death

Words That Create (More Goodness from Henri Nouwen)

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Words, words, words. Our society is full of words: on billboards, on television screens, in newspapers and books. Words whispered, shouted, and sung. Words that move, dance, and change in size and color. Words that say, ‘Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me, sleep with me,’ but most of all, ‘buy me.’ With so many words around us, we quickly say: ‘Well, they’re just words.’ Thus, words have lost much of their power.

Still, the word has the power to create. When God speaks, God creates. When God says, ‘Let there be light’ (Genesis 1:3), light is. God speaks light. For God, speaking and creating are the same. It is this creative power of the word we need to reclaim. What we say is very important. When we say, ‘I love you,’ and say it from the heart, we can give another person new life, new hope, new courage. When we say, ‘I hate you,’ we can destroy another person. Let’s watch our words” (Henri Nouwen).

Choose your words carefully. Speak life and not death. Speak hope and not despair.

Even your lack of words can have tremendous power. Your choosing to ignore someone sends a more powerful message than any words of hate ever could.

So choose words that head and not harm. Choose words that will build up and not tear down.

That’s all I have on this Thursday evening in February.

 

Changes 2.0

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Once again, I find myself facing changes that I’m not ready to face. But then again, when am I really ever completely ready for changes when they happen?

Next week is Mike Glenn’s last week as Kairos Pastor. It still doesn’t seem real. I can’t begin to imagine Kairos without Uncle Mikey. But starting February 16, it will be a reality to which I’ll have to adjust.

I’ve had friendships that ended because the other person moved away or simply drifted out of my life. Even now, I wish I could go back and do things differently for some of them. Still, life moves on. Maybe our paths weren’t meant to stay parallel forever. Maybe God has something different and better for the other person that neither of us can see right now.

I’m reminded once again that the only constant in this life is that everything will change and nothing will ever stay the same.

Well, not exactly.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the constant in a world of change.

That’s what I’m holding on to when I face new circumstances. It’s what I cling to when I feel like I have nothing solid to hang on to in my life.

So beside death and taxes, one more thing is sure. Jesus will fulfill all His promises in and through me. I can count on that.

With that in mind, I can look forward to the future with great confidence. Kairos is in good hands with Chris Brooks. I am in good hands with Jesus. There is no mistake, no tragedy, no loss that Jesus can’t redeem and transform into something way better than I or anyone else ever dreamed possible.

That’s a good thought to send me off to sleep tonight. I hope it will be for you as well.

 

Grief

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

  
I know recently we’ve had several celebrities pass away. I personally know of several friends (mostly of my parents’ age) who have lost loved ones.

Conventional wisdom says that you should grieve for an appropriate time then move on with your life.

I say (and I can’t say that I can speak from firsthand experience) that you don’t get over a loss like that. How can you go back to functioning normally with half of your heart missing?

I’ve heard adjusting to the loss of a spouse is like learning to live without one of your limbs. It requires adapting to a new normal. Nothing will ever be like it was. You will never be like you were when you were two. The hurt will never completely go away. But neither will the memories.

I also know some people who have had to bury their children. I can’t even begin to imagine how you go on after experiencing a loss like that. I suppose that only the strength God gives and that peace that passes understanding are the only things that sustain people though the death of a son or a daughter.

I can say with certainty that Jesus was well acquainted with the pain of loss. Isaiah 53 describes Him as a Man Acquainted with Sorrow and Familiar with Grief.

Above all, God knows about loss. He was the one who sacrificed His only Son so that you and I might have forgiveness and healing and life. So that death would no longer have the final say ever again.

So don’t let anybody tell you that you have to stop grieving after a certain point. If you grieve, it’s only because you had something beautiful, if only for a little while, and that’s not easy to part with. Goodbyes should never be easy.

I know in the end that nothing good and true is ever really lost. Because of Jesus and Easter, we know that death and grief and loss are only temporary. It’s love and hope and joy that are eternal.

 

No More

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

It’s official. I’m over celebrities dying. I’m over cancer. So far, we’ve said goodbye to David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, and Rene Angelil (Celine Dion’s manager and husband). That’s four too many.

Not even three weeks into 2016, I’m already over the fact that all of us have a terminal illness– that all of us will eventually die.

I’m also over Nashville traffic. Someone sneezes on I-24 and there’s a backup for miles and miles. Seriously? Because my favorite thing in life is to creep down the interstate at a snail’s pace. At least I have good tunes to keep me company in the drudgery.

I was thinking that in heaven there will be lots of no mores.

No more death. No more loss. No more tears. No more sorrow. No more pain.

No more traffic. No more waking up before sunrise. No more coffee pots that are empty because someone else drank all the coffee before I got there.

Okay, that last one is sketchy.

The best part of Jesus’ resurrection is that all the lies and hurt will eventually become extinct. No form of meanness or pettiness or jealousy or any of those other deadly sins will exist anymore.

Only what was best and truest and purest will last.

I like to think that the best things in this life are shadows of what’s to come. They’re echoes of the glories yet to come. All your best moments and memories pale in comparison to what’s coming.

In the meantime, I’m afraid of what I’ll see every time I check the msn.com website. I don’t want to hear of anyone else dying (especially from cancer) for a very long time.

If you have any good news, send it my way. I’m due for something positive these days.

Until then, I’ll drift off to sleep with some good music and hope for the future.

The end.

Unquenchable Hope

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Maybe what you’re looking at a week into the new year are the ashes and crumbs of what’s left of your hopes and dreams.

Maybe you’ve 99% given up on anything ever changing in your life.

Maybe you need to hear this right about now: your God is the God of the never impossible and the never hopeless and the never finished. There is no such thing as too difficult for this God.

Look at Golgotha. If any dream seemed dead and done for, it was what laid inside of that tomb for three days.

If Jesus could overcome that grave and that death and that hell, there is absolutely nothing in your life that you are facing right at this moment that He can’t and won’t overcome. Nothing.

Maybe what you need is an unquenchable hope built on  an undefeatable God.

It’s never too late to start hoping and dreaming again.

 

 

 

Here’s the Deal

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

So I found out today that the cost to repair the transmission on my Jeep is $2700. I almost needed the smelling salts as I typed that sentence. I’ll be sans car for up to four weeks. Pass those smelling salts, please.

That’s a lot of money. All for some itty bitty parts that decided on their own without consulting me or anyone else to stop working. All for some unseen mechanical gears that I didn’t even know existed until they decided to break down. Rude.

A lot of life is like that. Things break, people die, situations change. What seemed like a sure thing vanishes like the morning mist and what you thought would last forever ends abruptly without any warning.

It’s easy to let those things make you cynical, believing that only the very worst scenarios will play out and that nothing good can ever happen and that people are only out to get you.

Or it drives you deeper into all the Mystery that is the Abba Father.

As big as my car bill is, God is bigger.

As big as the void that is left by the passing of a loved one is, God is bigger.

As big as the hurt caused by the rejection of a friend or a family member, God is bigger.

As big as the accumulation of scars and wounds from a broken relationship are, God is bigger.

God is bigger than anything you will face today or tomorrow or the next day or any day after that.

God is bigger than any problem that you will ever face.

God is bigger than your fears and your doubts and even your unbelief.

Whatever circumstances, God will prove that He is enough. Everything you could possibly desire or want or hold in your hands without God is less than holding onto nothing but God.

That’s a lesson that all of us learn eventually, whether that means losing everything in a literal sense or in coming to the end of your own schemes and plans.

God is enough. God will be enough.

That is enough.

 

Seeds

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction” (Cynthia Occelli).

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal” (John 12:24-25).

“If my life is broken when given to Jesus; it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will only satisfy only a little lad” (Elisabeth Elliot).

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen).

Only God can take brokenness and make it beautiful.

The old saying goes that broken pieces make the best stained glass windows, and I believe that broken lives are the ones God uses to shine through most brightly.

Will you hide your brokenness in shame or will you let it be your testimony of how God’s strength is perfected in weakness?

 

 

Glory’s Just Around the Corner

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner” (1 Peter 4:12-13, The Message).

Glory’s just around the corner. I love that.

All that you’re going through, all the heartache and pain, seems like it will never end. You feel like nothing will ever get better, that everything will go on just as it has been.

Remember that Paul calls it light and momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory that’s coming. Whatever it is, it won’t last forever. But the glory will.

That’s a good reason to never give up. You don’t know how close you are to your breakthrough. It may be closer than you  think. It may even literally be around the next corner.

I might sound like a broken record, but I feel in my spirit that some of you out there are tempted to quit. Some of you are about to give up. Don’t.

Jesus didn’t quit. He more than anyone else had the best reason to give up. He knew what He was facing and what it would cost in blood, sweat, and tears. But He persevered. He kept going.

He knew that even death by torture was a light and momentary affliction compared to the joy and glory that would come after. Not just His joy and glory, but ours, too.

It’s all about taking it 24 hours at a time. Sometimes, it’s about one deep breath at a time, if that’s all you can do.

One day, you will look back and say that it was all worth it. Even the very worst parts were worth it to get to the glory.

 

 

Full Moon Thoughts

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Tonight was a full moon. Apparently, that’s when the crazies come out. Or maybe that’s when people’s tendencies to act crazy go into full gear. Or so I’ve heard.

For me, it was very calming to see the full moon in the night sky. I suppose it’s because I know I’m looking at the same moon that was up in the sky when I was little.

So much in this life is transitory. So many people I thought would be around for a long time have gone AWOL. So many loved ones aren’t here at all anymore.

Even the places I love don’t stay around, i.e. Borders and all those record stores in the malls.

But seeing that moon in the sky tonight reminded me that God is my constant. He’s the one that stays the same while everything else around me changes, while I myself am changing.

That’s the thing I’ve learned. Even if I could go back to a happy place in my childhood and find it’s still the same, it’s not the same because I’m different. I’m not the same as I was as an 8-year old. Hopefully, no one as an adult is exactly like he or she was as an 8-year old.

It’s comforting to know that God will always be the same. He will always love me the same (perfectly and unconditionally), He will always think of me the same (as His beloved), and He will always treat me the same (working all things together for my good and giving me only the very best).

For a while, clouds obscured the moon, but after a while they drifted away. Sometimes, God gets obscured by those pressing anxieties in my life. It gets difficult to find Him when there’s so many things clamoring for my attention.

The good news is that after the anxieties subside and those things move on, God remains.

Something That Spoke to Me

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I read this yesterday and I’m still thinking about it. It’s what C. S. Lewis wrote after his wife died after battling cancer. What spoke to me so much wasn’t as much the grief (although I have known that all too well), but the part of not being able to hear God speak to you because you’re too frantic to listen. We’ve all at some point been stressed and overwhelmed to the point where we can’t hear what anybody else is saying to us, much less God.

Here’s what he said:

“Why has no one told me these things? How easily I might have misjudged another man in the same situation? I might have said, ‘He’s got over it. He’s forgotten his wife,’ when the truth was, ‘He remembers her better because he has partly got over it.’

Such was the fact. And I believe I can make sense out of it. You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhaps can’t.

And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.”