parables

My Favorite Gospel

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luke

“The synagogue attendant gave Him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus unrolled it to the place where Isaiah had written these words:

The Spirit of the Lord the Eternal One is on Me.
Why? Because the Eternal designated Me
to be His representative to the poor, to preach good news to them.
He sent Me to tell those who are held captive that they can now be set free,
and to tell the blind that they can now see.
He sent Me to liberate those held down by oppression.
In short, the Spirit is upon Me to proclaim that now is the time;
this is the jubilee season of the Eternal One’s grace.[a]

Jesus rolled up the scroll and returned it to the synagogue attendant. Then He sat down, as a teacher would do, and all in the synagogue focused their attention on Jesus, waiting for Him to speak. He told them that these words from the Hebrew Scriptures were being fulfilled then and there, in their hearing” (Luke 4:17-21).

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me what my favorite gospel was. It had something to do with my personality type. I said my favorite was Luke, but I couldn’t really pinpoint why other than pointing out the way Luke notices and writes down all the little details.

I think I know why now.

I’m in a class at my church where we’re reading through a Gospel each week and this past week, I read Luke. Well, actually, the past two days. I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

More than any of the Gospel writers, Luke is a champion of the disenfranchised and the outcast. He’s the only one to mention the lowly shepherds who were chosen by God to be the first evangelists and missionaries for the newborn Christ.

He points out that Joseph and Mary couldn’t afford a lamb so they brought two turtle-doves instead.

He’s the only one to include the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the hero is a despised outcast, as well as pointing out that the Good News is for all peoples everywhere. For people like me. For people like you.

That’s why I love the Gospel of Luke.

PS They’re all really, really good. I recommend reading one (or all of them) at some point very soon.

Things I Love 26: Sowing the Seeds of Love

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island hammock

“A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ” (Ann Voskamp).

“…life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change” (Ann Voskamp).

I think for me two of the biggest agents of change have been 1) letting go of expectations of others and 2) receiving all of life as a gift. Making this list has changed my outlook. I have too many blessings to not see God in my daily world. I have been blessed too much not to want to be a conduit of blessing to others. That said, the list picks up at #726

726) God using me in the lives of those around me who don’t know Jesus to be Jesus to them.

727) The moment when you realize that the headache is gone.

728) Unplanned naps on Sunday afternoons.

729) Any time I get a chance to have a conversation with my smart and funny friend Alex.

730) Getting compliments on my t-shirts.

731) Not being naked in public.

732) The anticipation of coming to a good part in a book I’ve already read before.

733) Old Glenn Miller recordings.

734) Those pens that have the four different colors of ink.

735) Finding something of mine that I thought was lost forever.

736) That everybody doesn’t think like I do.

737) The smell of a freshly painted room.

738) The way Jesus told the best stories.

739) Gibson’s Donuts (even though there aren’t any in Nashville . . . yet).

740) The scent of honeysuckle in the air.

741) Picking blackberries in summer.

742) Being a Bapticostalicopalean (Baptist+Pentecostal+Catholic+Episcopalian) at heart.

743) Dreams that refuse to die.

744) Goat cheese.

745) The idea of changing the world by changing one person’s world.

746) Hearing people’s stories of how Jesus found and rescued them.

747) Seeing the glow of a person coming out of the baptismal waters a new creation in Christ.

748) The smell of the tire section at Costco.

749) Road trips.

750) Capturing a moment and a feeling inside a photograph.

751) Old graveyards.

752) My book of Emily Dickinson poems that I’ve somehow managed to misplace.

753) That I’m over 3/4 of the way through my list.

754) The freedom of finally being able to forgive myself for not being perfect.

755) Wintergreen or spearmint gum.

756) A now discontinued flavor of Snapple called Ralph’s Cantaloupe Cocktail that actually tasted just like cantaloupes.

757) Memories of riding standing up on the back of my dad’s old pickup truck with Murphy the black lab in the middle, grinning like an idiot and loving every minute of it (I meant the dog, but I’m sure I was smiling a mile wide, too)

758) Finding one Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels in hardback at a used bookshop.

759) People who always give me the benefit of the doubt.

760) Those Market Fresh BLTs from Arby’s.

Telling Stories

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I just finished watching The Descendants, a film I really liked. It got me thinking about why I love movies. It isn’t because they advance some social or even religious cause. It isn’t because they push boundaries and stir up controversy. It isn’t because of some elaborate CGI-driven special effects.

I love a good movie because at its heart it is all about a good story well told.

To me, a good story is one that I find my story in. I can relate to the characters and what they’re going through. Sometimes, I may wish my life were like that. Sometimes, I find myself empathizing with them because I’ve gone through similar circumstances.

There was no one better at telling stories than Jesus during His earthly ministry. He told stories, or parables, that each revealed a truth about God. The people who heard these stories could relate to them, because they could find their stories in them.

We are called to be witnesses for Christ. That doesn’t mean we argue for the validity of the faith or why Christianity is better than all the other religions out there. We don’t try to prove the Bible or creation or God. We simply tell our stories.

Not to say that these things aren’t important. We can defend the Bible and creation and God (although the last time I checked, He didn’t need our help defending Himself). But no one can argue with you about what God has done in your life and how you are different than you used to be. No one can refute a transformation or a new creation.

This blog is one way I choose to tell my story. Like yours, my story is a work-in-progress, an epic novel with the ending still unwritten. I happen to know the Author of the story and I’m convinced the ending is one you won’t want to miss.

The same goes for your story, too, if you let God write it.

 

Wheat and Weeds

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I keep thinking about wheat and weeds a lot. Not because I’m in need of medication (and yes, they do make pills for this), but because I’m still thinking about a particular sermon I heard Sunday. It was that good.

I’m wheat. Just go with it and it will make sense further on (I hope). I am planted in a field where wheat and weeds are mixed together and sometimes are hard to tell apart.

My job is not to try to decide which is which.

I could make a list of top ten most dangerous weeds– that is, the people I’d most like God to take out and smite. The problem with that is that I am most likely on someone else’s List of Folks for God to Smite Tomorrow.

Or I could just be the best wheat I can be and love people.

Oh yeah, I forgot one thing. I was once a weed.

In other words, I once was purpose-less and no good for anybody or anything. I once had no hope at all and was headed for a grim ending.

But God made me wheat. Is that anymore hard to believe than God changing me from dead to alive, from sinner to saint, from stanger to family, from alienated to beloved? No.

If God can to that in me, He can do it in anyone. Trust me on that.

From this moment on, I am believing the best about everyone I meet. I believe God can change anyone, make broken and dead people whole and alive, take your mess and make it your message, and help you find your YES, the reason you were born.

I choose to see you not as you are, but what you will look like when God gets through with you (and trust me, what I’m seeing is absolutely stunning!) I’m praying to see you with God’s eyes and love you with God’s heart and be God’s hands and feet to help you get to where God designed for you to shine.

Cause that’s just what wheat does.

Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given

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lifeofthebeloved

“During the meal, Jesus took and blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples: Take, eat. This is my body” (Matthew 26:26).

I’m in the middle of another Henri Nouwen book and I am loving it. He more than any other writer (except for maybe Brennan Manning) always seems to speak to where I am right here and now.

He says, “To identify the movements of the Spirit in our lives, I have found it helpful to use four words: ‘taken,’ ‘blessed,’ broken,’ and ‘given.'”

I had never thought about it that way before. I never looked at Jesus breaking the bread at Passover and made an analogy to my own life.

We are taken (or chosen) by God who loved us from the start. We are blessed by Him with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. We are broken by our own sin and the broken and marred world we live in with so much poverty, injustice, and inhumanity. We are given to be God’s hands and feet to bring healing and justice and compassion into the world.

I read somewhere that my life is loaves and fishes. Remember the ones that Jesus used to feed the 5,000? In and of myself, I can’t do much. But if I am blessed and broken and poured out, God can bless so many more through me.

News flash: God takes and uses broken lives, scarred hearts, screwed-up pasts, and promises left unfulfilled. He can use anybody. In fact, He more often than not prefers the outcasts and nobodies and failures to be the ones to turn the world upside down (see the 12 disciples for examples).

Lord, may I be taken by You, Who chose me before I was born and gave me the name Beloved, and blessed with as much of You as I can stand. Break my heart for the things that break Yours and then give me out to those in need.

PS The book I’m reading is Life of the Beloved. Expect more blogs to come out of this. I’m not even halfway through. And, to throw in yet another shameless plug, go buy or download or pilfer or ingest this book as soon as humanly possible. It’s that good.