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.