Month: February 2023

First Love

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography5 Comments

We saw Jesus Revolution yesterday. Wow, that brought back memories! I remembered the clothes, the hair, the music, the Romeo and Juliet clip (I let my straight dark parted-in-the-middle hair grow down to my waist after seeing that movie). I also remembered the atmosphere in those days. It reminded me a lot of what is happening again. We were also a generation with trust issues.

I’m a few months younger than Greg Laurie, the searching high school student in the movie. We both grew up in the Cold War years with the threat of nuclear annihilation feeling very real. Some guys I knew were drafted to fight, against their wills, in a proxy war they were told was to protect their way of life. We were manipulated by media marketing that urged our parents to go into debt to make sure we got to the consumer trough first. We witnessed the consequences of pollution and environmental carelessness in the name of corporate profit. We were offered unrestrained sexual expression and recreational drug use as valid, mind-expanding escapes. Sound familiar?

Lately, my attention has been drawn to a phrase inspired by the message in the book of Revelation to the church in Ephesus, a church that worked hard at doing good deeds, but somewhere along the way had lost the plot. The phrase is: “Return to your first love.”

Sometimes, when a married couple is struggling, a counselor will ask, “What first attracted you to each other?” Sometimes in the three-legged race that is a partnership that includes kids, financial and time budgets, and differing priorities, we can lose the plot and forget why we even entered this crazy contest. Sometimes, in a church with all the complexities of “one-anothering,” in a group with an even greater variety of beliefs, expectations, and quirks, we lose the plot.

The film provoked me to remember first love. I remembered falling in love with the guy who would become my husband. I wanted to know him better. I also remembered giving my yes to the invitation to “know Jesus” and get baptised.

What did I know about love? Frankly, like Greg in the movie, I had no guarantee that the love Jesus offered was not just another manipulative ploy to get me to serve “a way of life” some institution decided ought to be preserved. Like Greg, I took the risk and discovered that Jesus was who he said he was.

By the end of the film, the man who has loved me and stayed with me through some pretty tough times in the past fifty years was still there sitting beside me, holding my hand. Tears filled our eyes as we remembered our mutual first love for each other and for Jesus and his faithfulness to us. It’s something we dearly want to see the current generation of young people experience.

He’s real, man.

Whatever It Takes

On By Charis PsalloIn ArtLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking about gain and loss today. I’ve been reading about persecution around the world. It’s one thing to choose to follow Jesus in a culture where family, friends and colleagues are also believers, or there are, at least, no serious consequences. It is quite another thing when choosing to be a disciple of Christ means rejection by beloved parents, brothers, sisters and community. In places where not having a seat at the table is the result of shame dumped on a new Christian, choosing to walk a lonely path requires a courage few of us can raise on our own.

More than once I have spoken to sincere seekers who faced a hard choice.

“I want to leave my guilt and shame behind and believe in Jesus,” one young woman told me, “But I couldn’t hurt my father that way. It would disappoint him so much.”

“It would break my mother’s heart,” said another with tears in his eyes.

I don’t know what they decided.

A man I met in the U.K. in a class we both took told me, “My family said I brought dishonour upon them by my choice to become a Christian. They have tried to kill me more than once. My own mother fed me poison,” he said, his voice growing softer. “I know they will try to kill me again if I go back to my home country, but they need to know God loves them. Jesus died and overcame death to show them that he is not angry with them. I can’t turn back. Jesus loves me. I am his servant. Whatever it takes…”

What struck me was that none of these dear ones were rebellious by nature, nor were they angry with their families. In fact, they were the opposite. They cared deeply about loved ones. The issue they all wrestled with was the question of how to love God first, then others. Sometimes I feel like avoiding relatives who merely disapprove of my fashion choices and taste in music. Would I be willing to be misunderstood, to be disinherited, to lose everything and everyone dear to me to love them with the love of the Lord?

That kind of love, that kind of faith, can only come as a gift of empowering grace from the One who sees the beginning from the end. How I admire those with the determination to hold tightly to the Saviour and find their true home in the family of God.

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:29 NASB)

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate in hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1,2 NASB)

Greatest

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Trees and forests2 Comments

Jesus called a little child to his side and set him on his feet in the middle of them all. “Believe me,” he said, “unless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. It is the man who can be as humble as this little child who is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.

Matthew 18:2-4 Phillips

Have you noticed that children do not possess many of the things that many people assume will earn positions of influence or power? They don’t have tons of money, or a impressive resumé, or outstanding talent. Even cuteness has an expiry date and doesn’t help much when it comes to gaining status. A child actually holds very little status in society. A little kid may try to throw their weight around, but since they have little to throw, an adult can easily pick them up and instantly change their plans.

A child doesn’t need any of these things when they are loved perfectly by a good father. What a child possesses, that most adults do not, is a drive to learn and grow, enough confidence to try new things, and trust in the one who loves them and lifts them to see the world from Papa’s perspective.

A child doesn’t work at being humble or put herself down. A child looks to the one who loves him most, lifts his arms and asks, “Up?”

And that’s the heart attitude where greatness resides.

Feelings

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I learned about a word I wasn’t familiar with — orthopathy.

“Orthodoxy” is thinking in alignment with God.

“Orthopraxy” is acting in alignment with God.

“Orthopathy” is feeling in alignment with God.

It comes from ortho – right, and pathos – emotion. For those accusing people experiencing personal encounters with God in places like Asbury University as mere “emotionalism,” may I remind you that Jesus himself wept with compassion, cried out in agony, and danced in ecstasy -in front of God the Father and everybody? I’d rather follow his example than a stoic heresy hunter’s.

After this long season of crisis, all of us, but children and youth especially, have been subject to a campaign of fear, disappointment, and negativity. The result is rampant depression and anxiety. I continue to pray with weeping for emotional healing and freedom for this generation. I sing for joy when I see it starting to happen.

Love Song

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folks, Music, Photography6 Comments

In 1975, a month after we moved across the country to Vancouver, British Columbia, I had a miscarriage.

Between October and January that year, there was only one day I remember that wasn’t made even darker by oppressively low clouds. We lived in a dark closet-less basement suite with the circulated scent of our upstairs neighbours’ love of curried cauliflower wafting through the heat vents accompanied by the sound of their favourite ethnic music crackling through an intercom that didn’t shut off.

My husband worked long hours teaching and doing post-doctoral research amid the publish-or-perish culture of the university. The new church we went to had a nursery room without a speaker connected to the sanctuary. I sat alone with a hyperactive toddler in that room week after week just for the chance to connect with someone in the foyer after the service.

I was exhausted. I was depressed. I was profoundly lonely. I was in mourning for a child no one but my husband and I knew had existed. Not one to hide my feelings easily, I’m sure I probably gave obvious nonverbal clues that I was not exactly a ball of fun then.

One person reached out to me. On impulse, Sandy, the only other young mom in the congregation, bought a record album for us. Back in the basement suite, I put on earphones and played it over and over. Her kindness made a huge difference in my life. Love Song was the name of the band made up of hippies on the fringe of society in California. A pastor opened the door that allowed these diamonds in the rough play their new music in his church.

The story of that pastor and the people affected by his choice to open the doors is featured in the movie, “Jesus Revolution” which opens next week. The message that healed my aching heart is still real. Feel the love.

By This Will Everyone Know

On By Charis PsalloIn nature, Photography, Sky, Water5 Comments

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without love is self-centeredness; forgiveness without love is self-abasement; fortitude without love is recklessness; generosity without love is extravagance; care without love is mere duty; fidelity without love is servitude. Every virtue is an expression of love. No virtue is really a virtue unless it is permeated, or informed, by love.

-Richard Rohr

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians about the importance of treating each other well, with out prejudice and with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, he added an important truth: “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Colossians 3:14 NIV)

His advice about wrapping our motivations in love is what keeps us from turning his earlier instructions into another to-do list for controlling types. A song from “The Slipper and The Rose” called “Protocoligorically Correct” demonstrates a situation many of us are familiar with, even outside a fairy tale kingdom setting.

“Yes, we must be protocoligorically correct
Good form must never suffer from neglect
The rules and regulations we respect
Must be treated circumspect
Else the kingdom will be wrecked
We’ve a system to protect
Checked and double checked
And protocoligorically correct.”

It’s an amusing song even if its satire stings a bit. Many virtues seem, well, virtuous, until we realize that without love they become mere rules and regulations and the means to maintain control. When virtues morph into protocols, the soul of Christian existence is relegated to the back of the broom closet. Sometimes it’s easier to preoccupy ourselves with protecting a system than actually caring for each other and raising each other up. Love is an investment in another person’s well-being and spiritual growth. Love requires sensitivity to the tempering wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit and the kind of emotional courage Jesus demonstrated.

Love is not an option for the Christian. It’s not something to be sentimentalized and brought out for special occasions. Love is the identifying feature of the Kingdom of heaven.

Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13: 34, 35

Ruthless Love

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folks, Photography, Winter3 Comments

“Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.”

Frederick Buechner

Think Again

On By Charis PsalloIn PhotographyLeave a comment

Often at night I lie in bed and remember You,
    meditating on Your greatness till morning smiles through my window.
You have been my constant helper;
    therefore, I sing for joy under the protection of Your wings.
My soul clings to You;
    Your right hand reaches down and holds me up.

-Psalm 63:6-8 The Voice

Sometimes relief from the exhaustion of wrestling with worry and anxiety is a matter of replacing intrusive thoughts that recycle disappointment and diminishing hope with better thoughts, like thoughts of God’s greatness, of dreams fulfilled, of joy in the morning. Sometimes when our hearts ache and start to slip down the slope of dismal forebodings, our Helper and Protector gently suggests it’s time to change the diet of despair we are feeding our souls.

Sometimes, it’s not the time to escape into denial and thoughtlessness. Sometimes it’s time to have another thought, a better thought, a Holy Spirit-breathed thought. Sometimes it’s time to think again.