god

I Just Can’t People Today

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So, the low-grade fever is back. I still feel blah (but nowhere near death’s door). I still managed to get in all my Wednesday activities (before I was aware of The Return of the Fever).

I participated in the Summer Singles Series at The Church at Avenue South. Afterward, some of us went out to eat at Las Palmas. It wasn’t the best meal I’ve ever had, but that really wasn’t the point. It was being around people.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t people very well today. I’ve been in brain fuzz mode all day long. My mental capacity is about at the level of “Fire bad. Tree pretty” (those who know what TV show I’m referencing are awesome).

I spent most of my mental energy keeping my eyes open. I felt like that pug in the videos who is fighting vainly to stay awake in the middle of the day. It’s the pug life, fo’ reals, y’all.

Anyway, some days it’s okay not to be the most social person in the world. Sometimes it’s okay to be alone with your thoughts. Introversion (or just slightly less extreme extroversion) is not a sin. Some of the best minds have been introverts. Especially when they could keep their eyes open.

As I mentioned previously, if this is as bad as I’m going to feel, I’m okay. I can still function (just not without the aid of much, much coffee) and I can still fulfill all my adult obligations.

The key, as always, is to be thankful for being alive and still in mostly good health. The rest is still gravy.

 

I’m Sick

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It’s official. I have a fever and I feel bad. I’m sick.

As much as I like to think that I am brave and stoic in the face of illness, I’m not. Actually, I’m a bit of an overdramatic martyr, truth be told. In my own passive aggressive way, I want everyone around me to be aware of the agony I’m in so they can feel appropriately sorry for me and buy me nice things and do nice things for me.

I regaled more than one person with the thrilling tale of how I drove from work with the A/C off and the vent on because of the chills. It was brutal. I didn’t even sweat one drop the whole way, even though I normally would have been perspiring like the pig that’s about to be bacon.

I made sure that people saw how I was shaking and shivering under all that nasty air conditioning when I was clearly not well. Anyone should have been able to tell that just by looking at my poor miserable face.

Yet here I am, sick. Honestly, I’ve felt much crummier and if this is the worst experience I go through, I’m doing alright.

I know several who are worse off than I. I have a friend who has been to doctor after doctor trying to diagnose and lingering illness that causes her to be extremely fatigued and with a weak immune system to fight off infection. I know several who are fighting courageous battles with cancer, including one who recently lost his battle.

Viewed the right way, illness can be an opportunity rather than solely a burden. You can always serve those who are worse off than you (and if you can’t physically serve, you can send encouraging notes or texts letting them know you are thinking and praying for them. Encouraging words tend to have the same effect on those who write them as with those who receive them.

You can use illness as a means to stand in solidarity with those around the world who suffer daily from hunger, malnourishment, disease, and abuse. You can use your aches and pains as a reminder to pray to the Healing God for those everywhere who live daily with chronic pain and diseases.

This just in. I’m not at death’s door just yet. I’ll probably be right as rain in a day or two with hardly a memory of all my dire suffering.

 

The Fasting and the Feast

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“When the fast, the death, the sacrifice of the gospel is omitted from the Christian life, then it isn’t Christian at all. Not only that its boring. If I just want to feel good or get self-help, I’ll buy a $12 book from Borders and join a gym. The church the Bible described is exciting and adventurous and wrought with sacrifice. It costs believers everything and they still came. It was good news to the poor and stumped its enemies. The church was patterned after a Savior who had no place to lay his head and voluntarily died a brutal death, even knowing we would reduce the gospel to a self-serving personal improvement program where people were encouraged to make a truce with their Maker and stop sinning and join the church, when in fact the gospel does not call for a truce but a complete surrender.
Jesus said the kingdom was like a treasure hidden in a field, and once someone truly finds it, he will happily sell everything he owns to possess that field. a perfect description of the fasting and the feast. It will cost everything, but it is a treasure and an unfathomable joy. This is the balance of the kingdom; to live we must die, to be lifted we bow, to gain we must lose. There is no alternative definition, no path of least resistance, no treasure in the field without the sacrifice of everything else” (Jen Hatmaker, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Access).

So I finished reading the book 7. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s tired of the same old same old and is looking for something fresh and different. It’s for those who are weary of the prevalence of consumeristic Christianity that has overtaken much of America’s churches, along with a definite trend toward style over substance.

Most of what passes for the gospel these days is either some form of sin management, self-help program, or a variation of the “I’m okay, you’re okay, everyone’s okay.” The Apostle Paul said very clearly more than once that even if he or an angel should proclaim any other kind of gospel other than the gospel of Jesus as presented and expounded upon in the writings of Paul, let him (or her) be condemned.

I was convicted in several areas about my own excesses and my bouts of self-centeredness in opposition to serving others. We in this country have the means to alleviate a lot of the world’s suffering, but we choose rather to spend on lavish buildings   with the latest technologies and comforts. In other words, we’d rather spend it on ourselves.

So I’m telling you to run to your local bookstore (or your local laptop and your local amazon website) to get this book. You will not regret it.

 

The Love of God

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“Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky”

I had several ideas of what to write about for tonight’s post, but when I read this stanza that I posted back on this day in 2011, I knew what I had to write about.

This, the love of God, supersedes any political debate or doctrinal questions. The love of God is stronger than our doubts and deeper than our fears.

The love of God will last longer than the earth and  sky and all of human history. Nothing that the worst of humanity could ever devise will ever put and end to it or stop it from achieving its end.

I’m thankful tonight that this love of God sought me out relentlessly and wouldn’t let go until I finally relented. I’m more thankful that this love of God has never stopped pursuing me through seasons of selfishness and self-doubt.

According to what I read, this last stanza in the great hymn The Love of God was a revision of an ancient Jewish writing from over 1,000 years ago. The person wrote it on the walls of the insane asylum where he lived and was found after he died. Apparently, this was during one of his moments of lucidity.

The rest of the hymn was added around it later, but these are the words that haunt me tonight and have given my soul great rest and peace. May they do the same to you and may you remember them in the days to come when life gets hard and hectic.

 

Reaching Out with Joy

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“Father, our source of life,
You know our weakness.
May we reach out with joy to grasp your hand
and walk more readily in your ways.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever” (from The Liturgy of the Hours).

I posted this prayer exactly three years ago today on Facebook and it still echoes the longings of my heart. Too often we’ve felt weak and afraid and unsure. Too often we listen to the wrong voices that lead us into isolation and loneliness rather than into community and fellowship.

Reaching out with joy to God is admitting that we can’t overcome our weaknesses. It’s confessing our great need for God to guide us through this life.

The joy part comes in knowing that God never turns away anyone who seeks Him in earnest and will not fail to come to those who seek Him in faith.

May we reach out with joy to the God who reaches out to us in our weakest and most shameful moments.

Even You

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If you’re not a hipster, this is for you.

If you’re not a high I, type A, socially outgoing person who is always the life of the party who everyone wants to be around all the time, this is for you.

If you’re socially awkward at times and what’s in your head isn’t always what comes out of your mouth (including a long list of word you desperately wish you could take back), this is for you.

If you are an outsider, an outcast, a freak, a pariah, a loner, a loser, or just feeling unwanted and unknown and undesirable, this is for you.

When Jesus comes to your town looking for followers, He sees you hiding up in that tree like wee little Zaccheus. He sees you inching toward the back of the crowd, certain that Jesus will choose the popular and attractive people to be on His team.

He’s headed your way. You wonder if He’s about to tell you that you don’t belong here. That only the more successful more put-together, more upwardly-mobile people need apply.

But that’s not what He’s approaching you for.

He points to you. He calls you by name. Not one of the names given to you by all those who trample over you on their way to the top. Not one of the names by those who have deeply wounded your soul over the years. Not even on of the names you call yourself late at night when your defenses are down and your mind is unfiltered.

Jesus calls you by a name that you’ve never known before but know you could be. He calls out something better in you than you thought you could be. Jesus call you and tells you to follow.

“Even me?” you ask.

“Especially you,” Jesus replies. “Always you.”

Growing Young: What Maturing in the Faith Looks Like

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I listen to a lot of talk about what it means to grow up in the faith. A lot of it sounds like variations of “buckle down, grit your teeth, and try harder” or “have better morals” or “follow this 10-step plan to guaranteed maturity in six months or less.”

My idea of Christian maturity is becoming a child all over again. It’s about growing young.

I don’t mean acting childish. There is a world of difference between being childish and being childlike. You’ve all been around kids enough to tell one from the other.

Children aren’t shy about admitting their dependence. They know they need help– and lots of it. They aren’t embarrassed to seek out that help.

Too often, believers buy into the lie that you have to figure it all out on your own. That your own spiritual growth is up to you. Jesus saved you, but from now on it’s all up to you.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the disciplines of the faith and training your body, mind, and spirit to follow hard after Christ.

The best way to grow is to grow in community with those who will encourage and support you (as well as occasionally challenging you and holding you accountable). The most mature believers are the ones least ashamed to ask for help when they know they need it. They are the most aware of their own flaws and weaknesses and the grace that covers all their sin.

Christianity is all about “we” not “I”. That’s why God instituted the Church. He never intended for Lone Ranger Christians to strike out on their own and try to mature in solitude.

I still love the idea of a declaration of dependence. That’s what the Christian faith is all about. It’s not a DIY religion but an every day surrender and dependence on God and His grace. Your greatest strength still lies in surrendering and submission.

 

 

A Good Night

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So I inadvertently recycled my sunglasses tonight.

I was in the process of depositing several plastic bottles into one of the recycle containers in the Connection Center of Brentwood Baptist Church (also known as The Place Where They Have Kairos on Tuesdays).

I’m still not exactly sure of the order of events (or even 100% positive of the sunglasses part) but I believe that when I bent down to beautify the planet by not adding to the already overflowing landfills and being green and all that, my sunglasses slipped off my shirt and into the container (along with one unopened water bottle that I fully intended to drink).

Something a guy I work with came to mind: if that’s the worst thing that happens to me tonight, I’m having a good night.

Later, the main speaker, Chris Brooks, said something that arrested my attention. He said that while emotions can be very real, they aren’t always reliable. Immediately, my mind went to Jeremiah 17:9 where the heart, the seat of all emotions, is described as “most devious and incurably sick.”

I’ve learned that one the hard way over the years. Trial and error have taught me never to trust my emotions when I’m fatigued or hungry (and especially not when it’s a combination of the two).

While feelings can be legitimate, they can be misleading. I remember something a friend said once that I’ve never forgotten– feelings can lie to you, so you go with what you know.

In my case, I remember that Jesus promised that everything would turn out fine in the end (and if it’s not fine, it’s not yet the end). Jesus promised that He’d work all things together for good. Jesus promised never to leave or forsake me.

I cling to these promises when my feelings tell me they have failed. I hold fast to what Jesus said over what I feel because while my feelings come and go, Jesus’ words are eternal and secure.

I ended up making a late night run to Kroger’s and picking up another pair of shades just like the ones I accidentally discarded. Next time, I hope I’ll be a little less careless when saving the planet.

 

Being Good Stewards

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“But as certainly as God created man in His image, He first created the earth. With the same care He designed  sixty thousand miles of blood vessels in the human body, He also crafted hydrangeas and freshwater rapids and hummingbirds. He balanced healthy ecosystems with precision and established climates and beauty. He integrated colors and smells  and sounds that would astonish humanity. The details He included while designing the earth are so extraordinary, it is no wonder He spend five of the six days of creation on it.

So why don’t we care for the earth anywhere near to the degree we do our bodies? Why don’t we fuss and examine and steward creation with the same tenacity? Why aren’t we refusing complicity in the ravaging of our planet? Why aren’t we determined to stop pillaging the earth’s resources like savages? Why do we mock environmentalists and undermine their passion for conservation? Do we think ourselves so superior to the rest of creation that we are willing to deplete the earth to supply our luxuries? If so, we may very well be the last generation who gets that prerogative” (Jen Hatmaker, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess).

It really bothers me that people will go out of their way NOT to recycle. It may seem like such a small detail, but I think it’s a symptom of a lackadaisical disregard for the planet we live on.

We are called to be stewards. So why then do we act so often like consumers and users instead? If we honor God by honoring His creation, do we dishonor Him when we abuse and disregard what He has made?

What are we telling our children about the value of creation when we don’t take care of it and waste its resources?

I’m asking these questions because I am trying to figure this all out for myself. I don’t want to be another of those who are wasteful because they believe that our earth’s resources are unlimited.

At the end of the day, I’m thankful for grace that is greater than any of my wastefulness and greed and selfishness. I’m thankful for grace greater than any of my sin.