The Bible Says

The Bible actually has a lot to stay about women in ministry, everywhere from Genesis 1 (where "life" comes to help "dirt") to the women disciples that traveled with and ministered to Jesus Himself to the house churches meeting in the homes of women (in a time, mind you, when women would not have been named as the primary property holders in the first place...but I digress...). 

And there is no shortage of persons willing to try to use the lens of modern culture to dig into these stories and come up with all kinds of justifications or examples or what have you of this and that regarding women. 

But I think the best story to look at when it comes to this issue is one from the Old Testament that features not one, but two women...and the men caught in between. 

It is the story of Deborah and Jael, and you can find it in Judges 4. 

Deborah was a prophetess - the voice of God in her community. She was known for this role long before this, which is why the man whose job it was to wage war for Israel and who was expected to lead the troops of the army of God came to her for advice before he went into battle. He wanted to know what the Lord had to say. 

So he comes to the female prophetess and asks what she knows from the Lord, then immediately dismisses any power her word might actually have. Any truth at all. His response to the truth that he sought from the woman was, "Eh, I'm not sure." 

This is the first moment of importance here. Because we know that men in leadership, even men in leadership who vote against the leadership of women, talk to the women in their lives. They seek advice, ask for input, use women as a sounding board. Even in a society that is structured very differently than the Old Testament society of recently-settled Israel, men still talk to women and seem to seek out their opinion on a wide range of things. 

It's also true that men might still reject the wisdom and insight of women, even the women they sought out. Listen, this is no small thing. Men ask women for advice because they trust them...and then they immediately might wonder if they actually trust them. If the women they know for speaking truth are for real about whatever truth they just spoke. 

So the big, strong army guy seeks the Lord, finds Him in a woman, dismisses the message, and declares he's not even going to battle unless Deborah, the woman, comes with him. After all, it's her message; he can't just, like, live by it. 

At that point, Deborah tells him he's just forfeited his authority in the victory that is coming. 

The battle ensues, the enemy escapes, he seeks refuge in the tent of a woman he affiliates with safety. And that woman, Jael, drives a tent peg through his temple and kills him for the sake of all Israel. 

So the other big, strong army guy runs to the safety of a woman and finds she's more interested in truth and righteousness than protecting him...and he dies for it. And this, too, is continuing to happen as men seek affirmation in women of God and find truth and righteousness that condemns them instead. ...so they decide women should not be listened to. 

There are so many layers to this story - more than we have space here to unpack entirely - but if you watch the dynamics between the men and the women, you'll find two clear messages. 

First, God uses women. Period. He uses women to speak truth, to act in truth and righteousness, to be strength and wisdom and power in their communities, even way back when those things would have, culturally, been a man's job (even more than some men are still claiming today, even though culture has changed very dramatically since then). 

And second, some things don't change all that much... Thousands of years later, we're still feeling - and telling - the tension in this story like we haven't learned a thing from it. 

Dirt needs life. Period. 

The Story and the Facts

When our children are young, we tell them stories. As they get older, we speak more directly - they have developed the maturity to handle the "truth." 

But there's something still about the story that draws us. 

And that is why women in theology are so important. 

It's a bit of a stereotype, but it's well-deserved; it's the way that our culture has formed, the way that it has shaped what we expect of our men and women. It hasn't always been this way, but it is this way now. 

Thousands of years ago, it was rabbis who sat around telling stories. Jesus was incredibly famous for this - for the stories that He told. In fact, every time Jesus wanted to convey a deep, meaningful, profound truth, He started it this way: Let me tell you a story. 

That's not the way of the world any more. These days, we applaud the father who reads his children a bedtime story, as though it's completely unheard of for a man to sit down and enter the world of narrative. To some extent, that is true - our men have been shoved into this post-industrial, highly-technological world of strings of code and text and facts and data, of spreadsheets and bottom lines, of optimization and automation. And in the machining of society, there's not a lot of room for story. 

That's how it came to be that women are, today, our story keepers. Women are the ones who pay attention to the details, to the context, who see more than the numbers on the page. Women are the ones who can step back and put all of the pieces together more easily than the men who are profoundly engaged in each little individual piece all on its own. 

So when we think about a theology that is rich in story, that rests itself on the foundation of the Word, we have to be honest and confess our need for women's voices in these spaces. 

Women engage us in story. 

It's the difference between the highly-efficient 3-point sermon with a neat, tidy outline that fits into the bulletin and a few key blanks to fill in along the way...and watching The Chosen. It's the difference between looking at all the little parts of the story and actually living it. 

Our men come in and want to cut straight to the case; our women remember that the chase is really the journey, the path that we are on, and they point out all the little wildflowers along the way. You know, the ones that have no worries in the world and the Lord clothes them with beauty anyway? 

Listen, I know I'm engaged in stereotypes. I know it. To be fair, I have met many women who are as type-A and detail-oriented as any man, and I have met many men who are tender and nurturing and as aware of the finer things as any woman. But by and large, these are the roles our world has pushed us into in our current culture. That's not a judgment on whether such a thing is good or bad; it simply is. Our men are simply not the ones, for the most part, sitting around and telling stories; our women are. Our women are the ones teaching in almost every place but the church. 

And we're suffering for it. From all directions. We're suffering from men who are too automated and women who are still relegated to the shadows and doctrines that are stuck in a culture that doesn't exist any more and timeless truths that don't change according to the culture. And it's up to us to find a way forward from here. 

I don't know what that looks like, but I know this: it's going to take both. It's going to take stories and truth. It's going to take the things that engage our young minds and active imaginations and the things that speak directly to us in our maturity. 

It's going to take men and women to keep telling us the story of Jesus in a way that shapes how we keep living it for His glory.  

A Woman in Ministry

As a Mary in a world of Martha ministry, I confess I have been drawn to deeper theological spaces. The type more affiliated with men. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy cooking as much as anyone else, but I'd rather be at the feet of Jesus. 

And honestly, I never thought it really mattered that much. I believed that truth was gender-neutral, that God simply speaks and if it's true, it's true, no matter what voice speaks it. It simply shouldn't matter. 

I think I've told this story before, or at least touched on it, but it's worth touching on again because it is foundational to this conversation. 

Thirteen years ago when I was starting out in ministry, when I was serving as a chaplain for the first time, one of my supervisors sensed this in me, I think. We were talking about what we bring into the room with us, and I was listing off all kinds of things like truth, Gospel, goodness, that non-anxious presence we always talk about. And all of that was well and good, she said, but what do you bring in the room with you? 

What do you bring in the room with you as a person created by God? What do you bring in the room with you as a woman created by God? 

I immediately told her, having come of age in a church that did not affirm women, that my womanhood had nothing to do with my ministry. That it shouldn't matter. That it shouldn't be a barrier, and it wasn't a particular blessing, either, but it was something that simply was. I so happen to be a woman - why should that make a difference?

Over the course of that conversation, and many to follow, and many years that have passed since, I have kept coming back to that question. Because as it turns out, she was right and I was wrong and it does matter. 

We joke a lot about the differences between men and women. Most of the jokes are funny precisely because they are true. 

Ask a man for details, and he might just shrug. He doesn't know what they were wearing, who they were with, what was going on besides the things he was very specifically told - he didn't ask any follow-up questions, didn't make any mental notes. A woman, however, has twenty follow-up questions and then a few follow-up questions to that. She knows exactly what someone was wearing and who they were with and all the things....

You could say, I think reasonably, that men tend to end up with facts and women tend to end up with context. 

And I think the same is true when it comes to theology. 

The theology that we have had handed to us, mostly by men, is very factual. Like they sat down with the Word and picked it apart and labeled all the pieces and drew us a diagram. "This is what this says; this is what this means." 

Meanwhile, women have this more fine-tuned ability - I don't want to say it's innate because I think God gave it to all of us, male and female, but it is certainly more tuned by our society and cultural roles at present - to put context around it all. To put the Word into the story and not have it come out like an encyclopedia. 

So there is something you bring into the room as a woman of God...something I bring into the room as a woman...and it does make a difference.  

More on Women

A few years ago, a Bible publisher asked what kind of Bible readers wanted to see. I said that I would like to see more Bibles commentated by female theologians - not female ministers, not female pastors, not female leaders; female theologians. Women who have studied God's Word. 

And I was immediately told that there are "plenty" of Bibles by women...for women. 

To be honest with you, I have always struggled with women's ministries - those subsets of services and groups set up in churches in which women minister to and with one another. 

My problem with women's ministries is that they tend to emphasize the women more than the ministry. They create this caricature of what a Christian woman is - what she does, what she likes, what she buys, what she wears, whatever - and then cater to that image by digging up scriptural things that speak to only that. 

As a female who is allergic to most perfumes and candles, doesn't wear make-up, can't eat chocolate, doesn't drink wine, doesn't have kids, isn't into yoga (no Christian should be doing yoga anyway...), and who otherwise does not fit the caricature that has been created by women's ministries, I have always felt out of place. They simply don't speak to me. 

I am not, as it were, a woman of God. 

I am a female Christian. 

And as I labored and struggled and longed to try to fit into women's ministries, my heart was aching for the Word spoken for me. Not the me that I wasn't, that I'm not, that I'm never going to be, but the me that I am, that God created in His image, that doesn't fit the caricature. 

So yes, there are Bibles by women...for women...and they are full of beauty and flowers and ideas for candlelight meditations and aroma therapies and recipes to share and all those sorts of things, but what they are not full of is nourishment for my soul. Because these kinds of things make me feel like less of a woman, they make me feel like less of a woman of God. 

Like I'm not who God wants me to be because women's ministry, honestly, makes me feel like a lesser human being. 

I have therefore been drawn to men's spaces. Like Mary, who sat at the feet of Jesus while He taught instead of being in the kitchen with Martha. That's who I am - I'm Mary, in a world of Martha-based ministries. 

I want to be where theology is being discussed, where the Word is being read and understood, where the Hebrew and Greek are being parsed, where the unique perspectives of being a female Christian have merit as a being created in God's image just the same. I think it would be totally cool to commentate a Bible. 

Not for women, but for Christians. For all Christians. 

And I think, truly, that if you get the theology right, the men reading it wouldn't even know it was written by a women. There don't have to be hints of potpourri in it just because a female wrote it. She can speak authoritatively on the Word of God and if the truth is accurate, the voice should carry. Shouldn't it? 

I want more Bibles written by women. Not for women, although I hope that women will read them, too. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. 

On Women

This week, at their national convention, the Southern Baptists voted to ban women from the pulpit. This is not really surprising, as it has long been their stance, but they've made it official. 

Because if you codify sin, perhaps you can perform some kind of mental gymnastics that lets you feel less of a burden from it. 

Here's the thing: in the beginning, God created a man - Adam. God bent down into the dust, formed the dirt into clay, formed the clay into a human, and breathed the very spirit of God into him to make him live. He named him "Adam" - from the Hebrew word for "dirt" - and set him in the garden with all of the other amazing creatures He had made. 

Then, God looked around the creation and for the very first time, saw something that wasn't "good" - the man was alone. 

So God put Adam - dirt - into a deep sleep, took one of his ribs, and fashioned for him a helpmeet in his form, the form of God (because God had given Adam His form, in His image, and so the woman, created in the image of the image would also bear the image). And Adam named her "Eve" - from the Hebrew word for "life." 

And then God said, "It is very good." 

So when there was dirt and dirt was alone, it was not very good; something was missing. Something vital. Something that would be come to known, by the dirt itself, as life, and that life would prompt God to finally conclude that His creation was not only complete, but "very good." 

And now, here we are, thousands of years later, and a bunch of dirt got together in a room and affirmed for themselves, claiming to be in the name of God, that they don't need life. 

And I'm telling you...that's sin. 

That's a rejection of God's plan. That's a rejection of God's design. That's a direct rejection of God's Word, where God Himself told the dirt that it wasn't good for him to be alone and that he needed a helpmeet. 

And if you think Eve's job as a helpmeet was to sweep the dirt in the Garden and water the plants and wash the fig leaves, you are sadly mistaken. 

Eve's job in the Garden was to bring life...and not just from her uterus. Remember, Adam named her "life" before they'd ever even figured out procreation. He took one look at her and called her "life." 

Here's what I think happened: 

I think that when Adam sensed the spirit of God in Eve, something inside him leapt with joy the way that John leapt with joy in Elizabeth's womb when Mary walked into the room. There's something about the Spirt that recognizes life in the other when God is present, and it can't help but rejoice - physically rejoice. And I think that's what Adam felt in the depth of his being when God gave him Eve. That's why he named her "life." 

Thousands of years later, men still need that. They still need that connection. They need that reflection. They need that resonation. They need that thing inside them to be stirred with the spirit and presence of God. It's what makes things "very good." 

Thousands of years later, dirt still needs life. 

Without it, your name might as well be mud. 

Faithfulness

How faithful are you? 

Before you answer that question, pause for a second. I want you think not just about your life of faith, but your life in general - all the ways you are or should be or might be expected to be faithful. 

Do you do what you say you'll do? Do you show up on time to the things you've committed yourself to be at? Do you follow through on your promises? Are you invested in your marriage? Your family? Your kids? Your job? 

Your coffee order? 

We live in a world that seems to be invested in faithfulness. It wants to reward you for the things you do consistently and with good intention and that we have deemed "good" things to do. 

We start this early, with "perfect attendance" awards for schoolchildren. And students who turn in all of their assignments with excellence get even more rewards. At work, maybe you get recognition for being with the company five years, ten years, twenty years. Or you get an acknowledgement for your significant contribution. Your kids tell stories about you forever and for always, and you hope they're good. You get five punches on your loyalty card and your next bagel/coffee/oil change/whatever are free. 

Yes, there's certainly a place in this world for faithfulness. 

But be honest with me for a second - what does it even mean? 

That perfect attendance award from the school corporation feels big at the time, but nobody really cares. In fact, it might even make you look like too much of a workaholic, someone who doesn't know how to have fun or someone who doesn't know how to take care of themselves. 

So you worked for the same company for years of your life, maybe even your whole career. Once you retire, they'll fill your office with someone else before your smell even clears out of there. The work goes on long after you're done with it. They might still talk about you for awhile, but it won't take long before everyone who knew you is gone and you aren't even a memory any more. 

Okay, you bought 5 coffees. Great. Now, you get a sixth. And then what? You have to start all over on your 7th with a new loyalty card. Same gimmick - keeps you coming back. But at the end of the day, you spent $30 and saved only a handful. Who really came out ahead on this game? 

I was thinking about faithfulness the other day. Specifically, I was thinking about it in the context of God. Because I really felt on my heart a step that God wanted me to take, something He wanted me to do. And it got me thinking about all of the things I've done in my life that God has put on my heart...and how not a single one of them has ever been wasted. Not a single one of them has gone unnoticed by the One who asked me to do it. Not a single one of them has failed to produce more than it required of me. 

I can't say that about the jobs I've had or the relationships I've had or the friendships I've formed or the loyalty cards I've punched. In every single other transaction in the world, you'd be lucky to break even...if even that. The world says it's acknowledging our faithfulness and making a place for it, but at the end of the day, we're not the ones coming out ahead on that. 

But with God...not only do we come out ahead, but it's a net gain for everyone. Not only do we reap the rewards, but we've also planted something that's growing. Not only does God recognize our faithfulness, but He honors it. 

I've never done a single thing for this world that has ever come back on me 2-fold, let alone 10. But every time I do what God asks me to do, what He presses on my heart to do, it somehow goes out and fills an empty space and then comes back to me, pressed together, beyond my wildest imagination. 

So I'll ask again - how faithful are you? 

And then I'll ask - what is your faithfulness doing for you? 

A Wish, A Hope, and A Prayer

Yesterday, I said that hearing myself say that I was praying for something I wasn't really praying for changed the way that I approach prayer. And I said that it has also changed the way that I use language (which is already a very precise way). 

Here's what that change is for me: 

I no longer say that I'm praying for things that I'm not really praying for. And that includes you. 

I no longer promise my God to be doing things that He hasn't told me He's doing and I haven't been asking Him to do. 

Instead, I have expanded my vocabulary and adopted three different words for how I relate to these situations. 

- I might say I'm "wish"ing for something. If you hear me say that, it means I don't really have a particular attachment to that outcome, but I think there's a possibility it might be good anyway. I'm throwing it out into the realm of "things that might happen, come what may," with perhaps a little bit of a want, just because someone else wants it for themselves or there might be a good in it. The "wish" is reserved for something I don't invest a lot of time or energy in thinking about, something I haven't really determined whether it would be a blessing or a hindrance, something with more unknowns than I really want to wrestle with in a particular moment. Sometimes, for something that might even seem impossible. I wish that would happen, but I'm not holding my breath for it and it's not a deal-breaker for my life. 

- Sometimes, I'll say that I'm "hope"-ing for something. If you hear me say I'm hoping, that means I'm embracing confident assurance. Hope is knowing that something is the promise, but not knowing the timing of it. It's understanding that something is coming, but not quite knowing what it will look like when it gets here...or when it will get here. It's continuing to believe in something that hasn't happened yet as though it already has. Hope lets you start building your season around a truth, whether that truth is reality yet or not. I hope for a lot of things because I know that my God is good, that He loves me, and that He's made clear what He's doing. Hope is actually something you do - or something I do - when I've already prayed and I know what the answer it. It's living into the future when all you have is the present and the promise. I hope that happens...because I know it's coming, and I can't wait. 

- And, of course, I will still say I am "pray"ing for something. If you hear me say I'm praying, then I really am praying. I am seeking God's will and God's input on whatever crazy thing my mind has latched onto. I am seeking to discover whether it is part of God's promise for me, part of the good that He is working in the world, or if it's not. I am confessing my finite understanding and my limited imagination and opening the possibilities up to whatever God might be wanting to do with them. I am inviting Him to show me and to make the promise that makes hope possible. I pray for that to happen, but I haven't yet figured out what it looks like in God's vision and not just my own. 

So my language has become more precise, but with it, so, too, has my faith. I no longer waste my heart on things that ought to be wishes; I no longer languish in prayer for things that ought to be hopes; and I no longer just throw prayer into the wind and hope something sticks. 

By defining my terms, I have shaped my faith in a very meaningful way so that when I catch myself carelessly using one of these words, I am able to hear it in my own voice, pause, think about what that means, and ask myself if that's really what I'm doing here. If it is, then great; if it's not, then it's time to readjust and ask myself what I should be doing. 

And, oddly, though I have come to a place where I've stopped saying that I am praying for everything, I actually find myself praying more because I'm more intentional about what that means to me. 

Do you have language that is a little more careless than you thought it was? What would it mean to your life - and your faith - to clean it up a bit and really define your terms? How might it change your prayer life? 

A Matter of Prayer

I am a person who is very particular with language, so much so that talking with me can sometimes be, well, exhausting. For example, I don't like to say "people" unless I'm talking about an actual people group; if I'm talking about a group of human beings, I'd rather say "persons." It's more accurate. And did you know that it's a very different thing to be "nauseated" than it is to be "nauseous?" I could go on, but you're probably bored enough already. 

The thing is, as careful as I am with language, I have to confess that I caught myself on it. I can't remember how long ago it was - several years at this point, although several could be anywhere from 3-15 with the way the passage of time has been lately. But it was a season in my life where I was really wanting something positive to happen, something specific and positive, and I heard myself say, "I'm just praying for _____" whatever it was. 

And then, I stopped. 

Was I really praying? When was the last time I had actually prayed over that specific thing? 

The honest answer was humbling. And based on that one moment, I have become even more precise in my language. 

I'll confess - there are seasons in my life when I don't pray like I should. Not because I don't want to or because I don't believe in it or even because I don't know how. I just get...lazy. Maybe I get entitled. Maybe I start to feel like as much as I'm communicating with God with my heart, He doesn't need my words. Maybe I think He should just know what I'm doing and wanting and needing and He should already be working on it. 

Sometimes, I confess I even just ride along in my own life a little too much, accepting whatever comes my way and embracing opportunities and waiting to see what happens next, what God is doing all on His own. 

Whatever the reason, I realized that here I was, telling someone that I was praying for something to happen...and convicted in my soul that you know what? No, I'm not. I'm not actually praying for this. I haven't prayed for this in a long time. 

And at that moment, I committed to two things: 

1) To stop saying that I was praying for things I wasn't praying for. Not only does that make me a liar, but it sets God up to fail, too. Because if God doesn't come through and make it happen, then the watching world says, "But I thought you were praying for it. Didn't God hear you? Doesn't God care?" 

and 2) To pray for the things I say that I'm praying for. This means praying for the things I say I'm praying for when I'm not actually praying - choosing to then pray for them because that's what I said I'm doing. It also means choosing to say I'm praying so that I choose to pray for them. It means actively trusting God with the things I ought to be trusting Him with and for and being a person of active faith, not just a person who says they have faith. 

And it means something else about the way I use language, which I'll talk more about tomorrow.... 

In the meantime, I don't think I'm alone here. Are you someone who says you're praying when you haven't actually been praying for things? What would it change if you decided to pray when you heard that word coming out of your mouth?  

Brokenness

I was trying to heal and ended up breaking my brokenness and now, I guess, I'm stuck somewhere in the middle, trying to figure out which way I go. 

It sounds like a strange statement to make, but hear me out - I don't think I'm alone in this. I think a lot of folks have this exact same experience. 

The human being is a marvelous creature with amazing adaptation skills. Most human beings, by innate survival skill, will compensate for their weaknesses, mask their vulnerabilities, and find a way to continue to function and move on with living to the best of their ability. 

It's something we talk about a lot psychologically, with "masking." Finding a way to function through depression, finding a way to fit in socially with neurodivergent behaviors, finding a way to calm anxieties. We call it "pretending" sometimes, but it's much more than that. 

It's survival. 

The thing is that when we get to a place where we're done surviving, where we're tired of pushing through our days, where we aren't sure we have the strength to keep doing life this way, or - if God should be so gracious - you have an opportunity to truly heal what you've been compensating for, there comes this point where what you've been doing simply doesn't work any more. 

What's most fun *sarcasm* about this point is that it is also a point where the new thing isn't working yet, either. It's starting to work, but it's not ready to take over full time. It's just...ready to quit the compensations. 

Because there comes a point where continuing to compensate for your brokenness keeps you from building the true strength that you need to overcome it. 

Many years ago, something broke in my life that affected my physical ability to do something that comes naturally and normally to almost every able-bodied human...and many animals. Something so small and stupid that over the course of my life as I've told others that I can't do that, they've just cocked their heads sideways at me like, "Everybody can do that." No, not everybody. 

But as human nature would have it, my body just naturally came up with its own plan, made a compensation, and that's the way I've been doing it for decades. After the first few years of trying everything I could to forge a different path for myself, I gave up on the idea that it would ever be healed, I accepted my compensation, and I moved on with life - functioning well, if not "normally." 

All of a sudden, without ever expecting such a thing, I'm in a season where actual healing might be possible. At this point, it is not just a physical healing that would be required; my compensation also needs to be healed, as well as my psychological wraparound that envelops this whole thing. Put more simply, not only does my body need to be able to do it, but my mind needs to be able to believe and to trust that my body can do it. And that's no small task. 

What's most frustrating right now, however, is that as I continue to work the physical program and discover myself doing what I haven't thought possible in a very long time, the compensation that I made for myself all those years ago doesn't feel as natural as it has become for me. It feels broken. So I can't do what I'm one day going to do, but I also can't, right now, do what I have always done. 

Here I am - stuck in a weird brokenness of brokenness and trying to figure out which way I go. 

When you just need something that works, any old brokenness is fine, so long as you've found your way through it. But when something better is possible...there's the rub. What's a girl to do? 

Go with God, of course, and embrace the moment. Take whatever healing comes and whatever brokenness may be put back together and whatever compromise or compensation comes in the in-between because it's not the blink of an eye, it's the walk of faith and nothing happens overnight. (Not unless God wills it so, but we've talked about that in this space, too.) 

The only thing you are ever responsible for in this life is the next faithful thing, whatever that may be. So I'm doing that. 

And I don't think I'm alone.  

Tower of Babel

I do not consent to the use of my likeness, my image, my preferences, my buying history, my browsing habits, or anything else about me being used by AI. I don't. 

But that doesn't stop it from happening. 

As I was thinking about this idea again recently - and watching the news - I realized how often a relatively few number of humans are making decisions for the rest of us that we are powerless to stop the effects of. 

A handful of humans created this thing called AI and they had the power to put it in all kinds of places, and even if I turn it off on my own device, someone else still has it on theirs, and I'm subjected to what it's doing. After a recent medical appointment, I was informed in documentation that AI was generating my documentation. I object. (And also, in case you don't know this, there's no such actual thing as AI, which is even more frustrating.) 

Someone's phone is listening to me all the time because it's turned on to listen to its owner and it can't help but overhear what I say, and now, all of a sudden, I'm part of the very complex that I hate. 

An even smaller handful of humans has decided we should go to the moon. Not only that we should go to the moon, but that we should build a colony there, complete with a nuclear reactor and a launch pad pointed toward Mars. Another guy has decided to send giant mirrors into space to try to create a new source of energy. 

Did you know that per human capita, there is most trash and junk and waste in space than anywhere else humans have ever been? So much junk up there. 

And if it should come to the point where there's so much junk in space that space is, well, ruined, or if there's so much stuff on the moon that the orbit shifts even a fragment of a millimeter, I will have absolutely no say in this. I will have absolutely no ability to stop it. 

And if the data center down the road that a handful of public officials approve sucks all the water out of my reservoir or the new roofing plant dumps toxic waste into my field runoff or an infected mosquito steals away in the luggage of an international traveler, I am powerless to stop this, too. 

It's all "progress," you know. The ability to build things and manipulate things and explore things and travel the world and all this other stuff they tell us is making us "better" as a people, is demonstrating our accomplishment as a species. 

And here I am, thinking about the Tower of Babel and realizing that one day, I'm going to be scattered against my will because of human "ingenuity" that I didn't consent to. I'm going to be swept away by the frustration of the human enterprise when it finally becomes all too much and our "progress" actually sets us further back than we could ever have imagined. 

I wonder how many folks in Genesis got buried in the rubble that comes crashing down when the earth shakes, even if they never picked up a single speck of dirt to add to the project. Even if they just happened to be there because they already lived in Babel and that was just the place the schemers and scalawags chose to start building. 

I don't consent to this, but that doesn't stop it from happening and it won't shield me from the fallout when it comes. 

That seems unfair. 

Job's Friends

I have a Bible question. 

Before I ask this, you need to know that I have read the Bible all the way through more than a dozen times. And it wasn't until this time that I had this question. 

It's about Job's friends. 

Remember Job's friends? These are the guys who came to sit with him in the dust and ashes, while chastising him for creating his own dust and ashes and giving long, eloquent speeches about what they knew to be true about God and what Job, apparently, didn't know. Job spends a good chunk of the book that bears his name telling them what idiots they are, how foolish, how completely short-sighted and narrow-minded they are about who God is. How wrong they are. 

Here I am thousands of years later, reading these words. I know that the Bible is divinely inspired, that every word of it is useful for teaching and rebuking and training and all that. That God has given us these words because He wants us to know them, to be able to live by them, to discover more of who He is - His character and His heart and His love. 

So here's my Bible question: 

Am I, in 2026, supposed to take Job's friends seriously? 

That is - are the words recorded as being spoken by Job's friends words that reveal the true nature and the heart of God somehow, do they speak truth that is important to my faith, or am I supposed to be more like Job and read these words and know that's not quite true? 

Are Job's friends truth-tellers, even if that truth is not complete, or are they false prophets and distractions from what I should be learning about God? 

Elihu says, "I am telling you nothing but the truth," (36: 4) but Job tells Elihu that's not really the truth. So should I take Elihu's words as truth...or not truth? 

Are these the things I'm supposed to know about God? Or are Job's friends a warning to me even now about the faithful-sounding things that others might say that are not true? That might try to sway me away from what I know about God? 

God Himself says they did not speak truth about Him (Job 42:7). 

I started to have these questions because every day, as I read through my Bible, I try to find one thing to write down. One note to take with me. One truth to hold onto, something that speaks to me for some reason in whatever season I'm in. As I was reading through Job recently, I had such a thing jump out at me and I said to myself, "Of course. That is something I should most definitely hold onto." 

But then, I saw that it was spoken by one of Job's friends and all of a sudden, I wondered...is it, then, actually true? Is it true because it's the Word of God and He only gives us true words? Or is it the Word of God as a cautionary tale against untrue words? 

And now, I just don't know. 

What do you think? Do you trust Job's friends? Should you trust Job's friends? 

Voice of My People

Here's how I know that it's the loss of my community of faith that changed the way that I talk about God: 

Because I have a new community, not of faith, that has changed the way I talk about things in that community. 

I've been in and around healthcare for more than a decade, in various capacities. I have worked with four different healthcare organizations. I have been a patient in many more. And every single one of these places has shaped the way that I talk about healthcare - the way that I talk about patients, about insurance companies, about systems, about policies, about families. You take on the language of the persons you're around in the places that you dwell. 

It's no wonder, then, that when I lost my community of faith, I lost my language for faith. What had for so long been a beautiful sanctuary filled with hundreds of voices became an echo chamber filled with only mine. 

Language simply doesn't work that way. 

There's no such thing as a language of your own. You don't need one. There is no idea that you would have to communicate to yourself outside of your own brain, outside of merely thinking about it, so there is no use for having any kind of language. Language is only for communities. 

So when I lost my community of faith, my faith became private once more. It became innate in my being, not needing to be expressed. Not having a place for expression. At least, not in the same way. The past few years, then, as I have waited and prayed patiently for God to heal me and bring me back into community have seen me with a faith that only I have to understand, a faith that is only mine, a faith that has no place except in my own heart. 

No wonder I've forgotten how to speak about it. 

It's frustrating for me, for someone who is a wordsmith. I think that over the past few years, my faith has grown in beautiful ways. It is deeper, richer, more robust. It has this essence to it that it didn't have before - the essence it gets from having been so deeply tested in a wilderness. And yet, here I am, stumbling over my words, unsure how to make it as beautiful as it feels, not confident in how I'm presenting it because that voice, that language, is dormant. 

I hope it's dormant. I hope it's not gone. 

And yet, I also know that as I integrate myself into a new community of faith, the language that I develop in this space won't be the same as the one I had. I will learn to speak again, but it will be different. There will be something new and unique about it, just as there has been about every environment in which I have engaged healthcare. Every community has its own language for things; every family has its own dialect. 

I think about that, too. As I visit with my new community, with my new brothers and sisters, that's one of the questions I'm asking myself - is their language one that I want to learn to speak? Is it one that I want to hear sounding in my own voice? Does it resonate with my heart and with what I'm feeling and how I'm growing and the way that God and I are loving each other? That's important. 

For my voice will become like their voice, and my prayer is that our voices become like God's voice - humbly, authentically full of grace, hope, love, and mercy to a hurting world. 

The Voice of Faith

Lately, I've been looking back at my Facebook memories every day - that feature that reminds me what I posted on any given day any number of years ago. I started doing this a few months ago after realizing how negative some folks are on social media and wondering if they really hate their lives as much as they pretend to...and then I wondered what I actually say about my own life. 

Am I a person stuck in a rut? Have I grown over the years? Has there been a shift in what's important to me? What does the trajectory of the things I've chosen to post over the years say about me? 

The answers to those questions are, perhaps, answers for another day. 

What I've been struck by, however, and what is most convicting to me is the way that the voice of my faith has changed over the years. Especially in the last three years. 

After years in seminary and working as a chaplain and being engaged in the ministry of persons and presence, I had this really cool season - many years, actually - where I was finding the voice of my faith. Something authentic. Powerful, but generally gentle. Humble, confessional. It was the kind of voice I've always wanted my faith to have, and I was developing it. It was coming from my heart, and it was obvious. (Some of the most powerful places I see this is in my last book.) 

But over the past couple of years, something has shifted. Something has changed the way that I talk. 

At first, I wondered if it was simply the toll life has taken on me. A long battle with Covid, a life that's totally different now, a disabled body, thousands of days of struggle. Certainly, those things have the capacity to change anyone. 

But the more memories I read, the more I realize that I had the voice I wanted to talk even about those things. 

No, what changed...is that I was wounded. I was severely wounded by my church, by the people of God, by the brothers and sisters that I had so long called family. And from that point forward, from the time when I became painfully separated from them, my voice started to change. 

And listen - it's not the woundedness that changed my voice. It's not. I think that woundedness has given me more grace, if anything. It has caused me to reconsider how I love others and how I process their spiritual pain when they share it with me. And it has brought me into a new season where I'm exploring all kinds of new ideas. 

What changed my voice was not the woundedness; it's the loneliness. It's no longer having a community, no longer having a family. It's not having that support structure around my faith that echoes the love of God back to me in human reality and helps shape the way that I understand and present my faith. 

I still love God just as much as I always did, if not more. My relationship with Him is continuing to grow. I am engaged with a new church community, but I'm not plugged in and connected there yet the same way that I was with my congregation of 20+ years, so I don't have that fellowship around me that I'm missing, and it has changed my voice. It just has. 

So what I'm coming to understand in this season is really the "one another" of faith, that thing that God is so interested in in the New Testament, that thing that He keeps telling us that we need. Because what I'm discovering as I watch the voice of my faith shift is that...He's right. We do need that. 

By His grace, I will have it again one day, and perhaps I'll see my voice change once more. 

In the meantime, I just hope I'm still saying something good about Him. Because our God really is an awesome God. 

Even if, in this season, He feels like only my God. 

A Race Fan

"God is a race fan." 

The older gentleman declared it with great confidence on the morning news. Just a couple of days ago, thirty-three drivers had taken the track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in front of 350,000+ fans with a threat of rain that held off until just after the closest finish in race history. Literally. The rain started to fall on the victory celebration moments after the last lap. 

The gentleman could only believe that God wanted to see a good race just as much as he did, that God also enjoyed that spectacular finish. 

I can imagine such a statement striking a nerve. 

There are Christians who would believe that it's irreverent, a statement that has no business being made at all. To put God on a plane with human beings, to interject Him into secular human affairs, to ascribe to Him enjoyment of something human. Blasphemy! These Christians would say that a gentleman like this is giving God a bad name. 

There are non-believers who would scoff. Sure, God cares about a stupid little race, an insignificant afternoon of "fun" while children go hungry, disease runs rampant, wars are waged, hostages are taken, Christians are killed. What kind of God could be a race fan with so much chaos and destruction in the world? 

There are some who might try to create a middle road, claiming that God answered their prayers for a good race day, since He loves them and they prayed so earnestly for it. 

There are some who would say God could be nowhere near the track with so much sin and debauchery and *gasp* alcohol present. 

There are very few who would pump a fist in the air and say, "Yeah! God's a race fan!" 

But what if He is? 

God delights in His creation, and He delights in us, and He delights in our delight. Our God is a God of joy and festiveness and good things. He created festivals and parties and even commanded us to celebrate them. 

To put God on a plane with human beings? God put Himself on a plane with human beings when He came to be born in a manger and die on a Cross. 

To interject Him into secular human affairs? God interjected Himself into secular human affairs when He traveled into Samaria and sent the Good News to the Gentiles and declared all things clean and threw a miracle to the "dog" under His feet. 

To ascribe to Him enjoyment of something human? Jesus was highly criticized for eating and drinking and being merry. 

To be somewhere so near where sin and debauchery and *gasp* alcohol are present? Jesus came to save sinners, not saints. His feet were washed by a sinful woman, and He took a drink from another, and by the way, He turned water into wine. (Not, as some might claim, grape juice.) 

God has shown us again and again and again that He is a God of joy. That He is a happy God. That He delights in His creation, in us, and in our delight. 

There is absolutely no justification, in God's testimony about Himself, to believe that God couldn't be a race fan. 

In fact, I actually agree with the older gentleman - I think He is. 

God Has Forgotten

Forgive and forget. 

Two of the hardest words in the English language. We don't like to forgive, especially when someone is not truly sorry and has made no move toward atonement, and we certainly can't forget. 

Recently, I went to a 100-year celebration for my former elementary school. While hanging out and talking with friends and old acquaintances, this young woman came up to me and said she recognized me, but couldn't place me. I introduced myself, and she immediately got a little more excited. "Yes!" she said. "I remember you!" She went on to introduce herself, including her maiden name, and I remembered her, too. 

"You used to torment me and beat me up all the time," I said, matter-of-factly. It had been more than two decades since I had seen, or even really thought about, this woman who was once my bully, but the mere mention of her name brought all of it back. Here she stood right in front of me, seemingly excited to see me, successful in the world's eyes, and all I could think about her was who she used to be, a collection of scenes that are still stuck somewhere in my memory, ready to be recalled, apparently, at a moment's notice.

We don't forget very well. 

The same is true when it comes to our own transgressions, as well.

I have had moments in my life that have haunted me for years, times that I messed up or made mistakes or had to be corrected, and they've just stuck with me. I'm the kind of person who wants to apologize for the same moment every time I see you for the rest of my life, even if we just run into each other in the grocery store. "Oh my gosh - how are you? I am so sorry about that time that I...." 

But you know what? So often, when I bring up these moments that haunt me, the other person doesn't remember them at all. They've long forgotten about what I thought was the biggest blunder ever made in the history of the world. While I've been having nightmares about how much I wounded them and how desperately I wish I could take it back, they've moved on and sometimes, they didn't even know what I said. 

And yet, I cannot forget. And I spend far too long beating myself up for things the rest of the world has long since moved on from. 

Enter the Lord, whose grace and forgiveness humble me every time I remember them. 

In Hebrews 10:17, the Holy Spirit is speaking and He says, "Their sins and lawless acts, I will remember no more." 

Gone. Done. Finished. The sins and transgressions and goof-ups and mistakes that God sent His Son to the Cross to atone for have not just been forgiven, they've been forgotten. 

Which means two things: it means that the things that I keep beating myself up for are not even in God's memory any more...and it means that the things I cannot forget about others, like my bully, aren't there, either. He's forgotten them, too. 

And if God, who is the party most offended and most wounded by our transgressions, who is most crushed by our iniquities, has forgiven and forgotten, then how much more should I work on doing the same? 

God of Rest

Every so often, you will come across someone who reminds you just how many promises of God were fulfilled in Scripture - from the Lord's promise to an aging Abram and Sarai to Jesus's promise to His disciples to send the Holy Spirit among them. Quite honestly, it's a very long list. 

And while it's really cool to be able to go through His story and mark off all the promises kept, it's even better news for those of us who are still waiting on His promises to be fulfilled in our own lives. After all, if He kept every word He spoke to a sinner like David, who are we to believe He won't keep every word to us? 

For many of us, the promise our souls most look forward to is the one in Hebrews 4:1: 

The promise of rest. 

Let's face it - this life can be rough. Between family and friends and work and responsibilities and bills and bodies and pets and problems, it can feel like we're stuck on a hamster wheel, running and running and spinning in circles and all of a sudden, going so fast that we're not sure we can ever get off. Our world used to build in rhythms of rest, blocking out Sundays for faith and family, offering three-day holiday weekends every now and again. 

Remember the three-day weekend? Oh, how we looked forward to that. It felt like the most precious gift. 

But with the advent of the internet, email, mobile phones, social media, and a 24/7 economy that doesn't ever seem to breathe for fear of losing its momentum, we increasingly live lives that feel like we're on-call all the time. Like we have to be within reach of everyone else's fingertips, ready to drop even the most important things to us to go do what is most important to someone else. 

And everyone else's lack of preparation suddenly becomes our interruption, our emergency. 

As I write, the news is telling the story of a dry cleaner whose establishment had a suit someone needed for a special event, but that person had failed to account for a holiday and hadn't picked up the suit. "I personally left my lake house to drive up and get the suit for the customer," the owner said. 

How are we ever supposed to get any rest? 

Yet, rest is one of God's most-repeated promises. Come to me, and I will give you rest. You will find rest for your souls. ...The promise of entering His rest still stands.

There will be rest. 

That's really one of the greatest gifts of faith, I think, in a time like this. This promise of rest gives us permission to get off the hamster wheel. It invites us into a holy rhythm instead of a hectic one. It lets us set our boundaries around what God has given us, what He keeps inviting us into. 

There's not another single thing in the world that God could give us that we would so freely give away, yet we so often give away our rest, as if doing so was holy. But we need not do this. We should cling to our rest the way we cling to every other good thing of God in our life, for it is just as much His gift to us as anything else, and it is His promise being fulfilled right now, right here. 

So take that rest. Take that three-day weekend. Turn that phone off. Disconnect. Re-engage. Relax. Rest. 

For every promise of God is fulfilled. That much, we know. 

It's time we start living it. 

God of Wonders

Oh, how my soul so often longs to rest in something. 

I ache to cease from all my striving, from all the things that keep me trying to prove myself in the world. I long to stop trying to earn the things I have, to earn more than I have, to keep myself afloat. I want to be done thinking that I haven't done enough, that I'm not enough as I am, that there has to be more to me if there is ever to be more to me than this life. I want to get off this hamster wheel. 

But it's hard. It's hard because we work so hard for the lives that we live that it starts to creep into our faith, as well, until we're laboring not even to earn, but to keep, the eternity that God has promised us. As if, were we to stop for even a moment working so hard, that would be the moment that we would die, and it would all be for nothing. We keep a secret score in our head that tells us that yes, today, I still have salvation.

We know that God has given us salvation and that it is His free gift to us through grace. We know that it is finished, as Jesus Himself said before drawing what seemed to be His last breath. We know that it's not over, as we learned when He walked out of the tomb and spoke to us once more. And yet, something in us still needs the assurances. 

Something in us still needs to be able to look around and see it - it's real. It has to be real

It is real, and the author of Hebrews says we can see it all around us. God is proving salvation to us all the time "through wonders, great signs, miracles, and spiritual gifts" (2:3-4). 

He's proving it through wonders because how else does a tiny seed fall into the earth and die, only to become a great tree? How does a weed grow in the smallest crack of the sidewalk? How does a caterpillar grow wings and take flight? The wonders all around us remind us that God brings dead things to life in the most wild and unimaginable places. And He's doing the same with us. 

He's proving it through great signs because how else do the skies over our lives know whether to be red in the morning or the night? We look at the heavens and we sense what kind of day we are going to have, and we can see in them, too, the promise of eternity if we're looking close enough because God has painted the promise over all things. These are His great signs for us. 

He's proving it to us through miracles because how else does the lame man walk again? How do the blind see? How does the woman on the ventilator come off of it? How do the cancer cells vanish? How does the bank account keep having just enough in it when we just spent our last "just enough" last week? How does the traffic light switch just before a big rig comes barreling through it in the wrong direction, keeping us inches from disaster? Our lives are full of a little miracles, and they remind us that God has His eye on us.

He's proving it through spiritual gifts, through the little things He's wired us to do for Him and for one another that bring heaven to earth. That remind us that we are made for more than this. That give us that sense of something bigger than ourselves, something real. Something tangible. Something that we are an integral part of. And if He's made us an integral part of it here, how could we ever believe He hasn't made us to be part of it forever? Our salvation is sure because our God has made us part of His plan. 

Everywhere we turn, we see reminders of what the Lord has done. He's put these reminders all around us so that we can know it's not us who has to work for it; He's already done it. Our job is simply to let it all wash over us and rest in the promise. 

And isn't that what we want to do - deep in our souls - anyway? 

God of Truth

As a person who is generally very honest, it can be hard for me to believe that someone else is lying to me. Because my natural inclination is to not lie, it always seems to take me by surprise when someone else does. 

That said, I am also a person who is always secretly asking if someone is lying to me. I wonder if they're telling me the truth, just telling me what they think I want to hear, or have given up trying to tell me anything because I can be stubborn sometimes. 

At any given point, any one of these things - or perhaps all three of them - can be true. 

The trouble is that sometimes, I have the same questions about God. 

I wonder if God is sometimes lying to me. I know in my head that God is truth, but truth doesn't always feel good and it doesn't even always feel right, so I wonder if what I'm hearing, what I'm sensing, what is heavy on my heart is actually truth or if it's something less. I guess I should say that I don't wonder if God is lying to me so much as I wonder if that's really His voice. Is it Him? Or is it an enemy pretending to be him so as to lead me astray? 

But I do wonder if God has given up trying to tell me the truth because I'm too stubborn sometimes. I'm the kind of person who has a lot of follow-up questions, and it can be exhausting to try to convince me of, well, anything. There always seems to be one more question, one more assurance, one more what-if that I have in my head that needs to be satisfied. 

And sometimes, I wonder if I'm just hearing what I think I want to hear. If I'm projecting God's voice into my own wishes so that it sounds like He's saying what I want Him to say but really, it's not Him at all. It's me, shouting into my own void and pretending it's something of substance. 

Yes, I waste a lot of my time trying to unravel the Lord in my life, wanting to trust what I'm hearing but knowing there may be very good reasons why I can't, or shouldn't, and wondering if perhaps someone is lying to me - or I am lying to myself - in the Lord's name and wishing there was just truth. Just plain and simple, honest-to-God truth. 

Thank the Lord, there is. 

Paul is known for his salutations, for the greetings that he gives when he writes his letters. If you read the ways that he introduces the Lord, you can learn a lot about who God is. 

In his letter to Titus, Paul introduces God as one who "does not lie" (1:2). That's it. God does not lie. We know God does not lie. We can hang our hats on the truth that God does not lie. 

What that means for someone like me - and I don't believe I'm the only one like me on this - is that I need to put away all my mental gymnastics, all my human woundedness, all my hesitation and simply trust God. 

Because if He does not lie, then what else would I do with His voice? 

Grown Up

The other day, I was talking with a coworker who had a child to pick up from some kind of event that the child was involved in. As I sat listening to the schedule of yet another adult in this world who has yet another child in yet another activity, I started to lament. 

The opportunities, activities, and achievements that this world offers you when you are young are incredible. Everywhere you turn, there's something to do, something to be part of, something to try, something to excel at, recognition for excellence, awards, honors, tournaments, you name it. 

As a child, I played multiple sports. As a student, I was involved in numerous activities. As a straight-A student, I excelled across every academic discipline. Soccer, basketball, softball, tennis, volleyball, swimming, student newspaper, Future Problem Solvers, drama club, marching band, jazz band, AP classes, passes to the library for sheer boredom, extracurricular projects (like the local monitoring weather station). 

As an adult, I have a job. And then, I go home where I have a dog. And if I want to do something with other folks, it requires a ton of planning, a few cancellations, reschedules, and something "adult-y." 

Some days, I miss running around a field and chasing a ball. 

Some folks are lucky - the things they learned in childhood shape their adulthood. They get to hold on in some meaningful way to the things that brought them joy (and accomplishment and recognition) as children. 

But for many of us, if not most of us, those things are in our past. And the things we accomplished as children just don't count for much in the adult world. 

I have a journalism degree, multiple school-related (state-wide) journalism awards, a couple of internships in the field, and when I tried to break into community journalism in my hometown after graduation, I was told that none of that mattered. I didn't have any "real" experience, no matter how decorated I was. 

Nobody in my adult life seems to care how many sports I played, how good I was at them, whether I can still ace a serve. It's no longer important. Maybe that's why I became a runner - it's a good way to stay active without requiring an entire structure for activity. 

It's gotten me nothing in life to have read above my grade level for my entire school career, to have taken AP Calculus, to have scored what I scored on the SAT. Not important. Nobody cares. (Except, of course, that being able to do these things does shape how I am able to engage with the world, but even that is a skill of limited value in the wrong places.) 

What I was thinking about as I listened to that coworker talk was how my young life was so full of things that felt so fulfilling and so wonderful and so accomplished - ask anyone, and they would have told you I was an accomplished young lady in the 90s) - and fast forward a couple of decades, and these are not longer accomplishments; they are simply child's play. 

And what I realized then, as I listened to my heart, is how deeply I miss both of those things - childhood and play.

So I lamented. 

Because I filled my life with what feels like a thousand good things, and I miss those things dearly. I really thought they'd be a bigger part of my grown up life. I really did. 

Then again, I guess they are, because they have shaped the good things I have now and given me the tools I need to hold onto those, so.... 

Anyone want a pick-up game of kickball in the street later? 

God Stays

I am a person who is always thinking of other persons - what they might like, how to surprise them, how to support them, how to love on them. I spend my days pouring out, then I come into my sanctuary to recharge and be poured into by the God who created me to live this way. This simply feels natural to me. 

But there are times in my life that are harder than others, and it's in these times that I've realized that God is often all I have. 

In one deeply painful season of my life, I was serving in a congregation of beautiful, wonderful brothers and sisters who expressed great thankfulness for the gifts that I shared with them. For decades, these folks were part of my life, more than just on Sunday mornings. They were my family. 

Then, my life came crashing down in ways I couldn't have predicted and certainly could not have changed, and all of a sudden, I looked around and saw...nothing. No one. Heard no voices. Not a single person in the world was reaching back for me. Barely any at all even knew I was missing. 

As time went on, a few voices started to come out of the woodwork, searching, but they all had the same message - we miss the things you did for us. We miss the things you were good at. We miss the gifts you gave of yourself. 

Eventually, it hit me - I was truly alone. No one, in this massive network of what I would have called family, was even missing me. Nobody. 

And when I most needed help, there was no one willing to help me. 

It's hard when we have seasons like this in our lives. I think most of us have them. They come through the church or through our families or through our jobs or our hometowns or our teams or all kinds of places in which we thought we were interconnected with others only to find out that really? We weren't. We were reaching out, but no one else was reaching back, and when we slipped through the cracks, no one even seemed to notice and, cutting us deep to our core, no one was coming after us. 

Paul had this experience, too. 

You remember when Paul starts listing off all the things he's been through for the Lord - the beatings, the imprisonments, the accusations, the threats. Well, at the end of his second letter to Timothy, he's doing something similar, but this time, he's lamenting that for all he's going through in his life, he's looking around and discovering he's all alone. The folks he thought would be there when he was persecuted, accused, arrested are gone. One of them even left him to face the lions alone. "Everyone deserted me," Paul said. 

"But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength" (2 Timothy 4:17).

It sometimes feels like small comfort, especially when what we need in our lives is the physical presence of someone else in our dark space, but there's truly no greater comfort in the world than to know that God Himself is always with us. When the rest of the world turns its back on you, God...stays. In your hardest times, God is there. When you're facing the lions, God is by your side. With His strength, which is offered freely to you as grace. 

Praise the Lord.

God's Goodness

Why has God given you the things that He's given you?

Look around your life at your blessings. Your resources and your opportunities. Your encouragements. The special little things that are secret between you and God that remind you that He's talking to you. You know what I'm talking about. 

Why has God given you this? 

It's tempting to want to spiritualize it. To want to say that God has given you the things that He has so that your life can be a testimony to His goodness. So that others can look at what God has done for you and want Him to do the same for them. So that through you, others can come to know Him. 

Or maybe we say that God has given us what He's given us in order to prepare us. To set us up for whatever's coming next. Something bigger, something greater, something more meaningful than what we have now. Something that will bring Him even greater glory. 

Sometimes, we say that God can't not bless us. After all, if God is love, then goodness is just part of the package. If God wasn't pouring out blessings in our lives, then He wouldn't be God and what would be left for us to believe in? So we take His goodness for granted and simply think, "Of course!" 

But what if God actually had something in mind when He gave you all this goodness? What if there's one thing He wants for you through all these blessings more than anything else? 

There is. And it's this: 

He wants you to enjoy them (1 Timothy 6:17). 

Paul tells Timothy that God "richly" provides us with "everything" for our "enjoyment." 

Is it news to you that God wants you to be happy? 

It's news to a lot of folks, even to a lot of Christians. We can get so busy trying to do these big, grand things and make our lives massively epic for the Lord, full of glory and testimony and witness while at the same time trying not to anger Him, to lose His favor, to get smitten or cast into the streets where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth that we forget that one of the great aims of the Christian life is...joy. 

God didn't make Eden beautiful so that mankind would be miserable. He didn't paint the sky with multicolor brushes so that it wouldn't take our breath away. He didn't make the butterfly so whimsical so that we would scientifically break it down into its component parts. He didn't make food delicious as some kind of taunt. 

He wants us to enjoy our lives. He wants us to be filled with joy while we're here. He's invested in our happiness because happiness is a natural outworking of love. No one who feels truly, deeply loved the way that God truly, deeply loves us lives a miserable life. You can't do it. So like anyone in a loving relationship, God relishes doing all the little things that bring a smile to our faces. 

How would it change your life - and your relationship with God - to embrace this? To embrace the joy for which He has given you all that you have? 

God of Sinners

Paul offers a number of encouragements to the early churches and the young preachers. We often quote him when we're trying to encourage one another. He knew that our God is a God of encouragement, so he labored to reflect that. 

But perhaps the greatest encouragement is the one Paul says most bluntly, early in his first letter to Timothy: 

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst (1:15).

In other words, do you need a truth to hang your hat on, Timothy? Do you need one thing to cling to? One thing you ought to know by heart about God? It's this: 

God sent His Son to save sinners. 

Period. 

He didn't send Him to be a good teacher, though He was that, too. 

He didn't send Him to tear down the corrupt establishment, though He did that, too. 

He didn't send Him to establish the church, though that happened out of His life, too. 

He didn't send Him to stick it to the devil, though it's pretty well stuck at this point, too. 

He sent His Son to save sinners. 

To redeem fallen men and women. 

To bring us back to Him. 

To make it so that we could turn around and look Him in the face again and see what grace and goodness look like. 

So that sinners become saints who sing His praise in glory. 

Sinners of whom we are the worst. 

You and me. And Paul. And Timothy. And Noah. And David. And every other person who has ever dared to love God and live in the flesh at the same time. We're sinners. We're the worst of them. Because our hearts know better, but our humanity just can't seem to help itself. 

Christ Jesus came to save us. 

That is a trustworthy saying. 

Healing

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the folks in the Bible after God healed them. 

After the blind man received his sight, after the deaf man's ears were opened to sound, after the lame man stood up on once-useless legs, after the bleeding woman stopped bleeding, after the demon-possessed child stopped having seizures, after the demoniac left the graveyard, after Lazarus walked out of the grave.... 

Most of us have some kind of brokenness in our lives that we'd love to get rid of. We have wild imaginations about what life would be like without the burden that we're carrying, without the thing that's holding us back, if only God would come and simply heal us. 

We think the blind man just starts walking around. We think the deaf man relishes every sound. We think the lame man goes and gets a job. We think the woman goes back to her family. We think the demon-possessed child goes out and plays. We think the demoniac becomes an elder of the city. We think Lazarus just picks up where he left off. 

But the truth about healing is that even after the problem is gone, the restoration requires hard work. 

A blind man has to learn how to use his eyes again. Did you know that vision is one of the three components of your balance system? Having not had to incorporate vision into his movement for a long time, it's likely that the blind man who can see again stumbles around for awhile. Maybe a long while. 

A deaf man has to learn to distinguish sound. When you've never heard anything, all things just sound like noise. The world can become a frightening place until you learn what all those sounds are. He is probably overwhelmed and scared and has to keep reminding himself what a gift his hearing is. 

A lame man's legs would be completely wasted - nothing but bone. He hasn't used those muscles in so long, they've atrophied. They're gone. Maybe he stands on bone with the euphoria of his healing, but it will be awhile before his legs are strong again. He has to keep using them to build the strength that he needs to keep using them. Some days, he'll tire out quickly. Some days, they'll ache. But every day, hopefully, they'll get a little stronger. 

The bleeding woman spent 12 years living unclean in her community. She probably still does some of the things she did as an unclean woman that she no longer needs to do. She catches herself calling out when encountering anyone on the street, then stops herself. She keeps going to the well in the hottest part of the day, to avoid contact with others, until she finally realizes she can go in the mornings. Old habits die hard. 

The demon-possessed child never knew when a seizure was coming, so it's hard to trust that one isn't coming now. How do you just go out and play, carefree, when your life has never been predictable? When you've never been able to trust your body because it hasn't been yours? 

The dead man knows he must die again... 

On one hand, I want to say that Jesus is capable of surpassing all of these problems. He can, I know for certain, give a healing that is so complete that there's no recovery necessary from the healing itself; things just work. 

At the same time, I've lived enough brokenness in my life to know that I've never had a healing like that. God has done absolutely amazing things for me, and if I ever told you all of them, we'd be here for weeks and you'd be begging me to shut up. But every time God has healed me, I have had to put in some of the work to regain the function that the brokenness took from me. As often as God has spoken into my life and made me well, He has not once spoken into my life and made me whole. 

Wholeness is an ongoing work. One that we're doing together - me and God - but a work nonetheless. 

So I wonder sometimes about the healings we read about the Bible. What happened afterward? 

There's part of broken, but healing, me that really wants to know. 

God of Encouragement

I'm the strong one. 

I'm the one who is the rock when the rest of the world is shaking. I'm the one who can buck up and get through it, no matter what it is. I'm the one who never gives up, who keeps pushing through. I'm the one who can be going through absolute Hell and you'll never be able to look at me and figure out that anything is wrong. I'm the one who can say "yes" when I'm already running on empty and pretend that everything is fine when I really just want to curl up into a ball and quit. 

Yes, I'm the strong one. It's the way God made me. 

But I still need encouragement. 

I still need someone to notice how much work I'm putting into it. I still need someone to notice the victories I'm achieving. I still need someone to notice that it's not easy. I still need someone to notice that sometimes, I'm not okay. And I still need someone to notice how strong I'm pretending to be. 

I need someone to speak truth into my heart - the truth that they see me, that they know, that they get it. The truth that everything I'm putting in is making a difference, that something good is coming out of it. That I'm making a difference. That I'm appreciated. That it matters...that I matter. 

Just because I'm the strong one doesn't mean I don't need someone to strengthen me. 

I'll tell you - speaking for all the strong ones in the world? - that kind of encouragement is hard to come by sometimes. Most of the time. When you're the strong one, the world kind of just takes you for granted. Takes it for granted that you'll be fine. That you'll get through. That you'll be okay because you are okay because you're the strong one. It doesn't look like you need anything. 

Can I tell you something else? Being the strong one is exhausting. Having to constantly find the strength, somewhere, somehow, to keep going when you've been running on empty for a long time? It's hard. There are more days than you'd think that it's almost impossible. 

But here's a third thing I want to tell you: on those days? It is God who strengthens me. It is God who encourages me. 

Really, it is God who encourages all of us (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17). It's just what He does. 

He just keeps showing up, pouring Himself into our emptiness, filling our hearts all over again. He tells us that He sees us, that He hears us, that He recognizes what we're putting in...and He gives us more to keep putting into it. He notices how strong we're pretending to be and then comes alongside us with real strength, exactly what we need to keep going. 

See, I'm the strong one, but God made me the strong one. God formed me from the dirt with the kind of character and resiliency that makes me the strong one, and He gave me the life experiences that would form and strengthen and solidify my capacity for that kind of strength, and He has come alongside me through every season to keep filling me with that strength, being for me the encouragement that the world seems to forget that I need as "the strong one," but that I desperately need and that hits my heart like drops of rain in a desert. 

God made the strong one, and He's the one who keeps making me strong. By being my constant Encourager, my ever-present Companion, and my faithful Friend. 

So that maybe I can be the strong one for you when you need it...and let my strength lead you back to His. 

God Chose You

For the unpopular kid, one of the hardest times of childhood is when we're picking teams. You stand there excited to start the game, ready to get going, eager to show off your skills and, most importantly, to be part of something, but the kids around you go off one by one to their respective sides until all that's left is you.

And then everyone's suddenly ready not to pick you, but to give you away. "You can have him." "No, you take her. I had her last time." 

There's no greater pain through the heart than the pain of being unwanted. 

We're all at some time susceptible to it. Maybe we're not the most athletic, so no one wants us on their sports team. Maybe we aren't the smartest, so they don't want us in their group project. Maybe we aren't the prettiest, so the opposite sex looks right past us. Maybe we don't have a background that's acceptable, so we get pushed off to the side. Maybe we aren't successful enough, don't drive the right car, don't live in the right neighborhood. 

It feels sometimes like the world spends our whole lives drawing lines and more often than our hearts can truly bear, we find ourselves on the wrong side of them. Everyone's been picked. Everyone's settling in. Everyone's got the good life going for them, and here we still stand, and the world's trying to give us away. 

"You can have him." 

Sometimes, we can fall into the trap of believing that God must think the same thing about us. 

That God is always picking someone else to do what we want to do, what we feel gifted to do. That God is always passing us over when He's handing out answers to prayer. That God is kind of kicking around in the dirt a little bit, trying to give us away...or reluctantly accepting us just to get the game started, even though He fully intends to put us on the bench. 

Friends, that's just not the case. 

Paul says, in the opening to his first letter to the church at Thessalonica, that he knows God has chosen them (1:4). I know, brothers and sisters, that God has chosen you. 

Brothers and sisters, do you know that He has chosen you, too? 

Do you know that He wants you on His team? Do you know that He's already been dreaming of what He's going to do with you? Do you know that He sees the strengths you don't know you even have? Do you know that God is the one voice who, even when you feel like you're standing all alone, says, "I want her"? Not "I'll take her," but "I want her." I want her on My team. I want her to be part of what I'm doing. I want her with Me. 

He wants you. He chooses you. 

Yesterday. Today. Forever. And for always. 

God Loves You

It's the greatest truth of the Christian faith...and the hardest one to believe: 

God loves you. 

Yes, you. 

Way back when the whole Jesus thing was still fairly new, Paul wrote a letter to a young church whose people were losing their way a little bit. The church was in Colossia, and sin was starting to creep its way in. 

In chapter 3, Paul gently reminds them to put away all these sins of the flesh - the things that belong to their earthly nature. Things like sexual immorality, impurity, lust, greed. Even evil desires. He tells them to stop lying to each other and being angry with one another and letting "filthy language" come from their lips. He says, "This is who you used to be, but not any more." 

Yet, the fact that Paul was even mentioning these things in his letter to them means...they were still these things. They were still engaged in these things, still doing these things. Still being hateful and malicious and angry and immoral and impure and lustful and greedy and a whole host of "evil" things. 

But in the very next sentence, he changes the whole tone of everything: 

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience (3:12). 

And now, wait a minute. 

Because he just called them out for being persons of the flesh, for being disgusting, for not being the kind of people they should be but the kind they used to be. And then, in what feels like the very same breath, he reminds them they are "holy" and "dearly loved." 

I don't know about you, but that's a hard one for me. Put me in front of a mirror, and I'm bound to see my flesh. I'm bound to see the ways I'm not measuring up, even to my own standards, let alone God's. I'm prone to wallow in my brokenness and lament the fact that I'm still living my flesh, still living the old life, still the same old person I swore I didn't want to be any more (not that I ever wanted to be her). 

And it's easy to forget that at the very same time that I am all of those things, I am also holy and, most importantly, dearly loved. 

But such it is. That's the heart of the whole thing. God is love. And if God is love, then you are loved by Him. Nothing else could be more true. 

So if you're beating yourself up today, if you're looking in the mirror at someone who just messed up again, who just fell into an old pattern, who just made the same mistake, who just chose something you swore you'd never choose again, and you're wondering what this life you're living says about you, know this: it only says you've temporarily forgotten. 

Because the most important, the most true, the most amazing thing about you is not that you're somehow still here, somehow still pushing through, somehow still making it despite all your mistakes. No. The most important, most true, most amazing thing about you is that you are dearly loved. 

For God is love. 

And that means you.