A Grace at the Table

Is there anyone you're not willing to share this Table with?

We want to say no. We want to say that there are persons we don't think would share the Table with us, and that there are persons that we don't think should have a place at the Table, but we want to surrender our faith and display our righteousness and declare that if Jesus has made a space for someone, then of course, we will, too. 

I know we want to because I want to, and I'm sure that I'm not alone. In fact, I think I have very boldly said this: "I will share the Table with anyone. There's enough grace for everyone." 

But if I'm being honest, there are some persons in this world that would be harder to share a table with than others. And they're not the persons you might think. 

We've convinced ourselves that there's a certain righteousness in saying we would struggle to share the Table with certain groups of sinners, whatever sin it is that we deem more dastardly than the others. Murderers. Rapists. Pedophiles. Thieves. You know, Judases. We know there's no real righteousness in that, as we are all sinners, but we still feel a sense of (self)righteousness when we say it. 

I've had a challenging interpersonal week that has brought me to a place of thinking about this anew, and honestly, the persons I think I have the hardest time sharing the Table with...are the persons who think I don't deserve to be there. 

They are the persons who hold some kind of bitterness against me, some kind of grudge. They are the persons who judge my life and deem it less worthy. They are the persons that I know are looking down their noses out me, or out the sides of their eyes. The persons who are watching me because they think that in this whole grand picture of grace, I'm the piece that doesn't fit. 

Ouch. 

Not because they're right, but because...they're right. 

There are persons in this world who hold what I believe is a wrong opinion of me. But I'm at the point in my life where, when I encounter these persons, I'm not concerned with trying to prove them wrong any more. It doesn't do any good. I know who I am, and I know who the overwhelming majority of others in my life know me to be. Still, there's something that stings about these wrong impressions that a very few still hold. 

And what stings about it, as I reflect on my experiences this week with such things, is that they bring to my mind, to the forefront of my heart, the overwhelming amount of grace that it has taken for me to get this far. They bring to mind just how much saving God's really had to do in my life and how...they're right; I'm not as perfect a person as I'd like to think on my good days, on my regular days, on my normal days when no one is there to remind me, in stark force, that I'm not. 

It's hard to share the Table with someone who doesn't think I belong here because they remind me, even in their lies, that...I don't. It is only by grace that there is a space for me here. 

That's humbling. 

But then...it's supposed to be. We ought to be humbled by the grace that brings us to this Table. 

So, to my enemies...to those who think I don't belong here...thank you. Thank you for reminding me what a grace this truly is.  

A Life of Service

There's a difference between having the heart of a servant and having the faith of a servant, and it's a very fine but very important line. It's equally as important to be clear about what I'm not saying. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't serve in your church. I'm not saying you shouldn't serve in your church every week. I'm not saying you should never go into ministry. 

What I'm saying is...be mindful. 

This is something I've actually been wrestling with for a few years, as my church schedule continued to fill up and I took on more ministries and service opportunities. I heard others wrestling with their overextended selves, and I could feel that little bit of nagging in my own soul that something was off. 

But the truth is that I believe your spiritual growth and health are primarily your own responsibility. Churches come together to celebrate and to worship and to remember and to fellowship, which are all great things, but the edification of the spirit starts with your private spiritual devotion and practices. 

You are supposed to be reading and studying the Bible on your own. You are supposed to fill your home with worship music. You are supposed to carry a song in your heart. You are supposed to pray from your own heart when the Spirit moves you, or even at set hours. You are supposed to regularly commune with God and do what it takes to keep the spark aflame and growing in your own heart. No one else is as responsible for your spiritual life as you are - not even your pastor. 

As I started to feel the tension between ministry and personal spiritual health, I started to put into place more practices in my own life because I truly believe there is nothing wrong with serving in your church every week. I have heard the complaints that if you're always serving, there's no time to be fed, but I really do believe your primary place of feeding is at home. That's the way it has always been for the people of God, even back in the Old Testament.

That's not to say that there is no value in fellowship or in group discipleship, in growing together as we do in our churches. It's just to say that if you're feeling stifled and like you really need fed...the first question to ask is whether you're feeding yourself. One meal a week will never sustain the body. 

Still, somehow, I crossed the line and brought the work of service home with me and made even my private study, that which I knew was meant to feed me, just the raw ingredients for the meal I was making for everyone else. That's the line we've been talking about. 

I am still known for my servant's heart, even while I focus on growing my own faith and not in giving it all away. It's the way I'm wired. I'm in a fairly new job, and I'm already known for "always going above and beyond," but to me, it's just taking the initiative to do things that need to be done because I can do them and it's helpful to others and to the organization when I do. 

I have visited with my church a couple of times in the past few months, thanks to catching a ride as I continue to battle my health issues, and every time I walk in, someone approaches me and asks if I can serve in such-and-such a way. Of course I can. And I do. But I have also learned not to give it all away - I'll take the headphones off and tune into the live service happening right in front of me. I'll go with the flow instead of needing to have an order of worship in my pocket. I won't worry about how many more slides the pastor has to go through.

As I recapture my own heart - as I grow that sense of God's love for me and my love for Him - I'm also recapturing balance in service.

And it's the difference between reflection and radiation. 

And I am so thankful for it.  

For the Love of God

So what about the heart of a servant vs. the faith of a servant?

As you may know, I have been separated from my church for about a year and a half at this point (by medical necessity, not by choice). Since the separation was neither planned nor chosen, it took a long time for my heart to let go of the faith of a servant. I would read something, hear something, sing something, think something, and immediately give it away - start thinking about how it would hit wrapped in a certain message or how I might present it the next time I had a chance or who in my circle of faith might need to hear it and in what certain way. 

Habits die hard. 

But as the time has worn on, as life has kept me removed from a place of service, something started to shift. 

I don't remember now exactly what it was, but I was reading my Bible - as I do every morning - and for the first time in a very, very long time, a passage hit me that felt like it was hitting deep at my heart. Not at my heart for service. Not at my heart for someone else. Not as a good morsel meant to pass right through me and pour out. But as a message meant just for me. 

And I realized how long it had been since I'd felt that way in my soul. 

I realized how long it had been since I felt that "strange, warm" sensation that the disciples talked about on the road to Emmaus. I realized how long it had been since I felt like God would talk to me just for me. I realized that I had come to a place where I even had a relationship with God where I believed He loved me for my performance, for the things that I did, for the way that I did them. For doing a good job in service that helped to bring glory to His name. 

I realized it had been so very long a time since I had felt like God loved me. 

That moment changed everything. 

Once I hit that moment, I have invested my spiritual practice deliberately in knowing God's deep love for me again...and deepening my love for Him. Not in ministry. Not in performance. Not in service. Just in existing, in being, in being a being created in His image and indwelt by His Spirit. By knowing the breath that is moving in my lungs is His breath of life. 

I've missed that. 

And oh, how I need that kind of faith that doesn't just pour right through me but sticks to my bones and puts a little meat on my being. 

It doesn't mean I don't still have the heart of a servant. I do. And it doesn't mean that my servant's heart isn't driven by my faith. It is. But it means that I'm reclaiming my faith so that when things do pour through me, they're touched by the essence of something greater. 

It's one thing if Moses's face was glowing because He was simply reflecting the Light in whose presence he was standing; it's another thing entirely that His face was really glowing because that light was coming from inside of him. 

Let us have a faith that does not merely reflect, but radiate. 

Faith of a Servant

One of the challenges of living your faith with the heart of a servant is that it's very, very easy to slip into a heart in which you have the faith of a servant. 

Read that again if you have to. 

I introduced the idea yesterday that this is more problematic than it sounds on the surface, and it really is. It sounds like it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Who wouldn't want to have the faith of a servant? Jesus was a servant, and we are supposed to be like Him. He is our Teacher, so we should be His servant. He told us that whoever wants to be first among us should be last, and whoever wants to be greatest should be a servant to others. There seems to be a strong biblical indication that having the faith of a servant would be a great thing. 

But...it's not. 

Because one of the things I've come to realize is how easily, when I'm constantly serving as an outward expression of my faith, everything I do for my spiritual health and growth becomes an exercise in preparation for ministry. 

I read the Bible, but I'm thinking about who else might need to hear that. What it might sound like wrapped into this message or that one. I'm praying, but I'm praying more for how other hearts will be impacted than for God's impact on my own heart. 

I'm listening to the worship through headphones to get the balance of sounds and levels just right, but I'm not hearing the words or the melodies. I'm following along with the words on the screen so that I know when to advance the slide show, but I'm not really reading them. 

Everything I'm doing is done with an eye and an ear toward how those I'm serving will experience it. I'm focused so much on others having a technologically flawless, inspirational, motivational, instructive, awe-inspiring, truth-ingesting experience that I'm no longer having an experience at all. 

I have become just a vessel - a thing through which the goodness of God pours, but doesn't stick much. Because the faith of a servant is a faith that thinks more about who it is serving than it does about itself. 

Again, this sounds like a good thing. Selflessness. Un-self-consciousness. True sacrifice.

But it's not really a sacrifice if you don't hold it first to give it away. 

And thinking of yourself not at all is not an act of un-self-consciousness; it's an act of self-diminishment, which is never what God asked of us. 

I'm not alone in this. This is a sentiment that other ministers in various capacities have shared with me over the years, especially worship ministers and pulpit ministers who sense they are expected to be on stage every weekend, giving their worship away as a gift to everyone else. It's this really fine line, but it's so easy to cross in that, without even recognizing it, your faith becomes a practice instead of a presence; something you do for others instead of something that nourishes you. 

This is how, I think, so many pastors become enamored by the admiration of the flock. They have given away their faith as a gift to those they are serving, so the only thing they have to bolster their own hearts is the praise of those who receive that gift. As long as the congregation loves it, your faith must be doing something good...even if you no longer feel it in your own heart. Even if it's been a long time since you've had a moment with God just for yourself. 

Such is the faith of a servant. 

So...what now? 

Heart of a Servant

For 24 years, I have been an active servant in my church. 

I started as a youth group member who was there every time the doors opened, went on all the trips, stood in front of the congregation and gave the mission reports. I became the audio-visual technician, nearly every Sunday for almost six years. I was a member of the Vacation Bible School cast and an activity leader. I was the church webmaster and undertook a major redesign of our digital presence. More recently, I have monitored our livestream services. I tended the nursery. I taught a Sunday School class. I was a member of a small group, often leading some conversations therein. I worked with our benevolence ministry, providing funds to those in need.

I have spoken routinely for more than ten years, offering Communion devotionals or, as I like to say, setting the Table. I have prepare the Communion elements. I have cleaned them up. I have passed the plates, and I have stood at the doors to greet. I have coordinated the volunteers who do these things. I have preached one sermon. I have been part of the praise band and have even added vocals a few times here and there. 

For more than a decade, I changed the furnace filters in all 28 units in the building. I have replaced a couple of broken toilet parts and one faulty water valve. 

When I say that I have been an active servant in my church, I mean it. 

This stems from a servant's heart that God has put in me, well before I knew Him or the church. It's just the way I'm wired. 

As a young kid, outside of the church, I volunteered to deliver the fluoride treatments to the other students in the school. I worked in the library, shelving books and dusting shelves. I spent a good deal of my time in the essential skills classroom, helping the kids with greater physical and mental needs. I was out in the heat helping to build what we called the Friendship Bridge on the ground that separated my elementary school from the one next door, and I learned to lay block so I could help with the foundation for a historic one-room schoolhouse that was being moved to our grounds. 

If there is something to be done, I am wired to simply do it. I have always been this way. I rarely count the cost to myself. 

But...there is one. 

It's something I didn't realize or recognize or understand until very recently. Having been separated from my church now for almost 18 months (by force of medical realities), I'm not serving like I used to. There's not some task that I have to accomplish every Sunday, not something I am responsible for making happen. 

It took a long time being away, a long string of Sundays without duties for me to come to the realization that I did, but when I finally saw it, it broke my heart. It broke my servant's heart. 

See, yes, I have the heart of a servant; I always have, I always will. But somewhere along the way, that servant's heart led me straight down the path to a servant's faith. 

And that's not as good a thing as it sounds. 

*Stay tuned. 

 

Come Hungry

The churches I came of age in didn't have a snack bar. They didn't have coffee on brew. They didn't have breakfast spreads. In fact, the church I attend now didn't have these things until 10 or so years ago. 

You woke up on Sunday morning, ate breakfast in your own home, got in the car and went to church, not expecting to eat. If you found that you needed a little something, there was a bite of holiness coming somewhere in the middle of the service - Communion. 

And boy, was it good. 

Seriously, it was good. At just the moment when your mouth was getting parched from singing, when your body was starting to feel its emptiness in prayer, when you started to think about the essence of time and what exactly it meant to be all-in on God, they would pass the plates and that little cracker and that little sip of juice would hit just right. And it would mean something. 

These days, so many churches have coffee bars that it's hard to remember what that was like - when Jesus was the only thing to satisfy you in the service. 

That's not a complaint. Not necessarily. It's just an observation. When you come into church and head straight for a pot of coffee and a pastry, it takes away part of the body's craving for Communion. You aren't as hungry when the plate is passed. You aren't feeling an ache inside of yourself that longs for something to just take the edge off, to take the angst away. You're full already. 

That pastry is delicious. The little cracker? Not so much. 

That coffee hits just right. The juice? It's bitter. (Ironic, huh? But let's be honest - most of you don't drink real coffee; you drink caffeine with a ton of sugar in it. Real coffee, friends, is more bitter than grape juice.)

The New Testament tells us how foolish it is to show up to church hungry, to not have fed yourself in the comfort of your own home. How it creates a separation between groups of persons. How it establishes a foolishness in the gathering. 1 Corinthians says, "Don't you have your own homes in which to eat and drink?" 

When you come to church hungry because the church feeds your stomach, there's something about it that doesn't quite feed your soul any more. It's hard to explain, but if you pay attention, you'll know what I'm talking about. It makes church comfortable, with all the amenities of a social gathering and good friends and all of a sudden, that ache that draws you toward Christ, that thing that helps you engage because church is the only thing going on...it's gone. 

That's really what it is. When you taste the pastry on your tongue, you miss something of the holy moment. You do. Because you already have a sensory input that is delightful and strong; you aren't looking for anything else. Why would you? 

But if you're not distracting yourself with all the accoutrement, you can be really present. Fully present. Totally engaged. If God is all the church has to offer - God, Jesus, goodness, fellowship, and at just the right time, a little bite of bread and a little sip of juice - it just hits different. 

If you don't believe me, pass on the coffee bar one Sunday. Just one Sunday. And see how not being distracted changes the real Table you're sitting at.  

The Harder Way

Please don't misunderstand me - the choices that I make about how I am connected (and not connected) in my life are not easy ones. They don't make my whole life easier. Most of the time, these things make my life harder. 

It's harder to stay connected to some persons when you don't answer their messages right away. Sometimes, they feel slighted when you don't "like" their post (because you didn't see it). Sometimes, there are friends or family or coworkers who will send me what the world would consider an "urgent" message on social media, and it can be hours or even days before I see it. 

It's harder to have to plug my phone into my computer, enable file transfer, browse through a folder, and upload a photo that I want to share. It's harder to screenshot my runs for my running group and have to do the same thing to share my progress. It's harder to have to turn on, wait for the boot up, and log into a physical computer to shop online, to refill a prescription, to manage a profile, whatever. 

It's harder to hear everyone talking about something they are all seeing on their phone - breaking news or local gossip or weather alerts or what have you - and have to wait until I get home to see something for myself. (But I love weather, and I'm a trained storm spotter for the NWS, so if you're talking about weather, I've got windows. I'll just go look out one.) It's harder to not be part of the conversation. 

And, by the way, I've never been on TikTok. If you're trying to talk to me about something you saw on TikTok, no. I haven't seen it. And I probably never will. That is mindlessness and distraction at its best, and it's not doing anyone any good. 

But it's harder. It's harder to live a selectively connected life when the whole world, it seems, is plugged in. In the book I referenced on Monday (which I still recommend you read - Reconnected by Carlos Whitaker), Carlos was surprised when he arrived at the monastery and discovered that even the monks had phones. Even monks were carrying the whole world around in their pockets. 

This is what we have come to. 

But we don't have to. 

And we're not better off for it.

These devices we have, this technology - it's good for some things. Don't get me wrong. But it doesn't make our lives richer. 

In fact, it takes us away from the things that truly fulfill our lives. With these devices, we don't have to wander...or wonder. We don't have to speak or listen. We don't have to engage or pay attention. If we miss something, we just rewind it and play it again, but this world is full of once-in-a-lifetime moments that we'll never get back, even if someone out there caught it on camera and posted it. 

Take the latest total solar eclipse. That was a moment! It was breathtaking. And there's not a single picture that does it justice. Not one. The only reason we like the photos is because it reminds us of being in that moment and takes us back to our own memory of seeing it...except that there were so many persons who were so busy photographing and posting the eclipse that they neglected to look up and actually see it with their own actual eye, not through a lens. And let me tell you - it was so much better without the lens. 

This world is so much better without filters. 

So no, it's not easy. It doesn't make my life easier. It makes my life harder to choose to live the way that I do, to choose the relationship with technology and connectedness that I've chosen. 

But it makes my life richer. Deeper. More vibrant. More wonderful. More amazing. More incredible. More full. 

Because I'm actually living it. 

And that's something our phones will just never be able to do for us.  

Disconnected

If you don't know me personally, it probably came as a shock to you that I don't have social media on my phone. How can anyone, especially someone who blogs as faithfully as I do, not be constantly connected? (Yes, for the record, I write every single blog on my desktop, as well.) 

Well, let me tell you something else: on Sundays, I don't even turn my desktop on. 

It's one way that I recognize Sabbath rest. 

Follow that with me for a minute: I don't keep social media on my phone. I only use social media when I am on my desktop. I don't carry video games with me, either. And for one entire day every week, I don't even use my desktop computer. That's 24 full hours (actually more because I do not get up at midnight to turn my computer back on) in which I am completely disconnected from the world that exists on the Internet. 

And...it hasn't killed me. And...the internet is still there on Monday morning. And...I'm still not stressed about it because I don't have to catch up on all the things that happened while I was busy living. Again, I look at the things I want to look at, engage with the things I want to engage with, and walk away when I'm done...and I don't take it with me. It doesn't follow me around. 

A lot of folks think that a Sabbath is an antiquated practice in today's world. That maybe I think myself more highly religious than other folks because I observe one. But...a couple of things. 

First, God never said that He commanded a Sabbath until and unless we had something better to do on His holy day. The Sabbath was not created for men who had to work the field; it was created before sin. It is innate to our being, our created and "very good" being, to need a rhythm of rest. And...my life is better for it. 

Second, my Sabbath is not about you. It's not about setting myself apart from you. It's not about me feeling particularly holy or righteous or religious. Actually, if I'm being honest with you, my Sabbath practice brings into focus how harried and unrighteous I've become through the course of even just six days trying to live in this broken world, torn between all of the things the world says I have to do and be and say and like and tolerate and support and buy and whatever else...and the weariness in my soul that can't help but build because there's something in me that cannot seem to forget that I wasn't made for this. This isn't the kind of life I was created for.

So I log off. I disconnect. I spend one entire day each week purposely removed from all of the things that make the space of my soul smaller. 

I read. I take long walks with the dog. I run. I go to church and talk to folks face-to-face. I look up and notice things. I celebrate the goodness of God. I sleep in a little bit longer, make myself a real breakfast. I watch some sporting events on the TV, the actual TV, and talk about them with the other persons sharing the same physical space instead of throwing random comments out into the universe for whoever might be out there wanting to read them - probably someone who is in their own space watching the same thing. 

In fact, the day each week in which on the surface, I am most disconnected...I tell you, that's the day that I feel most connected.  

Selectively Connected

Did you know that you don't have to have social media on your phone? 

That statement probably comes as a shock to many persons. In a world in which we are constantly connected, not having social media in our pockets seems sacrilegious. 

How are my friends supposed to know what I'm having for dinner? How am I supposed to share the really cool birds I just saw on my walk? Who will I tell how miserable I am that I have to do adult things like work my job or raise my kids? How will I post inspiring messages or laughable memes if my phone is not my constant companion? 

What if I miss the thing I have to repost for Jesus to love me and let me get into heaven?

Can I tell you something? I have never had social media on my phone. Never. I have social media. I have social media accounts. I am active on social media. And...I have never once posted to social media from my phone. 

And it hasn't killed me. 

Actually, I only have social media on my desktop computer. (Yes, I still have a desktop computer.) See, the great thing about having a desktop computer is that it is then something I have to choose and be deliberate about. I have to decide that I want to sit in a particular spot, with particular things available to me and other things unavailable to me, and that I want to spend my time engaging in whatever I am engaging in on my desktop computer. 

If I want to post a picture to social media from my phone, I have to actually plug my phone into my computer via a USB cable, choose to enable file transfer, and browse through my folder to select the photo that I want to share. Again, this forces me into living a deliberate life. A life that I have to keep choosing. 

So often, our phones - and social media - and the internet in general - and video games (PS- I don't have any video games on my phone, either) are nothing more than distractions. They are meant to distract us. They distract us when we have to wait. They distract us when we are in an unpleasant situation. They distract us when we don't want to have to be active participants in our lives. 

While we choose to distract ourselves, everything after that is not really a deliberate choice. Our minds get sucked in and we're trapped in the vacuum that is, honestly, nothingness. 

Can I tell you something else? I actively use social media, but never on my phone, and it's not overwhelming to me when I come back to it on my desktop after awhile. Because I have not trained my brain that it has to see literally everything. I scroll through, slow down for the things that interest me, engage with some things and pass others by, and when I'm satisfied that this has been enough, I walk away and go do something else.  

And the internet doesn't follow me. And I don't take it with me. 

And...it's okay. 

(And for further record, my phone has its own email address; it's not hooked to my primary email address. So I don't even get email unless I'm at my desktop.) 

It doesn't break the internet. It doesn't break me. It doesn't diminish my relationships. In fact, it strengthens them because when I am engaged, I am truly engaged - by choice, not by mindlessness. And if I'm unavailable, I'm unavailable, but I'll come back at some point. 

We are the only generation in the history of the world that thinks we have to be constantly available to each other, all day every day, and...it's a lie. We don't have to be. We weren't created to be. 

You don't have to keep social media in your pocket. You don't have to take the internet with you everywhere you go. You don't have to live your life with one eye constantly to sharing it.

In fact, I think you're better off if you don't. 

Reconnected

I read quite a bit - usually an average of four books per month on top of my daily Bible reading. And it's not often that I use this space to review or to recommend a book, but this one is important. 

I want you to read this book. 

The book is Reconnected by Carlos Whitaker, who is fairly well-known in many Christian circles (and in social media circles). Carlos admits to being a man who spent way too much time on his phone every day, always having a reason why he had to be. But he worried about what it might be doing to his brain, let alone his life, so he set about figuring out how his being would change if he completely unplugged. 

For two weeks, he lived at a monastery. He lived his life by the sacred rhythms of prayer, silence, and solitude. He was guided by bells, by monks, by nature, and by wonder. He learned to notice things that he'd completely forgotten about because they were obstacles to the next dopamine hit from his phone. And he learned...that he didn't need that dopamine. 

Then, he spent two weeks living on an Amish farm and learning the rhythms of manual labor and connecting with the land. He broke some of the stereotypes that had built up in his mind about what other persons and other belief systems and other ways of living must be life, and he learned to really relate to folks again...as well as building up a few new callouses on his hands. 

Finally, he spent three weeks back at home with his family still not connected to the rest of the world. His phone was still far away, in someone else's possession. 

So...did it change his brain? Read the book and find out. 

But it changed his soul. And you probably could already figure that out. 

We live in a world that tells us that we have to be hyperconnected, but do you realize how new hyperconnection is as a human phenomenon? I remember back in the 90s (yes, the 1990s) when my family got our first mobile phone. It came in a bag the size of a lunch box, and it still had a big cord attached to it. Prior to that, we were on our own. And you can forget the internet altogether. 

And...our brains worked differently. Our hands worked differently. Our souls worked differently. There was something about having to actually engage the world around you that shaped the way that we lived, whereas today's human beings have all kinds of opportunities to disengage...and it seems they take every one of them. And even create a few more. 

I hear all the time from folks who say they couldn't imagine living without their phone, even in the same breath with which they curse it. They hate the way they're living, but they don't know how to do it any other way. It seems absolutely impossible to function in this world without being connected to it all the time. But...is it really that impossible? Is it really that unfathomable? 

Read the book. Seriously. It will give you hope. 

And if you need a closer example, come back for a few days and we'll talk some more about this idea.  

Setting the Table

As if we needed anything else in our Christian walk to help our minds wander, Christian service can sometimes be most guilty of this. Especially, I think, when it comes to the Table.

So much work must be done to properly set the Table for the congregation to partake. It takes someone to supply the emblems, someone to portion them out to ensure there is enough for everyone, someone or several persons to distribute them, someone to offer a prayer and perhaps a devotional, someone to clean up afterward if some of the elements come in disposable containers, etc. And each of these persons is prone to be a little distracted when the moment comes to simply eat with Jesus. 

Those who supply the emblems might be wondering if there was enough in the back to get through this Sunday, or how many more Sundays we can get through before we need more. Someone who portioned out and prepared the emblems might be silently praying they portioned enough - that there won't be some major increase in visitors this week - or perhaps that they didn't portion too many - that not many folks will be on vacation, because we don't want to have to throw away very much.

As a person who has passed the trays, I can tell you that it's easy to get distracted while trying to keep your eyes on the congregation. Which row has had it? Who is sitting alone that might have gotten missed? Is this row coming toward me or going away from me? The questions abound. And the same is true for one who prays or teaches over the Table - did my message hit home? Did they understand? Did I say what I think I said? Did I not say what I fear I might have said? Shoot! That one line I rehearsed all night - I forgot that one. 

The person whose job it is to clean up is already making a game plan, already scouting out the sanctuary to figure out the scope of their upcoming task. 

All of a sudden, the Table is done, the remnants are being wiped away, and you can taste the bread and the juice in your mouth but you don't even remember taking them. 

Because you were there, but you were not there. 

This is just an example of how all of us can be prone to what we like to call Martha Syndrome - being so busy in the work of worship that we forget or neglect to actually worship. It's so easy to do. 

This is why it's important to take some time during the week, even during Sunday morning, to prepare your heart and mind before you come to the Table. To take care of the worries and obsessions you have about whatever work you may be bringing to the worship so that when you come, you come not as a minister, not as a volunteer, not as a Martha, but as a Mary - you come as someone prepared to sit with Jesus and eat and soak it all in. 

It's why, I think, even Peter asked Jesus well before the meal, "Where should we go to prepare?" Because he didn't want to miss, and didn't want anyone else to miss, this moment. He didn't want anyone to be setting the Table when he knew everyone was supposed to be feasting at it.

So for those of us who prepare this Table, this reminder has been for you. For those of us who prepare this Table sometimes every time it is set, for the tireless volunteers who make sure there is room for everyone here, I ask - did you remember to make room for you? 

Don't let this Table pass you by with just an aftertaste to hold onto. Don't be here without being here. 

Come. 

God of Rest

On the seventh day, the Lord rested from His work of creating. 

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, for on the seventh day, even the Lord rested from His work. 

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, as the Lord your God led you out of slavery in Egypt. 

There's a strong emphasis in the Bible on rest. It is a prescription for goodness and wellness and a thriving life, not just for us, but for all of creation. The natural rhythms of rest are built into the cycle that we know as life, from sleeping and waking to seasonal changes. Rest is inevitable. 

And yet, we are very, very bad at it as a species. And I think we almost always have been. 

In today's world, many don't rest because every minute is another dollar for them. They want to work themselves to oblivion to pay for a life they don't even have time to enjoy because they are too busy working to fund it. Or we work ourselves excessively as a form of escapism, so that we don't have to deal with the thoughts in our head that naturally arise when we have a little bit of down time. Or we are stuck living paycheck to paycheck and scraping by and those extra hours at work are the difference between choosing between toilet paper and groceries for the next few days. 

As always, there are also folks who do not rest because they don't work at all and therefore, they have nothing to rest from. We would think their whole life is rest, but in fact, none of it is because without work, there can be no rest. 

So we have a whole world, almost, that doesn't seem to know how to rest.

And we're not alone. 

Back in the Old Testament, Sabbath rest was a hard-and-fast command for God's people. They had hundreds of rules surrounding the Sabbath and how to keep it. They spent a lot of time determining what was work and what wasn't. Remember when Jesus's (I know - New Testament) disciples picked a few heads of grain on the Sabbath and the religious elite lost their minds? Or when He healed a man on the Sabbath and then made reference to pulling an animal out of a ditch on the Sabbath? That's because the people had gone so far as to figure out if pulling an animal out of a ditch on the Sabbath was work or not. 

They were hard core. 

Until they weren't. 

As Israel lost their way, they lost their Sabbath. They stopped resting. Merchants were coming freely through the gates, even on Saturdays. (Israel's Sabbath was Saturday.) But then, after many generations and hundreds of years of no rest, God sent them into exile. Not so that they could rest, necessarily, since exile is not exactly a restful existence, but so that the land could. So that the rest of creation could get the rest that God promised it and designed it for after we, human beings, had taken it away for so long because we are so bent on not resting. 

He even said it - "This exile fulfilled the Lord's message through Jeremiah that Israel would like quietly at rest and be desolate for 70 years to make up for the generations where they did not observe the Sabbath" (2 Chronicles 36:21). 

God commanded rest. He created rest. He designed us, and all of creation, for rest. And if we don't rest, if we refuse, if we won't even let creation get some rest, He will make it happen. 

So rest, friend. You were created for it. 

God of Earnestness

I am not a good enough human being for God to hear my prayer. Or to care about it. 

Have you had that thought? It's very common for us, in seasons of conviction (or perhaps due to church teaching unnecessarily heavy-handed on the sin of humans), to have thoughts like this. We may want to pray, but we wonder if we can. Will God hear me with an unclean heart? 

Sometimes, we're tempted to try to clean up our own live before we pray. We want to be the kind of persons who deserve God's attention. (By the way, you are already are that kind of person - you are a person knit together in your mother's womb by a Father who already loves you so much that He can't wait to have a relationship with you, even on your hard days, even in your broken seasons.)

Even...if you're primarily wicked. For real wicked. 

Manasseh was a king of Judah who was particularly wicked, as many of the kings had been by the late age of his reign. The Bible tells us that "Manasseh corrupted Judah and the people of Jerusalem until they were more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before them" (2 Chronicles 33:9). So not only was he a wicked king, but he corrupted an entire nation of persons (mostly). He was responsible for hundreds of thousands of other persons going astray. 

If ever there were a man who should wonder if God would hear his prayer, we would think it would be a guy like Manasseh. I mean, I've had my days of feeling undeserving, but as far as I know, I have never corrupted an entire nation of persons. So there's that. 

Yet just a few verses later, after God has led an enemy into Judah's territory to try to get Manasseh's attention and recapture his heart, we see Manasseh embracing his "complete powerlessness" (v. 12) and praying to God for forgiveness. 

And God heard him. 

And God forgave him. 

Before, I think we can safely say, Manasseh ever forgave himself. 

Before he had cleaned up his life. Before he had had a chance to prove he was a different man. Before he could put together the evidence to even suggest that things could be different if he had a second chance. 

From an earnest heart, a troubled Manasseh, noted for his wickedness, prayed to the Lord, and the Lord heard him and answered. 

That should be good news to all of us who have ever felt undeserving. 

Pray, friend. Your Father is listening, and He is ready to answer. No matter who you are. No matter what you've done. 

God of the Heart

Am I doing this right? Does it count?

I hear this question frequently from earnest seekers who are trying to please God. Can I give my tithe to a ministry other than my church? Do I have to read the whole Bible every year? Which translation does God like? Should I be serving in more ministries? If I don't pray on my knees, does God hear me? 

Out of context, some of the questions seem silly. In context, of course, they are the cry of a heart just trying to please God, just trying to make sure they're getting this faith thing "right." 

Which means...those asking these questions are already halfway there. 

They are already halfway there because their heart is in the right place to even wonder if what they are doing is pleasing to God. If it's honoring Him. If it's faithful. If it's the right expression of their heart. If it's coming across the way they hope it's coming across. And that kind of heart is half the battle. 

Actually, it's most of the battle. 

Israel faced some of the same questions and struggles back in a time when the rules and regulations seemed exceptionally important. Back, we're talking, in the Old Testament. 

God had told His people from the Exodus onward that there were a few annual rituals they were supposed to observe. Passover. Feast of the Unleavened Bread. Feast of Tabernacles/Shelters. But for generations of Judges and less-than-faithful Kings, the people had not been celebrating these festivals. Until Hezekiah arrives, hears of a book in the Temple, is read its contents, and tells the people to come and celebrate. 

So, they come. They come from all over the region of God's people to celebrate a festival they were supposed to be keeping all along, a festival that had its own rules and regulations and rituals that were highly important to the proper keeping of the command. 

Hezekiah knew this. 

The people knew this. 

But their good King would not let that stop them. 

So he prayed a prayer - a prayer that I believe God absolutely heard and honored - asking God's blessing and forgiveness on those who came to the festival with the right heart, even if they had not had time or diligence to properly cleanse themselves to participate. In other words, He prayed for God to accept all the ritually dirty folk who showed up with hearts drawn to worship. 

That sounds like something our God would do. And, in fact, 2 Chronicles tells us that's exactly what He did - heard the prayer, accepted it, and accepted the people and their unclean worship. 

Am I doing this right? Does it count? 

Is your heart right?

God of Victory

Over the course of Israel's history, her kings seemed to struggle more and more with trusting in God. Somehow, the stories they had of His military victories weren't enough to sustain them. 

This was the God who led Egypt into the waters. Who parted the river for His people to walk through. Who laid to rubble the walls of Jericho with pots and trumpets. Who whittled Gideon's army down to a mere few men, then brought the victory anyway. He is the God who was able to keep His word to kill Ahab in battle, even though Jehoshaphat was the one dressed as a king. 

And yet. 

Amaziah was the king of Judah, fairly late in the game. By this point, Israel had split into two kingdoms long ago - the southern kingdom of Judah, which followed David's line as best as they were able, and the northern kingdom of Israel, which had rebelled. Like some others before him, Amaziah started his reign by killing all of his opponents, thus securing his rule. Then, he amassed an army of all able Judahites. 

But that wasn't enough for him. 

He went on to go into the northern kingdom of Israel and recruit more fighting men - skilled fighting men. Men with incredible abilities on the battlefield, whom Amaziah thought would be a tremendous asset to his own forces.

The prophet warned him this wasn't good, that he didn't need to hire mercenaries from other countries. That he should fight with just his own men, who would be more than enough. After all, there were 300,000 of them, all said and done. 

In fact, the prophet goes on to tell him in no uncertain terms, straight from the Lord Himself, that if he insists on hiring these other fighting men and putting them into his army, he'll never win. 

God will never let him win. 

Never. 

Not because God wanted him to lose. Not because God enjoyed seeing His people defeated. But only because God wanted him to know and to trust what had always been true: 

That God alone is the victory. 

Period. 

The Goodness of God

In nearly every church that I've been in, every experience that I have had of the Table, the Communion moment has been surrounded by...silence. If not silence, then a very soft bed of light, simple music - usually a simple worship melody, something off the day's playlist. (I think it's because our churches somewhere got the idea that silence is bad, so they put music into even the silent moments - under Communion, under prayer, under the invitation, under everything so that whatever happens, we never have to deal with silence. It's...awkward. But that's a conversation for another day.) 

So we celebrate the Table in silence, in personal meditation, in prayerful soft worship. We have this moment that feels like it should be dimmed lights and lighted candles, maybe a little swaying back and forth (but not too much), a private moment to oneself to think about what it means to be sitting at the Table with Jesus and what it means to be taking of the sacrifice that He offers us. 

Except...

There is no way this Table was ever that quiet. 

Maybe the first time, when Israel didn't know what was happening. Not in any real sense of knowing. 

But after that, remember - this is that Table of the Passover. It's a remembrance of that time when God sent an angel of death through the entire territory of Egypt and slaughtered the firstborn everything, only to pass over the homes of His people and leave them the only ones not weeping when the sun rose. It's a celebration of the goodness of God. 

Think about that for a second. We have somehow taken this Table, which was initially marked by a people not weeping and made it into one of the most solemn things we ever do. 

One word: whyyyyyy?

I think it's a bigger problem than just the Table. I think we struggle as Christians in this age to celebrate, to truly celebrate, the goodness of God at all. We're not good at praising Him for the amazing, wonderful, incredible things that we're experiencing as His children. We aren't even that good at talking about them. 

Maybe it makes us feel weird. Sometimes, it makes me feel weird. It's been so long since many churches have truly celebrated the Lord, rather than solemnly, reverently worshiped Him, that for generations like mine, it's almost a foreign language. That's sad. 

I don't think that celebrating the Table fixes all of that, but I do think it's a great place to start. I think that the experience we have not only with the memory of the goodness of God Who passes over His people but also with the Son of God who came to live with and die for us is a great place to start learning how to celebrate again. It's a great place to break out of that solemnity, out of that silence, out of that smooth worship bed, and, uhm, party. 

After all, if anyone else had done this for you - your friend, your neighbor, your politician, whomever -you'd rejoice in that, wouldn't you? 

So let us rejoice. 

Let us break bead, pour juice, lift our glasses and our hands, and rejoice. 

For this is His body, broken for you, and this is His blood, poured out. For you. 

Doesn't that make you happy? 

God Gets Angry

We all are members of one family, brothers and sisters in Christ. For years, we have called each other "Brother Bob" and "Sister Judy." We have greeted each other with the warmth of the family and sat together at the family table, sharing the bread and the wine. 

God's people have always been a family. From very early on, when God met Abraham, He became the God of generations - always the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of fathers. But then with Jacob, who became Israel, and his twelve sons, God became the God of brothers. 

And so He is today. 

This lends a new understanding to some of the Old Testament narratives that are too easy for us to read right past. 

In the OT, Israel had a series of kings. These kings were often succeeded by their sons, which is the way most human societies have done it for a very long time. Occasionally, someone would be ousted, murdered, overthrown and someone entirely new would come in, and sometimes, it wasn't the eldest son that took over, but largely, a son would succeed his father as king. 

In the midst of all of this, there are a few narratives in the histories and chronicles of the kings where we see a son, chosen or not chosen by his father, intend to make the throne securely his, and he kills all of his brothers. Such was the case of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat. 

Jehoshaphat did a very prudent thing and gave each of his sons an inheritance, making them governors across the kingdom even while making Jehoram the next king. But Jehoram wasn't having it; he didn't want to have to fight in the family order all the time, so...he killed all of his brothers. All of them. 

When the prophet Elijah writes a letter to Jehoram condemning his reign, one of the grievances God has is that "you have murdered your brothers, your own family, who were better men than you" (2 Chronicles 21:13). 

We read this and we think it's about family. And it is. But remember, in the New Testament, Jesus made us all brothers and sisters. 

God, in 2 Chronicles, through the prophet, is talking to all of us. 

He's telling us - He gets angry when we hurt our brothers. 

He gets angry when we don't let others have their place in the world. He gets angry when we let jealousy and insecurity turn us against those we are supposed to love. He gets angry when we've been given our portion and decide that it's not enough, that we need everyone else's portion, too. 

He gets angry when we fail to love our brothers and when we take their very life (not necessarily physically) away from them. 

We are brothers and sisters in the Lord, and this matters. It means that every time the Bible talks about brothers or sisters or families, God's not just talking about those born from the same flesh as you; He's talking about those born from the same Father. And that's everyone. 

God Speaks Truth

We all say that we want someone who will tell us the truth, but the truth is...we don't really like the truth. We don't like being told when we've messed up or when we don't have our facts straight or when we were just plain wrong. We don't like being shown our rough (or sometimes, sharp) edges, and the moment that most of us are told the truth, we immediately come up with all kinds of plausible explanations (excuses) why that's not really the truth. 

The truth is that most of us would rather have someone who tells us what we want to hear. 

We hear this a lot when there starts to be a cultural shift in the church, for better or for worse. One side, if not both, accuse the other of have abandoning truth and preaching "only what everyone wants to hear." Then, we start to argue about whether God is really about truth or whether He's about love, and how can truth and love co-exist? 

It's been a problem since as far back as at least the New Testament, when we are told that persons were looking for someone not to tell them the truth, but to tell them what they wanted to hear. In fact, I'd say it's a problem we've had as a human species as far back as at least Judges, when we are told that "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." In other words, there was no one around to speak truth...or no one who was given the authority to speak truth. 

God, on the other hand, has always been a truth teller. Whether we've wanted to hear it or not. 

One of the more fun stories in which to see this is the story of Ahab and Micaiah in 2 Chronicles 18. Micaiah is a prophet of the Lord; Ahab is the (wicked) king of Israel. Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, has come to help Ahab in battle, but he wants to hear from a prophet first. 

So Ahab calls together his royal prophets, the guys he's surrounded himself with, but they are basically just yes-men. They are guys who tell him what he wants to hear, no matter what it is. Jehoshaphat recognizes immediately that these men are speaking for Ahab and not for the Lord, so he asks if there's any man of God they can talk to, and Ahab says, "Yeah, there's one, but I don't like him. He never tells me what I want to hear." 

They call Micaiah anyway. When pressed to speak what God really says, the prophet does not hold back. 

Then Ahab is like, "See? I told you." 

God always speaks the truth. 

He could have told Ahab what he wanted to hear, but it wouldn't have been the truth. He could have agreed with all of the yes-men, but it wouldn't have come to pass. He could have given lip service, but He would have been found a liar and a fraud - and those are things that God can never be. Not if He still claims to be God. 

But this is good news. It's good news because it assures us that what we hear from God is true. Always has been, always will be. Whether it's what we want to hear or not. 

God is Commander

If you live on planet earth in any kind of formed society, you are familiar with the idea of a commander - particularly, of a commander of an armed force. 

The commander is the one who assesses the situation, gauges your resources, draws a strategic battle plan, rallies the troops, and leads them into battle. This is true of the United States Armed Forces. It was true of Israel's armed forces. It's been true of armed forces for as long as there have been armed forces (or nearly) because it doesn't take long to have a battle going on before you figure out you need a leader and a plan or you're going to get slaughtered. 

In Israel, God led the army through a number of human leaders. First, Joshua. Then, a series of judges. Finally, the kings. In fact, that's one of the reasons that Israel wanted a king - they wanted someone to lead them the way all the other nations had someone to lead them. It was the king's job (part of it) to lead the Israelites into battle. 

You may even remember that it was David's failure to lead his army that left him open to sin with Bathsheba in the first place. 

Israel, though, had something even better than a king, even after God gave them kings like they asked for. 

They still had God as commander of their army. 

No matter what human was in charge, God was in charge even of him (or in rare cases, her). No matter what the troops looked like, God was their leader. Whenever an army was pulled together, it was God who determined who was fighting and how they were supposed to do it. 

We saw this at Jericho, when God told the armies to march around the wall with lanterns. We saw this when He told them to sneak around and plant a surprise attack on the other side of another city. We saw this when He determined what tribe of Israel would lead an attack, or which tribes would even participate. We see this over and over again throughout all of the battle scenes of the Old Testament. 

Yet, should we have any question at all about what it means that the Lord is the commander of His people's army, we need look no further than the reign of Asa in 2 Chronicles 14. 

Asa built an army during a time of good peace in Israel. He developed a corps of fighting men, strong and brave and numerous. And then, wouldn't you have it? Cush came to attack him. And as soon as they got into the battle, as soon as the two armies met face-to-face, Asa prayed and recognized God as the true commander of the army. 

One verse later, we are told, "Just as Asa requested, The Lord defeated the Cushites on behalf of Judah, and the Cushites fled." 

Just like that. Right on the battlefield, the Commander of the army stepped in and gained the victory. A victory that Asa had spent a whole season of peace preparing for but knew wasn't really his. 

Because even though he was king, he wasn't commander. 

That job always has been, and always will be, God's. 

God is Right

We are a people who don't like the truth about ourselves. Even if we are, as we claim to be, mostly good persons, mostly nice, mostly kind, mostly gracious, mostly generous - even if we spend most of our lives being at least reasonably close to the kind of person that we want to be and that we think God wants us to be - we don't like it very much when we hear that we've messed up. Fallen short. Failed. 

It's easy for us to come up with all kinds of excuses, stories, spin. All kinds of things to say in our defense. A thousand reasons why we can't possibly be guilty of the thing that someone else said that we were guilty of, why we can't possibly be guilty of that thing that our own spirit is trying to convict us of. 

We can't possibly be wrong or have done wrong. 

Can we?

A lot of the time, all of our talking and posturing gets us out of the moment. We put up such a defense (or throw such a fit) that we can make even the most confident accuser starts to question whether they really heard/saw/experienced what they thought they did.

Couldn't have been us. 

Could it have? 

It's a dance that we are very good at and one at which many of us get a lot of practice. It comes from those first moments of fallenness all the way back in the garden when, after eating the fruit, Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent snickered to himself. 

But if you look at the rest of the biblical story, you actually don't see this a whole lot. And there are plenty of times when it would have been easy; there are plenty of characters who you'd think would have been good at these self-justifications.

Yet, more often than not, what we see when the Lord steps forward to convict a man is not self-justification, but humility. Confession. Acceptance. Every time the Lord comes to hand out a divine punishment for a wrongdoing, we see a man, stripped naked by his sin, who says...yeah, I deserve that.

Rehoboam, Solomon's son, goes a step further and says, "The Lord is right." He's right about who we are. He's right about what we've done. He's right to punish us. His chosen punishment for us is right. Everything about this whole thing that comes from the Lord is right. "The Lord does what is right."

As he should. I mean, Adam and Eve can say whatever they want, but at the end of the conversation, they're the ones still naked and ashamed and picking little pieces of bush out of their hair. Eve's fault, the serpent's fault, it doesn't matter - their shame testifies against them. Like the little kid who has, in fact, stolen a couple of cookies, it's written all over their faces. There's nowhere to hide. 

The Lord is right. And He is also merciful. 

Would that we were more willing to accept this in our lives and let ourselves be truly justified by the only One who can actually make it so. 

For we all have sinned, whether we confess it or not. 

Beef and Noodles

A few years ago, I attended a family reunion. As my mom and I stood around in the kitchen talking about what food we should take, she laughed a little and said, "I thought about making up a big pot of beef and noodles." 

I laughed, too. 

Then, we showed up at the reunion and saw the spread all across the table. Deliciousness as far as the eye could see, and the host was firing up the grill. As we stood around talking to a couple of cousins, my mom made the comment that she thought about bringing beef and noodles. 

A cousin laughed and said she was going to do the same thing. Another one chimed in with a chuckle and said she was, too. 

A couple more cousins walked up and joined in the conversation, and when they found out what we were talking about, each one of them said they'd had the same thought - definitely beef and noodles. By this point, we were all laughing. 

See, my great-grandmother was known for her beef and noodles. Made from scratch. It's a dish that is a hallmark of our family, something everyone knows, and something everyone knows how to make. Just the way that grandma made it. 

Everyone knew, just knew in their hearts, that there would be beef and noodles at this reunion, and so everyone thought about it, then brought something else. 

I think about that, and I think about this Table with Jesus. 

We all know what's at this Table. Every single one of us. We know, when we come, that there will be bread, which is the body of Christ, and there will be juice, which is the blood of Christ. We stand in our kitchens and think about it. We kneel to pray and think about it. Whenever we think about this Table, we think about the bread and the juice. We can't help it. 

At the same time, we all bring something different, too. We all bring with us whatever it is that we have to bring, whatever we've got in this season. We bring our hurts and our hopes, our trials and our triumphs, our sickness and our health, our brokenness and our healings, our weariness and our zeal. We bring our everything. 

And when we look out over this table, there's quite the spread. There's something on this table for everyone, something that anyone can connect with, that anyone can nourish their souls with. There's something about the gathering of the whole family of Christ around this Table that just fills it to overflowing with a veritable smorgasbord of human experience. 

And it is good. Boy, is it good. 

But talk to any one of us, and we'll all tell you the same thing, even while we're poking potatoes and hot dogs and alligator cake into our mouths - 

Every single one of us is thinking about the bread and the juice. 

As we should. 

A Love Story

And then...life. And we're left trying to find God all over again, trying to learn to love Him all over again, trying to learn His love for us all over again. 

And I'm thankful for this. 

I think back to some of the first things I ever knew about God - or thought that I knew about God. Some of the earliest experiences that I had of Him, some of the first moments that I knew for sure His love. I think about the wonderful memories that those things hold in my heart, the solid foundation that they have created for every bit of faith that has come afterward. 

But I also realize how many seasons of my life I have had since then that I simply wouldn't have made it through with my faith intact if that was all the faith that I had, if that was all I ever knew of God. 

I would still love Him, I think....maybe...but it wouldn't be a meaningful, intimate kind of love. It'd be the kind of love you have for a relative you only see once or twice a year who doesn't ever seem to know what's been going on in your life. Who seems to care, but hasn't stayed connected. Who you love, but you come to find out that you don't really know. Not in any way that matters. That's not really love. It's something, but it's not really love. 

The truth is that I have needed every little thing I have learned about God, every little thing that I've had to fight for. All of the things that I've come to know after being almost sure that I lost Him again, that He didn't follow me into whatever season I just entered into. The truth is, He entered into every single one of those seasons with me, and He invited me into a deeper faith in each of them. 

He invited me to find Him anew, to discover something different, to take that firm foundation block on which I had set my faith and start building on it, start strengthening it, start stretching it out to accommodate more of the inevitable human experience - love, loss, victory, defeat, sickness, health, questions, confident assurance. All of it. 

And every season has given me more to draw on in the next one. More to trust in. More to hope in. More to know for sure. Every season has made me more unshakable, no matter what comes next. 

Some persons try to live forever on whatever little bit they know about God. They try to cling to that, no matter what the season is. And that leads them to sometimes think that God has probably changed, or disappeared, or doesn't love them any more. 

But that's simply not true. 

The God I have known in seasons past is still good. Always has been, always will be. But if that's the kind of goodness He brought to this season, I would, at the very least, think it strange. In fact, I think sometimes about the little things of God that I have loved so much from seasons past, and I realize that if those little things were to pop into this season, they would worry me. They would concern me. Because the challenges I face in this season are not the challenges He was answering in that one, and I realize that to see those signs of His love today would make me wonder whether those challenges were coming back, too. 

No, I love the God that I find in every season. I love knowing more of Him. I love having the chance to grow my faith every time I move. To have a God to hold onto while at the same time, having one to keep discovering, too. 

It is the most amazing of all love stories, and I get to be right in the middle of it. 

It's so cool.  

Manna

And then...life. And then, you wonder if you still love God or if He still loves you or if you even know anything about Him at all. 

As we saw yesterday, God hasn't gone anywhere, but He's different in every season. Different aspects of His heart and character manifest themselves in different ways according to where we are and what our needs are and what our eyes are open to. 

The simplest way to say this is: you only need manna in the wilderness. 

When Israel left Egypt and set to wandering, they got hungry along the way. God gave them manna from heaven, this new sort of thing they had never seen before that appeared on the ground for them every morning. And they haven't seen it since. 

In Egypt, God showed His love by drawing a distinct line between His people in Goshen, who were never touched by frogs or gnats or blood or death, and the people of Egypt, who are probably still cleaning frogs out of their houses. 

There has never been a ram in a thicket anywhere in Scripture except on Mount Moriah when Abraham needed a sacrifice. 

In the Tabernacle, the Levites were responsible for carrying all of the things of the tent, but when the Temple came along, they moved into the cities of refuge and became the ministers of God's justice and protection. 

The list could go on and on. As we read through the Bible, we continue to see all of these different examples of God's love and goodness depending on where His people are, what kind of season they are in. 

Should we say, then, that God is ever-changing? Of course not. We understand that all of these things are just aspects of His one being, of the one consistent reality that is the very heart of God. We understand that you only need manna in the wilderness, you only need carriers in the desert, you only need a sacrifice on the mountain. We understand that God met His people in exactly the way they needed at exactly the time they needed Him in exactly the place where they were.

The same is true today. 

It's hard when our life changes because it feels like our God changes. It feels like everything we thought we knew about Him is called into question as the experience we've had of God starts to fade in a new place. But...it has to. Some other aspect of His love is coming. We are about to encounter Him in a new way. We are about to deepen our relationship, if we can just hold on and keep looking for the new way that God loves us here. 

A Distant God

And then...life. And transition. And all of a sudden, you don't know if you love God any more. You don't know if He loves you. All of the signs and wonders and assurances that you've grown accustomed to - grown to depend on - have vanished, and the God who was once so near now feels so very far away. 

Because He is. 

The experiences you've had of God have all been dependent upon the places in which you've found Him. So it's only natural that when you come into a new season and find yourself in a new place, you have to discover God all over again. Not because He's really distant, but because the ways in which you've known Him are far removed from your new situation. 

If you were to move to a new town, you could not expect that driving the exact same path from your home - a left turn, two rights, a mile straight down the road and into the parking lot - would get you to the local grocery store in your new town. That would be weird. 

At the same time, you would also never convince yourself that just because the same route doesn't get you there, your new town obviously doesn't even have a grocery store. That would be just plain silly. 

In the same way, we so often move from one season of life and expect to find God exactly where we left Him - a left turn, two rights, a mile straight down the road and there He is. Then, we're surprised to find that that's not where God is any more. That's not how we get to Him from here, not from this new place. 

What's interesting is that most of us will then go through this period of wondering whether God is even here at all, then. No matter how sure we were of taking this step, of making this move, of entering this new season, there comes a moment - usually when we realize that we can't find God the same way we're used to - when we wonder whether God really wanted us to be here at all. 

Was He really calling us to move? Did He really prepare this place for us? Is our faith strong? Did we hear wrong? Maybe we didn't hear at all and just made it up because it's what suited our hearts. 

The questions don't seem to stop. 

We long for a taste of the God that we have known, the One we have loved, the One we were so certain loves us. We ache for the signs and wonders and assurances that brought us this far, just a little one. Just a piece of one. Just a reminder of one. We struggle because He seems so far away, and it doesn't seem like we'll ever find Him again. 

But...we will. 

Because He's not that far away after all. 

He is, as He has always been, right with us. Right here with us. We just have to find the new way. 

And yes, a lot of us are going to step out of our houses and turn left just like we've always done, even for awhile after we've realized God isn't over that way any more. It's just habit. It's just natural. It's just the way we have lived. 

But eventually, we'll remember. We'll take a right. Or maybe even go straight. Wherever He happens to be. And the new route will become the old standard, and it will be just as natural to us as anything ever was. 

We will know, as we have always come to know, that God is in this place, too. He's not so far off as He seems. He's just...different here. 

And that's okay. In fact, it's good. 

Seasons

There are seasons in my life in which I love God deeply. Inevitably, these are followed by seasons in which I can't figure out if I even know who God is anymore, let alone if I love Him. 

Let alone if He loves me. 

It's a tough place to be in. Always questioning the faith. Always missing those things that made me so sure in a season that seems both not that long ago at all and yet, somehow, an entire lifetime away. 

When I stepped into ministry more than a decade ago, I felt the love of God deeply. I felt it in the way that He poured into me when I was pouring myself out, every day. I felt it in the way that the worship music thumped deep in my soul like a bass boost during my hour-plus commute each way. I felt it in the way that I stood a little taller (literally - I gained an inch in that season), in the way that I found the strength to look in the mirror, in the way that I saw the tenderness in my own hands. There was something unquestionable about God in that season. 

Then...life. And I entered a new season. A season marked by more questions. By roadblocks. Not so much by wandering as by wondering - wondering where I go from here. What the next step is. What the last season meant in this season. Why the God I had grown so close to had suddenly become what felt like so quiet, so distant. 

This season was a season of struggle. Deep struggle. Physical, emotional, financial, spiritual struggle. Not for any particular reason except that, well, the things I had been so sure of didn't seem so certain any more and I was wrestling in that place that pulls us between what God says and what the world allows. I was certain I knew where God wanted me, but I was running up against a world that seemed committed to making sure I could never get there.

At some point in this season, I found God anew once again in the weirdest of all ways. In a time when I was worried about where I was going and what I was doing and how I was going to make it, let alone survive, God started meeting me in the most unexpected places with provision. Weird provision. Opportunities. Gifts. Blessings. Poured out like I had never experienced them before in my life...and haven't since. And I came to understand that God was loving me even then, and I began to rely on these provisions to nourish my soul in those places that kept questioning. Until...one day, I realized I wasn't questioning any more. 

Ah, yes. God is still God. God is still good. God still loves me. Things are okay. 

Then...life. Another transition. Another new season. One that has been blessed from the very start of it, only to come into a sort of rough patch of growth later. A season that was clearly God's next good thing for me and yet, there's something empty about it. Those little provisions that I had come to love, to rely on, to use to fuel my soul...they're gone. Those things haven't happened any more. Much as the thump in the depths of my soul that I felt to the worship as God poured into me hasn't really happened since two seasons ago. 

And it's hard. It's hard because I know I still love God. At least, I think I do. But there are all of these questions again. This weird gnawing...emptiness where all the things that made me solid in seasons past don't work here, and there are days that I wonder...is the love still there? Is it still deep? Am I losing something? Is this what drifting away feels like? Will those things I always loved about my special relationship with God ever come back? In the same way? In a new way? 

There are a thousand questions, and I don't know the answers to them. But then, I realize that at the beginning of every other season, I didn't know the answers, either. But they came. And they were good. And they were wonderful. 

So maybe it's about just holding on.  

Strong and Happy

Our God is a God of bread and wine. If you read through the Scriptures with an eye for it, you'll find this meal in a thousand little places where you never expected it. 

One such place that I recently found this Table was deep into the psalms. 

In Psalm 104, the psalmist declares that the Lord has given us "bread to make us strong, wine to make us happy, and oil to make our faces shine." And I love this image of the meal. 

Bread has nutritional value. It is full of carbohydrates, which the body uses for energy. It does something to the physical system to eat bread; it enables us to do other things, things that God has called us to do. The bread nourishes our bodies. 

Wine...doesn't really have nutritional value. You aren't getting a lot of good energies from wine. You aren't giving your body much fuel at all. But..it does something to the soul. It's intoxicating. It captivates something inside our spirit and makes us lighter, more carefree. More prone to dream wild dreams. The wine nourishes our soul. 

I think this is important when we think about the meal that Jesus prepared for us in the Upper Room and, just a few hours later, on the Cross. He told us this was His body and this was His blood; He told us it was the bread and the wine. 

And I think the only conclusion we can draw from that is that the Lord was telling us that He was feeding our bodies and our souls. That in His sacrifice, there was something for every part of us. Something for the part of us that connects to the world (the body) and something for the part of us that connects to the Lord (our soul). 

Sometimes, it's too easy for us to forget about this. To think that God only cares about what we can do or about how much we love Him, but not really the two of those things together. We tend to tip the scales one direction or the other and convince ourselves that God only cares about one thing - whatever we have decided that one thing is.

I'm telling you - it's very infrequent that we decide that God cares at all about our happiness. 

But here it is, right there in the psalms - the purpose of the wine is to make us happy. 

Of course, we are talking about a happiness of soul, not a satisfaction of the flesh. We're talking about a true happiness, not a temporary glee. We're talking about abiding joy, not momentary ecstasy. But it's there - happiness. God cares about our happiness. 

And if you ever forget that, then this Table is here to remind you. 

For on it, forever, there is bread to make us strong and wine to make us happy, the body to give us strength and the blood to give us joy. This is the gift.  

God Acts

How long, O Lord?

They are words most of us resonate with, as we have spent so much of our lives praying desperately for the Lord's intervention and wondering when - or sometimes, even if - He will move. When will He do something? When will He set things right? When will He answer us? How long, O Lord, must we wait?

We have come up with all kinds of ideas to satisfy our souls when we don't think God is moving quickly enough. We have told ourselves that we just don't know what is truly good, so what we are asking for is actually not what's good for us. We have told ourselves that the timing is wrong, that God will act when it is time for Him to act and not a second sooner. We have told ourselves that God simply doesn't care, that this isn't the kind of thing that He's interested in. We have told ourselves that God is testing us, that we have to get through this to "pass." We have told ourselves that God is punishing us, that we deserve whatever bad things He's not seeming to rescue us from. We had told ourselves that God is strengthening us, that this is going to prepare us for something else He wants us to do later. We have told ourselves all kinds of things, ad nauseum, to try to make ourselves feel better, but the truth is...none of these things do.

Rather, all that these things tend to do is to call into question everything that we think we know about God until the only logical conclusion we can reach is a nagging question that we can't quite let go of - is God even good?

But the Bible tells us who God really is - that He is good, yes, and that He answers us. He is coming. He is doing something. 

Solomon reflected this knowledge in the prayer that he prayed over the Temple when its construction was finally complete. If you remember this prayer, it takes up the entirety of the very long chapter of 2 Chronicles 6, and in it, Solomon mentions several groups of persons by name. Israelites, non-Israelites, the faithful, the repentant, the backsliders. Seekers. Everyone. And the structure in each breath of the prayer is the same:

Lord, when You hear, act. 

When You hear this person, respond. When someone prays this way, answer them. When we turn to You, let us see Your face. 

The only reason that Solomon prays a prayer like this one is because he knows this is who God is. He knows this is how God responds. He has learned, through his own journey of faith and the story of his people, that this is a God who answers. Whenever He hears His people, He can't help but come. 

In the Garden. In the wilderness. On the mountain. In the Temple. On the shores of Galilee. In the streets of Jerusalem. Over and over and over again, the Bible tells us that we have a God who hears...and acts. Who moves. Who comes. And Solomon takes all this wisdom to heart and prays to this God...the God he knows the Lord really is. 

So if it doesn't seem like God is coming, He is. If it doesn't seem like He's answering, He is. If it doesn't seem like He's acting, He is. He can do no other. Our God is a God who hears...and acts. 

May we pray with such confidence. 

God's Fullness

If you've read the Old Testament, then you know that the Temple (and the Tabernacle) were somewhat complicated designs. There was a courtyard, an inner place, a holy place, and a Most Holy Place. All of the accoutrement of the Temple had its specific place, exactly where it had to be, in one of these spaces, and entrance into these spaces was limited to certain classes of Israelites - for example, only the high priest was allowed in the Most Holy Place. 

And the Most Holy Place was the place where the Ark of the Covenant, covered by the Throne of Mercy, dwelt. It's where Israel kept the tablets that God Himself had written on, a sampling of manna from the wilderness, Aaron's blooming staff. It's where all of the most powerful symbols of God's promise and presence remained for all time. 

We are told, as well, that the very presence of the Lord dwelled in this Temple (and in the Tabernacle). We are told that He came in a smoke so thick that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. 

We are told...that His glory filled the Temple. 

This is so like God. This is exactly the kind of thing that He does. 

We are a people who are prone to think that if God is going to move into the Temple, He's going to move into His room. The Most Holy Place. Where the Throne of Mercy is. He's going to move into the place that is set up to be most suited for Him. And, of course, we live a lot of our Christian lives believing this, as well - that God is content to dwell in the space we have created for Him, the little room that seems most fitting for Him in our lives. 

But the Bible tells us over and over again that this is not what God does. The Bible doesn't tell us that God came to dwell in the Most Holy Place. It doesn't tell us that God's glory covered only the Throne of Mercy. It tells us that He came to dwell in the Temple and His glory filled the place. 

Every nook and cranny of it, overflowing even to the outside. So thick and so clearly present that you couldn't ignore it. 

And this is still what God does. 

He comes to fill this place. He comes to fill our lives. He comes to fill our hearts. He comes to dwell in a glory so thick and clearly present that you can't ignore and that's so clear to everyone because it overflows a little bit and just sort of...seeps out of us. 

He's not content to dwell only in the Most Holy Place, even if that is the place that looks most like His sort of thing; He comes to dwell in every place and make it holy. 

This is our God.