Don’t worry about having the right words; worry more about having the right heart. It’s not eloquence he seeks, just honesty.
Max Lucado
I remember, as a child, listening to two women disagree about the proper way to do something in church. Both believed that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing well. Both believed there was a right and wrong way to do things. Both believed their way was the right way. Voices were rising, but not in praise. Finally one said, “Well, we’ll just pray about that and see who God listens to.” She stomped off.
That scenario stuck with me. Even as a child I knew something was off. I didn’t know how to pray properly. In fact, nothing scared me off praying with other people more than being told I was doing it wrong by those who seemed to be in God’s favour. (I wrote about that here in Praying Naked).
Today I was reading this passage in the fourth chapter of Philippians. Amusingly (to me anyway), it comes right after the Apostle Paul urges two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to make more of an effort to be of the same mind as the Lord and get along with each other. Immediately I the memory of the two “prayer warriors” from my childhood.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
Let your gentleness be evident to all.
The Lord is near.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (verses 4 to 7)
I’ve been in a lot of religious settings in my life. Sadly, I’ve witnessed a lot of broken hearts in the wake of “doing things right” when right was defined by a person or institution whose need to be right surpassed the need to be gentle and extend love and grace to those who didn’t measure up to their standards. Even the disciples argued amongst themselves about who Jesus liked best and who would be greatest in the kingdom.
Servants, slaves, and employees may jostle for positions of greater trust and authority through superior performance. It’s their way of trying to earn security by being the most useful and therefore most valued asset. There’s a reason why Jesus told them, before he was crucified and rose again, that he considered them friends. Their position was secure because he loved them. That’s it. It’s all based on love. And he asked them to love one other as he and the Father love.
I am so painfully aware of the number of wounded believers rejected or left behind or still scrambling desperately for approval by those who determine themselves to be most loved. Somedays it feels like grief. Someday I just want to weep, but I am reminded that I am guilty myself of turning this whole prayer thing into some sort of me-first competition too.
There is so much more to this one-anothering thing than we think. All I know is that we are urged to be one in the Spirit. Unity is not to be found in our efforts or methods. Unity is found in God. God is love. He cannot love us any less than he already does, nor can he love us any more than he already does.
I am loved. You are loved. Let’s start praying together by rejoicing in that fact.
The fires are still raging in British Columbia, but the closest one to us is mostly contained. Today’s smoke is from controlled burns. Fighting fire with fire. We hope.
I’ve noticed a strange mix of emotions in people right now. The apostle Paul wrote that people who show mercy need to learn to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. I was in a place this week where I listened to three different people in different circumstances on the same day. It was a day of weeping and rejoicing.
One was rejoicing that her prayers were answered. Their property in West Kelowna was in a pocket the fire skipped over. Their house and neighbourhood remain untouched. Another woman, a single mother with four children, lost everything except the items they grabbed and stashed in the car as they fled the encroaching flames. She loves the Lord and prayed just as much, but the fire didn’t skip over her neighbourhood. In fact, the area that included 150 rental units was totally destroyed. Another family is still awaiting word on the condition of their property and has not yet returned home.
Then there is our own story. We watched the progression of the fire from a safe distance in our steel and concrete building in a mostly commercial area of the city. We suffered from the smoke and considered joining the thousands who fled the area on both sides of the lake, but decided that sitting in stop-and-go traffic for hours in heavy smoke might be harder on our health than staying home with windows closed and AC on. (I wish now I had bought that air purifier when I saw it on sale last March.) I guess we suffer from a bit of survivor’s guilt.
Conversations with virtually everyone after a dramatic disaster like the Grouse Complex Wildfire in the Kelowna area usually begin with the question, “Are you alright?” and “Did you see it when the giant flames reflected in the water? Where were you when it jumped the lake?” We tell our stories as a way of processing something we hoped to never experience. For some, faith in God, no matter what, has increased. Others struggle to believe that God cares or that anything good could come out of this. They feel abandoned. This is trauma in real time.
I was planning to visit my cousin’s flower farm when she posted photos of the huge plume of smoke that drifted over their place on the first day of the Westside fire. They postponed their annual public tour until conditions improved. This past Sunday, I told my dear cousin and her gardener husband about the conversations I had been having as we walked in the garden. I guess weeping and rejoicing were still on my mind when they gave me permission to take my camera and stay as long as I wanted in the area where they grow many varieties of dahlias.
This is what the flowers reminded me of. We all experienced the falling ash from trees and structures going up in flame but on this day, I was ready to shake off the ashes like the gardener shook ashes off the flowers. It’s time to be who God made me to be. I’ve learned from experience to pay attention to the condition of my heart as soon as I am able after a time of trouble. It’s possible, even necessary, to bracket feelings and tend to practical needs at first, but setting them aside indefinitely leads to problems later. I need to process.
All of the flowers in this garden are dahlias, but they can be quite different in their expression of dahlia-ness. Some are small, tidy domed bundles in sedate colours with mathematically determined petal distribution. Some are exuberant semi-chaotic displays of bold colors Mom would have warned me to never to wear side by side. The flowers were all dahlias. They all had similar structure, but I was amazed by the diversity on display. They reminded me of the different types of people I have listened to this week.
Some people respond to times of fear-inducing uncertainty with a need for decently-and-in-order control. Some seem to display a limited range of emotions like a black and white photo. Just-the-facts people. Many of our friends and neighbours who’ve watched fire devour memories and investments in their now destroyed homes are weeping, stunned by the magnitude of loss. They are wondering what they did wrong and struggling to get back a measure of control. Others, freed from the restraints of police-enforced evacuation orders, or triggering isolation behind closed doors and windows whilst wearing those wretched face masks (again), react to the signs of increasing freedoms with relief. They may experience a sudden flurry of creative expression with the messiness of a little adult ADD distraction mixed in.
I can do both and often do. Alternately and simultaneously. In times of trouble, organization is essential to survival. I make lists. When the crisis is over, freedom is essential to creative re-building and emotional expression. I might paint a chair or take photos and write an article for my blog while I ask, “What does all this mean, Lord? How should I respond? How do I relate to you and others without letting disappointment taint everything?”
The problem in our relationships often occurs when we are transitioning from crisis to healing in different ways and on different timetables. The helpless can become the hopeless. Some people tend to follow a drive to create order and want to try to control as much as possible. They set more rules, guidelines, protocols, or whatever works for them so this doesn’t happen again. They want to impose discipline via flow charts on both the somebody-look-after-me types and the don’t-fence-me-in types. Disappointed creative freedom lovers, on the other hand, tend to resent restrictions. They may avoid energy-sapping overt battles over control by going all passive/aggressive –in a original way, of course. What we don’t understand is that both extremes are responding to fear – fear of being out of control and fear of being controlled.
Either way, living in fear opens the door to conflict and unhealthy ways of thinking that come after disappointment and a loss of innocence. Bad things can happen to good people. Prayers do not always receive the answer we want. What now? When the devil senses vulnerability, he says, “Oh. You are disappointed and angry. I can help you with that.” Listening to his prompts stirs up anger and unforgiveness that, when it sits around too long, can congeal into bitterness as hard as concrete.
Needing to be in control, needing to be controlled and needing to avoid being controlled become the habits of fearful bitter people. Over-controlled people feel disrespected and fall into resentment and distrust. Controlling people, especially those who seek positions of power, also feel disrespected. They distrust uncooperative types and respond with tighter controls. Over-controlled people respond to more control with more distrust while the hopeless watch… We see that cycle playing out far too often in the world around us.
There is no peace in the garden until we take responsibility for turning to the the One who knows us best and loves us most. He is the one who offers healing for our own wounds. In the process, we need to stop to recognize that our way may not the right way or the only way. Our way may inflict more wounds and contribute to the distrust/control cycle and the growing snowball we would dearly love to heave at someone someday. We need to acknowledge that we do not live in a vacuum and our behaviour does affect others.
It is so easy to discard people who don’t see things the same way we do. Much of the division so many of us have seen become entrenched in our communities is based on fear of pain or loss. We may have a diminishing store of grace for people who fail to read the room and instead rejoice while others weep or weep while others rejoice.
The answer? I believe the Holy Spirit’s character is revealed by the fruit of the Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-governance. His grace empowers us to break the cycle by supplying the necessary qualities to respond his way when we seek it instead of relying on our own strength. He gives us love that counteracts fear, and kindness to return for lack of caring, and the ability to govern ourselves faithfully while allowing others the freedom to make choices the way he does.
Anyway, that’s what the Creator of beautiful people in community and lovely flowers in a garden communicated to me through diversity in dahlias. My opinions, as usual, are subject to change as I learn and heal and grow. I leave you with photos taken in the garden. What do you see?
I took this photo yesterday evening from the condominium where we live. I saw the smoke all afternoon, but when my neighbour across the hall invited me to see the view from her balcony, I saw the flames.
A huge fire caused thousands to be evacuated from their homes across the lake from us here in Kelowna, British Columbia. I have friends and family on the west side and was very concerned for their safety. I assured concerned friends from elsewhere that the fire was over there and we were alright on this side of the lake.
Last night, the fire jumped the lake. Embers flew across the water and landed on the other side in dry vegetation ready to burst into flame. I’m hearing about people we know not far from here evacuating in the middle of the night. It’s more than an opportunity for dramatic photos now.
A couple of days ago, someone asked if you cold sing theology. I think they meant the dry theories about the study of God that people argue over, the kind of hot air balloon detached from any real experience that causes “experts” with large vocabularies to drone on endlessly. I agree that theory devoid of experiential knowledge of the Holy can just be another source of contention. I also believe that theology that is what we think about God, and doctrine that is what we believe about God enough to act on in a crisis is one of he most important considerations we will ever make.
Can I sing theology? Yes I can. I used one of my favourite hymns, How Firm a Foundation, as an example. Today, with flames consuming a nearby hillside as I watch the winds pick up and the flag over the supermarket shift directions, a verse from that song is more relevant than ever.
When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply; The flame shall not harm thee; I only design Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
There is so much in those four short lines. Fiery trials happen. Our cries of “Why God?” are less likely to be answered than “What do you want me to see about you that I couldn’t see any other way?”
I’ll let you know.
In the meantime, prayers for our city and its citizens to be come through this time safely are welcome. For that matter, we need prayer for this entire country, especially the west and the northern territories were fires have raged for weeks. Prayers that we would come out as refined gold, freed from the kind of entanglements that hold us back spiritually are even more welcome.
Sometimes I hear God’s voice in unexpected places. Popular music is one of them. I wrote about it here. (Hearing God’s Voice Through Music). This morning I woke with a song in my head. It’s not one that’s on any of my play lists, but it was insistent, so I paid attention.
Recently I’ve been asking myself why it is sometimes so easy to set a God-given dream aside to collect dust for years. I could say that I’ve been distracted by the cares of life or that I chose to support another person’s dream because I believed it was a worthy and lofty dream. But I think, to be honest, after listening to the song, the Lord is telling me something. I have set the dream aside because taking steps to walk with God toward the dream he put in my heart takes courage. And I have been afraid –afraid of success, afraid of failure, afraid of what critics will think, afraid of letting friends down, afraid of letting God down, afraid of standing alone in the no man’s land in the middle of the social and political and factioned church battles we find ourselves in.
Mariah Carey’s song is called “Hero.” One of the most profound questions we can ask God is “Who do you see when you look at me?” For many years, I assumed the answer to that question was “a sinner saved by grace.” I was wrong.
It can be rather shocking when we hear his answer. It’s easy to dismiss it as a figment of an over-zealous ego. When he approached the cowardly Gideon hiding down in a winepress to thresh grain, the angel of the Lord called the guy who thought he held the lowest status in the country, “Mighty Warrior.” Gideon’s response was the equivalent of looking around and saying, “You talkin’ to me?” The way God sees us is much better than the way we see ourselves. Frankly, I discovered, the hard way, that talking about it to friends who don’t understand how God sees them can bring about a jealous response the way Joseph discovered what jealous people can do when he told his brothers about his dream of sheaves of wheat bowing to him. Candour is risky business. Very risky. But maybe it’s step one in trusting God.
As we grow in grace, God reveals more of how he sees us. I’ve been praying about an updated version of what I call an identity statement (similar to an artist’s statement). When I heard “hero” I felt like Gideon must have felt. I feel like the last person on earth that term could apply to. Then I remember that years ago the Lord spoke to me through the book of Hosea: “‘It will come about in that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘That you will call Me Ishi and will no longer call Me Baali.'” (Hosea 2:16) Ishi means hero/savior/husband. Baali means master.
It’s about relationship. Through his kindness, his gentle alluring, he has replaced the harsh image of himself as an impossible taskmaster with the image of my hero, my saviour, and the lover of my soul.
We become what we focus on. If my focus is on other humans who have merely a piece of the picture, I can, at best, become a faint copy of their traits, both good and bad. If I focus on the one who is my hero, getting to know him in a deeper sense, I will eventually become more heroic like him.
Jesus’ road to hero status involved laying down his right to respect in the ultimate demonstration of humility, but he never let go of the dream to save us and re-connect us with the Father who created us. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
I am very well aware of my tendency to back away when intimidated, to withdraw when stressed, and to try to change who the Lord created me to be to fit in with other people in a desire to belong (what Brené Brown calls the opposite of belonging). On my own, I can’t pursue this dream, but Jesus stood up to injustice. He’s the shepherd who goes after the lost lamb. He pulled me from a pit of guilt and shame and sang a song of grace over me. He invited me –fearful, shame-ridden, voiceless me– to partner with him to set the prisoners of spiritual abuse free. He lives in me. In a world of disappointing would-be heroes, he is my only hope.
This whole thought is too much for me, but I choose to trust him.
And then a hero comes along with the strength to carry on and you cast your fears aside…
Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide; In every change, He faithful will remain. Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake To guide the future, as He has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; All now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.*
It’s hard to have hope and confidence when things seem dark and deep. It’s hard to leave the what-ifs behind and not allow your confidence to be shaken.
It’s hard, but grace empowers you to be who God sees when he looks at you. It is God’s abundant grace that activates hope so can say with confidence, “All now mysterious shall be bright at last.”
In every change, He faithful will remain.
*(From Be Still My Soul, music from Finlandia by Jean Sibelius, Lyrics by Catharina von Schlegel, translation to English by Jane Laurie Borthwick)
My friend gave me some seed she collected after I complimented her garden last summer. It amazes me to see what can grow from an ugly tiny brown thing in an envelope. I didn’t think I could grow zinnias in a pot on my balcony, but I planted and watered them anyway. Now look.
May the Lord grant us the ability to see the beauty in people when they are still in their unimpressive stage. May we give them a chance anyway.
This is a week of remembering. Yesterday would have been my Dad’s birthday. His birthday came at the same time as the end of the school year. There was always a picnic. Today is the anniversary of my Mom’s passing. My husband’s mother also died this time of year. The picnics those years became “refreshments” in hushed community halls instead. It’s a season of contrasts.
I’ve been thinking about our parents’ lives. I am grateful for them and the generation that rose from the ashes of poverty and famine in the 1930’s and World War in the 1940’s. They knew tough times.
Poverty brought poor nutrition and lack of medical care. Poverty meant that when Dad was five-years old two of his siblings died of illnesses easily treat now. Poverty left him as an only child of grieving parents for several years. Grandma told me that one day she found him playing in the dirt. He was burying matchboxes like the boxes they buried his little brother and baby sister in. He would bury them and dig them up repeatedly telling them to wake up.
My Dad was bullied for being the only boy from an English-speaking family in a school where the other children were refugees from persecution in Russia. The family lost the farm after another crop failed and his father became too ill to carry on. As an 18-year-old my father was preparing to go to war when armistice brought an end to conscription. Lots of young men from the area had already died, so he knew what it meant to be sent overseas.
When Mom was five-years old, her mother died. The family could not afford a doctor. They had already lost several children to diphtheria and other childhood diseases. The crops had failed that year and the money-lender took several sacks of what little wheat they had managed to glean to feed the family over the winter. They were also grieving the news from the Red Cross that no friends or family left behind in The Crimea had survived Stalin’s cruelty. In his grief, her father turned to alcohol. Later, my mother and her younger brothers suffered bullying at school for coming from a German-speaking family in a country that was at war with Germany even though their older brother was fighting for the allies in the Netherlands.
My husband’s parents also grew up in harsh environments. His father lived with immigrant parents in a tar-paper shack on a farm during the dust-bowl famine years. He joined the air force when he was old enough and flew reconnaissance in enemy territory at an age when kids now go to college.
My husband’s mother’s house in Rangoon was bombed by the Japanese and she and her mother and sister barely escaped being sent to a concentration camp by fleeing to India. She spent her teen years inside the walls of a compound there because the people on the outside hated her kind. Since she was a biracial child in the East, she lived in fear as she experienced soul-crushing racism from both sides.
Our parents, and many others of that generation, had amazing perseverance, but they also had deep scars. It’s hard not to dismiss the influence of either the noble or the broken side of the previous generation on our generation (or the trickle down effect on the next). We see the good side or the bad. We tend to idolize or denigrate. I don’t think we can properly honour our parents (or grandparents or great grandparents) without acknowledging how far they came in their lifetimes. That means both the acknowledgement of how devastating the circumstances of the times could be on mental health and the acknowledgement of how hard they worked toward building a better future for their children.
By the time they passed, both my parents and my husband’s parents had faith that God loved them. They were trusting Jesus to finish the healing that began here. It will be wonderful when we are all together and we are all completely well.
I honour them and say thank you for having a vision that extended beyond your lifetime. Thank you for your sacrifice.
You are always and dearly loved by God! So robe yourself with virtues of God, since you have been divinely chosen to be holy.
Be merciful as you endeavor to understand others, and be compassionate, showing kindness toward all.
Be gentle and humble, unoffendable in your patience with others.
Tolerate the weaknesses of those in the family of faith, forgiving one another in the same way you have been graciously forgiven by Jesus Christ.
If you find fault with someone, release this same gift of forgiveness to them. For love is supreme and must flow through each of these virtues.
Love becomes the mark of true maturity.
Colossians 3:12-14 TPT
Many of us long to be understood. We want to explain the background behind the reasons for our actions. As I often told my children, and now my grandchildren, an explanation is the history behind a decision. It is not necessarily the validation of a decision. An explanation is an explanation, not an excuse. Whether we hurt someone intentionally or unintentionally, their pain is still pain.
A young child hits back. A mature adult doesn’t need to.
Somedays I need to do an accounting. I need to remember times when I have been forgiven for doing or saying things meant to hit back. I write down memories of times when grace was extended to me for my graceless acts of immaturity. I give thanks for people who showed me kindness when I was flailing in pain, striking out at anyone I perceived as a potential threat and when it seemed only the foolish would trust again. Instead, they gently, humbly, and patiently demonstrated God’s true nature.
When I look at the people who have had the greatest effect on healing the deep wounds in my heart, they are all people God brought into my life to show me there was such a thing as love that was not self-serving. They made time. They listened. They were not put off by my raging. They were not afraid of how being associated with me would make them look. They made it possible to believe in more than the disappointing behaviour I had seen demonstrated by immature or false Christians. They showed me the kind of love that drives away fear and nurtures fertile ground for faith to grow.
On these accounting days, when I look, when I see, when I understand how costly it was to love someone in as much pain as I used to be, how can I justify offering less mercy than I have received?
Today I am thankful for the mature ones who patiently extended love to nurture my spiritual growth. Twenty years ago, when I told one of them I was losing faith, he said he would hold onto faith for me because he knew I would eventually begin to comprehend how much God loved me.
I want to be like Jesus because that guy let me see Jesus in him.
Charis: Subject to Change 