“The trouble with really seeing and really hearing is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.” ~ Frederick Buechner
Sometimes, for some of us, a simple prayer of appreciation to the Creator of love and beauty for his goodness to us is as great a victory over self-centeredness as is sailing across the world to set a thousand captives free.
The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope–and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.
-Walter Wangerin
There’s just something about purple that is like the exquisite beauty of a song of overcoming sung in a minor key. Victory yes, but not without sorrow.
This blog is in response to another person’s post, now deleted. The post made me stop and consider. It was about shameful behavior currently being exposed in a well-known ministry in the U.S.. “This should be strictly a private matter,” they said. This person felt strongly that reading any reports, even with solid evidence of ungodly choices, was participating in gossip and exploiting someone’s weaknesses and giving way to our own salacious desire for a titillating story. It was a type of abuse in itself. It can be. For many, it probably is. I want to agree entirely with the writer. I truly do. Maybe they are right, but maybe something else is happening here. Something bigger.
My reaction to this exposure is much the same as finding out a much-loved, seemingly strong, healthy family member was in the hospital, in a coma, and dying from necrotizing fasciitis. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THIS! I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THIS! OH, GOD, MAKE IT GO AWAY!
Our son-in-love and his wife were both in denial about how seriously ill he was. He delayed going to the emergency room at the hospital until the pain was agonizing. “Necrotizing” means dying. His leg was filled with dead and dying tissue -corruption- that was exposed by emergency surgery that left an open wound the length of his leg and buttocks. By that evening, he was in critical condition, in a coma, with multiple organ failure. Privately, the team of doctors gave him 0% chance of survival.
When thousands of people joined to pray for him, the Lord showed us that the church (including many denominations and expressions in North America) has also been in denial about harboring hidden corruption. This may not just be about the particular organization in that horrible article this week. So many are infected. Was there a less painful way to expose this, or is the Lord allowing it to shock us and shake us into waking up to the reality of the situation? Is this the stern, no-nonsense grace of a caring Father?
For decades, many vulnerable people have been sexually, emotionally, financially, and spiritually abused by those misusing power. Too many times we have looked away to spare them (and ourselves) embarrassment –and potential institutional chaos. This is no longer a private problem between a few people. My heart is broken for the woman involved, (and yes, I agree her behavior has been a lot like that of many victims of abuse and exploitation that I have known.) Perhaps God is serious about exposing what we don’t want to see because it’s time to stop closing our ears to the cries of people who have been used to bolster power-hungry egos.
This is a systemic problem. It’s OUR problem. It’s not just about the abuse; it’s about the cover-up.
In our own story, Abba asked us to pray for the state of the church in our country with the same desperate passion we felt as we prayed for our loved one. I don’t want to look at what has been exposed recently in people who I have admired and trusted. I am dismayed. I am shocked. I feel sick. But I can’t look away. Now the question is: how does the Lord want us to respond?
We don’t want to see this stuff exposed and published, especially where those who do not love Jesus can use it to mock us. This generation of the young, however, like the boy Samuel who watched Eli’s sons defile the tabernacle with vile behavior, see what’s going on. They know. They are staying away in droves.
We may not want to see it, but now we have, and it requires a response. It’s time to stop pretending that all is well. It’s time to cry out together with passion for a deep healing touch to the Body of Christ in North America.
Before the crisis in our family happened, our son-in-love told the Lord he was willing to do whatever it takes to serve Him, including laying down his life. He crashed on Palm Sunday. On Good Friday the family was brought in to say goodbye. Hundreds gathered at the hospital and in the church building to pray that day. On Easter morning, he briefly opened his eyes. On Pentecost Sunday, he walked into church without amputation, with 100% oxygen saturation, with the kidney function of a teenager, with a keen quick mind, and with the assurance that he was deeply loved. We saw a miracle.
Why did he and his family and friends, and eventually the thousands who followed the story on social media, go through that painful time? I believe it was training for such a time as this. We need to stop looking away, pretending this is not serious or not our problem. It’s time to get on our faces and cry out in our exposed corporate shame for deep cleansing, healing, repentance, and restoration.
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
We saw a miracle once. Lord, do it again!
When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.
Henri Nouwen
This is a strange time. The world is in transition. Society is in transition. My neighbourhood is in transition. My family is in transition. The church is in transition.
I am in transition.
No, I am not changing my gender, although aging changes the way people relate to us older folk. It’s as if we are neutered by grey hair and wrinkles. No longer considered “marketable,” there is an unexpected freedom in not having to find my value in the ability to attract a mate to potentially procreate with when I already have one who has stuck with me going on 53 years, and having children at this point in life is, literally, inconceivable. Yet, the pressure to look young and attractive is incessant. (What a baffling game that is.)
I am, however, still changing. As the apostle Paul wrote, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:10-14 NIV)
I woke from a time pressure/anxiety dream far too early this morning. In the dream I was poking around my house, procrastinating as usual. When a moving truck pulled up in the driveway, I suddenly remembered this was the day we were supposed to move out of the old family house into something more suitable for our stage of life. I had done nothing in the way of downsizing or packing or arranging for movers. The woman, who had her young children in tow, stepped out of the truck. She was so excited to move into her new house that had become a burden for me.
In the dream, I lied to her. I told her our truck broke down, so we couldn’t move out on time. She said, “Well, we’ll just have to get you another truck.” She left me with no excuses not to keep to our agreement.
I woke, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by the prospect of everything I needed to do in the process of change. I realized exhaustion is not about packing up housewares; it’s about cooperating with the Lord to move into increasing holiness, greater acts of love, and deeper relationship with Him. I’m dilly dallying.
I felt like the dream was saying, “Get a move on!” As I prayed, I also remembered that even in transition and all of the upheaval and sorting and tossing things I no longer need, and carefully packing and preserving others to take with me, I can let go of anxiety and find joy in this moment of uncertainty and change. I can still rest in the certainty of God’s faithfulness. There is a place of quiet rest in the current view of this season that is the alternating too warm/too cold/too warm/too cold unusual climate of change. Life, even at seventy years old, is lived in a place of disrupting process and increasing trust.
He’s not finished with me yet.
I don’t know what the the future holds, but I know Who holds the future, and I know the One who loves me enough to keep investing in me by poking and prodding me to get a move on. There is more. He still holds me in a divine embrace. He’s got this.
His voice is calling, “Get up! Get a move on! We’ve got things to do today.” Can you hear it too?
Watch Your Step
It was the flash of gold that caught my eye that morning. The reflection of golden aspens on newly formed ice covering the pond beside the mountain road glowed with photographic potential. I turned around, found a place to park, looked around for signs of bears or wolves, then carefully found my way down the embankment. The scene was as wonderful as I had hoped.
I knew the nights had not been cold enough yet to make the ice safe to walk on. I learned that lesson early in life. My friend fell through the ice on the creek near our house when we were kids. Fortunately, we were near the edge and the only damage done was to her new patent leather shoes and the adults’ confidence in our wisdom. I had no intention of testing the ice this time.
I started looking for a good angle, but a cluster of bushes hindered me from getting that one perfect shot. I found a gap and stepped around them onto the edge of the bank. It gave way. I slid down to the water landing on the ice. It didn’t hold me. Suddenly I was knee deep in freezing cold water. Worse than that, the muddy boggy bottom oozed around my feet grabbing my boots and refusing to let go.
Eventually, I struggled out, grateful for overhanging branches and deadwood turned walking stick. Climbing back up the embankment, I wondered how I could have ignored the wet earth and sudden drop on the other side of the overhanging grass near the edge.
I didn’t see the hazard because my eyes were on the gold.
Every year, I ask God for a word that will describe the next learning season I am walking into. My attention has been drawn (several times) to the word “circumspectly” found in the NKJV translation of Ephesians 5: 15 & 16:
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Circumspect is not a word that shows up often in modern English conversation. It comes from the Latin circum “around, round about” and specere “to look.” The Greek word is akribos “exactly, accurately, diligently.” Many modern translations use the English word “carefully.”
The picture seems to mean that to walk circumspectly is to walk very carefully, placing steps precisely, while being aware of the atmosphere and surroundings, metaphorically (and perhaps literally) speaking.
I don’t believe that everyone is at the same point on their journey, or that what is pertinent to me is pertinent to everyone. I’m not saying this is a prophetic word for the world in 2024. Maybe it’s just for me, but perhaps some of you can relate. It doesn’t take a prophetic word from heaven for anyone who is familiar with scripture, and looking around with eyes to see, to understand we live in perilous times, times where even those with platforms and titles can trip up.
Someone once told me that if you think you can’t be deceived, you already have been. Deception and distrust magnify each other. We can accept the wrong things and miss the right things by being too naïve or too wary. We can talk ourselves into or out of almost anything when we are unaware of our own unexamined motivations. Temptation is custom-made by the father of all con men and the evil one does not play fair. There is a reason why the Lord’s prayer includes the plea, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one…“
For me, walking circumspectly means listening to the still small voice saying, “Heads up! Pay attention. Proceed cautiously. Danger ahead. Lean on Me. I’ve got you.” It’s tempting to be distracted by the self-serving stuff, and by the seductive voice of the enemy of our souls. Not all attractive options spread before us are God’s ways. Without the wisdom and discernment he gives when we ask, and then applying it, we can find ourselves in a muddy bog before we know it.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I read reports and op-eds in the media from all manner of sources, I still don’t know who to believe even after employing research and critical thinking. When I see people I have admired exposed for serious misuse of power I am dismayed. I have questions!
Jesus said his sheep hear his voice. The book of Ephesians is full of God’s wisdom and advice on how to live wisely and walk circumspectly in this world where the evil one, although defeated, still has influence. God is good. He is not worried. He knows the way. Ask. Then follow through.
Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (Ephesians 5:17)
The Lord is reminding me these are days when I need wisdom and discernment more than ever.
How about you?
I’m coming out of a year of more disappointment and loss than I have experienced in most of the past decade. The losses were not as dramatic as the death of my father, or moving away from a city full of friends I loved. The losses have been like an incessant, low, slow prairie wind blowing away a summer garden bit by bit. I’ve lost more friends, relatives, and former colleagues to death in the past few months than through the entire time of the pandemic. The count is at fourteen since spring flowers bloomed. Many were not as close as immediate family, some I spoke or wrote to regularly, and some I had not spoken to in months, if not years, but they still had an influence in forming who I am and we had a connection. The degree of pain from their loss surprised me. I want another deep conversation, another project to work on together, another evening of laughter.
This past month, I have taken time to process these and other losses before heading into the new year. Recently, I have also been disappointed by people, including myself, (especially myself) who promised more than they could deliver. I’ve seen exciting possibilities fade and blow away like dried leaves of grass and brittle browning petals. It’s hard to let go.
Usually I head into a New Years Day with optimism and a declaration that this is the year of breakthrough into greater things. I do believe that greater capacity to hold on to love and the empowering grace of God lies ahead. I do believe that his unfailing kindness will be with me all the days of my life and that I will see more of his goodness in the land of the living, but there is a bittersweet aspect to the view from here. In this place of the now and the not yet, there is a reconciling with the fact that all of us eventually die and the world goes on without us.
When my father was old and knew he didn’t have much time left on this earth, he talked to me about feeling the responsibility of keeping memories of dear ones alive. He was the last one who remembered his little brother and baby sister who died the same year and whose wooden grave markers in an untended cemetery have long since disintegrated in the harsh northern climate. He reminisced about characters who were old when he was just a lad. One time, without realizing it, he reached down to pet the dog, long since gone, who saved his life once. He warned me to prepare my heart to let go when I reached an age when old friends departed more frequently. “All flesh is grass,” he said, “but our spirits live on. I know I will see them again.”
It’s in seasons of leaving the past behind and choosing to move on that we realize how much comfort comes from knowing that whether we live or die, the Lord never forgets us. He never leaves us. His love is eternal. His mercies are ever new. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
(Psalm 103:15-18 NIV)
Write the vision
Habakkuk 2:2 (NKJV)
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
Charis: Subject to Change 