Lent: Signs

I admit I feel squeamish looking for signs from God.  It can feel mystical or new age or dare I say, a little desperate.  But Jesus' last days were ripe with them...roosters crowing, veils tearing, miraculous healings, bleeding prayers.  Jerusalem was a hotbed of signs and wonders with hundreds of prophecies violently, joyfully fulfilling in a single God-man and his supreme act of love.  How could the earth NOT quake?!



Witnessing signs is akin to the tearing of the veil in the temple.  Maybe not as dramatic, but still a moment where God allows me to glimpse his glory, to taste a bit of his power this side of heaven.  But I rarely think to ask.  Or look.  Or attribute.  

You see, Jesus  contrasted the ready faith of the Samaritan's with the restricted faith of the Galileans, who demanded signs and wonders to believe.  He said irritably in John 4:48, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe."  Paul confirms in 2 Cor 5:7, "We live by faith, not by sight."  So I mostly don't ask.  

Yesterday, I did.  I was wrestling with something that I needed to figure out, embrace, and submit to.  The day was beautiful and I had 20 minutes of spare time waiting for my daughter to finish bell choir practice at Assisi Heights, the glorious Catholic convent imposingly perched on a hill in my town. Thanks to its Roman architecture and castle-like quality, I had my kids convinced for years that it's where the princess of Rochester lives.  

On the hillside of the beautiful grounds is a quiet niche surrounded by sandstone walls crosscut with gnarly oak roots.  At the far end, a shrine of Mary.  I have visited the open sanctuary many times and have always sensed it to be a sacred spot, not because someone ordained it to be sacred, but because it becomes holy ground to me when I enter.  

I went there requesting a sign.  I specifically asked God to lead me to a rock, something I could hold as a reminder that I was living out my calling and was committed to spiritual growth.  I walked slowly along the curving wall, enjoying the playful squirrels, when one of them knocked loose a stone, which rolled to my feet.  I picked it up with a smile and held it in my hand, studying it. Yes, it was the product of nature and gravity and weak sandstone and busy squirrels, but it was, in that veil-tearing moment, a sign which filled me with wonder.  

Lent: Simultaneity

I spent the last 20 hours either sleeping or battling the stomach flu.  Oy!  I missed church and small group, grocery shopping, and weekly planning and now I'm starting the week out with a residual headache and a sense of being behind already.  

But as I sat on the front porch this balmy morning, sipping coffee and chatting with my husband who is in China, I though about the value of being emptied (sorry for the visual.)  Letting go of schedules and duties and commitments is not easy for me, but there is spiritual discipline in both fulfilling and withdrawing from them.  

Jesus, in his final hours, both fulfilled and withdrew.  

But I'm learning we can develop the art of simultaneous fulfilling and withdrawing.  Life can be lived in synchronized work and worship.  In my favorite book on the devotional life, A Testament of Devotion, Thomas Kelly writes 

"At the first practice of inward prayer is a process of alternation of attention between outer things and the Inner Light.  Preoccupation with either brings the loss of the other, yet what is sought is not alternation, but simultaneity, worship undergirding every moment, living prayer, the continuous current and background of all moments of life."  

This, I feel, is my highest calling: to "walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship." -T. Kelly

Lent: Crumpled

I've pondered words and lessons in the many days since I last posted my "daily" Lenten thoughts, but I've let the urgent edge out the eternal and failed to still my heart and listen.  That is part of my Lenten journey...to face the truth about my weaknesses and feel bathed in Grace.

As I opened the shade on our south window yesterday, the bright March sun burst through with a magnificent blast of light, which hit the round prism on the sill and exploded in a rainbow of shredded color across the room.  That is my picture of grace breaking into a contrite heart.   Thank you, Lord.

I've been on an unusual mission to help save our local youth theater through a variety of efforts: presenting, fundraising, creating a musical.  My time is swallowed up there.  I used to think that a mission like this was secular work, and perhaps competed with my spiritual work, which I equated to serving at church.  I unwisely divided the sacred from the secular.  

But I am learning the beautiful truth of this verse:

Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. 1 Timothy 4:4–5

I have made this mission holy by praying for it.  And by praying for it and seeing it as sacred work, I see God everywhere in it, and I uncover constant opportunities to be His message in both word and deed.  

Oswald Chambers, in this insightful devotional, said:

The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Ghost, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message.

Jesus, walking the road to Golgotha, was crumpled for the purposes of God.  But his light was about to break forth.  May I walk each moment in that divine paradox of crumpled glory.

Then your light shall break forth like the morning,

Your healing shall spring forth speedily,

And your righteousness shall go before you;

The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Isaiah 58:8

Lent: Stumble

I'm stumbling over stones on this dusty Lenten road to Golgotha. Jesus is trudging slowly up the road, dragging his cross, which leaves a deep groove in the dirt behind him, and I am stumbling awkwardly beside him, tripping every third step. It would have been easier to give up sweets for 40 days.

The stone in my path last night was the documentary Dropbox, which I saw with friends and my daughter in a local theater.  Pastor Lee of Seoul, South Korea, shared his heart and ministry for orphans, abandoned babies, and children with severe and profound disabilities.   Most of his 15 children are all three, and many times a week, the little bell on his baby dropbox rings, revealing an unwanted bundled newborn.  He loves the least of the least of the least.  

It's an inspiring movie, beautifully filmed with sweet moments of levity, tragedy, hope.   The young American director who set out to find a cool story and win a Sundance prize was so moved by his six months in the orphanage, sleeping on the floor with the children, that he surrendered his life to Christ.  

It's a stumbling stone because it is asking me what I am doing for the least of them.  I am possibly more informed than the average person on global orphan needs and child trafficking, I help out my adoptive family friends when I can, and I give to causes that serve these groups.  So why do I stumble?  

I think Christ does not want us to shrug helplessly ever.  He would rather have us faceplant.  He appoints each of us times, kairos times, to step/stumble into a space where our ability meets someone's need.  We can spin on our heal and walk the other way, of course, or we can crack open and spill out.  

I close with these difficult verses on confession of my/our rebellion, which drives back justice and incites oppression.  I'm sorry, Jesus.  Show me a better way.

For our offenses are many in your sight,

    and our sins testify against us.

Our offenses are ever with us,

    and we acknowledge our iniquities:

13 

rebellion and treachery against the Lord,

    turning our backs on our God,

inciting revolt and oppression,

    uttering lies our hearts have conceived.

14 

So justice is driven back,

    and righteousness stands at a distance;

truth has stumbled in the streets,

    honesty cannot enter.

15 

Truth is nowhere to be found,

    and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.

Isaiah 59;12-15

Lent: Kairos

  

My pastor on Sunday shared an interesting contrast in words.  The Greeks were bright enough to have two words for the concept of time.  Chronos refers to hours, minutes, seconds; the time I watch click by on the big, round clock across from me. The Greek god Chronos was represented with an hourglass and a scythe.  Symbolically appropriate, I'd say.  I've often felt the sting of the scythe of chronos.

Kairos, in contrast, is the word for "an appointed time," a "supreme moment."  It is the winged god holding the balance of time that has reached its tipping point.  It is the "ripeness" of time spoken of here:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…” and so on.

In the first Greek translations of the Bible, each use of the word ‘time’ in the above passage is rendered as kairos, not chronos.

Mark says, “The KAIROS has come, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Mark 1:15

I FEEL chronos.  I feel it in the shoulder that won't fully heal because of the sophomoric trick I did while snow tubing in January. I SEE it in the eyes and minds and bodies of my children.  

But I HEAR kairos.  The Holy Spirit speaks to me in the language of kairos.  Throughout the day it says, "Move now.  Speak now.  Listen now.  Give now.  Do now. Rest now."  

It told Esther:  "Now is your moment.  Speak."  It told Gideon, "You, unlikely man; you, man of valor.  This time is for you.  Move now!"  It told Jesus, "The time has come for the cross."

The Bible is drenched with kairos.  So is my life.  As  I listen carefully during this Lenten journey, I hear two sounds:  the unrelenting ticking of chronos and the unmistakable voice of kairos.  

Lent: Feet

I sometimes feel that lump of nostalgia rise in my throat over the passage of time, what it has done to the fuzzy-haired, footy-pajamaed bodies that used to shuffle up for a hug first thing in the morning, their favorite blankies trailing behind.  Now I look UP even to the 11-year-old.  Just a titch.  Today, my son will come down in a shirt and tie and beeline out the door for work with a quick hi.  The girls will be checking emails and instragrams while pouring their cereal.  If there are hugs, they will be initiated by me.  

When they were little, I pulled them aside one summer day and took a picture of their feet, which I framed and hung in the bathroom.  On days when I glimpse their impossibly big feet and have to grab the doorframe of the mudroom to brace myself against the shoe odor (Toms are the worst!), I make my way to that series of pictures and smile, praying for the hard and good places those feet will take them.  

My hands-down favorite mental picture of Jesus is him bent down washing the tired feet of his dusty band of misfits, the very hour of his death.  He taught powerfully with words and parables, but nothing short of the cross could express Isaiah's haunting words, "He humbled himself," like this tender act.  

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.  After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.  John 13:3-5

This was not out of character.  He got up and washed their feet because he came from God and was returning to God.  

A woman washed my feet once.  After a summer Bible study years ago, our hostess arranged a time of foot-washing.  We took turns washing and being washed.  It was awkward and lovely and memorable.  I could identify with Simon Peter, who protested, "No, this isn't right," but I could also sense the rightness of it.  The blessing.

 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. John 13:14-17

Lent reminds me that time is brief and should be filled with much bending and washing of feet, even in our worst moments.

Lent: Memory

"One of the great sorrows which came to human beings when Adam and Eve left the garden was the loss of memory, memory of all that God's children are meant to be."  Madeline L'Engle, Walking on Water

Could the awkward, unsettled parts of my life be caused by the forgetting?  I strive to "fulfill my calling" and "use my gifts," but always there is something out there, just beyond my reach; elusive, something that would fully satisfy my cravings and smooth out the wrinkles in my sheets.  

A friend and I were talking about where he and his dream fit in this world.  He shrugged and said, "We're aliens anyway."  He doesn't expect to fit east of Eden.   

The Scriptures respond to this ache:  wait, be patient, persevere, hope.  

Observing Lent has been an exercise in memory...remembering the man of sorrows, from the ragged edges of his story to the blazing cross at the center, and remembering what that means for me: that because I identify with this grand story, from Adam to Christ, I know there is something I'm forgetting.

Lent: Confession

I recently asked a young Catholic friend, Claire, about her experience in a confessional.  I admitted I thought it was a strange, unnecessary step in the process of spiritual reconciliation.  We have unlimited access to Christ through his work on the cross, so why climb in a little booth and recount our sins to a human intercessor?  

She looked at me with a knowing smile, her curly red hair framing her beautiful, pale features.  She said something like, "I know people who didn't grow up with it think it's strange, but I think it's beautiful."  She told me about her first confessional, where the priest came to her home and gentle encouraged her in the art of identifying sin.  She explained how it helps her be conscious of and accountable for her sin, and how confessing it aloud frees her from guilt and reconnects her to Christ.   

I can see the beauty of it now.  

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.  James 5:16

I am learning to name my sin, to call overeating "gluttony" and impure thoughts "lust," and to discern the pride and idolatry that creep into my thoughts and actions, but I have a lot to learn about confession.  I want to jump right into the pool of grace before taking the shower of confession.  

While I don't intend to slip into a confessional booth, I am convinced that there is value in confessing sin in a safe community.  I did this one day in my ladies' small group.  I unleashed my tongue and my heart and took a chance to confess something raw and embarrassing.  Behold, the power that Claire and the Book of James described manifested in my life!  Beauty. Freedom.  Healing.  
Confession to one another celebrates the expiation of our sin and the sanctifying work of God through the cross of Christ (1 John 1:9). Confession to another Christian also guards us from absolving ourselves without true repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). Bonhoeffer writes that God gives us certainty that we are dealing with the living God “through our brother” (116).  from this excellent article:  Confessing our Sins Together by John Piper

Lent teaches that if I want to draw near to God, I need to take sin seriously through earnest confession to God and to my brother.  

Lent: Misgivings

It's only one week into Lent and I'm having misgivings about my ability to be consistent and committed to this One Word project.  I would have misgivings if I was fasting, too.  I'd forget and eat the chocolate if I was fasting from sweets.  I'd sneak a peak on Facebook if I was fasting from social media. 

I remember reading a blog about fasting by Ann Voskamp some years ago.  She reminded me that the whole point of giving something up for Lent is to prove our pathetic weakness and our great need for Christ.  

Lent paints the sad picture of how we crave earthly things more than Christ.  I sit down in the mornings and really just want to surf the net, check in with Facebook friends, and respond to emails.  I don't want to ponder great Biblical truths.  I don't want anything that smacks of discipline in these early hours.  

 Lent takes us deep into the dark heart of humanity, where we realize we would have probably had a role in the ancient story. Would we have been a scoffer in the crowd?  Would we have been weak like Pontius Pilate or violent like the guards?  Would we have been unfaithful to Christ like Peter or betrayed Christ like Judas.  

I'd like to think I would be Mary with the long hair, cracking open the jar of exquisite, fragrant oil to pour on Christ's feet.  

Maybe, but I have misgivings about that, too.  Lent reveals that I can't even follow the primary commandment of Christ.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  Matthew 22:37

Lent teaches that this is not possible.  I cannot love with all my heart.  It will always be divided.  But through Christ's work on the cross, I can earnestly pray with the psalmist:

Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.  Psalm 86:11

Lent: Held

One look in Karmen's eyes last night, and we both started crying.  We were at a Sara Grove's concert when Sara started talking about friendship; how her group of four close friends stand at the corner of a stretcher for each other.  That story did us in.  Both our minds went to this Scripture:

Four men came to Jesus carrying a man who could not move his body. These men could not get near Jesus because of so many people. They made a hole in the roof of the house over where Jesus stood. Then they let down the bed with the sick man on it.  Mark 2:3-4

Several years ago, four of us adopted this Scripture as our standing orders.  We would be at the corners for each other so that we could always feel supported.  Since then, our little group has tested the stretcher many times, and we've taken our turns holding and being held.  I even wrote a song called "At the Corners" to seal the promise. 

Four Corners:  Vicki, Emma, Karmen, me

Now one of us is gone.  When Emma died of cancer two weeks ago, we stood together and grieved.  Part of the grief is that the image of the four corners doesn't work anymore.  It's all lopsided.  

Today, Lent reminds me Christ fills all empty spaces.  He holds all things together.  He girds up the weak points.  He is the final word on standing in the gap.  Emma is with Him in heaven even as He is with us here on earth, standing in her place.  

Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord. Jeremiah 23:24

Karmen, Sara Groves, and me

Lent: Lonliness

As I shared lunch with a friend on Sunday, we fell into a conversation about what kinds of suffering bother us most.  For her, it was loneliness, particularly seeing elderly people eating alone.  

I've thought about lonely hearts quite a bit lately.  I read this article recently about drug addiction which pointed out addiction is not so much a crime against society as a symptom of loneliness, and that when you remove the stigma of crime and put addicted people in strong community, the problem is decimated.  It resonated deeply with me.  

I've worried about friends suffering alone, and of Emma's little Gracie, who just lost her mother to cancer, of her impending loneliness.   I've not had to endure loss like that, though I have had seasons of loneliness as a young mother and a new college student.  I think our society calls it depression, but maybe it is just a secret, sad space of disconnection and dissatisfaction.  

I imagine the road to Golgotha was as lonesome a road as any.  Jesus was surrounded his whole life by people who, at best, did not understand him, and at worst, despised him.  He walked his final steps, dragging his own cross, surrounded by people, but utterly alone.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Isaiah 53:3  

and so, this:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses...  Hebrews 4:15

This is not a Christian platitude for loneliness.  This is a truth to cling to.  And it is a reminder to extend empathy and to let it move you bravely into the circle of someone's loneliness.  

Lent: Chaff

The wisest people I know have discovered how to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Chaff is light, airy, useless fluff; wheat is the kernel of  nourishment.  So they lay their commitments, their attitudes, and their goals down on the threshing floor and pound.  

This process can hurt.  It hurts to give up good things for best things.  It hurts to relinquish long held attitudes and habits in an effort to align with Christ.  It's risky to ask God to direct your future and shape your goals.  What if he calls you to do something radical?  

This process is confusing.  A single activity can be both wheat and chaff.  Facebook, for instance, can be used for encouragement and ministry or can stir up trouble and sin.  Mundane tasks can be frustrating burdens, or, if taken to the threshing floor, can become sacred moments.  

Picture this:  you step into the sanctuary of the laundry room.  You smell the staleness of sin and the freshness of new life mingled together.  You move dirty clothes into the washer, close the door, and watch the magic. You pull out fresh, clean clothes from the dryer, thinking on each person represented by t-shirts and underwear and little wadded socks.  You give thanks at the white metal altar.  Suddenly, what once felt like chaff becomes nourishment to the soul.  

Christ spent his life and sweated blood trying to help people see the difference between the wheat and the chaff before his own body was flailed.  

His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.  Luke 3:16

Lent: Suffering

On Day 5 of Lent, I think a friend is contemplating suicide.  It's just a gut feeling, which places me in a quandry.  Do I speak?  Do I wait?  Do I hope and pray I'm mistaken?   What is my place in this distant friendship?  His life has completely unraveled in Job-like fashion, but I am just on the Facebook periphery, which is a weird, hand-wringing place to be.

It leads me to think about suffering.  I witnessed suffering this year in its most heart-wrenching intensity as Emma's cancer raged.  But she beautifully used it to testify to God's glory and provision, and thus, all that the Bible promises about the good things suffering produces were evident in her life and death.  Not unlike Jesus walking the road to Golgotha, weeping and praying, but knowing and trusting.  

Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.-Tim Keller

What is it like to have a Job-like life without a Job-like faith? What is it like to feel this part of a psalm...

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?  Psalm 22:1

without this...

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly.  Psalm 22:25

Lent: Unknowing

I have a mentor who is teaching me through example and gentle instruction to sit in the Mystery, to relinquish my need to control, understand, and plan.  He promises that it is messy and holds no guarantees of worldly success but that it develops a keen awareness of God's smallest provisions.  

It's the opposite of knowing but the equivalent of love.  

I am bad at it.  The poet in me likes mystery, but the rest of me likes to execute a plan and enjoys positive feedback.  

The ancient church fathers often had adroit descriptions of our walk with Christ.  One anonymous writer from the Middle Ages described God as dwelling in a Cloud of Unknowing that could only be pierced with a dart of longing.  

Longing, tense and acute, should drench this Lenten journey.  And after the 40 day walk to the cross, shall I expect to know the Unknowable better?  My guess is that the mystery will build, like a bank of clouds, but so, I pray, will the Love. 



O God, you are my God,
  and I long for you.
My whole being desires you;
  like a dry, worn-out, and waterless land,
  my soul is thristy for you.
Let me see you in the sanctuary;
  let me see how mighty and glorious you are.
Your constant love is better than life itself,
  and so I will praise you.
I will give you thanks as long as I live;
  I will raise my hands to you in prayer.
My soul will feast and be satisfied,
  and I will sing glad songs of praise to you.
from Psalm 63

Lent: Presence

When I embarked yesterday on this Lenten "word meditation," I wondered how I would know to which word I should  fasten my thoughts.  My days are full of words.  I worked for 2 hours yesterday with 15 kids collaborating on a musical we are writing.  That session alone was an explosion of words!  

But God, who planted this idea in my heart, is faithful to bring one word bubbling to the surface this morning:  presence.

What do I desire from this Lenten journey?  What does God desire of me?  Presence, I think.

Me drawing near to Him through contemplation, through small deeds done in love, through telling of his goodness.  Him drawing near to me because I ask, because that's who He is, an eager dance partner who will pull me close and lead out with joy. 

 “I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the presence of GOD. For my part I keep myself retired with Him in the depth of centre of my soul as much as I can; and while I am so with Him I fear nothing; but the least turning from Him is insupportable.” 
― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

As I sat in a ladies' Bible study yesterday, I learned of a helpful distinction regarding the presence of God.  One attribute of God is his omnipresence.  That he can be everywhere at once is a mind-blowing feat, but I tend to accept his omnipresence in stride.  

What I cannot overlook is his manifest presence...the times when his utter being breaks through the veil in rays of light and warmth and revelation, and I viscerally react with tears or goosebumps.  

I find I'm most prone to experience God's manifest presence when I am in worship or when I am telling a story about Him or his people; when I am actively thinking on His glory.  

But as for me, it is good to be near God.

    I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;

    I will tell of all your deeds.  Psalm 73:28

Yesterday, as I sat at a corner table in a coffee shop with my laptop and headphones, this song came on the Pandora classical channel: Tribute and Angus Dei by Michael W. Smith.   It broke through my thoughts with its gorgeous crescendo, and God's manifest presence joined me for tea.  Goosebumps.