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