Called to Stand

In my last post I told you that Butch and I participated in a pilgrimage to Israel. Our tour leader was Mike Fanning and our pastor, Trey Little, was co-leader. Mike took care of the archeology and Trey took care of the spirituality. Two busloads of people, mostly from our church, toured from one end of Israel to the other. More than a check-off on the bucket list, it was indeed the trip of a lifetime.

People who had been before warned me that I would never read the Bible the same way nor think about Jesus the same way. This was certainly my experience. For instance, I was amazed at how small Israel is and how close together all the famous biblical sites are. The gospels are jammed packed with stories about Jesus and his travels from this town to that village. But while sailing on the Sea of Galilee, Mike pointed out that the area of Jesus’ ministry encompassed less than a quarter of the shore. I was shocked. Such big things happening in such a small area. How I read the Bible will never be the same.

I learned that Jesus probably traveled to a large Roman city, Sepphoris, that was within a few miles of Nazareth in order to work as a carpenter. While he was there he was undoubtedly exposed to Roman culture, religion, architecture and society. He was not the small-town, unsophisticated boy that I have always pictured. I will never think of him in the same way.

Before the trip I expected that visiting the Garden Tomb would be spiritually overwhelming. But no. It was interesting and enlightening, but not the knock-your-socks-off experience I was sure it would be. I anticipated that I would feel the crush of historic and spiritual significance at the Wailing Wall. But again, no. Don’t misunderstand; both were significant experiences, just not as I imagined.

Where I did experience the most profound spiritual experience was in the Garden of Gethsemane. I’m not going to write about it here. But if you go to this link (click here) you will be taken to a reflection I recorded for Morningside Ministries* and hear what I experienced that morning. In the video you will see a photo of what I saw as I gazed across the Kidron Valley toward the walls of the Old City. As I saw what Jesus saw it helped me to understood more profoundly what he experienced. Now I know him better. I certainly will never think of him the same way.

Moving through Lent toward Holy Week and Easter Sunday always causes me to pause and reflect on what Jesus was doing and feeling on those days. However, this year my Garden experience is illuminating my meditations of that time so long ago and what it means in my life today. Jesus was called to stand during the most agonizing time of his life. And he did it faithfully. I will never be called to stand and wait to be arrested and then crucified, but every day I am called to stand. I’m called to stand in difficult situations from which I’d rather run. I’m called to stand and wait patiently when what I’d rather do is run, or scream, or threaten to get my way and get it now. My hope and prayer is for me, and for you, to stand when called to do so and to do so faithfully.

Woodpile Kitty hopes for you a meaningful Lenten season in preparation for a joyous Easter.

* The website mmLearn.org is a service of Morningside Ministries. mmLearn was created and designed for caregivers, both those who work in care facilities and those who care for loved ones at home. The webcast, Called to Stand: A Lenten Reflection, is part of mmLearn’s Prayers for a Caregiver series which offers spiritual support to caregivers in the home.

A Father’s Day Reflection

Sunday is Father’s Day. How are you going to honor your father? Grilling up some steaks or hot dogs? Ice cold watermelon? Or maybe dinner at his favorite restaurant? A day at the golf course and no complaining allowed by those who stay at home?

My dad, me on right and my sister on left.

When I was growing up fathers were expected to be the main breadwinners in the family. My own dad provided ample food, clothing and shelter for my mom, my siblings and me. In fact, he did so well at providing that when my mother and he were both in an assisted living facility for patients of dementia, my siblings and I had no worries related to finances. By the measure of a good provider, my dad was a good father.

But in recent years it has come to the attention of researchers that a father’s influence effects everything from how successful his adult children are in their chosen professions to how successful they are in their marriages. If you want to read more about this aspect of fathers, here are links to two articles: “The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children” is from the Department of Health and Human Services and “The Importance of Fathers” from the Psychology Today.

The most important way a father influences his child is in how his son or daughter views God. It is not unusual for a person who does not believe in God say that if God is a father, they want no part of him because their own father was angry, unloving, critical, or some other negative quality. I didn’t understand this way of thinking. In my mind, if you had a bad father, then God should be all the more attractive because he is perfect in love, kindness, and mercy.

Then one day I was reading Psalm 51 in my Bible. This psalm was written by King David when he was confronted about his affair with Bathsheba. I had read it many times before, but on this particular day I saw something astonishingly new: I had been trying to make up to God for all the ways I had disappointed him. I tried to get on his good side by being and doing good so he would love me.

As I meditated on this psalm in the days following this revelation, I realized that I was doing the same thing with my earthly father. I tried to make up to him for all the ways I sensed I had disappointed him. My view of what God thought of me and how much he loved me was wrapped up in my view of my dad and how much I thought he loved me. I was looking at my heavenly Father through a lens that was my relationship with my earthly father.

Then I began to realize that trying to make up to God was fruitless; there was nothing that could be done in my power that would make up for the bad things I had done. And even more amazing was that there was no use in making up to God because he had already forgiven me. He had already given me a second chance and a third chance and as many chances as I would ever need. And further, that the bad things I had done in no way effected how much God loves me; he loves me regardless of my actions or attitudes.

Once I understood that and started changing how I related to my heavenly Father, accepting the forgiveness and the second chances, I began to see my earthly father differently. I saw not through my own ideas but through the thoughts and words of God as expressed in the Bible–a new lens. If God could forgive me, then I could attempt to forgive my dad. If God gave me a second chance, then I could try my hardest to give my dad a second chance.

This is a simple explanation of a process that took years. I was an adult that day I read Psalm 51. Twenty years later when my dad died, I don’t think I was even halfway to forgiving him. That was almost nine years ago. As I’ve forgiven and forgiven again–that second chance God is so ready to give–I have come to a place where I can say that I have forgiven so much that the parts I haven’t forgiven aren’t that important any longer.

If you are interested in reading more about my dad, click here to read my post “A Couple of Street Corners and Imagination”. On the website of mmLearn.org you can view two videos in which I talk about my dad and me: one about my relationship with my dad and one from which this post was taken, “Father’s Day Reflections”. The mmLearn website is a service of Morningside Ministries and was created and designed for caregivers, both those who work in care facilities and those who care for loved ones at home. “Father’s Day Reflections” is just one of many presentations in their Prayers for a Caregiver series.

My dad will be in my thoughts this Sunday, Father’s Day. If your dad is still with you, I hope you have the opportunity to enjoy his presence that day. If, like my dad, he has passed, I pray that your memories of him will be sweet and filled with forgiveness.

From the Woodpile Kitty,

Have a blessed Father’s Day

Letting Go

As I write this, Christmas Day is fourteen days away. That’s just two weeks. Yikes! Christmas is approaching and my expectations, as well as my anxiety, are rising.

How about you? As Christmas approaches are your expectations rising?

In Webster’s the first definition of expectation is “a looking forward to; anticipation”. It’s the excitement of seeing how all of the preparations we’re spending so much time, attention and money to get just right unfold. The second definition is “a looking for as due, proper, or necessary”. Applied to this time of year, one definition tends toward the positive and one definition towards the negative. When we get so wrapped up in the expectations of Christmas as those things that we think are due, proper or necessary our expectations have a tendency to cause anxiety and, in the end, dissatisfaction.

Think about it for a moment. What are your expectations of Christmas? What are the due, proper, and necessary things that mean Christmas to you?

Here’s my list:

Buying the perfect gift for everyone
Preparing a scrumptious Christmas dinner, from scratch, of course
Glittering decorations adorning inside and out
A tree beautiful enough to grace the pages of Architectural Digest

This is only the beginning. It is due, proper and necessary that I fit in church services and family traditions all the while maintaining family relationships that are happy and peaceful. Does any of this sound familiar?

My list of due, proper, and necessary expectations will certainly not result in expectations of looking forward to Christmas in anticipation. I know. It was my modus operandi for years. And then I learned about the art of letting go.

It happened when my both of my parents lived in an assisted-living facility for dementia patients. The first Christmas they were in the Haven, I kept thinking “It’s not supposed to be this way.” This was not what I thought was due, proper or necessary as far as Christmas was concerned. Slowly it dawned on me that this was Christmas even though all the things I thought made Christmas weren’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to plan and prepare the Christmas dinner with my mom. There would be no unwrapping of gifts around their tree. Trying to accomplish all the due, proper and necessary expectations kept me from enjoying my parents on their level. It caused even more stress in their lives than was necessary. All of the things I had taken for granted about Christmas I had to let go.

Your life may also be at a place where the things that make up your expectations, those due, proper and necessary things, are not going to happen as they used to. For whatever reason our lives are not as they were when we first started developing Christmas traditions. Some of those reasons are:

Managing at least two extended families, yours and your spouses and perhaps ex-spouses
The addition of a child either by birth or adoption
Parents are older or passed away
Children are grown up and have families of their own
Married children have additional extended families
We may have family relationships that are strained or estranged

We can try to keep all the expectations of due, proper and necessary and experience stress and strain, lack of Christmas joy and reverence, or we can examine our expectations and let go of some of them.

This suggestion may be shocking to you. Everything about our culture shouts that expectations of what is due, proper and necessary is what Christmas is all about. From Black Friday, to secular Christmas music to Christmas movies and TV shows, Christmas is the time when problems are solved, the perfect gift is just waiting under the tree, and all strained family relationships heal in one magical day.

But what about that first Christmas, the one that we have taken a snapshot of and memorialized in our nativity sets and crèches? The idyllic night of angel songs and visits from exotic wise men?

Even Mary and Joseph had expectations that they had to let go. Read the accounts of the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke. As you read make a list of all of the expectations the Holy Family had to let go. You will see that first Christmas in a new way.

What are some of the expectations you should let go? What gets in your way of enjoying Christmas in all its love, joy and peace? Are there things that get in the way of your family’s enjoyment of Christmas because you can’t let go?

Dear friend, you are held in the Father’s hand. Let go of those things you think are due, proper, and necessary, the things that come between you and what he deems as due, proper and necessary. As you do, may you experience the warmth of his hand cradling you, drawing you through Christmas and ever closer to him through Jesus, the one this season is all about.

Merry Christmas!

You can hear more about letting go by clicking on the link below. It will take you to the website of mmLearn.org, a service of Morningside Ministries. mmLearn.org is designed for caregivers, both those who work in care facilities and those who care for loved ones at home. In their Prayers for a Caregiver series I recorded “Letting Go“, a devotional upon which this blog post is based. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Visible and Invisible

What frustrates you?

What ratchets up your blood pressure making it hard to think clearly?

What makes you want to throw something?

Your answer?

Here’s mine: computers and their close relative, the internet. The thing I want to throw? My computer, of course.

Take Monday, for instance. Since computers are a source of my frustration it doesn’t make much sense that I would sign up for an online course, but that’s what I did. The class, offered through the continuing education department of our local school district, was scheduled to start on October 3.

Bright and early on Monday, the first day of class, I clicked on the link for the online courses and was presented with the home page. I entered the user name and password that I had used to register for the class. The site returned a message that one or both of these were not correct. I thought that perhaps I mis-typed and tried again with the same result. I checked to be sure I was using the correct user name and password. I was.

There it was, the first prick of frustration.

“Perhaps,” I thought, “I need to create a new account for the class.” There was not an option for creating a new login. Frustration noticeably increased.

A few days before the first class day, I had received a cryptic message from the continuing education office that contained a contact name, email address and phone number just in case I had any questions or problems which, as it happened, I was currently experiencing. I called the number and was confronted with an automated voice and several choices, none of which seemed to fit my situation exactly. I did not choose wisely, got disconnected and had to start all over. This time I choose the right one and found myself on hold. After almost two minutes a message came on that they were having “unusually high calling volumes”, but I could leave a message by pressing 1. I pressed 1 and was promptly disconnected.

The frustration was so thick that I couldn’t think clearly. I was drowning in a sea of black with no one to save me, no friendly hand to haul me out of the miasma, no lifesaver thrown to my rescue.

There was an email address though. Email sent. And I waited. For the rest of the day.

Finally, I told my husband about my problem. This is always my last resort, because he hates the way I have my personal computer–emphasis on personal–set up. So not only is it frustrating for me, it’s frustrating for him. He had no better luck getting in than I did, except that he was smart enough to go to the school district’s website, found the direct number of the community education contact person and left her a voice mail. Now we both waited.

Next day: I tried the login credentials again thinking that perhaps they were having trouble with their site. It happens. But not this time.

Phone number again. I steeled myself for voice mail hell. To my surprise, I got a human. She couldn’t help me, but the woman who could would call me back in five or ten minutes. “What are the odds?” I thought, rolling my eyes.

Butch and I went to lunch, Subway, my favorite for weekday lunch. While we were there, he got an email from the district woman with new login credentials for me and a promise to help if I have any more problems.

I know that frustration with my computer grows out of the reality that I don’t understand it. Then add the internet which resides I-don’t-know-where. If I can’t see it, how am I going to understand it?

However, there are lots of other things in my life that cause me frustration. Some I can see, like people, and some I can’t see, the internet. And I know, but don’t like to admit, frustration is an unavoidable part of life.

While ruminating on this, a Bible verse popped in my head, one I memorized a long time ago. It goes something like this: in Jesus all things were created, things that are visible and things that are not visible*. My computer and the internet fall in there somewhere. But so do the weeds in my yard, the gray hairs on my head, and the disagreeable checker at the grocery store. Visible and invisible includes all the things that cause frustration. Because Jesus created them, he is able to handle them for me. I can place my frustration in his hands and get it out of my heart.

The emailed login credentials worked. I’m in. I’ve completed the first week’s lessons. Things visible and invisible. No more frustration… at least for now.

* Colossians 1:15-20

Confessions

I have a confession. I am an NPR junkie. I listen every day to my local public radio station, KSTX, and shows like “Fresh Air”, “Talk of the Nation”, “The World” and “All Things Considered”. Today I heard a news story about a complaint made to a school concerning Bible verses on banners at football games. A group, Freedom from Religion, asked that verses be banned from banners. That infuriated me. For one thing I am a Christian and I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. For another thing, I live in the United States. We still have the First Amendment, don’t we? Whether I’m a Christian, a Mormon, a Jew, or a Muslim, I have the right to say whatever I want to say.

The school district buckled under, separation of church and state, you know. But the school isn’t forcing the students to put Bible verses on their banners; it is their own idea. And that’s First Amendment rights. Not church and state.

Many Christians will lament that there is a war on Christianity in our country. We can’t mention Jesus, can’t wish a Merry Christmas, can’t pray before public events. We blame the government and groups like the Freedom From Religion. But I think the blame rests first with ourselves.

I live in an area of my city that has a high population of Jewish believers. There is a synagogue on a major road that leads to my subdivision. On the Jewish sabbath and other holy days, it is not unusual to see Jews walking to worship, crossing four lanes of traffic, pushing baby strollers, sunshine or rain. They are walking while all the rest of the world is whipping by them at forty-five miles an hour, if they are obeying the speed limit. The Jews are counter-cultural. They have ample evidence that there is a war on Judaism. And yet, they walk as their religion dictates while the world does what the world is going to do.

So the war on Christianity. My theory is that if everyone who called, or even thought, themselves to be a Christian, even if it was just Christians who actually went to church, if all of those Christians stood up and lived as Jesus modeled and taught how to live, our culture would look very different. There would be visible evidence in things like Bible verses on football game banners, praying out loud before a public event, using the name of Jesus seriously and not as a thoughtlessly tossed pejorative, and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas during the appropriate time of year. More than that it would be treating others as I would have others treat me. It would be considering the interests of others above my own interests. It would be exhibiting a character distinguished by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The war on Christianity? Game over or, at least, changed.

Even as I write these highfalutin words, my conscience is pricked. Just yesterday, I had an opportunity to pray out loud before a non-church meeting. Christians were present as well as non-Christians. I was confident I would not be chastised and yet I failed to pray as if I was talking to God. I failed to pray in Jesus’ name. I failed.

My challenge to myself and to you, dear reader, is to be counter-cultural. If you are a Christian, live as you believe Jesus would have you live no matter what is going on around you. Let the traffic whiz while you walk. Let the world do what the world will do. As for me, I will follow my Lord Jesus.

[click here to see the news story about the football banners mentioned above]