God Teaches

I have a teenager in my life. It was not that long ago that I had many teenagers in my life, as I spent several years working for the local school corporation. So hear me when I say that I have had many lectures in my life about how the world works - how things in the world work, how people think, how relationships manifest, everything - from persons who do not have the lived experience to know how things actually work. 

The thing about teenagers is that they are past their curiosity stage, for the most part. Little kids ask questions because they honestly want the answers; teenagers ask questions because they want to demonstrate to you how smart they are. They are at that age where they are looking for mastery of their world, where they are longing to grow into adulthood and show themselves competent and capable. And so, they will spin these incredibly long tales about how things work.

Even long after you've told them they're wrong. 

No, no. They aren't wrong. You just don't understand. Here, let them explain it again...oh, this is so exasperating for them. Why can't you just comprehend how the world works? Aren't you supposed to be the adult? 

If you have teenagers, if you know teenagers, if you love teenagers, then you know what I'm talking about. Maybe. Maybe I need to explain it to you again. (Sorry - couldn't help myself.) 

But now that we have a vague understanding of the common ground on which we stand, I'll just say what I want to say: 

Too many of us are spiritual teenagers. 

We love to lecture God about the way the world works. We love to spin tales and go off on long tangents, then sigh exasperatedly and start to explain it all again until He understands. Doesn't He know? Isn't He supposed to be God?

Isaiah tells us that God will help us learn (and indeed, Jesus was called "Teacher" for a reason), but the key to our learning from God is the thing that teenagers do least well: we have to listen. 

If we would listen to God, we'd learn all kinds of things that we thought we already knew. And guess what? They're different than we thought we understood them. If we would listen to God, He would tell us things we haven't encountered yet, things we cannot know except through Him. If we would listen to God, we would gain another perspective on this world and the way it works - a perspective that might challenge our lived experience of it a little bit and open our eyes to the fact that there's more to this world than we know of it right now. 

If we would stop trying to prove our mastery and go back to our curiosity, God would help us learn. He's always speaking, always teaching, always pointing out the things we're missing. 

But we have to be willing to listen. 

If you have a teenager in your life, you know how frustrating it can be that they are so cocksure, so certain, so completely uncorrectable when they think that they know better than us. 

Imagine, then, how God feels.... 

God of Hidden Riches

A friend recently posted that she was having a difficult day at work, then reached for her lunch and found a heart-shaped potato chip in her bag and was reminded of how much God loves her. 

I told her that was sweet and that I have a similar relationship with God. There's this chink in the floor at work, right as I'm getting near my unit, that is heart-shaped, and it catches my eye every time, and I remember the goodness of God. 

At my desk, which I share with other coworkers when I am not on duty, there's a recessed area behind the computer screen, and at a time when I knew one of my coworkers needed some encouragement, I plastered that little recessed wall with blue paper and stuck affirmation stickers all over it so she would see positive messages when she came in. You can only see these affirmations when you're physically sitting at our desk. 

As I was walking past the chaplain's office and the chapel in the hospital one day a few months ago, I suddenly noticed for the first time that the number code above the door is 144 and 145; my life has been filled with 4s and 44s for almost forever; it's a number that holds a special meaning for me. So now, I smile every time I walk by those doors because I believe that one day, God will give me those doors for my ministry...for His ministry. In His timing, of course. 

Everyone seems to have something. Don't we? We all have that thing that shows up in secret, quietly sneaking into our consciousness in the place we least expect to find it. Maybe we're the only ones who see it. Maybe no one else understands the significance. Maybe no one else would ever "get it," even if we explained it a thousand times. But we all have that thing. That thing that sneaks in and reminds us that God loves us, that He's with us, that He's working in and for and through us. 

And...of course we do. 

Isaiah 45:3 says, "I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name."

In other words, God's always been tucking away secret treasures for you - little things nobody else would see, things that lighten your heart and make you remember how much He loves you, how good He is, how much He cares for you, that He's working in and for and through you. That in the course of a no good, very rotten day, He is still right there with you. That on your best days, He's rejoicing with you. That in the times and places where you maybe least expect Him, there He still is. With you. Knowing you, loving you, calling you by name. Just you. 

That potato chip was an act of God's love. Whatever happened to the floor at work to take that specific chink out of it in that specific place was an act of God's love. It might have felt like an accident at the time. Sometimes, it feels like circumstance or happenstance. But it's not. 

It's love. God just loves you. 

What secret things is He tucking away in hidden places to remind you of that? 

Cheryl

A few years ago, I was working for the local school corporation, and I had spent a couple of years at the high school, a couple of years at the middle school, a few days at some of the elementary schools here and there filling in for Covid, and it came time that I needed to make another transition. This time, I was moving permanently to the intermediate school. And urgently. 

Literally, HR called and told me to report to the new building the next morning. That was at about 3 in the afternoon, just as the school I was working at was letting out for the day. I had just a few minutes to send a mass email, thanking everyone for their friendship and announcing my departure, and to find some folks I wanted to say goodbye to in person. 

The next morning, I showed up at the intermediate school, where I knew literally no one. Not a single soul. Not even the principal or the assistant principal, not my new boss, nothing. They greeted me with joy, welcomed me, set me up with all of the things I would need to succeed, showed me around the building, everything you would expect on Day One of a new gig, and then I went to it...floating around and trying to find my bearings. 

Around lunch, I found an empty teacher workroom with a table in it and sat down by myself to eat. Honestly, I was crying. I was missing my friends at the middle school, and I felt lost in this new place. I had yet to actually meet any of the other staff I would be working with on a daily basis (except for one guy who I knew from somewhere else, and we picked back up immediately...after he ribbed me on the tour, he told the principal he was just joking and that we were lucky to have me). 

All of a sudden, a teacher came in to make some copies and saw me sitting there...and greeted me by name. 

"You must be....! So happy to have you here! We are all looking forward to it." 

Uhm...what? 

She introduced me around to a few of her friends, and by the end of the day, I was starting to feel like there was a place for me there. In fact, everyone already seemed to know me and to appreciate me and to want me there. 

It would take a few more months before I realized what had happened. Cheryl, the principal, had a staff meeting every morning with the building staff. During this meeting, among other things, she made everyone aware of staffing changes - who was coming, who was going, who was out, who was doing whatever. The morning of my arrival, on no notice at all and having not even met me herself, Cheryl introduced me to the staff. Just like that. 

She opened a door I would walk through just a short bit later. 

Oh, how I want to be a person who opens doors. I want others to have the experience in the world that I had at the intermediate school from my very first day - not having to introduce yourself, not having to make an impression, not having to establish a place. Already having a place. Already being known, by name. Already having the good favor of others just by virtue of being there and coming onto the team. 

I want to be a Cheryl. For all the folks who feel like pawns in this world, being shuffled around, wondering if there's a place, wanting a place, I want to be a Cheryl...who makes that place for them before they even get there. 

Thanks, Cheryl. (For that, and for everything.) 

God of Wisdom

"Hey, Genius!"

I turned to look because of course, she was trying to get my attention. I have a bit of a reputation for being smart, but also for being a problem solver - someone who can fix just about anything and knows who to turn it over to if I can't. 

I've had this reputation for most of my life. I was the smart kid. I was the gifted student. I was the one the teachers had to go out of their way to find assignments for because I finished the other ones in less than half the time it took anyone else. My whole life, I have listened to other persons tell me how smart I am; I have listened to them recommend me to others who have problems that need solving; I have heard them tell me I can do anything I put my mind to. 

But I cannot for the life of me (literally?) figure out God. 

I have some good ideas. There are some things that I know for certain. There are some things that I am absolutely sure of. There are some things He has shown me and proven to me over the years, some things He has whispered in my ear, some things He has laid on my heart. I have enough knowledge - bolstered by enough faith - to get me through most of the time. 

But every time I think I have Him figured out, He proves to me that I don't. 

As soon as I feel confident in saying that I know how God is working, one door closes and the curtains on the window start blowing a little bit. As soon as I know that everything is trending in a Godward direction, all of a sudden, we make a hard turn toward something else...even though I might know that God is still leading. 

Isaiah tells us that God confuses even the wise (44:25), and what's funny about that is that it doesn't matter how smart or wise I am, as soon as I think I might be one of those wise men, God confuses me, and all of a sudden, I know how unwise I truly am. 

(Is that a sign of true wisdom?) 

Yet, this is what faith is. It's a way of living that requires knowing enough to believe, enough to trust, but not knowing enough to predict or to expect or to be arrogant about anything. It requires enough knowledge to abide and to rest and to love and to be loved, to be certain of some things, but never really to know. Faith requires trust; otherwise, it is confidence. (And not confident assurance.) 

Without an element of trust, faith rests on itself. It rests on its own understanding. It puts itself in the position of authority because it knows - it just knows, and it is so certain about it that it no longer even requires God at all. It might still give Him credit, if there's love in the person's heart, but it doesn't really depend on Him. 

Trust keeps us depending on Him. And we can only trust, in faith, what we cannot know by wisdom. 

So He keeps us guessing, at least a little. 

Even us geniuses. 

God Eternal

One of the best ways to believe in the promises of God is to look back at the ones He's already kept. 

We say this as Christians, and we turn to our Bibles and we read about the way He gave Abraham a son late in life, He kept Noah safe in the boat, He protected Joseph in Egypt, He led Israel across the Red Sea and the Jordan River...and on and on and on we go, all the way through the life of Christ Himself. Promise. Kept. 

But I think that can be discouraging for some of us. Especially for those of us who live here and now. 

It's been 2,000 years since Jesus. Two. thousand. (And some change.) The rest of that stuff? That all happened hundreds to thousands of years before that. So I think it's easy for us to sometimes think of God's time frame as just too big. Sure, He did it once, but we don't have thousands of years to wait for Him to do it again. 

Then, we look at the bookends of the Bible, and that's not much more encouraging. In the beginning, God...and in the end, God... and we are supposed to be encouraged by that, we think, but friends, I'm broken now. I don't want to have to wait until the end of my life to be healed. I don't believe God calls us to live a broken life of misery so that one day, we can be restored; I believe God is restoring us now. 

(Wow, I am using a lot of italics in this post.) 

Isaiah tells us that God was here at the beginning and He'll be here at the end (41:4), but that doesn't keep me from struggling with now. With today. With this broken moment and this confident hope and this longing in my heart. 

So I think it's important that we keep track of the things God is doing in our life. However that works for you. Some folks like to keep a journal of answered prayer. Some folks just journal, forget the prayer. Some folks build altars or take snapshots or create mementos. Some of us like to post things on Facebook so that on this date sometime in the future, Facebook will pop up a reminder for us. Whatever it is for you. 

Because you need to know that God was here in the beginning and God will be here in the end, but you need to also know that God has been here all the way through. He didn't just start things, then go away and plan to show up again later. He's not just hanging out waiting for the next chapter in His story to be written. He's writing that chapter right now, and you're in it. 

And you need to see how He's doing it. You need to see how the pieces start taking shape. You need to see how it's all coming together. 

While it's all well and good for Abraham and Moses and David and Jesus and all those folks (and yes, their stories are important), I need to know that God is working in my story. Right now. The days I'm actually living. The chapter I'm actually writing. I need to know that God is not thousands of years removed, but that He's in the whisper and the wind and the stillness and the noise right now. I need to know not just where He's been or where He will be, but where He is, and that is right here with me and you. 

All the way through. 

Isaiah meant that, by the way, when he wrote those words. They're just too easy, sometimes, for us to misunderstand. 

God Alone

I spent several years as a graduate teaching assistant, primarily in the Christian philosophy department, primarily responsible for "Intro to Worldviews - Philosophy 101." This was an introductory class aimed at helping first-year college students start to consider the ways that persons think in the world, what shapes their thoughts and perspectives, how different ideologies are played out all around us. 

One of the challenges of teaching such a course on a Christian campus is that most of the students come in with a church background that has taught them that they just have to tell everyone what the Bible says and get them to believe in God and...problem solved. All problems. Solved. Just like that. 

Of course, those of us who live in the real world know it's simply not that easy. 

But the Bible tells us it wouldn't be. 

See, the thing I had to keep explaining to students was that they couldn't simply quote the Bible or make a claim about God because the secular humanist or Muslim or nihilist or Hindu they were talking to did not believe the Bible or God to be authoritative. The words wouldn't mean anything to them because they didn't have a frame of reference that said that these words were any more true than any other words; perhaps they were even more false. 

And this is the trouble we run up against whenever we are trying to talk about God with an unbeliever of any walk of life. God is so far beyond their frame of reference that it's hard to give them a sufficient grasp of the goodness and nature of God with nothing for it to be planted on, no foundation for understanding. 

Isaiah tells us that God cannot be compared to anyone or anything (40:18, 25), and that's the very heart of this whole thing. 

We can't tell them what God is like because God isn't like anything. As soon as we start to say what He's like and try to make a comparison, we have to introduce all of these various caveats to that, all these little ways in which He is actually not like that until the person we're talking with comes to understand that that thing we are saying God is like? Yeah, He's not actually like that at all. And they can't come up in their mind with what it might look like because they have this image of this thing, but it's not sufficient, and there's no understanding to fill in the gaps to create anything. 

So God cannot be grasped because there is simply no way to describe Him to anyone who does not have a reference of faith to understand. 

By faith, however, we get a glimpse. By lived experience, we start to understand. By at least accepting and embracing the stories that the Bible tells us are true, we can start to have some kind of a frame of reference, but we have to accept them without understanding. Without understanding how it is possible. Without comprehending a God who is beyond our comprehension. 

It's a tough task, something extremely difficult to do. But then, the Bible told us it would be. 

There's simply nothing we can compare God to - not anyone or anything. We can only understand by living and loving in faith. 

God Heals

There are miracles of modern medicine. There are plain ol' miracles. And then, there are nights lying awake in bed, pleading with God just to hear you, just to acknowledge that He knows you're still here, just to give you a glimpse of some kind of hope of healing. 

For all that science has given us, for all that we've come to understand about our human condition - and even our human condition as persons of faith - there is still not a thing in this world that we can do about our soul sickness. 

Only God can heal that. 

We spend our whole lives wrestling with it. We do. We stay up late, we moan, we groan in our spirit, we cry our tears, we let our emotions drip down our faces, we bow our heads, we fold our hands, we cry out...and we still don't really know what we're doing. We feel the tension in our souls, this tearing, this torn-between. Torn between infinite love and...whatever this is. Whatever this broken, messed-up, falling apart, can't sleep, knocked down, worn out life we're living is. 

The more broken we are, the more we feel so deeply in our souls that it wasn't supposed to be this way. The closer we hear God's footsteps, the more our hearts just start to beat in sync with His. The more we dream about the garden, the more real it becomes. This is what we were made for. 

Then, what is all this mess?

Isaiah says that those who dwell in God's land won't be able to say any more that they are sick - that they are soul-sick, that they are sin-laden, that they are beaten down, broken up, downtrodden, hurting. The people of God won't be able to say any of that because the Lord their God, the only One who can, has heard them and will heal them and will take away all of their sickness. All of it. 

Even the sin-sick, messed up, twisted around, broken down, fallen over, can't sleep sickness that plagues our existence in the fallen creation, in the already-but-not-yet, in the shadow of the Cross. 

It won't be a pill. It won't be a transfusion. It won't be a transplant or a gene splice or a miracle of modern medicine. Hey, it won't even be a miracle. 

It will be simple grace, born out of steadfast love. The mercy of God poured out on us, crying out from the side of the road, crying, simply, in our beds, in the darkness, in the angst, in the hurt, in the sorrow. 

God heals all the sickness with one breath of His incredible love and we, the people of God, will no longer get to say that we're broken. 

Rather, we will shout the glory of God and rejoice that we are healed. 

Maggie

To be honest with you, I don't remember this woman's real name. Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. But I'm pretty sure it's not Maggie, so let's call her Maggie. 

I was a chaplain at a large hospital, and I was working part of my shift on the acute neurology floor. I peeked my head into one of the darkened "continuous EEG" rooms - a room where they were monitoring brain signals from the patients 24/7, so as much external stimuli as possible had been eliminated. I peeked in to see how the patient was handling the intensive testing, and that's when I saw her crying in the bed. 

I walked in. 

As we talked, Maggie told me that she had some kind of undiagnosed seizure disorder that was rapidly getting worse. She couldn't seem to get through a single hour of her life without having these catastrophic seizures. The doctors had told her it would only be a matter of time - a short matter of time - before the seizures killed her. 

"That sounds really scary," I said, reaching out my hand to hold hers. As she eagerly took my hand, I continued. "What do they suggest doing about it?"

She told me the doctors were talking about doing a radical surgery in which they would sever some of the nerves in her brain and hopefully stop them from sending signals to one another. Basically, they were talking about a type of hemispherectomy. The seizures would stop, they believed, instantly. 

But the surgery was not without its risks and side effects. Most distressing for Maggie was that she was all but guaranteed to lose her short term memory as a result of the procedure. She wept as she told me that she could not fathom the idea of going through life never being able to enjoy another movie - a favorite interest of hers. How can you enjoy a movie, how can you even watch one, if you don't remember what happened five minutes ago? 

She went on, of course, to mention the social struggles of not having a short term memory. Not being able to make new connections with others. Not being able to participate in meaningful conversations. Struggling to make day-to-day decisions, even as simple as planning out a meal or doing the grocery shopping or remembering why she got in the car in the first place. 

I did not envy the spot that Maggie was in. 

We talked for more than an hour as Maggie wavered back and forth between doing nothing - a choice that would ultimately kill her, sooner rather than later - and having this radical surgery - which would make her life, in her understanding, not worth living. We talked about the pros and cons. We weighed the inevitable outcomes of both options. As soon as she would feel herself leaning in one direction, she'd do a complete 180 and come back the other way. How do you even make such an impossible choice? 

After our long back-and-forth, Maggie wiped a tear from her eye and admitted there was a potential third option. The doctor had told her that it was possible that if she could eliminate some stress from her life, if she could learn to slow down and take periods of rest, then the seizures would possibly lessen on their own. 

She could very potentially make a dramatic impact on her life - and free herself from this impossible decision - if she could just learn to rest sometimes. (Maggie was a very driven individual, very Type A.) 

"But that's not really an option," she said after she acknowledged it, dismissing it immediately. "I don't know how to stop, and I don't want to." Then she went back to wrestling with her impossible choice. 

I don't know what happened to Maggie. I don't know what choice she made. I don't know how things turned out. But I have never forgotten that conversation. Because I can be like that sometimes. It can be hard for me to slow down, to rest. 

I wonder how many impossible situations I've put myself in because of that.  

True Faith

That's the thing, I guess, about real faith - about what a real faith looks like in the real world. 

When I wear a cross necklace, the world knows what that means. Or thinks it does. The world understands this as a sign that I belong to Jesus, that I believe in Him, that I probably worship Him, and that I may even belong to a church. 

When I demonstrate peace in the face of adversity, the world doesn't know what to do with this. 

The world mistakes it for calm. For some kind of mastery that I must have over my very normal human anxiety. The world mistakes it for indifference, as if maybe I just don't even care what happens to me. Very close to indifference is depression; maybe I'm just already defeated, and I've given up. The world tries to put peace into its framework, but it doesn't fit. So the world doesn't know what to do with it and can't understand it. 

The same is true with joy. Joy is another one of those things I have fought hard for in my life, one of those gifts that comes out of my close relationship with God. I have been called happy, but happy isn't it. I have been called happy-go-lucky, but that isn't it, either. I have been accused of being naive, like maybe I just don't understand what is happening, so of course, it doesn't affect me like it does everyone else. But no, that's joy. True joy. 

The same is true with forgiveness. Folks have heard my life story, even recent chapters of it, and they assume I must be harboring some kind of secret vendettas against some folks. They apologize when they accidentally mention someone in front of me, someone they know I haven't had a positive experience with. They apologize when they mention anything positive about that person, like it's somehow wounding for me. They don't believe me when I say that I have forgiven someone, that I want the best for them, that I'm okay seeing them do good things and succeed in life. The world doesn't know how to let go of its grudges, and it kind of relishes wishing ill on broken persons who have wounded them, but faith doesn't work like that. I can truly forgive and wish someone the best. Why would I want someone to be a thoroughly horrible person who goes around wounding others all the time? What kind of sick satisfaction is that supposed to give me? But the world doesn't understand forgiveness. 

The same is true with gentleness. The world doesn't understand why I don't go to the mat for myself, why I don't fly off into a rage, why I am not inconvenienced by the slowness of others to catch on. The world doesn't understand patience, how I can afford to wait for someone else to "get it" on their own. Why I'm not pressed by the tyranny of the urgent like everyone else seems to be. 

Friends, faith shapes us. It gives us all these things that the world sees, but it doesn't understand. That it witnesses, but it doesn't process. It can't conceptualize of the things of faith without the framework of the cross to guide it. So it misinterprets. It mislabels. It questions. It asks us, how is that even possible? 

It's possible because I am already the thing I very most need to be in all the world - deeply loved. And that love, the love of God, gives me the opportunity to see the world through a lens not of scarcity and want, but of abundance and grace. 

It doesn't mean I'm not affected by the things that happen here. I have the same anxieties, the same fears, the same questions that anyone else would have in my situation, whatever that situation happens to be at the time. I am very, very human, and if you spend five minutes talking to me, you can't miss that. 

But I am also very, very loved. And that love changes everything. 

That's not calm, my friends; it's peace. It's not happiness; it's joy. It's not indifference; it's grace. 

It's faith. Lived out to the best of my ability, no matter what page of my story we're on. 

Calm

Life has been throwing yet another challenge at me lately, and at this point, a lot of folks think my life is just one trial after another after another. It's not really, but I understand how it can look that way sometimes. But for me, it's just my story, and I just keep turning one page after another and seeing what happens next. 

I have had some really good seasons. I mean, really good ones. Even lately. When I turned 40 a few months ago, I was on top of the world. I felt good. I looked good. I believed good. I was in a really good place. Things weren't perfectly, but the good overshadowed everything. The love of God, my friends, is real. 

And even though my life took a turn I wasn't quite expecting, the love of God is still real. 

One of the things I've heard frequently in the past few weeks is how "calm" I am. Words that would scare someone else, paths filled with thorns, darkness lurking just around the corner, things that would shake just about anyone else, and I can just state them as fact and not be shaken. "You're so calm when you say that," others have said. As if...what?

As if I'm supposed to lose myself over the stresses of a fallen life in a broken world? As if I would handle things oh so much better if I was a mess? As if anxiety would actually help me at all right now? As if I'm "supposed" to keep myself up at night, pace a rut into my floor, dig my nails into the backs of my hands, and rip my hair out? What on earth for? 

The people of God used to do this, but never over stress. They always did it over grief. And it's taken me a long time, but what exactly do I have to grieve in the hard seasons? 

Am I supposed to grieve that my life isn't going the way I would have dreamed that it would? Am I supposed to grieve that bad things happen to persons who are doing their best to be good? Am I supposed to grieve that what I have been certain is God's plan has experienced yet another delay? 

These would be losses of ego. These would be losses of self. These would be losses from my finite human perspective, losses that can only see what I think I see, losses focused only on me, me, me. 

But while there have been some significant losses in this season of challenge, there have also been some incredible blessings. I am learning, growing, and loving so much. I am seeing things that I wouldn't have seen if the shadows hadn't started playing with each other. I am feeling God's presence in a new way. 

And so, what you actually hear when I am able to simply speak about what is happening right now - without fear, without anxiety, without stress - isn't "calm." 

It's peace. 

Because at the end of the day and at the dawn of the next, God still loves me. God still strengthens me. God still gives me hope. God still has a call on my life. God has still filled my life with the richest of blessings, the greatest of which is His everlasting presence. He is the Prince of Peace. 

And nothing gets to take that peace away. 

Least of all, these momentary troubles.  

Stripped

I took the necklace off. Sometime that afternoon, or maybe that night, I don't remember, but I took it off. I laid it on my desk, where I always do when I take it off for safe keeping, and...I didn't feel as naked as I thought I would. 

I had already been thinking in my head about what it meant to have a naked faith - a faith that is known by my actions, by my heart, by my character, and not by my jewelry. Something in me had been drawn to the idea, although I confess there was still a little hesitation in my heart. Would my faith hold up?

My cross has never been for show; it's been for me. It's been to remind me that I am loved and that I am called to be loving. Most days, most of the time, nobody sees it; I'm the only one who knows it's there. I can feel it when I lie down to go to sleep. I know that it's there, and it reminds me to remember. 

But the narrative of not having it had already gotten so deeply into my heart...can I tell you? I think I thought more intentionally about my faith after I took that necklace off than I ever had while wearing it. 

And wasn't that the goal? 

Wasn't the Lord asking me to think about my faith? Wasn't He wanting me to reflect on it - on how it really looks and what it really feels like, which is so much more than the way that the silver feels running through my fingers? Wasn't God asking me to think more about the expression of my faith than the adornment of it - the way it feels deep in my bones more than the way it feels hanging around my neck? 

That was really the challenge of this moment. When I went to work the next morning - naked - I was thinking more intentionally about my faith and what it actually looks like than I had in a long time. 

A day or two later, that same small voice that told me to take my necklace off told me I could put it back on. Eventually, I did, but it feels different to me now. 

This was my Mt. Moriah moment. 

In Genesis, God called Abraham to go to the mountain and sacrifice his son, his promised son, the son that represented what God was going to do with Abraham's life. Abraham took young Isaac with him, went up the mountain, and even went so far as to bind the child with ropes while building the altar fire that would, in just moments, consume him - screaming, crying, yelling, suffering. That fire would first hurt the boy beyond all recognition until the whole promise went up in smoke and came to rest in ashes. 

I felt the same sort of thing when God called me to take my cross off. It was this laying down of something that was important to me, but had become important for all of the wrong reasons. I think it was easy for Abraham to look at Isaac and see the promise of God, but not feel it in quite the same way. I think it was easy for me to look at my cross and see the promise of God, but not feel it in quite the same way. 

So the question was: can you hold onto the promise, the real promise, and not its idolatrous substitutes? Do you have a faith that can return to God as its foundation, its source? Do you have a faith that lives on its own breath and not on rituals or relics? 

As in Abraham's life, it isn't always about forever; it's about the willingness in this moment to obey. 

I have worn that cross - or something like it - for over 20 years, maybe almost 30 by this point. But those couple of days without it told me more about my faith than that sterling silver ever has. 

And now, my goal is to live naked whether I'm wearing my adornments or not.  

Naked Faith

For as long as I have been a Christian, perhaps even longer, I have worn a necklace to remind me of my Lord - most often, a cross, but for a season, the tree of life. I have a ring that says, "Blessed," that I have worn for many years, so that in a stressful moment, I can look down on it and remember that I am, above all other things, loved. 

The jewelry has been kind of high maintenance - I have to take it off when I run so that the sweat doesn't corrode the metals (I learned that lesson the hard way), so these are items that I touch at least 2-3 times every day to remove, put back on, untangle, etc. This has just been part of my existence, and it's honestly not been something I have given much of a second thought to for quite awhile. 

Until last Sunday. 

Last Sunday, I was sitting in church, just worshiping for one of the first times in a long time. I'm in a new church right now; nobody knows me there. I don't have a favorite seat. I'm still feeling things out and figuring out all of the new sensory inputs. The songs are familiar, but they sound brand new. The Communion is offered, but it feels like it is freshly poured. 

I get to decide who I want to be to a people who don't know me yet. How I want to present myself. What stories I want to tell about myself. 

But I look around, and I realize - I don't know them, either. I don't know this woman sitting three chairs down in this row. I don't know this family whose heads I'm staring at the back of. I look around, and I don't know them. 

But I know they love Jesus. 

I don't know what came over me in that moment, having a whole heart full of thoughts but no real conscious ones - nothing I was deliberately thinking about, nothing I was obsessing over, no questions I was asking, nothing really running through my head. And yet, out of nowhere, I heard and felt distinctly in my heart - 

Take off your cross. 

Take off your necklace. Set it aside. There was part of me that wanted to throw it, but I realized that was probably a little dramatic. 

How could I take off my necklace? It had been with me for so long. It was an important part of who I am. It reminds me of things I am prone too easily to forget. Take it off? Just take it off? 

I wrestled with this for a long time. And, of course, being the practical person that I am, I was not simply going to take my necklace off in a darkened church auditorium. Where would I put it? What if I lost it? What if I wanted it back later? What if it was some emotional defect based on some physical state I hadn't yet figured out that was trying to dupe me into doing something I would never do? What if the devil himself was trying to separate me from my faith, right here in a new season of life, and this was his gimmick? No, I was not just going to take it off. 

But what my heart was figuring out was that...I needed to. What my heart was feeling was not a rejection of Christ or the cross or the jewelry itself, but what it had come to represent to me. It felt too easy. Of course I'm a Christian; see my cross? 

What my heart was feeling was a pull toward a more naked faith - one that demonstrates itself by living. 

And the question becomes: if my jewelry doesn't give me away, would my life still tell you I love - and am loved by - the Lord?  

David

It was the first night of church camp, and I was up late talking with a roommate I had just met. She was telling me about her struggles with depression, how she had a history of self-injury, and how she had even come close to actually killing herself. She looked mostly at the floor, but occasionally at me out of the corner of her eye, and I knew I needed to say something to let her know I wasn't troubled by her. 

We were both teenagers, both in our awkward years, and both knew, apparently, some of the heavy darkness that dwells in this broken world. I stuttered out a few encouraging words, about how obviously God had a plan for her life and it was good to see her coming through on this side of it. I assured her that I didn't think she was weird, and I wasn't scared of her. Then, I told her part of my own story, which included a season living in locked facilities with other young persons who had troubles similar to hers. I was perfectly comfortable with her. 

But her eyes got as big as saucers. 

The next day, she moved out of our shared room and never came back. 

Later that night, my group leader - David - pulled me aside and told me that my roommate had, indeed, moved out. The things I had shared had scared her, and she didn't feel safe sharing a space with me. He told me how inappropriate it was to share my story with her and that if it was something I needed to talk about, he was always there to listen (even though David and I had just met the day before, as well). 

It honestly baffled my mind. I couldn't understand how saying, "I can relate, and I know stories like yours because I've been in dark places with them" to someone who just told me she'd tried to kill herself made me the threat. I believe so much that God has given us our stories for a reason and that we have no reason to be ashamed in sharing them and yet, here I was - ashamed. Feeling like I'd done something wrong. 

I agreed to talk to David, which is how we ended up sitting at a picnic table out behind the dorms as the sun was setting in the summer sky. I was trying to explain to him the story she'd told me, why I had shared what I had shared, what it means to me to have that story to share, what my goal was in choosing my words carefully, all of that. I was, for sure, trying to defend myself. 

But the more I talked to David, the more he started to ask questions, and the more I realized that maybe I carried more shame with me than I thought I did. I started to buffer a little bit, to deflect. I caught my own eyes gazing downward until, at last, trapped in the pain and the hurt and the darkness of my own story, my eyes were locked to the ground, barely able to make out the dirt in the darkness. 

It was now very late into the night. 

Then, David told me to look at him. He didn't demand it. He didn't ask. Somewhere in between. He encouraged me to look at him, and he waited until I could bring my tear-stained eyes just a little bit upward and almost meet his. Then, he said eight words I have not forgotten since that night: 

"Listen, God wants to bless your face off." 

He already knew that, he said, just from the few short interactions we'd had in our small group together. He knew that from the way that I talked about my story. He knew that from the heart from which I had reached out to my roommate, even if my execution wasn't as spectacular as I thought it would be. David's simple, but enthusiastic and absolutely confident, words did for me what I had been hoping my words would have done for my roommate - and all because he had made the space for us to have a real conversation in which he had been really listening. 

It is because of talks like the one I had with David that I have worked to become a listener. It's because of the slightly-damp seat at an overheated picnic table in the dusk of summer that I have worked to make a place for anyone, anywhere. It is because of being heard that I have started to encourage others to speak.

If you need a place to talk, I've got one for you. 

And, for what it's worth, David was right - God has been blessing my face off. 

But maybe the most important word of his sentence was the first one: listen. 

The Queen

No discussion of Esther is complete without talking about the queen herself. There are two queens in the story, and although we could learn a lot from Vashti, the queen I want to talk about today is Esther herself. 

The story tells us that she risked her very life to go into the presence of the king when he hadn't asked for her, that he was known to dismiss or even kill those who violated his personal space in this way. But I don't think she gets enough credit for this moment. I don't think we draw enough inspiration from this one decision. 

Because let's face it - most of us never face actual death just for asking someone a question. 

But think about the trajectory of Esther's life. She was an orphan, by the standards of the day. We don't know what happened to her father; we don't know where her mother is. We know that she has been raised by her uncle, her kinsman-redeemer, and she has grown up in a society that was patriarchal in nature. So she was a woman who would have a tendency to just be quiet and do what was expected of her and not push the boundaries, especially since she was already on her second family - she couldn't afford to be a burden to Mordecai. She might fear that he would abandon her and leave her an orphan again. 

And, in fact, throughout her story, we see her deferring to everyone. We are told that she did whatever Mordecai told her to do. She followed his wisdom without question. When she enters the king's harem and begins her year of beauty treatments, she does what the king's advisors tell her to do. When it was time to enter into the king's presence for the first time, she asked her attendant what she should take with her, and she took only that. At every point in her life, she was letting someone else call the shots, doing only what she was told exactly as she was told and never stepping outside the lines. 

Then comes the impossible moment: her uncle Mordecai tells her that she needs to go talk to the king on behalf of her people...and the king has a long-standing rule that no one comes into his presence unless he asks for them. She cannot, in this instance, simply obey both. To obey one is to disobey the other, no matter which way she goes. 

For what may be the first time in her life, she has to make a choice.

I don't think we give her enough credit for what has got to be an absolutely excruciating moment. We always focus on the danger of putting her life on the line, but what about the risk of simply making a choice? 

Most of us are never going to face actual death or even the threat of it. But we are faced with these sorts of situations every day. Some of us spend much of our lives just following the rules, doing what's expected of us, living up to someone else's expectations. Fulfilling our roles. Knowing our place. Not pushing the boundaries. 

But inevitably, there comes a point where we come up against a situation that doesn't have a simple way through. We must make a choice. 

Are we willing to make one? 

The Bible doesn't tell us how Esther made her choice, except with a lot of prayer. She gathered her people to pray for her, and then she did what she believed was right - ready to accept whatever the consequences were of that decision. 

And that's really the only way we can do it, too. We have to look at the choice in front of us, pray about it, gather our prayer warriors behind us, and then do what we believe is right - what we believe God is calling us to - and be ready to accept whatever the consequences are of our decision. 

But we must choose. We must make a choice. Not making a choice is a choice in itself, one that often favors the default or the status quo, whatever that happens to be. 

So can you choose? When push comes to shove, are you ready to make a choice? Will you make a choice? 

The Deputy

If we're looking at the lessons we can learn from the characters in Esther's story, we absolutely must talk about Haman. We're not sure what exact position he held, but we know he was very high up in the king's hierarchy, a man with great responsibility and honor under Xerxes. 

We could talk for days about Haman's flaws, about his heart, about his personality, about all of the things we can learn from him - from the arrogance it takes to demand that everyone bow down to you (even though you aren't the actual king) to the irony of accidentally erecting the pole on which your own dying body will be put on display. The lessons are many. 

The one I want to pick up on, though, is one that tends to slide by us a little more easily than others. Probably because it doesn't seem central to the grand arc of the story. And yet, God chose to include it anyway. 

As Haman is on his way to talk to the king about what they can do about that wicked Mordecai, that annoying little Jew who refuses to bow down to the kingdom as commanded, the king is looking over some records of his administration and discovers that Mordecai at one point saved his life by reporting to him the secret scheme of two of his guards, who were plotting to kill him. 

Haman then comes into the king's presence, and the king says, "Oh, good. You're here. Let me ask you something.... What should I do for an amazing man who has given me great honor?" 

And Haman thinks, of course, that the king must be talking about him. 

Haman believes that he is the best thing since sliced bread. (Did they have sliced bread in the Babylonian empire?) Haman believes if there's anybody who has ever done any good in the world, it's him. Haman believes that he is the man who is most loved, most favored, most honorable in all of Xerxes' kingdom. The fact that he's in a position of relative power and prestige only seems to confirm this for him. Haman believes he is the man. 

As a result, in his own mind, there's no one better than him. No one more deserving. No one else who has ever done a good thing, at least, not a thing good enough to ever deserve honor for it. Honor is for him and him alone. 

It's this bias that we all have toward ourselves. 

We wouldn't do the things we do if we didn't think they were the right things to do. We wouldn't criticize others if we didn't think they were wrong about something. We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves if we knowingly went against our own conscience. So our entire life is lived in a confirmation bias of our own goodness - we know our heart, we know our motivation, we know our understanding (or the things we think we understand), and we believe ourselves to be acting in good, righteous, and honorable ways. 

So of course we are good persons. Of course we deserve honor. Of course we deserve praise. We do everything with the purest of intentions. And everyone else? Well, it's hard to tell sometimes. 

When the world says, then, that someone should be honored, it doesn't take much for us to think that of course, they're talking about us. Who else would be worthy? 

But what if...what if there are actually other good persons in the world? What if there are others who are doing more than us? Who are doing better than us? Who are having more of an impact than us? Or not even "more" - what if there are others who are having the same kind of impact that we are, doing the same things we are, living just as good of lives as we are? 

Have we stopped to consider the possibility that there are other good persons among us? 

After all, no one compares themselves to the bread slice, but to the sliced bread - which is, necessarily, made up of more than one piece of the whole.  

The Uncle

It's difficult in the story of Esther to talk about Mordecai as just the uncle. Indeed, in the scope of the story, he is so much more. 

Mordecai is a faithful man. He is known to - and hated by - Haman for his faithfulness to God, which is unwavering. He is known to the king (eventually) as a faithful friend, someone who protected the king from certain betrayal and death. The folks around the king's residence seem to know Mordecai by name; he is a very real presence in the fortress. 

He is also Esther's uncle, but he is more than that even here, too. He is her kinsman-redeemer. We don't know what happened to her father, and perhaps to her mother, too, but we are told that Mordecai has raised Esther as his own. He is the Boaz of her story, a foreshadowing of the Christ figure. He has become not just her uncle, but her father.

He protects her. He guides her. He teaches her. He loves her. 

When Esther is first chosen to come into the king's harem and compete for his affections, Mordecai gives her some advice on how to proceed. Among other things, he tells her not to tell anyone about her nationality. They don't need to know she's a Jew. 

The Jews were exiles here; they were foreigners. It's clear that at least some of the natives have a hatred for them, as indicated by Haman's heart, although it's hard to tell what the widespread attitude was toward the Jews. It's not a stretch to assume it was also negative, though, as there didn't seem to be much pushback to the idea of completely annihilating them. 

So don't tell anyone you're a Jew, Mordecai advises Esther. And she doesn't. She goes through a whole year of beauty treatments, earns the king's favor, becomes the new queen, and builds her own consort all without revealing her nationality to anyone. No one in this kingdom knows that she is a Jew, except for those who knew before she came to this palace. 

But then...

But then, Haman issues a decree that the Jews should be slaughtered. All of them. Thoroughly. And Mordecai comes back to Esther to try to convince her to use her power and her place to help her people. 

He can't, apparently, talk directly to her, though, so what he does is he tells one of her eunuchs, one of her attendants, to give her the message. 

And all of a sudden, this man who did so much to protect his niece, this man who redeemed her, this man who taught her and guided her and loved her, this man who insisted that she keep her nationality a secret...has outed her. 

He told the eunuch. He told the servant. He told someone in the fortress who wasn't part of their people who exactly Esther was. And friends, those kinds of things do not stay secret. It's not like he trusted this person not to tell. The story doesn't tell us that he even asked the person not to tell anyone else. Mordecai, who has so far protected Esther, goes out and just declares to the powers that be that she is actually a Jew, and there's no hiding any more. There's no safety any more. 

He just put her life at risk. 

Because he was concerned about his own? 

Something about having our own skin on the line, something about the threat being in our own backyard, it makes us do things we wouldn't otherwise do. It turns us into persons we never thought we'd become. Mordecai spent his whole life redeeming and protecting Esther as if she was his own, but when his own life was on the line, when the lives of his people were in danger, he walks right up to someone with the power to destroy everything...and throws Esther under the bus. 

Ouch. 

It makes me wonder who I've thrown under the bus over the years in the name of self-preservation. It makes me wonder who I have loved, but betrayed over the years out of a fear for some circumstance's impact on my own life. 

It makes me wonder what I'm capable of when it feels like my life on the line.  

The King

Recently, I was reading the book of Esther, and I was struck by how much we have to learn about ourselves - how much I have to learn about myself - from the characters in this short book that has had such a dramatic impact on the story of God's people. 

And as good a place to start as any is with the king himself, Xerxes. 

We know that the king was arrogant; that much goes without saying. We see how domineering he was, how he wanted his way and only his way and always his way. We also see that he could be extremely temperamental - just look at the experiences that women had with him. 

Queen Vashti refused to come entertain him while he was drunk, and he threw her completely out of his presence. Esther was afraid to go into his presence without being invited because he was known to throw those persons out, too. It was dangerous to get on the wrong side of Xerxes. 

But what's unclear is whether or not he knew this about himself. 

All evidence says that he didn't. All evidence supports the notion that perhaps he was an extreme narcissist and had absolutely no understanding of his own potential failures and weaknesses. Maybe he had heard rumors about others who were afraid to approach him; maybe he liked it that way. Maybe he liked his power. But it seems he didn't understand how temperamental he was. 

Because every time we see him doing anything, he signs it with his signet ring. 

He makes it un-revokable. 

He makes it permanent. 

He was drunk and upset with his wife, so he banished her and signed it with his official signature and made it permanent. When he sobered up, he realized how much he missed her, but there was nothing he could do about it; he couldn't even revoke his own order. 

Then, Haman comes to him and says, "Hey, I have an idea," and Xerxes is like, "Cool. You know what you should do? Seal it with my ring, and then it will last forever." He didn't bother to check out the possible impact or consequences or even truth behind Haman's idea; he just went with it and made it permanent. 

Then, Mordecai comes to the king and tells him how horrible this plan of Haman's is and how it's going to devastate everything, including the king, whose favored wife has been permitted to be slaughtered, so Xerxes gives him the ring and tells him to do whatever he sees fit and make that permanent, too. 

At any point, you would think that Xerxes would notice a pattern that perhaps his finalization of every whim he has is not working out so well. At some point, you would think he would see that doing things hastily without thinking them through and sealing them with his ring so that they can never be changed is actually a very bad idea. 

But he never does. 

Do we? 

We live with a self-confirmation bias. That is, we do things because we think they are right and we are convinced that we are informed enough to make the decision, so it's tempting for us to want to make all of our plans permanent. This is obviously the thing to do. This is obviously right. This should be what we do forever. 

But are we aware of how often we are wrong? Do we realize how our emotions or other factors in our lives get in our way? Have we been able to learn from our mistakes? Or do we just keep pulling out our ring and sealing our fate in a fleeting moment, making decisions we can never go back on and not realizing until it's too late that maybe we should have waited?  

Jim

Earlier this week, local media broke the news that Colts owner Jim Irsay had died. 

It seems a little strange to talk about him in this space, since I never actually met the guy. Not in person. But Jim Irsay changed my life - and my philosophy - in ways that he didn't even know. 

More than a decade ago, Jim Irsay was the reason that I joined Twitter. I saw a story on the televised news that Jim was giving away his money on Twitter; all you had to do was tweet back to enter to win. And in a season when I didn't have a job, my resources were dwindling, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, this became my new financial life plan: I was going to stalk Twitter and win some of Jim Irsay's money, and that was going to help me get through the rough stretch. 

He was only giving away a thousand or few dollars at a time, but to someone in my position, that felt like a months-long lifeline. I would watch for his posts, enter to win, count the comments, do the math, run the stats in my head, and hang on to that very small chance that I might actually win like it was the greatest hope in all the world. As difficult as it would be to be the one selected by random hat pick, it was enough hope to keep me from despairing. I honestly believed that at any moment, my circumstance was going to change, that it was going to be my day, that God - and Jim - were going to bless me with exactly what I needed. 

And they did. 

They gave me hope. 

It was slim hope, but it wasn't false hope. Jim was actually giving away that money. Someone was actually winning. Some average Joe off the street was having their life changed and blessed by something that was actually happening, and I had just as good a chance as anyone at being the recipient of it. 

No, it wasn't a great chance. No, it wasn't a sound financial plan. No, it wasn't a long-term solution to my short-term problem. But in a season in which the world was slamming doors in my face left and right, when employers refused to give me a chance because I was either over-educated or under-experienced for them, when my health (undiagnosed chronic condition) was still a barrier to my success, when I couldn't buy toilet paper and dish soap on the same week and still have any funds left over for actual food, when I was at rock bottom and could hear nothing but the sound of those slamming doors, the generosity of Jim Irsay kept at least one little door cracked open just a little bit for me. And on top of that, the very real truth that I was fundamentally no different than anyone else in the world and had just as much of a chance of...winning. 

Winning something. Winning anything. Being the one picked. 

It's a reminder to me to keep the door open for others. You never know what someone is going through, what kind of season they are having. You never know what slim glimmer of opportunity that they're looking for in you, what reassurance, what hope. You never know what a boost it might be to their soul if you hold out for them that something is possible, whatever that something is. If you give them just as much of a chance to win in this world as anyone else would have. 

I want to be the reason someone believes. I want to be the reason they keep holding on. I want to be the absolutely crazy, doesn't-make-any-sense, really poor plan for the future that someone just can't let go of. 

And I want it to be because of my rock-solid faith in the God who loves me. And them. 

Thank you, Jim, for keeping me going in a rough season. Rest well, sir. You have earned it. 

*I never won a single penny from Jim Irsay. In the end, that didn't matter. I got the greater gift. 

Mammon

When I say that we need to put away mammon and turn back to God, I can hear the objections already. And I get it. Mammon is fun. 

It's fun to be part of a travel team, even if that team plays on Sundays. It's fun to get your buddies together and go to the game or to the racetrack, even if that means leaving church a little bit early. It's fun to take a day trip to the amusement park and make memories with the kids; they probably would have forgotten that Bible lesson anyway. 

Mammon seems like all the stuff that makes our lives feel full. 

And I'm not going to go all hard-core here and say that we should only do church activities; we live in the world, and we are meant to live in the world, and we are meant to participate in our lives and be a witness in the world and we can't do that if we're not part of the things that are going on around us. 

The problem is when we fill our lives with the world and then try to squeeze God into them. The problem is when we reach the point that we're willing to give up church - church activities, worship services, Sunday school, youth group trips, senior outings, fellowship opportunities - for the things we've bought into in the world and we are not equally (or more) willing to give up the things we've bought into for church (and church activities, etc.). 

If you're more willing to hang out with your buddies drinking beer than you are to hang out with your small group, that's a problem. If your kids never miss a game, but miss church for four months in a row, that's a problem. If you've got season tickets and you're never in the pew instead of the stands, that's a problem. 

What it says is - I'm willing to give up God for some fun in the world, but I'm not willing to give up my fun for a closer relationship with God and His people. 

We use all kinds of things to justify this. The church isn't a building or a place or a time; it's the people. But if you're not with the people in the place at the time, then you're losing a big chunk of your argument. The church is the people, not the person. You are not the church by yourself. 

We say that we paid money for whatever we have from the world, and we don't want to waste our investment. But do you also give money to the church? Are you wasting that investment? Have you given your heart to Jesus? Are you wasting your opportunities there? 

We say that others are counting on us, that we committed to be part of something and if we're not there, we're letting everyone else down by our absence. Hate to break it to you, but you're letting me down when you're not at church, too. The church depends on your presence - your talents, your fellowship, your encouragement. People miss you when you're not there, and it's a very real loss. 

So none of our excuses hold water. They're just that - excuses. They're just what we say when we're not willing to say that we chose mammon over God. 

And just as a side note - if the world is more "fun" to you than God, then you haven't met God. It makes me really sad to hear folks justify their double-mindedness by saying that God just doesn't bring joy to their lives or make their lives feel full the way mammon does. If that's the case, you don't know God. 

Anyway, rant over. Just some thoughts I wanted to share this week, as my heart was heavy with them.  

Double-Minded

There are some who will say - why can't we do both? Why can't we love on mom in the morning and then go live our lives in the afternoon? And the answer is simple: you can, but it's really, really hard. 

We are a people who struggle with double-mindedness. Give us something we want to do more, and it's all we can think about. Give us the excitement of something coming later, and it's hard for us to be in the present moment. Maybe you're making breakfast in bed for mom, but you're thinking about the game later. Are you really, then, present to mom? Or is it obligatory? Can anything come from your heart if your heart isn't even in the same place as your hands? 

It's true about the church, too. If you don't believe me, ask yourself when was the last time you thought about what you were doing after church. Did you make lunch plans? Have a family reunion? Know what time the game starts? Need to mow the yard? Whatever it is, whenever we have something else on our schedule, we spend our Sunday morning checking our watch. Wanting to make sure we're not about to miss that other thing because of the thing we're doing now. 

And when you're constantly thinking about that other thing you definitely don't want to miss? You miss the thing you're supposed to be doing in the moment. 

You start timing the sermon. You start counting the choruses. You start criticizing the benediction. You step out a couple of minutes early to "go to the bathroom," but you really just want to be first in line to pick up your kids from class so that you can get in the car quickly and be one of the first out of the parking lot so that you don't have to wait another minute so that you can drive across town, pull up to the squawk box, and beat that other denomination to Wendy's because you've got things to do this afternoon. 

Did you even hear the sermon? 

Are there echoes of the worship in your ears? 

Or are you just stressed out because you've been obsessing all morning about the next thing, while missing the more important thing, which is the thing right in front you? 

Maybe we should start calling you Martha. 

Are you getting it? You can't be truly invested in any moment if you're thinking about the next one. You can't be loving mom if you're thinking about where you need her to take you later. You can't be loving God if you're thinking about what you're doing after service. You can pretend all you want. You can think you're somehow better than the rest of the human race, that you're somehow more capable of a good solid single-mindedness, but the truth about our creation is that we have to have space if we're going to fill it, and if you've only given a small space to something, you can only fill it with small things in small ways because the bigger things are pushing on it from every side and squeezing the experience right out of it. 

We cannot be present and facing forward if there's something tapping on our shoulder all the time. We're just not capable of it. 

That's why we have to be diligent about setting aside time - real time. About creating space - real space. About making sacrifices - so that we clear out all the things that want to press in and take away what's sacred...or what should be sacred. We have to sacrifice our idols - those things that have become too sacred to us, those things that have taken away our ability to be present to the things that ought to be more important but simply aren't any more. 

We have to be willing to put away mammon and turn back to God.  

Sacrifice

The truth is that when you squeezed mom in on her own day, then ran off to do the things you'd normally do on a Sunday (which is no longer church because, hey, priorities), what you really said was that your priority is the other thing. You squeezed mom into your regular schedule because you're nice like that, but then you turned and ran off to your "real" life and dragged her along and what that says is that she's not worth a sacrifice. 

You're not actually willing to give anything up for her. You're not willing to miss anything for her. You're not willing to lose an opportunity for her. You're not willing to "waste" an investment for her. 

You're only willing to give her the free time that you have in an already-busy schedule, then ask her to help make sure you make the rest of your obligations for the day. 

And this is what's happening with the church. This is why I get so animated about the ways that the world makes us so busy on Sundays and tells us it's okay. 

Because what the world is really saying is that if you want to honor God, it's okay to just squeeze Him into an empty slot in your schedule and give Him a little recognition, then move on to your obligations, your commitments, your opportunities... 

The world has made God not your obligation, not your commitment, not your opportunity. 

And you haven't even noticed.

But be honest - you stopped sacrificing for God a long time ago. 

We've lost touch with it. We don't live in an Old Testament world. We aren't required to bring ram, lambs, and male goats and the corresponding grain offering with its pour of wine. Most of us don't even understand all of the sacrifices made by God's people historically. We just focus on the sacrifice that God made for us, and when it's all about this, then we become the center of our own faith. 

God bridged the gap. God paid the price. God made it possible. So faith takes so much less from us today than it did before the Cross. At least, that's the way we're living. God just loves us, and He wants us to love Him, and all of a sudden, it's easy to convince ourselves that we can love Him from anywhere, doing whatever we want, so why shouldn't we be somewhere else on Sunday morning. 

I can love God wherever I'm at. 

I can love mom wherever I'm at. 

Except...we can't. You can't love both God and mammon. And the truth is that whatever you're making sacrifices for, that's what you love most. 

So if you're sacrificing the fellowship to go play ball, you love ball more than you love God. It doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what justification you want to put on it. At this point, a lot of folks have a laundry list - I committed; I invested; I promised. Okay, great, but you're supposed to be committed, invested, and promised to God, too, and you forsook that. You tried to give Him less and call it even, but you're not willing to do that with your other activities. So plain and simple, you value them more. 

It's a hard truth, but we have to swallow it. 

You love most what you're willing to sacrifice for. And if you're not willing to sacrifice, then maybe you don't love it as much as you thought you did. 

Multiverse

We live in a world that expects us to multi-task, to always be doing more than one thing at a time. To be answering work emails and answering phones and shuffling papers. To be driving and texting. (That's illegal where I live, but it doesn't stop anyone.) To be exercising and listening to an audio book. I'll confess and say that at times, I am quite adept at washing the dishes while I am cooking and making more dirty dishes. We are being taught that simply doing one thing at a time is not enough. 

That's a discussion in and of itself, and we'll probably have it one day this week. 

But what sparked me to start to write this reflection was the realization that the world doesn't just expect us to multi-task any more; it's asking us to multi-prioritize. It's asking us not just to do more things at once, but to place an emphasis on more than one thing at a time. To experience, to honor, to value, to celebrate more than one thing at a time. 

I was struck by this on Mother's Day. Specifically, I was struck by the number of mothers on my social media feed who were posting about the activities their kids had on Mother's Day - ball games, recitals, concerts, contests, etc. 

I have written before about how the world has been coming for our Sundays. About how sports leagues are intentionally scheduling on Sundays and families are choosing between sports and church, often choosing sports while trying to tell their kids with their words how important church is...while showing them that sports are actually more important. The world has convinced us it is okay to forsake meeting together if we have something more fun to do, something we've committed to, something we've paid for or otherwise invested in. (Never mind, of course, that we were supposed to have committed to and invested in the church first and foremost.) 

But on Mother's Day, I saw so many of my friends being mothers - taking their kids here and there, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and squeezing in a real quick breakfast or a few seconds to open the card their kid made them. 

And it just struck me what the world is doing. 

The world has gotten so busy, so fast, so full of itself that we used to take a whole day to celebrate mom and to let her relax and now, she gets a couple of hours and then we fill the rest of the day with other priorities. Honestly, she's lucky if she even gets a couple of hours. She gets a moment, then it's gone, then it's back to business as usual because the world doesn't stop any more. 

And when the world doesn't stop, it doesn't want you to stop, either. It wants you to squeeze in as much as you can and it tries to tell you that it's still meaningful...it's just meaningful with other things that are also meaningful. 

And all of a sudden, you're not just multi-tasking, you're trying to multi-prioritize and honestly, friends, you can't. You cannot fully appreciate a moment that you're trying to squeeze in before the next one. 

You cannot serve both God and mammon. 

It's not possible. 

It's a tension I wrestle with quite often, as I make deliberate decisions to avoid the traps the world is setting. But it broke my heart to see it play out so powerfully on a day we set aside to love someone who means so much to us. Are we really so busy that we can't even take a single day - a whole day - to just stop and love someone? Truly love someone? Are our schedules and our things and our commitments and our investments and our activities and our opportunities that important? 

The truth is.... 

Cindy

For a season in my life, I was scraping money together by taking odd jobs, selling handmade crafts, and rescuing trash. That was back when you could set big trash items out at the curb any old time and the trash would be sure to take them. 

I had rooms in my house full of my finds. Stuff that I walked by with my dog, then went back to retrieve when my hands were free. Stuff that still had some life left in it or...as was the fad of the time...could be restored and repurposed. I had visions for what things could become, but I didn't have the funds for the materials to get them there, so I just picked up the trash and pitched the vision and hoped someone else would pick it up for a few dollars. 

At one point, I had this really neat set of solid wood end tables. Funny story - I picked up the one end table, thinking it was cute and seeing all of its potential, and then it was months, or maybe more than a year, before I stumbled upon the second one and realized it was a perfect match. (Matching end tables sell so much better than a single one.) 

I posted my set and waited. 

And waited. 

And waited. 

How could no one see the beauty in these that I saw? A matching set! In great condition! A little work, and they'd be spectacular. 

Then, Cindy sent me a message. "Do you still have the end tables? How much did you want for them?" 

$17, I told her. I still remember the exact amount. There was something I wanted to buy for my mom for $17, and it was important to me to find it. When I tell you that I was scraping by in that season, I mean it. She said we had a deal, and she would pick them up in a day or two. 

A day or two later, Cindy showed up on my porch, checkbook in hand, and wrote me a check for $34. 

No, no, I told her. That was $17 for the set, not for each table. I only needed $17. I immediately felt guilty for somehow miscommunicating and accidentally overpricing my items. ($34 felt like a LOT of money to me at the time. Even for solid wood.) 

She shrugged and said, "The check's already written." She tore it off and gave it to me. I kept protesting, and I'm not sure I even helped her carry the tables to her car at that point because I was busy arguing. She looked at me and said, very matter-of-factly, "It's all God's money anyway. We're just passing it around," then picked up a table and started walking away. 

I struggled with that for a long time. To be honest with you, I still struggle with that. I still feel like she overpaid me, even though my rational brain knows she got a good deal in the market of the day. 

But I have never forgotten those words she spoke. In fact, you might laugh if you knew how often I say them to myself in my own head. 

I'm in a better place financially now than I was in that season, and I have the opportunity to be generous. I have the opportunity to provide and to do things I wasn't sure back then I would ever be able to do. And as I consider how to be a good steward of what God has given me, I still have those words in my mind. They help me to decide what to do with my blessings. 

It's all God's; we're just passing it around. 

And so, I try to do my fair share of passing. Knowing that someone, somewhere may think they're taking advantage of me, but that's not the case at all. I'm giving freely from what was never mine in the first place. 

Joy

The thorns in our flesh can be an encouragement to our faith. They help us to live in a state of perpetual hope, as we live also in dependence, knowing afresh the goodness of God every day. But that doesn't mean they are without their consequences. 

For the person of faith, the idea that a persistent discomfort could dissuade us from believing in God is laughable. We just double down on what we know - that God is good - and we dive deeper into prayer and into thankfulness and into trust and hope and faith and love. This sustains us. This helps to get us through. 

But the thorn still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Even if it can't shake our faith, that pesky thorn so very often steals our joy. 

That is its true devastation. 

I currently have a thorn in the flesh. I've been wrestling with it for a few years at this point, and God has not seen fit to heal me of it so far. I have been living the story that I'm telling you, the same story that Paul tells you - that story that draws deeper into prayer, dwells in hope, keeps pushing against the mountain and trying to move it by the spoonful. 

But I also have to admit that one of the greatest challenges of this thorn is that it's taken something that I used to love, something that I found great joy in, something that deeply connected me to something of God in the depths of my soul, and it has made it nearly impossible for me. When I attempt to do the thing that I can no longer do because my spirit is still willing, but my flesh is thorny, I no longer feel the joy that I felt for so many years while doing it. 

It's no longer freeing. It's no longer fun. It's no longer good. It's absolute drudgery and a big ball of nerves and wondering when or if I will ever be unbounded by these chains so that joy can fill me up like a balloon again. 

That...is the hardest part for me. 

If God never heals me, I will still believe in Him. If God never heals me, I will still trust in Him. If God never heals me, I will still hope in Him. If God never heals me, I will not doubt His goodness. If God never heals me, I will not doubt that He loves me. I will double-down and get the biggest spoon I can find, and if my spoon breaks, I will find a stick, and if my stick breaks, I will dig with my fingers, and if my fingers start to bleed, I will keep digging anyway. Whatever. Put a mountain in front of me and watch me start moving it, in whatever little ways that I can. 

My faith is not at stake here. I know the goodness and the grace and the love of God too deeply in my bones to let a little discouragement dissuade me. 

But my joy.... 

It takes everything I've got to hold onto my joy.

But I'm trying to do that, too. Because this world took my joy from me once, and it took everything I had - everything God and I had together - to get it back. 

And I shall truly be damned - in a double sense of the word - to lose it again. 

Dependence

It's hard when God doesn't heal our thorn in the flesh. It's hard to reconcile our faith and how earnestly we've prayed with the great, big, resounding "no" from the heavens, from the God that we know is good. As I said yesterday, this persistent thorn in the flesh brings with it the blessing of hope. 

It also brings the blessing of dependence. Or, we might say, continued faith. 

Let's be honest about it - most of us want God to heal the thorn in our flesh so that we can move on. So that it can become one of those good stories we tell from a place far removed from the pain. We promise that we will speak of His goodness, His mercy, His grace. We want the painful seasons of our stories to begin with "once upon a time," with the luxury of looking back and somehow ending up at "happily ever after." 

But we know the world doesn't work that way. We know we don't get all of our stories to work out this way. We know that our stories don't always get to start with "once upon a time," with the luxury of looking back. Too often, they start with "yet again" or "today, too..." One more day. One more struggle. One more chapter that looks the same as the last one. Sometimes, we have to live wondering if we'll ever be happy again, let alone ever after. 

As we say, them's the facts. Or in the language of the church, can I get an "amen?" 

When God doesn't heal our thorn in the flesh, we don't get to tell our stories the way that we want to - from the driver's seat, looking in the rearview mirror. Rather, we have to tell them with every breath. 

We have to tell our stories of depending on God every day. Of believing in Him every day. Of trusting Him every day. To heal us, yes, but more often than not, just to get us through one more day. 

We tell the story of yesterday, and it is a story of God giving us just enough to get through. And when we tell the story of today, it will be the same - God got us through. And maybe that will be the story for the day after that and the one after that and a thousand more. 

Our story, which we wanted to be this really cool story of a really powerful faith that moves mountains and throws them into the sea, becomes...a really cool story of a really powerful faith that is moving mountains by the spoonful. 

One more day. One more breath. One more trust. One more hope. One more prayer. One more thanksgiving. One more rest, and then we'll get up and do it all over again. 

We develop, over time, these narratives of the consistent, steadfast goodness of God. Goodness yesterday, goodness today, goodness for tomorrow and the day after that and maybe a thousand more after that. God may not have been powerfully, miraculously, emphatically good for one dramatic moment of healing like we've wanted, but God is powerfully, miraculously, wonderfully good in every little moment. 

And that, my friends, is a story, too. It's a good one. It's one worth telling. 

And it's that thorn in the flesh that God just doesn't heal that gives us the chance to tell it. 

One more day. One more struggle. One more chapter that looks the same as the last one. One more page of our story in which God is - as He always was and always will be - good. One more sentence in which we declare that He truly does love us. 

Hope

One of the most beautiful gifts of a thorn in the flesh is the opportunity that it gives you to hope. 

Yes, you heard me right - that thing that God doesn't seem to want to heal, that thing that doesn't seem like it's ever going to get better, that thing that makes you have to grind through significant portions of your life because it's always with you is the very thing that keeps you tethered to this beautiful thing called "hope." 

By the time it has become a thorn in the flesh, most of us have completely exhausted all of our resources. Like the bleeding woman, we have seen all of the doctors, spent all of our money, tried all of the remedies, dug through the encyclopedias of native and natural remedies, put things into ourselves that we would never have fathomed would become one with our tissues. We have run out of earthly options...actually, we probably ran out of earthly options a long time ago and we have even run out of the bizarre, crazy, other-worldly options. Even aliens aren't coming to heal us. 

We have prayed all the prayers, cried all the tears, yearned all the yearnings, enlisted all the warriors, gathered all the righteous, made our three-strand cords of friends, filled all the journals. 

All we have left is hope. 

But remember - as Christians, when we say "hope," we're not talking about a wish. We're not talking about a dream. We're not talking about blowing the feathers off a dandelion into the wind and wondering if God catches the message. (And, by the way, by the time we have a thorn in the flesh, we've stripped all the dandelions naked, too.) 

Hope, for the Christian, is confident assurance in the things we know to be true about God. Hope is trust in His heart. Hope is faith in His goodness. Hope is waiting expectantly, knowing we are wrapped in His love. 

That's why hope is such a gift. 

It reminds us of what we believe. It reminds us of what we know. It reminds us of what He's promised. It reminds us of what His Word tells us. It reminds us of the stories - of the ones in the Bible and the ones that we've heard and the ones that we've lived and the ones that we've scribbled in the pages of the journals that we just maxed out with our newest hope. 

It reminds us what He's capable of. It reminds us what He's done. It reminds us what His love means, and what it means for us to be His beloved. 

It keeps our eyes focused not on the thorn, but on the God who wore those thorns in His crown so that we would know that He gets it. He understands. 

And one way or another, this God is our only way through this. Either He will heal us, as we know He is able, or He will give us the strength - moment by moment, day by day, breath by breath - to endure, as we know He is able to do that, too. 

So our hope rests in Him and Him alone. 

And what a beautiful gift that is.