Bad News about Heaven

If you're just wanting Jesus to heal you, then I have some bad news about heaven.... 

See, we say it all the time, especially when we are watching someone we love struggling in their human flesh. We look forward to the day when Jesus just takes them home because they will finally be healed of all of this. Because they will finally get their body back. 

We look at our loved ones in wheelchairs, and we imagine them running. We look at the amputee who lost their legs in battle, and we see them, like the man in the Temple, stretching out their limbs again. We look at the blind and know that they will see us. We are confident that when we all get to heaven (what a day of rejoicing that will be), we will all be full and whole and well and the things that ravaged our bodies down here will be no more. 

But...maybe not? 

Jesus Himself said that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off because it's better to have only one hand than to be thrown whole into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. Because it's better to only have one eye than to have both and be bound to hell by the one. 

And it was Jesus who was crucified, with nails piercing His hands and His feet, who came back from the grave and showed those physical scars to Thomas. Did not just show them to the disciple, but let the unsure young man put his fingers through the holes. 

So tell me again how we believe that God is going to restore our bodies to perfectly and beautifully functional and whole when Jesus Himself says the hand that would throw us into hell is better off amputated and He showed His own physical, earthly scars to a disciple after His own resurrection? 

Yesterday, we asked what it is that we're believing God for and saw that from very early on when Jesus was walking this earth, it seems like a lot of folk were believing Him for their healing. 

What if...Jesus doesn't heal you? 

Not because He can't. We know that He can. Not because He doesn't want to. We know that He wants to. But what if...that's just not the way? 

What if all the things that you've lost in this body are not coming back to you in the next life? 

On the surface, this seems like a damning question. It's too hard. It's...unfathomable. God won't heal me? God won't make me whole? My child who has been bound in a wheelchair, my husband who lost his legs in combat, my wife who suffered a traumatic brain injury, my friend who went blind...they're going to be crippled...for eternity? 

What kind of God is that? 

But that's exactly the point. That's exactly the question. If you aren't believing God for your healing, is there something worth believing Him for? 

I think it's good to engage our sanctified imagination this way. I think it's good to think about the things we might be missing because the answers we've already settled on are too comfortable for us, too close. One of the best ways we fall more in love with God is by thinking about the things we don't normally think about, by thinking about more than we've settled for in our too-familiar faith. 

What other things can you dream of with your eyes wide open? 

Healing and the Kingdom

Let me ask you a question: what are you believing God for? 

Not why do you believe in God, but what are you believing He will do for you? If God in the flesh showed up this afternoon, what is the thing you would expect most from Him? 

This is an important question because God in the flesh actually did show up once, and if you pay attention to the way that the Gospels develop, it reveals something interesting about the human condition. 

I've been reading through the book of Matthew lately...again. And one of the things that jumps out to me as I read this year is the number of folks who brought their loved ones, their friends, their kids, whoever to Jesus for healing. The number of blind men who stand on the sides of the road. The number of crippled and diseased and outcasted men who come to the Temple and the synagogue to seek Him. 

I know what you're thinking: so what? Jesus's healings in the Gospels are very well known. 

But...they weren't. 

When Matthew first tells us that the crowds were bringing the sick and the lame and the blind and the diseased and the afflicted and the outcast to Jesus...he also gave us no record at all of any previous healings Jesus had done. The people were just...bringing the broken. 

Because they heard that God was among them. 

Maybe God. Maybe a prophet. Maybe a crazy man. Whoever They had heard stories about the kind of authority with which this Man spoke, about maybe how a dove descended from the heavens, maybe about a voice booming with love for Him. We're not really sure what kinds of rumors were circulating about Jesus in the very early days of His ministry, but somehow, everyone was getting the idea to bring their sick to Him. 

Is this what we most expect from God? 

Do we believe that the first thing that God would do if we were ever to encounter Him is to heal us? 

Is that what we want Him to do?

It's interesting that yes, Jesus healed the sick. He gave sight to the blind. He made the lame walk. He stretched out deformed hands. He stopped chronic bleeding. He cast out demons. He called the dead out of the grave. But He didn't actually teach all that much about healing. 

No. Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. 

About the first being last and the last being first. About the reward being great for anyone who has made sacrifice. About loving God and loving others. About being honest and upright and righteous and forgiving and gracious and merciful. Not about being healed. Not even about healing. But about the Kingdom. 

And yet...they kept bringing their sick to Him. And He healed every one of them. 

But...what are we believing Him for? Just for this? 

It's a good question to be asking ourselves. 

Dill

Jesus tells a parable about the wheat and the weeds. We've been looking at this parable for a couple of days. First, we discovered that He is right - it's better for the weeds and the wheat to grow together. Yesterday, I confessed that sometimes, I'm the weed in somebody else's wheat field. 

As I was writing that reflection, I was thinking about all the things that grow in the wild that we think are weeds, but we've found out they're actually not. 

I watch a lot of survival shows. You know, the kinds of things where humans challenge their ability to live without all the tools and modern conveniences of life as we know it. And they always take these folks and drop them off in some remote place far from home and they're just like, "Go for it." 

I'm never more amazed than when one of these survivalists is walking through some overgrown place, chopping through vines and avoiding thorns and stepping on ants and untangling spider webs and just trying to get through the darkness into some kind of clearing they might be able to call home for awhile when all of a sudden, they just stop, walk a couple of steps off in one direction or another, take a delicate leaf in their hand, sniff it, and declare some magical knowledge about it. 

"Ah! This is the snufugrappy plant. It is useful for purifying water and healing bug bites and it kind of tastes a little bit like watermelon." 

I'm just sitting at home like, it's the what now?

Or they'll bend over into an overgrowth of something that all looks the same to me, dig through a mess of tangled weeds, and pull up this one little tiny thing and declare, "This is actually edible. I can eat this." 

How do you even know? 

And as I consider these moments, these times when I am just absolutely blown away by the knowledge that these survivalists have about these sorts of things that all look the same to me, I think about this parable. 

It makes me wonder if everything I think is a weed in my life really is a weed after all. 

Maybe...it's an herb. 

The herbs are great. They bring out so much flavor in our food, as well as often providing medicinal properties. But I wonder how long it took human civilization to walk right by the sage, clear it out, destroy it, do everything we could to eradicate it, before we realized it might actually be a benefit to us. It's not like God planted Eden with grocery labels; we have discovered, over the course of our lives, what might actually not be a weed, even though it might look like one. We have discovered, over the course of living, that all the things we thought might be choking the life out of us might actually not be. 

That's kind of a big dill. 

(Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)

But then, I read the parable of the weeds and the wheat, and I wonder - what might we discover in the "weeds" if we let them keep growing with us? What is the next thing we're going to stumble upon in the overgrowth? 

How does it change the story if one day, we stop for just a second, take a step or two off the beaten path, pick up one of those weeds in our fingers, smell it, and declare, "Ah, yes! This is the snufugrappy plant. It is useful..." 

It is useful.  

A Weed

Jesus tells a parable about the wheat and the weeds. We looked at this parable yesterday and at what seems to be a common response to it. 

We know the weeds in our lives, and we think we'd be better off without them, but we're often wrong; Jesus is right. (And ain't that always the case?) 

But one of the things that I think with this parable about as I continue to mature in the faith is not just the weeds in my own life. 

I think about the ways in which I am a weed. 

Because listen, I'm not perfect. I've got things about me that seem to grow out of control. I've got things that are toxic to the others around me. I've got roots that go down and kind of suck up all of the nutrients around me in a space, leaving very little for the good things that other folks are trying to grow. 

Am I proud of this? No. Am I resigned to this? Not really. I'm always doing everything I can to make sure that I'm not a weed. But do I understand that this is one of the realities of being human? Absolutely. 

So I try to be mindful that sometimes, I am the thing that is keeping others from growing. I am the poison in the well. I am the thief in the night. I am the one taking away the opportunity for the wheat to thrive. 

And...sometimes, I'm the one thwarting God's work, too. 

I'm the one believing it's not worthwhile. I'm the one believing it's not possible. I'm the one grumping around because grace is for me and not for thee. I'm the one looking around trying to figure out just who is the wheat and who is the weed and not realizing that that giant weed that I see right in front of me is nothing more than my own reflection in a mirror. 

This is nowhere more true in my life than when I am wanting the whole thing to be wheat. 

Than when I am looking around and wanting excellence for everyone. Than when I have extremely high standards for what goodness looks like in a certain place. Than when I'm certain I know what's best...what works, what is good, what is meaningful, what is valuable. 

I can be kind of a big weed if you're not doing things the way that I think is right. 

But give me some time, and I usually come around. I usually start to see the ways that the roots are tangled together, the ways that sometimes, even the difficult things help us to grow better. The way that we're not actually fighting for water, but we're better able to access it because we're all trying to draw it this direction...even if there's still something in me that thinks you're trying to steal it...even if, in fact, I'm the actual thief. 

I'm working on it. It's a lifelong process. But these days, I can't read this parable without recognizing how much a part of it I am. 

Not just because I am the wheat. But sometimes, because I am the weed. 

And God is still giving me the grace to keep growing here. 

The Weeds

Jesus tells a parable about the weeds and the wheat. And it goes something like this: 

A farmer went out to his field and planted a bunch of wheat. Unbeknownst to him, some enemy came along and threw a bunch of weed seeds into the field. In season, then, the wheat started to grow, but so did the weeds. There were so many weeds that his workers wondered if they shouldn't start pulling them up, but the farmer said no. If you pull up the weeds, you'll uproot the wheat. You'll ruin the whole field. Just let it be; it will sort itself out in the end. 

And we read this parable, and we think about all of the weeds in our lives. We think about all the things that seem to be ruining our fields. 

And we kind of get indignant. Because we know our lives would be better without the weeds in them. We know that the wheat is better without the weeds. We can identify the things in our lives that are miserably insufferable and seem to be sucking the very life out of our being. 

How can God say to just let the weeds grow? 

Yet, there really is wisdom in this. For if we really sit down and think about it, getting rid of the weeds in our lives is also a threat. It may uproot more than we count on. 

Maybe you've got a weed in your family. You think there would just be so much more harmony and fun and wellness in the family if you stopped inviting Cousin Jessica to the gatherings. It's just better for everyone. The wheat will thrive without that wheat there. 

But the empty chair condemns you. The absence creates a bigger suck than the presence ever did. The bitterness runs steady under the whole thing like an underground stream, and everyone knows...yes, you're having a better time, but at what expense? It's harder than you think to cut out even a weed. 

Maybe you've got a weed in your body. It seems obvious to you that things would just be better without that battle, without that struggle. 

But what you don't know is that healing one thing often requires healing something else. Because over time, your body has compensated in ways that you never even notice, let alone understand. If you walk with a limp for five years and then suddenly fix that limp, it doesn't take you long to notice that your other muscles aren't trained to work right any more. So now, you have to break them and heal them in new ways and put yourself back together. All of a sudden, what seemed like a simple fix becomes a long journey of one fix after another after another and honestly? You didn't feel this broken when you were actually broken. 

Maybe you've got a weed at work. The solution is very clear: the whole place would run more smoothly if you got rid of that weed. Sometimes, that's true. But what often happens is that removing one piece shifts around the work in a way no one expected. You're suddenly missing a piece of your operation, and you might not have even realized what that person was doing. The whole dynamic shifts in a way you weren't prepared for. 

So wait...am I saying that God was right? That you should just let the weeds grow with the wheat? 

Yup. (I mean, no surprise, right? My general default position is that God is right.) 

Because it's true. Try to uproot some of the weeds in your life, and you'll find pretty quickly how intertangled your roots actually are. And, well, maybe the wheat doesn't thrive as much as you thought it would without the weeds. Maybe the root is too damaged from the pickin'.  

God's Best

It's because of this Crazy Man that I believe I can be healed...and I believe this Crazy Man can heal me. 

But faith doesn't stop there. 

Real faith is always more concerned with God than it is with self, and one of the things that I love most is seeing God be God in this world. Seeing Him do His thing. Seeing amazing grace pour out, hope flourish, the lost be found. 

I believe in God's best for me, but I also believe in God's best for you. 

Here's one of the things that I've figured out the longer I've been a Christian and the more that I've read the Story: 

I am in every story, but I am not always the main character. 

Sometimes, sure, I am the sinful woman, quietly walking into forbidden places and pouring out my most valuable offering at the feet of Jesus. 

Sometimes, though, I'm the friend, lowering my friend right in front of His feet and smiling because I know what's about to happen for someone I love. 

Sometimes, I'm the despised tax collector who suddenly has a whole party at my house, just because Jesus chose me. 

Sometimes, and I hate to admit it but it's true, I'm the Pharisee. I'm the scoffer. I'm the one who can't believe what Jesus is doing for someone I don't particularly like, don't particularly think is worthy. I hate to say it because as much as I believe in the goodness of God, there's still this human side of me that seems to have some measure of judgment built in...a measure that I have to choose against every single day. 

There aren't really many folks in this world that I actually hate. And, even the ones that I do, I can't think of a single one whose life I wouldn't love to see transformed by Jesus. That's true even of the folks who have wounded me most deeply. 

I long to see everyone restored...even if I'm not always thrilled about seeing them redeemed...because I know what Jesus can do. 

For someone like me. 

For my friends. 

For the outcast.

For the sinner.

I've even seen the way that demons respond to Him. 

Sometimes, I'm the one who has someone that's dead to me, but I'm still standing around hoping you walk out of that grave. 

I can't help myself. 

I've lived it. I've seen it. I can't wait to see it again. I want to see Him do it again and again and again because that's what makes Him so incredible, so worthy to be called "God." 

He truly is Lord. Good and loving and gracious and amazing. 

I believe that for me. 

And...I believe that for you. 

Always

Actually, it's because of this crazy man (Jesus, not the patient) that I always default to believing I am being healed. 

Seriously. 

Anytime something changes in my body, my default position is to believe that perhaps something is getting better. Perhaps, even though maybe it hurts right now, it's actually a good thing. 

Because of this, I have let some things go on for far too long. 

I kid you not - I one time suffered a fairly significant high ankle sprain. I heard the pop. The pain blinded me for a full minute, at least. I could barely put any weight on that foot at all. 

And I was still telling myself that maybe this was actually just loosening some of the tightness that I had felt in that ankle for awhile and perhaps in a day or so, I was going to be running way more freely and efficiently than I had in a long time. 

Spoiler alert: that wasn't the case. 

But I know the goodness of God. I know the miracles He works in this world, even today. I'm living proof of many of them. I know His deep love for me. And I know He's working all things together for good, even when they aren't good things to begin with. 

I know these things about God not just because I have read them, but because I have seen them. And because I have lived them. 

I've had the honor in my life of watching Him work miracles in unexpected ways, in unexpected places. I've been there when His healing just settles over a space and everyone breathes a little easier, all at once. I've been at the bedside of dying persons who suddenly get this overwhelming joy and peace in their spirit, and there's this amazing little burst of life that just...pops out...right before death. 

In hospice settings, they usually call that last one "the rally," but it ain't the human body that's doing that; it's the human spirit, God-breathed and on its way home. 

It's why I keep pressing on when a lot of folks keep telling me they would have given up by now if they were living my life. Given up? I gave up a long time ago. 

I gave up trying to fix myself. 

But I still believe in the miracle-working, untouchable-touching, death-defying, grave clothes-folding, tender, compassionate, wonderful Crazy Man who tends my wounded spirit every day. This is not the rally; it's a gift. 

And I'm never willing to say there's a way that God's healing can't happen. 

Even if it seems to be coming from a disoriented individual who just so happens to say, "Come here." 

Jesus also said, "Come." 

You just never know. 

A Crazy Man

Yesterday, I shared the story of a patient that I encountered in healthcare who was disoriented but also either tried to put a curse on my life...or tried to heal me. 

The obvious question is: why would I think a crazy man could heal me? 

And the obvious answer is: 

Because one already has. 

By many worldly standards, Jesus Christ was a crazy man. No, He wasn't the demonaic slobbering and drooling all over himself in a cemetery, broken chains hanging off his wrists. But He was pretty off-the-chain. 

He went to the synagogue but refused to act religious. He refused to be churchy around churchy folk. 

He spoke to the persons that society said had to be ignored, shunned, avoided at all costs. 

He touched the untouchable. 

He let a sinful woman rub His feet with her hair. 

He kept talking all this weird stuff about destroying a massive building and rebuilding the whole thing. 

He broke bread with someone He knew would betray Him...and not even a little bit. This guy was going to betray His very life. 

He stood silent at a moment when He should have been defending His existence, fighting for His life. 

He talked to God like a close friend, like a Son to a Father. 

He spoke forgiveness for sins. 

He died a dignified death in an undignified manner. 

And three days later, He folded His grave clothes before He walked out of the tomb. 

See, it's not so far of a stretch to say that Jesus could have been a crazy man. Could have been...if it hadn't all been true. 

But even in the weird, the wild, the wacky, the unexpected, the uncultured, the off-beat, the forbidden, Jesus healed persons. 

He gave sight to the blind. He gave sound to the deaf. He gave speech to the mute. He made the lame walk. He stopped a bleeding disorder in an instant. He eliminated the wounds of leprosy. He made a dead man live. 

So do I think a crazy man could heal me?

How could I not? 

For One already has.  

Healed

He beckoned me from the hallway. "Come here," he growled, waving me in with a few giant sweeps of his hand. 

Given that he had been telling everyone else to go away, I thought maybe this was my opportunity. The patient needed help, but he wasn't letting us help him. If he wanted me to come see him, then perhaps I would have a chance to convince him to let us intervene. To let us do what we needed to do to help him feel better. 

In short, he seemed completely out of his mind. A little bit of the right intervention might help to put him back into it. 

So I went in. (That's usually how I get myself in trouble.) 

The patient asked me what my name is, and when I didn't answer him right away, he stretched out one hand toward me in what seemed to be deep thought. Then, he told me my name. Not my name that was on my badge, but a version of my name that wasn't. 

I think my face gave it away, though I was trying hard not to. But his mouth curled into a little bit of a smile and he said, with a wink, "Sometimes, I can read minds."

Cool, bro. 

Then, he started to speak some kind of rapid-fire mumbo jumbo I couldn't quite understand between the way he was slurring his words, his gruff kind of voice, and the fact that I'm not certain that all of it was meant to even be English in the first place. Suddenly, he froze. Half a second, if that, but somehow noticeable. 

I froze, too. 

Without any warning at all, he let out a guttural scream as he yanked his head and body violently upward and away from me. Twice. I felt it through every bone in my body, all the way to the soles of my feet. 

As quickly as he did it, he just as quickly stopped, settled back in, and smiled that same sort of twisted smile toward me. There was something gentle about it. 

Given his state, I immediately thought this crazy man had tried to put some kind of curse on me. As I walked away and went through the day and recounted the story over and over again, I started to wonder if perhaps he was trying to heal me. 

Stranger things have happened in healthcare. 

You meet folks at their most vulnerable, usually. Illness does strange things to persons, whether it's mental illness or physical illness or some kind of combination of the two. It wasn't my first strange encounter with a patient, and it won't be my last. but the incoherence of it all, the way that I couldn't quite make out the words, the way that he couldn't tell me what his intentions were...I still wonder about this one. 

And I also laugh a little bit. 

Did I really just think that a crazy man might have healed me? Have I really spent time wondering if he could have? 

(This story is going somewhere. Hang with me for the next couple of days...you're gonna like this.) 

Diversity

One of the things that makes us beautiful as a people is our diversity. There are no two persons in the world who have exactly the same perspective on things because there are no two persons in the world who have exactly the same experiences. Even identical twins have slightly different experiences and perspectives in the world. 

And this means that every situation has more than one angle, every problem more than one solution, every opportunity more than one triumph. Every devastation, more than one heartbreak. We learn more about being human from being around other humans who are also learning from the way we're doing it. And so, when we truly come together, it's this magical kaleidoscope of beauty and creativity and lived experience and learned response and all the things that make us broken and captivating all at the same time. 

That said, we're at risk of losing our diversity. 

Because of the little lie of AI. 

If you follow along with me, you know that I preach that AI doesn't actually exist. There's no such thing as artificial intelligence. There is such thing as an automated system that is taught to respond in a way that a human programmer created it to respond, which sometimes looks like learning or intelligence but actually can never be bigger or different than its programmer is able to respond or to learn or to gain intelligence. Without even realizing it, persons all over the world are turning their lives over to Programmer Billy, who came up with this in his office one day and now, the whole world thinks like him. 

And this is where our diversity gets flattened. 

Look, for example, at the absolute onslaught of AI-generated event or service flyers all over social media. Houses for sale, job fairs, employment opportunities, community events - every single one of these things looks exactly the same in terms of layout, font, style, etc. The content might be different, but we all recognize the pattern - AI made this. 

And when AI is making your community advertisements, you aren't. The little touches that you would put into them are gone. Everything looks exactly the same. 

Which means that when you're promoting your dog rescue, we don't get to see the smears of paint where the dogs were trying to help but weren't really helpful. We don't get to see the painstakingly-lettered signs promoting your kids' lemonade stand. We don't get to see what you thought might be most important because everything's just in a box...a box that AI made. We don't get to see the images you would have used, the fonts you would have picked, the styles that you thought would convey your meaning best. Some folks are even using AI video, and we don't get to hear your voice. 

You let the computer slop something together for you based on what Programmer Billy thinks creativity looks like, and we totally lost YOUR input into the whole thing. Which means we lost a sense of who you are. Or what your project means to you or could mean to us. 

And that's the danger of AI. Well, one of them. We're literally creating a world with a single image, a single voice, a single look. It won't be long before we expect things to look like the template and start looking down on handmade endeavors of real human creativity because that's not the mold. 

And it's sad. 

Because we really are at our best when we all look different. When we all see different. When we pick the things that are important to us and put a little emphasis on them. When we speak in our own voices and write in our own handwriting and struggle in our own creative processes and put in the work and take our time and invest a little sweat and make things happen. When we open ourselves up and open up opportunities and make ways through the world for others to follow. 

All this AI...it's just flattening us out. One pattern. One template. One style. One look into which to plug your own content, which gets lost because now, it just looks like everything else that's out there. Not a little bit. It looks exactly like everything out there. And it's like going to the grocery store and everything is in a plain brown package and there's no way to know or to see what you're really getting. 

We have to stop this now, before it's too late. Before we forget how to be human in an artificial world. Before we lose our creativity, lose our perspective, lose our preferences, lose ourselves. 

For God So Loved

How is that we are living lives so full of the grace of God and yet, we seem to be missing so much of that grace? So much, in fact, that we become jealous and bitter when He pours out His grace on someone else? 

Simple. 

We think we deserve it. 

Jonah didn't recognize God's grace in his life because he was God's prophet. He was one chosen by God. He was a faithful man, probably considered himself righteous, knew that he had a special calling on his life, and was used to being the one that other folks came to with their God questions because they knew he was the prophet. 

This may have been part of the reason that he didn't want to go to Nineveh. Remember - his objection to going to Nineveh was that the people were going to listen to him, hear the word of God, turn their hearts around, and repent. He was afraid the authority of his voice would be enough to turn them and then, God wouldn't punish the wicked the way that Jonah wanted Him to. 

He wasn't like Moses, claiming that he was unqualified for the job. He wasn't like David, accepting his smallness and staying out with the sheep while God was looking for a prophet. There wasn't anything that suggests to us that Jonah didn't think he was up to the task. 

So it's not that big of a leap to think that Jonah the prophet was full of more than just God's spirit. 

He was also full of himself. 

Maybe. I mean, it's not something we're told about him, but it's something that's not hard to fathom if we look at his life and his examples and his words. And being full of himself doesn't necessarily mean that he's puffed up or arrogant about it; it just means that he has a full sense of who he is and feels God's bigness in him while he's doing his thing. 

So it makes perfect sense to Jonah that God would rescue him again and again and again. It doesn't seem like grace; it seems like the obvious thing that has to happen. God certainly isn't going to let His prophet succumb to trouble in the world. It's one of the perks of being Jonah. 

In the same way, we can become pretty full of ourselves.

We pray, read the Bible, go to church, tithe, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick. We wear the necklace and sport the bumper sticker and preach the Gospel. So the things that happen to us that make our lives a little better or a little easier are expected. Of course God loves us like He does. Why wouldn't He? We're fantastic. 

Then we look around and see Him loving other folks in these really dramatic, wild, and world-changing ways, and we get a little jealous. We get a little green. We can't stomach it. It doesn't make any sense to us.

Because we've lost the sense of just how much grace our own lives have required...by believing that we deserved it. And if we deserved it, then it wasn't grace. And if it wasn't grace, then it looks like God is loving other persons a lot more than He's loving us. 

How dare He. 

That's why we have to keep looking back at our own stories and seeing the patterns of grace and recognizing them for what they are. Which requires recognizing us for what we are. Which is...sinners. Saved by grace. Not because we deserved it. 

May we be amazed by it. 

The Grace of God

The prophet sat on the hillside and watched Nineveh to see what would happen next. He already knew what would happen; that's why he didn't want to go to Nineveh. He even told God he knew what would happen. But still, he watched. 

And you can't help but wonder if he was concerned, as too many persons of God tend to be concerned, that Nineveh was about to get more of God's grace than he felt like he had. 

Uhm, Jonah? Do you realize how much of God's grace you've already gotten? 

God gave you the grace to run away in the other direction and not do the thing He called you to do. 

He gave you the grace to survive a storm that scared the wits out of some very seasoned sailors. 

He rescued you from the raging waters of that very same storm so that you didn't just get sucked into the depths and die right there. 

He put you safely inside a fish that could have eaten you, but did not digest you. 

He caused that same fish to spit you out...and not back into the waters where you'd have to save yourself, but close enough to shore that you could wash up and stand a chance. 

And speaking of chances, He gave you a second chance to go and do that thing that He called you to do in the first place.

And you, Jonah, might be afraid that someone else will get more of God's grace than you? 

Not gonna happen. 

But this is a trap that so many of us fall into. Our lives are so much our lives, our stories so simple to us, that we often neglect to see God's hand in them. We miss all the wonderful, beautiful, gracious little things He's done for us. Then, we end up looking around and getting a little jealous that other folks are experiencing the grace of God, too. 

Where's our grace? 

Why, it's right here. On literally every single page of our story. 

Have you ever truly sat back and thought about what God has done for you? Maybe your story doesn't include a raging storm and a big fish, but I bet it contains some other wild and crazy things. Things you can only explain if God's grace is in on it. 

Actually, I'll bet your life is full of more grace than you even realize. If you took the time to sit and think, you'd probably be...amazed. (Hey, maybe that's where the song came from.) 

A wretch like me. 

So how is it that we miss this grace so easily? 

Jonah

The story of Jonah is one of the most fascinating stories in the Bible to me. And I'm not saying that because of the giant storm or the big fish or the fish juice that ends up all over the prophet. If you ever just slow down and read the story and try to look at all the things they didn't teach you in Sunday school, it is one of the richest stores in all the Scripture. 

I could write about Jonah for weeks. 

But the scene that I want to touch on for now comes near the end of the book. Jonah has gone to Nineveh and preached God's message of repentance. The people responded immediately and began to change their hearts and minds and turn toward the Lord. Then, we're told, Jonah walked back out of the city (which was a three-day journey across), climbed a hill, and sat to "watch what would happen to the city." 

Engage your sanctified imagination for a second: what do you think he was watching to see? 

He knows - he's known since the very beginning - that God isn't going to destroy the city. The kind of change of heart the people have had is exactly what he was so afraid would happen if he went and preached judgment. And now that he's seeing it with his own eyes, their repentance, he's even more certain. No judgment is coming on Nineveh. 

But do you think he was still kind of hoping anyway? 

Nineveh was the worst of the worst. Nobody wanted to be involved with Nineveh. He couldn't fathom how God could want to be involved with Nineveh. So do you think he was kind of hoping that some kind of destruction was still coming? 

Maybe he was watching to see if they would mess up. That they would build an illegal altar or offer an illegal sacrifice or somehow break the covenantal laws of God in such a way that the Lord would have no choice but to be angry with them again.

Then, He can smite them. And the prophet has a front row seat. 

Maybe he was watching to see them fail. To see them come up against the impossible decision - some stronghold in the city that would have to come down and something maybe they would struggle to tear down. Something that would make them show their true colors and reveal how fake all this repentance nonsense was. 

Maybe he was watching for the moment where he could say that he was right about Nineveh all along. 

I think it's less likely that he was watching to see what would happen to a people who truly turned their lives around. I think it's less likely he was watching to see them succeed. I think it's less likely that he was watching to see something that would change his opinion of Nineveh. 

I do wonder if perhaps a little jealousy was in play. I wonder if Jonah was sitting there thinking about his own life and his own journey with God...and hoping those lousy Ninevites didn't end up getting more of God's favor than he did. Just to make sure God wasn't going to love them more than He loved the prophet.... 

The Fellowship

Too many persons - including Christians - think of church as an obligation. It's something God expects of us. It's something the rest of the church expects from us. It's something the world expects from us. 

And when church is an obligation, it can also kind of be a drag. 

Sorry. Can't do anything else on Sundays; have to go to church. Can't go to the family thing; have to go to church. Can't watch the football game; have to go to church. And when we start to think of church like this - like a non-negotiable obligation - it becomes a burden. 

In reaction, a not-small number of Christians have realized that actually, no. Church is not an obligation. In fact, they've decided that God doesn't care if they go to church at all. So...they don't. They join sports leagues on Sunday mornings, travel their kids all over the region, sleep in, attend football games, do the grocery shopping. Whatever they want to do. 

And...they're not wrong. Church is not an obligation. 

But it's a gift. 

The church gives us something that we don't get anywhere else in the world - a fellowship. In fellowship, we are brought together in a way that is unique to the church. 

In the church, we can worship. We can look around us and see others worshiping. We can let it get down into our heart because, for a brief moment in time, it's far less likely to be assaulted by the world. 

In the church, we have persons who pray for us. We have persons who believe in the power of God as much as we do...and they keep believing when we are too weary to hold on to our own faith. 

In the church, we have both different and similar perspectives on the things we're all looking at. We're looking at the same Bible, the same Jesus, the same God, the same basic trajectory in life, the same eternity...and yet, because of our differing experiences in the world, we all have a unique perspective on it. So we are able to show one another things others might not see...and we are able to be shown things that we might not see. That's how our faith gets deeper. 

In the church, we expand our data set. What we know about God is one thing. What we see God doing in our lives is one thing. But when we see God doing those same things, and more, in the lives of others, we get an even bigger view of God. We realize exactly Who it is (to the best of our finite ability) that we're worshiping. We understand a bit better Who loves us and what love looks like. 

The truth is that you'll never understand God, learn God, love God on your own the way that you can when you're embedded in an authentic fellowship. Period. No matter what this culture has tried to sell you. 

So no, you don't have to go to church. But you get to go to church. It's one of God's amazing gifts to you. If you aren't partaking of that gift, then you might have to ask yourself - what else is God trying to give you that you're missing out on? 

The Church

I think what's happened, what makes us so confident in leaving the church, is that we've lost sight of some very fundamental things about who the church is, who she is supposed to be. 

For some, we've thought that the church is for our training in the faith. So hey, if our faith is strong and we don't need any more training, then we don't need the church. 

And actually, a lot of churches have adopted this model, too. They turned themselves into something they call "seeker sensitive" and the basic attitude of the church is that once you've been a Christian for a bit, even a fairly short bit, you should be engaging in the spiritual practices that deepen and sustain your faith on your own. You should know how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to worship, how to tithe. If you're not doing those things, then that's on you. 

Then, our churches shifted their emphasis to conversion. To introducing Christ over and over and over and over again ad nauseum, every Sunday from here unto eternity. They started judging their effectiveness in baptism numbers over all else. Attendance is a close second. 

So the church is for conversion; the Christian life is up to you. If that's the case, then no wonder so many Christians are thinking they can wander away and somehow not become the lost sheep Jesus is looking for so desperately. 

For others, the church has been seen as an obligation. We go to church because we're expected to go to church. Sometimes, it's because God expects us to go to church. 

In this case, one of two things eventually comes creeping into our heads, then our hearts. 

First, if God is just counting attendance, the faith doesn't seem very vibrant at all. It's not dynamic. It's not life-giving. We come to resent going to church just to check a box. It doesn't hold meaning for us. And eventually, it becomes easiest just to stop going. God probably doesn't care. 

Second, we start to think God's favor depends on us just showing up. For whatever. Attendance is what matters most to God. 

I confess that over my life of faith, I have had both of these thoughts about church...and many more. I have believed it to be for training, and found it relatively unnecessary once I know how to discipline myself. And I have believed it to be an obligation, as though if I were not in the pew on Sunday mornings, God would certainly smite me. That He's counting the Sundays I've had to miss and evaluating my reasons why to figure out if they're good enough. 

The more I've grown in my faith, however, and the more that certain seasons have kept me from being able to faithfully attend church, the more I have realized that church is neither an obligation nor a bore. 

Church is God's gift to us. 

And I think shifting that understanding just a small little bit can make a big difference for so many who are tempted to become the one who wanders away. 

You don't have to go to church. But you get to go to church.... 

The Fold

Sometimes, we wander away. We go chasing something we're certain God would want us to have, even though He has neither called us nor sent us to it, and we expected Him to follow, but He didn't. 

Because He's still got 99 other sheep over there and the whole plan of God was that we would be with them. 

We see this independent streak in ourselves perhaps nowhere more clearly than when discussing our church attendance/membership/commitment. 

More and more, we're seeing folks who have been Christians for a long time, and many who have not, deciding that they don't really need the church to be a Christian. They worship God on their own, and they're happier with their Sundays for other things. 

They don't need the church. Or perhaps they have been hurt by the church. Or perhaps the church has been poisoned by the world. Or maybe there's a personality clash. Or whatever. But somehow, some way, some day, the Christian decides that her faith is strong enough that she doesn't need the church. 

She's all set in the God category. Got it. Still love God, just don't need His people around all the time. 

So she wanders off. 

She finds ways to worship that "suit" her. She discovers new ways to connect with God. She relies on what she's always done and the things she can "fit" into her "lifestyle." She wears the necklace. She plasters the bumper sticker on her car. She might even read her Bible every day and pray faithfully and only stream Christian music and tell everyone she meets how good God is to her. 

But make no mistake - absolutely everyone who has a story like this one wakes up one day and looks around and finds themself alone. Finds themselves not just without other sheep, but without the fundamental nature of the shepherd. 

See, when you leave the flock, you get out from under the shepherd's protection. He's tending His sheep. He's watching His pasture. He knows where the streams are and the best grasses and how to rotate the herd through so that they always get the very best. He never intends to herd you separately from everyone else. He never decides to cultivate a special little place just for you. 

Because you're safer - and so is everyone else - if you're together. You're better off - and so is everyone else - if you're together. The shepherd is most effective if you're together. 

I think this is why we don't see God's glory as much in the world today as we used to, even as recently as a few generations ago. It's because we've got all these solo Christians running around out there, and it's hard to see our great big God when He's always busy chasing single wayward sheep. 

An altar over here, a song over there, an open book in that corner, a soft worship song in that heart. And it's nice. And I'm sure He's happy to do it. But it wasn't the plan. 

The plan was for anyone passing by to be able to look over and see a whole pasture full of sheep - one group, one shepherd - and know right away whose they were. 

We're robbing God of that opportunity. We're robbing Him of that plan. 

Because we decided we didn't really need the other sheep and we wandered away. But what we didn't realize was that the other sheep are kind of a package deal with the shepherd. That's the way He intended it.

(And that's why it doesn't take long for anyone who has left the church to do one of two things: go back to the church or quit the faith altogether.)

The One

Sometimes, God moves and we were supposed to follow. But we didn't, and now, we find ourselves standing in a distant place, wondering what happened. Follow the cloud and fire, friends. 

But sometimes, we move and we expect God to follow. And we find ourselves standing in a distant place, wondering what happened. 

It's an easy trap to fall into. We pray, read the Bible, go to church, and have a faith that feels pretty solid. We ask God what He's up to, feel things out with our spiritual gut, dream big dreams with our sanctified imagination, and we know that God loves us. So when we go out on that limb, we expect God to come with us. 

I'm not talking about the times when we feel sent. When we feel that nudge from God that He's asking us to go, like when Jesus sent the disciples out and told them to go to all of the villages.

I'm talking about the times when we think things are gonna be just fine if we go wandering out a little bit on our own, when we're so full of faith that we believe we can do whatever we want and not lose God. 

But here's what we often forget: although God loves you, individually you, He's more a God of the people than He's ever been a God of the person. 

God's plan for us is that we would all be together. 

And so often, these plans that we have for ourselves, these things that we think sound good and that we're certain God approves of, are things that leave us standing on the outside all alone. We go, thinking God is going to build up a community around us if we just step out in "faith," but what we don't realize is that God has already given us a community and hasn't actually called us to step outside of it like we thought. 

The goodness of God is back where the others are. 

Think about the parable of the lost sheep. A shepherd has 100 sheep and loses one, so he leaves the 99 and goes off to find the one. 

We're not talking here about a sheep that simply didn't make the trip to the new pasture. We're not talking about a sheep that somehow fell behind and never caught up. We're not talking about a straggler. Many translations actually say the shepherd had 100 sheep and 1 wandered away. 

Saw a piece of green grass and went for it, never expecting to end up alone. But certain, as we all are, that the shepherd would definitely want him to have that nice, green grass. 

We are that sheep. We are the ones who have wandered away. We were so certain in who we thought we were, who we thought God thought us to be, that we wandered away, expecting God and the rest of the herd to follow, and then we looked up and discovered we were all alone. 

Suddenly, we are the one that the Shepherd has to come after. 

We thought for sure He'd come with us, but no...He's coming after us.

Because He's not willing to lose us. Especially not like this.  

A Distant God

Sometimes, we hear something preached for so long that we just take it as truth without really considering it. I found myself on the verge of saying one such thing the other day, and then I stopped...because I don't think it's true all the time, even though it's often been presented that way. 

Here's the thought: 

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So if one day, in your life of faith, you look up and God seems distant, He's not the one who moved. You are. 

And that sounds well and good if your goal is to convince a wayward soul to come back. 

But...

I'm not entirely sure that's what Scripture teaches us. 

Moses looked up and saw a burning bush...and that was God calling him to come and see. 

When Israel fled Egypt in the Exodus, God led them by a pillar of cloud during the day and fire at night. The entire pattern was that God would move first, and they were supposed to follow. If God didn't move, they didn't move. 

Even Jesus spent a lot of His time going places and then having the people not know where He went and searching to find Him. "Hey, we saw Him in the boat. Maybe He went to the other side of the sea!" And then, they show up and see even more miracles and hear even more teachings and are convinced of even more grace. 

The truth about God is that God has been moving from the very beginning. He was walking with Adam in the cool of the day in the Garden. And He hasn't stopped moving since. 

Which means that if you look up one day and God seems distant, maybe you haven't turned your back; maybe He's beckoning you to follow. 

And this is important. 

Because I think it's too easy for us to think we know what our faith is supposed to look like. We think we know what we're supposed to do and what God wants from us. So if we think we've become distant, we're likely to try to return to the status quo and call it a day; go back to faith as we always knew it and claim we've come back. 

But if we're not where God has actually called us, we may have come back, but we haven't gone forward. We haven't grown. That's why there are so many Christians stuck in this really baseline kind of faith that prays, reads the Bible, goes to church, tithes, but doesn't understand what the outworking of God actually looks like in the world or how they factor into it. Because they aren't going to where God is to meet Him in the new places He's moved to....they're going to the last place they knew where He was and figuring it still kinda smells like Him there, so He can't be far. 

Then all of a sudden, here we are in temples made of shiny things but empty of spirit and wondering where our faith went, feeling like maybe we have turned away after all. 

But maybe we haven't. 

Maybe...we just haven't followed like we were supposed to. 

Chaos Theory

Maybe you still believe in chaos theory - that the world is just falling apart and I just so happen to be on the receiving end of the goodness of it. 

Okay, but...all the time? 

That's called favor.  

It's one thing to be in the right place at the right time, but to be in the right place at the right time a lot can only mean a few things. 

It could mean that I'm just lucky. But the odds of luck are astronomically small, and they assume that I'm an "average" human being. So then we have to figure out what is average, and I guarantee you that when it comes to going out of the house and doing things, I am definitely "below average," which makes the odds even smaller. 

It could mean that I am an averagely-lucky individual surrounded by above average unlucky individuals. If I am on the receiving end of chaos, on the finding end of what is lost but I am not especially lucky, that means that other folks around me are losing things and falling into chaos statistically more than folks in other places. If that's the case, then other folks should definitely stay away from me - because rather than being lucky, maybe I'm bad luck. 

Or maybe my life is just as much chaos as any of the rest of creation except that I somehow naturally find myself in cycle with the chaos. You know, the way that natural cycles of things sometimes just sync up from being around each other so long. Maybe I've got my chaos synced with the universe so that things fall apart into me more often than someone who is, say, out of sync. 

I realize that to some persons, this all sounds perfectly logical. Or, rather, it sounds like perhaps I am overthinking it - I'm just lucky, okay? There's no rhyme or reason to it; it just is. 

But there is nothing in this world that "just is" without meaning, even by the kind of worldview that says that. Because the same folks who think I'm "just" lucky are the same folks who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to improve their own "luck," which means that even they don't think it's purely random. There's got to be something to it. 

Which leads me back to faith. And favor. 

At the end of the day, the easiest answer to astronomical odds is to simply look at what God has to say about these human lives we're living. And what God has to say is that they are divinely created, sacred, and filled with the one thing that can account for all of the "good fortune" that we have in such a place that seems to be spiraling out of control but is somehow kept from falling apart entirely: 

The love of God. 

So yes, I choose to believe God loves me. And that my life is a series of reminders of this love. And that He speaks to me through little things that mean something to me - that maybe you don't understand and maybe you can't understand, but it's a secret language that God and I have between us. 

So when I see one of those butterflies that is suddenly somehow almost everywhere in this mess of chaos, I am brought back to the only thing that I can know: 

God loves me. 

An awful lot. 

Coincidence

So the sticker is green. And there are more butterflies this year. And there was a $10 bill lying on the ground in an alley that we just happened to cut through on a certain day. 

Aren't all these things just coincidence? Aren't they just as likely to happen to anyone else as they are to me? 

Nah. 

See, that's what faith is about. 

I don't go looking for butterflies. They just happen to be there. Like I said, I can't tell you how many I've noticed in my whole life because that number is actually quite small. And my guess is that the neighbors who walk the same sidewalks that I do haven't seen nearly as many as I have, even though they've been right there. 

Actually, I have been walking with others a few times and I've seen the butterflies and stopped to thank God for His goodness, and they want to know why I've stopped. I try to point out the butterfly, but they don't see it. 

There was a $10 bill lying on the ground in an alley...and two blue collar service guys about twenty-five feet away in a parking lot, standing outside their work vans, smoking and chatting. They were there way before me, but they didn't see it. They were probably kicking themselves when they saw me bend down and pick something up. But that was for me. 

The sticker is green, but it could just as easily have been any other color. And it would have meant nothing to me. But that green sticker brings my life into order in a way that just feels so satisfying. Any other year, I might not have noticed a color at all, but this year, I didn't notice anything else. (It's almost worth the extra $25 that my registration jumped this year. ...almost.)

There are all kinds of persons in this world who want to talk about coincidence and chance and pure dumb luck. But these are the same persons who also tend to believe in "the science." Not just science, but "the" science, as though it is an entity of its own. 

And "the science," absolutely everything we know about it, says that left to its own, everything tends toward chaos, not order. The longer you don't intervene, the more things fall apart.

So then that would suggest that all of these little things that make my heart swell, all these things that bring me courage and strength, these things that remind me how much God loves me...aren't messages from God at all but are actually pure chaos. They aren't my life coming together; they are the world falling apart. 

Imagine having a worldview where everything that tempts you toward joy and confidence and a better tomorrow is actually chaos and deterioration and decay. 

Sorry. That just doesn't work for me. 

Because what "the science" also knows that order comes from an outside force, from something acting on the entropy to pull it all back together and hold it in tension with itself and somehow, this all works in such a delicate balance that it is able to sustain life. 

Or perhaps, if you have eyes to see, not just sustain life, but love it. 

Because that tension that holds it all together is exactly the tension I'm feeling that gives me the eyes to see the world the way that I do. 

It's amazing grace...for a wretch like me.  

Little Signs

Faith gives us eyes to see the world differently, and there's something incredibly beautiful about that. 

But when we have eyes that see the world differently, we also see different things in the world. We realize it's not just the world that we're looking at, but all of these little reminders of God that we might have missed entirely. 

My faith has deepened a lot over the past several years, as a product of both my desperate need for God and His constant reassurance of His love for me. Quite honestly, the life I'm living right now is a miracle. There's no other way to explain it. 

But because of the way that my faith has sharpened, I'm seeing God in the world in ways that I probably would have missed a decade ago. 

For example, one year ago when we put our little dog down and my big girl, my best friend, my constant companion started to show signs of illness, a beautiful black and orange butterfly fluttered around us on a morning walk and then landed on the sidewalk just a few feet away and simply stayed there. I was able to walk right up on it and take a stunning up close photograph. 

A week or so later, my beautiful girl died. Since that time, my life has been filled with beautiful, mostly black and orange, butterflies. I can't tell you how many butterflies I've seen in my 40 years of life, even with a butterfly garden that I planted as a child, but I can tell you that the number I've seen in the last year far exceeds my lifetime total up to that point. Actually, until that day on the sidewalk, I couldn't tell you the last time I saw a butterfly ever. 

Now, they're everywhere. 

When I was unemployed and underemployed for a long time, my beautiful girl and I went through a season where we found money on the ground all the time when we were out walking. And I'm not talking pennies - we found $20 bills. $10 bills. I remember one time I was browsing for new window blinds for the one window in my bedroom, but I knew I'd never be able to afford them on my scant income. I was looking anyway. And when I finally accepted that I wouldn't be able to change my color scheme, there was $25 on the ground. Just a couple of days later. All I'd have to cover was the tax. 

After I got a real job with a livable wage, we stopped finding money so much. A few dollars here and there, but nothing like we had found in my time of greatest financial need. And then...less than a week before she died, we cut down an alley to avoid a busier street that always kind of scared her, and especially more since she had gone blind, and wouldn't you know it? A $10 bill. Just laying there. 

This week, as I'm kind of just taking a breath and letting things settle and thinking about how I really want this season to develop and wondering about the answers that might still be coming to prayers I have prayed for a long time, I got the updated sticker for my license plate in the mail. No big deal. Whatever. Bureaucracy. 

But when I opened the envelope, my heart swelled. A sense of peace settled over me. I smiled. I laughed. I almost cried. The sticker this year is mint green. It's the color I've been surrounding myself with because it speaks something to the deepest part of me in this rough season. The interior of my car is mint green. Now, my sticker matches it. 

Everyone else probably opened that envelope this year and didn't even notice what color it was. If they did, they probably just shrugged - the sticker is green this year. Cool. Whatever. 

I opened that envelope, and I got a surge of holy strength in me that I didn't expect but could not deny. It just took my breath away. 

These are the kinds of things you see, the kinds of moments you engage on a level you can't quite explain, when you have eyes of faith that see the world...and see God in it....  

Eyes of Faith

If there is a great gift of faith on this side of eternity, I think it is this: 

Faith changes the way that we see the world. 

Now, listen. I'm talking about real faith - I'm talking about connectedness to God, a deep understanding of your own belovedness, the humbleness of spirit that allows you to listen more than you speak, and an intentionally-developed inclination toward grace. That kind of faith. 

I'm not talking about belief. I'm not talking about the things that we think about God or the things that we think we understand out of the Bible or the things that we think are right or wrong. 

I'm talking about faith that gives us the eyes of God. Through them, it changes the way that we see the world. 

And it's simple, but it's not easy. 

It's being able to hold in juxtaposition something so wonderful as amazing grace with something so profane as a wretch like me. 

It's seeing first and judging later. 

Okay, actually...it's not judging at all. 

Because here's something you may not know if this is not something you're good at yet - seeing first often eliminates your urge to judge. 

I've been in healthcare a long time. And healthcare is a weird place to be sometimes. You've got all of this data in front of you and the challenge is always to remember that there's a human inside that body, that there's a person inside your patient. 

I remember a patient that I wasn't sure what to do with. Actually, nobody was sure what to do with them. The data was weird and not all of it was back yet and the personality, according to the rest of the staff, was hit or miss. There were some things going on that naturally evoke judgment. 

But then one day, I was walking through my unit and something caught my eye. It was the patient - down by the foot of the bed, hunched over. Something seemed wrong, so I stepped in without a second thought and asked what I could do to help. 

The patient grabbed my hand and just started crying. We talked for quite awhile and I did my best to comfort them in what was an incredibly difficult time. When I finally left, I went back to do some charting and clean up some of the other things I was working on. 

About twenty minutes later, it hit me...that was that room. That was that room that I hadn't been sure about. That was that room that nobody knew what to make of. That was that room that seemed to have this thing hanging over it...until it was just an open door with a soul in need and then, suddenly, I had completely failed to notice that it was that room. 

That's what I'm talking about. Living with eyes of faith, seeing the world different, being open to those little nudges from God will take you places you can't imagine. It will put you in situations you couldn't have imagined. It will give you the grace you need for another wretch like you. And your brain won't even process that you're doing it until way later, when you're back in your own space and suddenly realize what's happened. 

And at that point, I no longer had doubts or questions or fears about that patient. None. None of the rest of that mattered. Because there was a holy moment there and God sent me to meet it, and if I hadn't had the eyes to see it and the feet that simply walk in faith and don't pay attention to things like room numbers, I would have missed it. 

That's probably my favorite thing about faith on this side of eternity - all the things it just lets me see that my fallen nature probably would have turned a blind eye to. 

Accommodation

I put a solid board under my mattress. 

Actually, I had a solid board under my mattress. But ten years ago, after purchasing my first memory foam mattress, I had to change that board out for slats. Because memory foam mattresses need to breathe on the underside or they will mold rather quickly (ask me how I know). 

For ten years, I wrestled with those slats. Even though they were cut to size, they never seemed to stay in one place, which frustrated me because they were also terribly difficult to move back into place. If I'm struggling with this much intention to move them, how on earth did they keep moving on their own? Additionally, there was no good place to tuck in sheets so that they would stay taut - the slats kept moving, so the sheets kept getting laxer. 

But such was the trade-off for not having mold. 

Then, earlier this year, I bought another new mattress. This time, it's not a memory foam. As it turns out, i didn't like that as much as I thought I would, so I went back to springs. And for the first six or seven months of having my new spring mattress, it increasingly annoyed me that my sheets would not stay tucked. 

Until I remembered...

...I could put a solid board under this. 

It doesn't have to breathe the way that a memory foam does. Actually, it would be much more comfortable on a solid board...which would also provide a great, consistent surface for sheet tucking. 

Now, every time I make my bed (which I just did before sitting to write this post), I think about something deeper. 

See, our lives are full of accommodations that we've made for ourselves. Things we have had to change and create and conger up just to make things work. To make our lives work. To make our bodies function better. To make our relationships function better. To make our work function better. Whatever it is. 

We all have them. They're the little tips and tricks we've found along the way of living that we've figured out make a positive difference in our lives. 

The question is, how often do we ask ourselves if they are still working for us? 

Is that accommodation you made ten years ago still necessary? Do you still function that way? Do you still need to function that way? Do you need something different in this season? 

We build these things into our lives to make thing better, but are things still better? 

Seasons change. Times change. Demands change. We change. Yet for so many of us, our accommodations stay the same. We never reassess them. We never come back and see if we still need them or if we might need something different. 

Then one day, we wake up and the sheets are tangled all around for what feels like the millionth time and all of a sudden, we realize...we don't need that accommodation any more. We can do something new. 

But why are we waiting for the sheets to tangle? Why are we waiting for it to drive us crazy? 

What if we made intentional time in our lives to reevaluate our lives? To reassess what we've built around ourselves? To reassess ourselves? 

Maybe you still need slats. Cool. If that's what this season requires, maybe a few tangles are the trade-off to avoid a bigger mold. 

But maybe you don't need slats any more. And if that's the case, then why are you still wrestling with them?  

Good on Paper

Here's the thing: very few of us ever do anything because it sounds good on paper. 

They do it because the persons they are in relationship are doing it. 

Your kid doesn't want to play baseball because he thinks baseball sounds fun; he wants to play baseball because his friends are playing baseball. 

Your mom doesn't go to quilting club because she likes to quilt; she goes because her friends are going to quilting club. 

What is the number one question thing someone decides to do every time they see something on paper that looks like fun? 

They ask somebody who has done it. 

Maybe you've thought about hosting a foreign exchange student. You want to talk to someone who has actually done it first to see what it's really like. 

Maybe you're thinking about joining a bowling league. You seek out someone who has played in that league before to see whether it's fun or not. 

Maybe you're considering watching a new TV show or reading a new book. You make a social media post asking if anyone has seen/read it yet and what they thought. 

The truth is that we are a social species, and we do most of what we do in community - by having folks around us who are doing/have done it, too. By making it a group activity. 

Which is why when the church decides that its primary activity is advocating for others to do something, nothing gets done. 

It's why the church is fundraising for the crisis pregnancy center quite well, but has trouble finding volunteers to work at it. 

It's why the church wants more grace for immigrants, but it doesn't open its doors to them. 

It's why the church rallies against abortion, but unwilling mothers are left on their own. 

The truth is that we do more good in this world by loving our actual neighbor than by advocating for big change...because the small change is the big change. 

Because when your neighbor sees you loving the unwilling mother, they're more likely to go out and love an unwilling mother. 

When your neighbor sees you offering respite care for a terminally ill patient, they're more like to offer respite for a caregiver themselves. 

When your neighbor sees you offer a care package to the homeless, they're more likely to put together a care package to keep in their own car. 

Kindness spreads by imitation, not by protest. Not by advocacy. Compassion, grace, mercy, and love grow in this world by being practiced by the least of these, not by being demanded by those whose greatest action was standing on a street corner. 

Want to change the world? Great. Go get your hands dirty in it...and not with poster paints.  

Advocacy

Most glaringly, as the church is crying out for the state to do better at all the things the church was built to excel at, the church isn't even trying to take these functions back. Not on a meaningful scale. 

Rather, the church believes that her role now is advocacy with the state, not service of the poor, the sick, and the immigrant. The church seems to believe that the best thing we can do for others is to provoke the state to do better for them. 

You may have guessed this by now, but I don't believe this. 

Jesus never once spent His time asking the Romans to do better. 

Actually, He didn't even spend His time asking the Pharisees to do better. 

He spent His time encouraging and empowering the people to do better. 

And truthfully, that's the only way things ever change in a meaningful way. 

The church has gone from practicing compassion to just preaching it. From being merciful to protesting for it. From extending grace to demanding it. From being love to judging it. 

And it's not a good look for the church. 

The truth is that you do more good in this world by simply loving your actual neighbor than by attending a thousand protest marches in support of something so undefined as "your neighbor." If you want to change an actual life, then you need to engage an actual life. 

It's the same difference as giving money to a cause versus actually supporting a cause. 

Let's say you see a fundraiser for a family in need. You feel like maybe you ought to give a little, perhaps out of guilt because you know your life is easier than whatever they are going through right now. Or maybe simple charity because you've lived that story yourself and you know how difficult it is. So you give money. And other folks give money. And now, that family has money. 

Great. But did you actually do anything for them? 

Having the resources to get help and having help are very different things. It's nice to be able to say, cool, now I can pay the restoration company to clean all the burned-up possessions out of my house. But it's even better to look up and here are your actual neighbors with gloves, trash bags, and a big ol' jug of ice water to get them through the day. 

This is what the church used to be so good at, but not any more. It used to be, "Hey, church - Bob is moving on Saturday, and we'd love to have some help" and the whole church shows up with boxes and trailers and everything you need to move Bob to his new house. 

Now, it's "Hey, church - Bob is moving on Saturday, and we're a little short of what we need to hire a moving truck for him. Would you consider giving a little bit extra this week so we can get Bob moved?" 

Weak. 

That's not what Jesus made us for. And yet, it's what we've convinced ourselves we're supposed to do. 

So all of a sudden, you see pastors and "faith leaders" standing on street corners, holding signs and begging the government for more compassion, more mercy, more grace, more faith....more of all the things the faith leaders themselves are supposed to be the best at. And at the end of the day, they go home having done absolutely nothing for any of their actual neighbors and somehow feeling good about it. 

Pharisees. 

Protest

The US government has been facilitating a lot of changes in policy and enforcement, on various issues, for half a decade or so...maybe a little more. Really polarizing stuff, in case you hadn't noticed - abortion, healthcare, immigration, education. 

And it seems to me, at least locally, that when I see the news at night, there always seems to be a conglomeration of pastors and "faith leaders" on the screen, banded together and carrying signs, touting how they wish the government would do more. No, that's not quite right. 

They wish the government would do better. 

They are protesting with a plea for the government to have more compassion, more heart, more mercy, more grace. 

Which is cool, I guess, if that's your thing. At least, everyone says how nice it is to see the church standing with the people on these things the government needs to get better at.

But... 

These are the things the church used to do. 

The church started healthcare. The church started education. The church was the sanctuary for the refugee and the outcast. The church took care of unwed mothers.

Historically, it was the church who saw these needs and met them...with compassion, with heart, with mercy, with grace. 

And then, somewhere along the way, the government took over. There are a couple of primary reasons for this. 

First, it seems logical that the government, with its much bigger reach and much bigger pool of resources to draw from, would be better able to provide these kinds of services. The government has the ability to reach places that were more difficult for the church, just by nature of being everywhere more conveniently all at once. 

Second, as society began to shift more secularly, culture asked for the government to take over these things. They wanted these services to be separated from "all the religious stuff." Prozac shouldn't come with a side of preaching, and it became intolerable to even have a Cross on the wall of the local hospital. We don't need that faith stuff, the culture said, and they asked the government to take over. 

Well, not exactly. First, they asked the government to oversee these activities, to ensure that access was fair and that no religion was being shoved down people's throats, but this oversight so tied the hands of those ministering to the poor, the sick, and the refugee, that it just became easier for the state to do their own thing. 

And now, here we are. But...have we gotten our money's worth?

Of course not. Now, we're hearing cries that the government shouldn't be in women's healthcare. That immigration is more complicated than policy makes it look. That healthcare should be a universal right and not a for-profit business. That education should be concerned with things it historically wasn't concerned about. 

Quite honestly, everything the government has touched is broken. Beyond broken. 

And here we are in our streets, crying out - even from the pulpit, even from our robes - that the government is failing in compassion, in mercy, in grace, in love. And of course they are. They're the government. 

The church was much better at these things. That's what God designed her to be. 

And yet, most glaringly...(come back tomorrow)

Wheat and Weeds

Do you see the pattern yet? Want to do one more? Okay, here we go. 

Jesus tells a parable about the wheat and the weeds, and it goes something like this: a farmer was planting in his field, planting the wheat in the meticulous kind of manner that a farmer should plant. But then, darkness fell and an enemy snuck into the field and started sowing weed seeds among the wheat. Of course, the enemy doesn't take as great of care sowing his seed as the farmer does, so it doesn't take long before the farmer realizes there are weeds everywhere. 

The farmer's workers want to set about the painstaking task of removing the weeds from the wheat, but the farmer tells them not to. If you do, he says, you might disturb the wheat that's growing. So let them all grow together, and we'll separate it all out later. 

So they let the weeds grow. 

As you might expect, here's the point: I am both the wheat and the weeds. 

We want to read this parable and believe that we are the wheat. We are the faithful ones, growing where the Farmer planted us. We pray, read the Bible, go to church, tithe, wear our WWJD bracelet, have the bumper sticker on our car, have the Christian radio station on pre-set. If this world is wheat and weeds, we are clearly the wheat - we are nutritious and functional and serve a purpose, all while creating a harvest for the Lord. 

And there's some truth to that. The Farmer did take meticulous care when He planted you. He chose exactly the kind of seed that He wanted you to be and put you where He wanted you to grow and you are nutritious and functional and purposeful where He has you.

And sometimes, yes, it can feel like you're surrounded by weeds.

But there's more than that. 

Because the enemy has also snuck into the place where you are, and you're growing things in your life that you were never meant to grow. You are angry and jealous and insecure and uncertain and timid and sinful, to one degree or another. And you are, in the space of someone else's wheat, a weed. 

That's why we have to be careful about trying to become the workers, the helping hands. They wanted to uproot the weeds, but if we're being honest, we're just as much weed as anyone else. 

Yet the Farmer lets us grow up together anyway. He lets us share the same space - our wheat with their weeds and their wheat with our weed. We're all growing in the same soil, looking for roots, reaching for the Son, becoming some weird kind of hybrid of what the field was intended to be - our good, purposeful, functional, created self blending into a sea of less-than, of weeds. 

And we all know, because we've lived it, that just pulling the weeds in our lives doesn't make us better wheat. So we've come to the same conclusion that God has - let it all grow together. Some drawing more nutrients than others; some having firmer roots than others; the good right among the less-than, the Farmer's plan still somehow taking root in the enemy's spoil. 

And one day, when that day comes, the Farmer will sort it all out. It'll be okay. There will be enough wheat, and we will be among it...and we'll throw all the weeds into the fires and burn them up forever, left with nothing but the pureness of what the Farmer planted in the first place. 

Wedding Guests

Want to do another one? Let's go. 

Jesus tells a parable about a wedding feast. The planner of the party has invited a bunch of folks who have all said, with gusto, that they'll be there. Wouldn't miss it for the world. And then, as you know, the time comes and none of those folks decide to come after all because, well, the world. So the banquet-giver goes out into the streets and invites the poor, the disheveled, the outcast. And of course, they come right away and everyone has a great time. 

The cool thing about this parable, just like we saw with the last parable, is that I am both of these groups. 

So are you. 

We are the ones who have the best of us invited into greater things. We have our finer points and all of God's glory at our fingertips. All we have to do is show up. 

But then, we get distracted by the world. We get distracted by the same things that the original wedding guests were distracted by. 

The first got distracted by his new field - all the hopes and dreams that he had for a new season in his life, with all the optimism of what a new space and a long dream were going to provide for him. I've been there - you probably have, too. I'm betting this guy prayed for this field for a long time and he finally got it, so he assumes this field is going to be better than anything he'll find at the wedding feast. The field is God's gift to him...and just look at all it's going to produce in his life. 

The second got distracted by his new oxen - fresh oxen with fresh strength and all of a sudden, he's got work to do. I've been distracted by work, too. I bet you have, as well. Work is the thing that provides for what we need; it gives us the funds to support our lifestyle and it gives us the sense of accomplishment to believe we're making a difference in this world. I bet this guy prayed for the oxen. Every time he saved up a little more of the cost to purchase them, he probably thanked God that he was getting closer to breaking through and now, here it is! A breakthrough! Have you ever been so close to a breakthrough that you forget to take a break for glory? 

The third got distracted by his new wife. Here it is, the love of his life. And so, he doesn't have time to go and celebrate Love at some random wedding because he's already celebrating love in his own life. It's everything he thinks he's ever wanted. And she is God's good gift to him, too, I'm sure. The answer to so many prayer. Her dad said yes! He saved the dowry. He paid the price. He got the bride. Now is not the time to be distracted by an even bigger wedding feast; his little meager one was enough. 

Are you seeing yourself yet? Great. But we're only halfway through. 

Because then, the servant goes out into the streets and starts grabbing anyone he can. The bad and the good, the whole and the broken, the outcast and the rejected. All of them. 

And here, my friends, are we, as well. 

We are the bad and the good. We are the outcast. We are the disheveled, the ones who don't have our lives together. We are the dirty who would have to get cleaned up just to go in...the ones who are depending on the banquet thrower to clothe us in something appropriate. 

And when we're honest about this part of ourselves, when we recognize the gutters we live in and the dirt that covers our lives, we leap at the opportunity to go...

...we are clothed in righteousness, and we have a great time. 

See? Once again, I am both men in the parable - the invited and the outcast. How about you?