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.