Valleys

It's camp season, and camp season reminds us all of the mountains we've been on with God - the incredible spiritual highs that we've had sprinkled throughout our Christian experience that have powerfully shaped our relationship with God and the times that have left us filled to overflowing. 

We spend so much of our lives chasing this feeling, trying to recreate those mountains. 

But can I tell you a secret? Can I tell you something raw and real and honest that I hope might help you when you get so deep back into your real life that it feels like the bottom is falling out of your faith? 

Here it is: 

You can have this feeling in the valleys, too. 

Actually, I think it's even more powerful here. 

When you're in the valley, you don't just want God; you need Him. That fullness you're seeking? It pours into a true emptiness, and that means that the measure of it is even bigger than you ever imagined. 

It's the difference between having a bunch of acquaintances who like to go bowling and frequent the farmer's market and hang out at the playground while the kids push each other on the swings and having a true friend who will bring you a tub of ice cream and eat it in the corner of the basement with you while you cry. 

At summer camp, God is awesome; in the valley, He's awe-inspiring. At camp, He's totally cool; in the valley, He's totally close. 

And this kind of radical experience draws you near to Him in a way that expands your heart to hold more of Him until you're filled to almost bursting with His goodness. Even in the mud. Even in the shadows. Even in the weeds. Even in the wilderness. 

The truth is that as our faith matures, we find that we feel closest to God not on the mountaintop, where it feels like either one of us could go tumbling off the peak at any moment, but in the valley, where the downward force of gravity - of trauma, of hurt, of brokenness, of emptiness - keeps drawing us closer. 

We spend so much of our Christian journey trying to make sure that our mountaintop faith can survive the valleys, but friends, I think that's wrong. I think what we need is a valley kind of faith that can survive the mountaintops. 

We need a faith that's tested in the darkness, that's rock solid sure, that's steady in the doldrums so that when we get filled with with the euphoria of the mountain, we don't forget the substance of God. That we don't forget that He's more than good feelings and joy and fun. That we don't forget that the God who shows up to celebrate with us is the same God who eats ice cream in the dark corners while we cry. 

Mountains

It's summer camp season, so my social media feed is filled with pictures of young persons hanging out with their friends, worshiping God, and having mountaintop experiences. There are updates about how many lives are being saved, how many commitments are being made, how many core memories are being locked in. 

It reminds me of my own camp seasons more than two decades ago. 

And lest the rest of us be left out, there's something for the adults, too. Spiritual retreats, ladies' weekends, mens' breakfasts, church picnics, worship night under the stars...the lists go on. Summer is a great season; it reminds us of the mountains that we've been on. 

These are the moments we want to recreate. These are the moments we want to experience forever. If we're honest, most of our church programming is tailored to try to create these experiences - mountaintops. Moments of such vibrant, worshipful, joyous encounter with God that your whole life feels full. You might even say overflowing. 

You come bouncing out of these moments with all kinds of energy, all kinds of hope, all kinds of confident assurance. All kinds of enthusiasm, not just for your own walk with the Lord, but for everybody's. You're about to tell the world how incredible God is, and you've got enough pep and zip and woohoo in your spirit and your voice that you just know they're gonna listen. 

How could they not? 

Yes, we want to live our lives on the mountaintops. 

In fact, most of us come home from these experiences - from these camps, these retreats, these picnics, these fellowships - and determine that we're never going to live in the valleys again. We're never going to let ourselves lose this feeling. We're never going to settle for anything less in our life of faith than exactly this - the full-throttle, completely-sold-out, total excitement for God that we have after a few days away with Him. 

But we know it doesn't last. 

We go back to our real life - to work and family and neighbors and bills and responsibilities and bodies and brokenness. And it doesn't take long until that high that we felt wears off and settles back into the doldrums, back into the routine, back into checking a box on a connect card and dropping it in the box on our way to beat the (fill in the rival denomination of your choice) to Wendy's. 

Before long, we're wondering how we can get it back. How we can get that feeling back. How we can recreate that mountaintop experience and discover that fellowship all over again. How we can refill our tank, which feels far more empty these days than that fullness of overflowing we said we were never going to let go. 

We wonder if we've lost our faith. If maybe we don't believe any more like we used it. It certainly doesn't feel like it used to. 

And then...the bottom falls out....  

Saving Ourselves

If you're anything like me, you seek a lot of opinions. When anything is going on, I have a handful of folks that I go running to to see what they have to say, to see if they see things the same way that I do, to receive the reassurances that things are going to turn out okay. 

In the age of the internet, we also ask our computers a lot of things. You can even take a picture now and search for that picture. It's crazy the amount of information that we have at our fingertips. 

And yet...when it all comes down to it, there's only one bit of information that matters: the official report. 

You can't act on the opinions of your friends. You can't act on the wisdom of the experts. You can't act on the article you found on the back pages of the internet that kind of sort of half mentions something like this. You can't act on your own gut instinct. If you want to move forward in this world, you can only act on the official record - on what was said and decided by the person with the authority to speak and to decide. 

This is true in our work - where the boss has to approve your wild idea. This is true in medicine - where the doctor has to authorize the treatment. This is true in homeowners associations - where the neighbors have to give the nod to your new fence. We spend our lives seeking options and opinions and opportunities only to run right up against the wall of authority every time and realize it all comes back to one authority that either yeas or nays it. 

If we're honest about it, we should have already known this. 

Because the same is true with God. 

We spend our lives running around, trying to gather opinions and options and opportunities. We ask our friends, our family, our bosses, our coworkers, our neighbors, our pastors, our doctors, whoever, and we come up with a great plan. And that plan is usually how we're going to save ourselves from...something. 

Save ourselves from financial disaster. Save ourselves from death. Save ourselves from heartache. Save ourselves from trouble. 

And listen, sometimes, we have really good plans. We do. We formulate strategies that ought to work, things that make perfect sense to any rational mind. 

But we run right up against the same thing we always do - that there's only one perspective that matters, and it ain't ours. It's God's. 

God is the one who has to approve this whole thing. God is the one who has to make it work. God is the one who gives it the go-ahead. 

And God...is not interested in all the ways we've come up with to save ourselves. 

Because God is the only one who can save us. 

He knows that. We know that. He knows that we know that, even when we seem to have forgotten. That's why it seems that the more plans we come up with to save ourselves, the more God steps in and foils our plans so that we remember what we have forgotten - God alone can save us. God alone does save us. 

Praise the Lord. 

God of Grace

Have you ever looked at someone else's life and wished you had what they have? 

We do it all the time, especially in the age of social media. From the outside looking in, someone else's life can always be a temptation to us. They have a nicer car, a better-looking spouse, a stronger community, a more vibrant church, a deeper faith, a more prominent job, a fatter bank account. I tell you, we look at those photos, and their grass really does look greener. 

How did they get their yard looking so nice? 

It's tempting, but as we all know, the pictures only tell part of the story. The story only tells part of the story. The things they say, the things they share, the things they decide the world can see are only a fraction of their lived existence, and the truth is that everyone has their struggles. And while you're busy looking at their life and wishing for what they have, they're busy looking at yours and wishing the same. 

It seems almost unimaginable to those of us living our own lives. How could anyone look at this and think they want it? In our tougher seasons, it doesn't make sense. But it's true. Because perspective is everything, and each of us feels like we're missing something...because we are. But that thing we feel like we're missing is different for each of us, so we end up just envying each other and wanting what looks like that last missing piece. 

Want to know the secret truth about all of this? 

The last missing piece for all of us is exactly the same. The trick is accepting it. 

We could get together and swap pieces of our lives until each of us has what we think we wanted, and it wouldn't do us any good. We would still feel like something was missing...because something would still be missing. We weren't made to have our lives complete, not this side of Eden. 

That missing piece that we're always searching for...is grace. And it only comes from the God who loves us. And it always comes from the God who loves us. 

Peter calls us all "heirs of the gracious gift of life" (3:7). In other words, we are all recipients of God's grace, and He has given us exactly the same amount of it - a full measure. 

A measure that pours down into our cracks and fills them up to wholeness. A measure that makes up for what this broken world leaves us lacking. A measure that reminds us that there's something so good about God that none of the troubles we face even stand a chance. 

A measure that makes our grass greener. Truly. 

We just have to be willing to look around our own lives and see it. 

So there's the challenge - what has God's grace done for you? Where do you see the full measure of it poured out in your life? What have you inherited through it?

Do you see the goodness? It's already here, right where you are. 

God the Judge

We have a pretty good idea of who is going to be saved. Or so we think. 

We look around at the horrible evils in the world, and we are certain those evildoers are not the kinds of persons God wants around Him for eternity. We're talking about the felons, yes, but we're also talking about the liberals...or the conservatives. The evangelicals or the charismatics. The men or the women. The seekers and the lost. 

We've got all kinds of categories of persons, based on our own perspectives and stories, who just aren't heaven material. At least, not as far as we understand God. 

But such an understanding - if you can even call it that - doesn't account for the vast majority of what God has to say about Himself, of what He told us we need to know about Him. 

One of those things we're supposed to know about Him - perhaps, when it comes to how we evaluate the persons around us and eternal salvation - is this: 

God is the only one who's gonna judge. And He's the only one who is gonna decide who He saves (James 4:12). 

Not you. Not me. Not the headlines. Not the church. Not the doctrine. Not the Bible as we have divided it, rightly or wrongly. None of that. 

Just God. 

And let me tell you something - 

God looks and He sees the sinner. He sees the liar and the worrier and the woman broken by sin. He sees the striver and the judgmental and the one drawn by the pleasures of the flesh. He sees the self-righteous, the righteously angry, the one just doing their best but falling woefully short anyway because that's how the wounded human heart just is, whether we like it or not. He sees the failure and the fearer and the tormented and the hurting. 

He sees her created in His own image, and His heart is moved with compassion. He sees all the barriers, all the brokenness, all the burdens, and still, He says - unlike so many of us - I can still save this one. I will save this one. 

And thank the Lord, for even with all my judgment, my perspective, my self-confidence, my utter arrogance about it, she is the one I also see...every time I look in the mirror.

God is Generous

For years, I gave faithfully to my church. A portion of my income, however meager it might have been, and even a portion of my investment, though it is small, too. I have always believed that it is God's desire that we be givers, and I believed that giving to our local church is an important part of that. 

Three years ago, I became separated from my church. And then, sadly, alienated from the same body. It was right about the same time I came into my first job with a living wage, stable hours, and a steady income. 

So here I was now, a Christian with generosity of spirit but no place to give. 

And let me tell you - this season has been so much fun. 

No, not because I'm keeping my money now, but because I am finding new and different and fun ways to give it. 

It's fun to take a portion of my money, set it aside each month, and then keep my eyes open for good things I can do in the world with it. For opportunities to use it to bless someone. For chances to give it away. Lest you think I'm here to brag or something silly like that, I won't tell you the fun things I'm doing with my money.

But I'll tell you that I am learning that God's work is just as vital outside of the church as in it. That one person, with the generosity of God, can make a small difference that makes a big impact. That giving truly is fun, and it isn't confined to a collection plate. In fact, I might dare say that the monies I have been able to give in joy and whimsy in the past three years have done more for the Kingdom of God than the amount I gave to my former church in more than two decades. 

What I really want to tell you, though, is how this kind of giving has deepened my faith. It has grown my connection to God. It has helped me to live a freer, more faith-filled life. And that's not an accident. 

See, generosity is not just God's advice. It's not just His plan. 

It's His heart. 

James tells us that God is generous and enjoys giving (1:5). And no matter how many sermons I've heard over the years on just such a thing or how many times I've been told that it's supposed to be fun, I never really believed it - I couldn't have believed it - until I understood it for myself. Until I experienced it for myself. Until I started making my own giving fun. 

Until I started enjoying it. 

And it's changed the way that I think about the God who gives good gifts to me. He enjoys it. He likes giving me good things. He loves filling my life with stuff it wouldn't have without Him. This is who He is. And when I remember that, it's much easier to accept the gifts. 

After all, what greater delight than to see good things growing from a gift that you enjoyed giving? 

God the Father

God is referenced as our Father; Jesus taught us that when He referred to the Lord as "Abba." And the Bible keeps telling us that we are His children. 

The Bible also keeps telling us, as in Hebrews 12:7, that God disciplines us like a father disciplines His children. Therefore, we should not only accept His discipline, but we should learn from it, since that's what it is for. 

True. 

But...

That doesn't mean that everything you experience in life is God's attempt to teach you a lesson. 

There's a lot of this bunk theology out there that tries to claim this very thing. In fact, I'm reading a book right now where the author recounts her experience with the unimaginable, and so far, she has spent all of the pages trying to explain how she just has to come to this place of submission so that she can learn what God is trying to teach her through this experience. So that she can understand why God wants her to have this season in her life. 

Here I sit, reading, and thinking, "What if He doesn't want that for you?" 

Because here's the truth - so many of the things we try to justify as God's good discipline in our lives, as God's desire to teach us something, as the seasons God, for some reason, "wants" us to have...are the same kinds of things we'd be screaming about if we saw them in the headlines. We'd be crying about child abuse, talking about it around the water cooler at work, signing petitions online demanding justice for the little one. 

Yet, we tell ourselves that God just does these things and it's our responsibility to submit ourselves to them so that we can learn something. 

Listen. Hear me on this: 

No. 

God is a good Father, not an abusive one. God does things that build us up, and we're not talking about an army style bootcamp rooted in a model of trauma. If it feels traumatic, God is very well working to turn it to good, but He didn't put the trauma there. You aren't supposed to be thankful for the scarring seasons in your life. That's not what God wants for you. 

So this thing where you feel abandoned and decide that God wants you lonely for some reason, no. This thing where your body breaks and you decide that God wants you disabled and broken, no. This thing where you lose all of your resources and are teetering on the edge of earthly ruin and you decide that God wants you in poverty, no. These things go directly against what God says He wants for you, what God has said is "very good," and they teach you to "submit" to Him as an abusive father, who you are somehow then supposed to turn around and love. 

What's happening is that this world is traumatizing you in its fallenness, in its brokenness, and God is doing everything He can to protect you from it. And to grow you through it. And to love you all the way. You have a good Father in the midst of a traumatic world, not a traumatic Father in the face of a good life. Don't ever confuse the two. 

The next time you're tempted to decide that this brokenness is what God wants for you, ask yourself how you'd feel if you read it in the headlines. If it fills you with righteous anger to think that there would be a father who would do this to his kid, then it's not God doing it to you. Period. 

But keep your eyes open and see what He'll do in response. I promise it will be amazing. 

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.