sunday School answers to real life questions? Do you ever feel that you’re praying what you think God wants to hear instead of what’s really in your heart? Do you ever lie awake at night wondering what would happen if the people around you knew what you were really thinking? What you were really like?

There’s good news that sounds like bad news at first. God knows. God knows it all. He knows all the faux-prayers and the religious jargon you talk sometimes. He knows what you do and what you think when no one’s watching. That seems like bad news until you get to the clincher. He loves you anyway.

He loves you at your phoniest. He loves you at your meanest. He loves you at your darkest moments in the middle of the night. He looks at you and doesn’t see phony. He looks at you and sees Jesus and what Jesus did in your place. He sees the perfect life Jesus lived instead of your own very imperfect existence.

Best of all, God sees you for who you will be instead of who you are. He sees what He designed you to be. He promised to not stop working on you until you’re 100% real and complete.

In the meantime, it’s okay to be real and honest and admit you have made a mess of your life. It’s okay to confess you don’t have all the answers, or even all the questions. It’s really not about how much you know or how well you act but how much you are loved.

I raise my glass and toast to all the phonies who are stepping forward to take off the mask and be honest about themselves. I drink to all the pretenders who just got real. I salute all of you who are letting down the walls on what God is doing in your life so others can see grace at work and how love can transform a person. That’s where the freedom is. That’s where I want to be. I hope you do, too.

Grace: What a Year of Blogging Has Taught Me

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

I think I’ve been blogging for about a year or so. It was some time last July that I started this crazy venture. Ok, so I don’t have millions or even thousands of loyal followers, but I have readers. Tens of readers.

The idea was never really about numbers. It was always about an outlet for me to express myself. Especially when it comes to the grace of God. Cause when it comes to grace, I am the #1 fan.

Grace walks in the back door when friends walk out the front door. Grace comes in when I’ve failed again after I promised I wouldn’t. Grace is a good thing.

Grace has led me safely thus far and grace will lead me home, or so says the old hymn. Grace really is amazing, isn’t it?

Grace says that God is strong and He loves me. Grace says that love won’t ever go away, no matter what I do. Grace is a good thing.

The more I try to describe or define it, the more I realize how hard a job that is. I can’t tell you what grace really is or how it works; I can only tell you that I desperately need it and I find it available at just the right moments.

 The older I get, the more I believe in my heart that there’s no such thing as good or bad Christians. There are only those who were lost and are now found. There are only those who deserved to die and got to live. There are only those who deserved hell and got Jesus instead.

In the end, none of us measures up. None of us is good enough. None of us always does what is right and avoids temptation and never fails. We all fall short. We all need grace.

That’s why I have no patience for impatient Christians and I am judgmental toward judgmental believers. I guess that makes me just like them. Darn. I really wanted to have the superior high ground for once. Oh well.

What draws people in the end is not perfect doctrine (which no one has), or mastery of morals, or a vast intellect, or the gift of eloquence. It’s grace. They see what grace has done for us and they want it.

May we all be trophies of grace each day and help people see that it’s okay to be broken and messed up and not have life figured out or everything together, because grace will lead us home.

 

 

 

The Way of the Heart . . . So Far

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

I think I’ve established the fact that I am a supreme book nerd. I pretty much start salivating when I walk into Borders. For some reason, I don’t get quite the same effect at Barnes & Noble. Not sure why.

Anyway. I’ve been reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, titled The Way of the Heart. The book is based on the teachings of the Desert Fathers of the 4th and 5th century. The idea is that in order to grow in your salvation you must “flee, be silent, and pray.”

Thus the three tenets of the book are solitude, silence, and prayer. We need each one to be able to tune out the distractions and tune into God’s heart for us.

Solitude keeps us from passively drifting along with society and its values and being conformed by the world around us. It takes us out of the world, so we can be in the world and not of it. We’ll never have time to get away to spend time with God unless we make time.

Silence is in response to what Nouwen calls the “wordy world” where we are constantly being bombarded with messages all day long. Silence means that the words we do speak have more meaning because they are fewer and more deliberately chosen. It means we avoid the pitfalls of words spoken flippantly or angrily or vainly. It allows us to hear God speaking to us.

Prayer is not so much finding out more about God and gaining knowledge of His will, but in immersing all of our being into God and being transformed by Him there. It is an acknowledged dependence on God in everything for everything always.

I am 79 pages in, and I am almost tempted to start the book over when I get finished. I can’t say that about too many books I’ve read, and I’ve read plenty. Remember me the uber book nerd?

I recommend anything by Henri Nouwen or Brennan Manning to speak directly to your world wherever you are. At least that’s what happens for me when I read either one of them.

I think I’ll close with a quote from Henri Nouwen:

“It is in solitude that compassionate solidarity grows. In solitude we realize that nothing is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart. In solitude our heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering people in a gesture of solidarity.”