Coincidence

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

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

Nah. 

See, that's what faith is about. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry. That just doesn't work for me. 

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

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

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

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

Little Signs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, they're everywhere. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eyes of Faith

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

Faith changes the way that we see the world. 

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

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

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

And it's simple, but it's not easy. 

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

It's seeing first and judging later. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accommodation

I put a solid board under my mattress. 

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

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

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

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

Until I remembered...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good on Paper

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

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

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

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

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

They ask somebody who has done it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advocacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great. But did you actually do anything for them? 

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

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

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

Weak. 

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

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

Pharisees. 

Protest

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

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

They wish the government would do better. 

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

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

But... 

These are the things the church used to do. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wheat and Weeds

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

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

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

So they let the weeds grow. 

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

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

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

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

But there's more than that. 

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

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

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

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

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

Wedding Guests

Want to do another one? Let's go. 

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

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

So are you. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Men

Jesus was known for His parables - short stories that conveyed a powerful spiritual meaning. And in many of Jesus's parables, there appear to be two main characters, or two types of person. 

Too often, we read these parables and try to figure out which of the characters we are. If we tend toward being one, we consider ourselves righteous; more toward the other, we consider ourselves more depraved. We generally walk away inspired to be one over the other, trying to change to become more like the one we more admire, the one who seems more right. 

This feeds naturally into the comparisons we are always making between ourselves and others, comparisons where most of us come to the conclusion that we are "better" than the average other person. If we're more like the righteous-sounding character, then we're winners (and we're almost always winners); if we're more like the less-righteous-sounding character, we have some work to do. 

But there's another way to read these parables of Jesus, and I think, at least in my own experience with myself, it's the better way. 

In the parables of Jesus, when there are two men or two types of men or two groups of men to choose from, the correct reading illuminates that...I am both of them. 

For example...

Jesus tells a parable about two men who go to the Temple to pray. One is a Pharisee, the other, a tax collector. They both notice that the other is there; they've seen each other out of the corner of their eye. The tax collector lifts his hands toward the heavens and thanks God that he's not like the tax collector; the tax collector bows to the ground and says what a deplorable man he is, desperately in need of God's mercy. 

And we walk away wanting to be like the tax collector. 

But the truth is...part of us already is. And part of us is the Pharisee. 

Inside me is both a man who is looking around, comparing myself to others, trying to be righteous by being better and one who is humbled before God, troubled by my own shortcomings, knowing my own fallenness and desperate need of mercy. 

As much as we want to idolize one of these men over the other, the truth is that they both have their less-desirable traits. The Pharisee is self-righteous and caught up on his own superiority and authority. The tax collector is a sell-out, working for the state and often corrupt in his dealings with men. 

They both have their more-desirable traits, too. The Pharisee knows the statutes of the Lord and the covenant that he lives in, and he recognizes things that are displeasing to God (like being a sell-out and corrupt in your dealings with men). The tax collector knows his own corruption in the light of the Lord, even if he's not as well-versed in every single tittle of the statute. 

It's not that one of these men is righteous and the other is not. It's that both of these men are me, they are parts of myself as I wrestle with what it means to be a person of God. With what it means to be faithful. 

And here's maybe the most important thing that we can recognize about both of these men, about both sides of ourselves...they're both in the Temple. They're both seeking to worship and to pray and to connect with God. 

And if I find that that is true about both of the men in me, well, then, I suppose I am on a good road, at least.

Even as I seek to pray more like the tax collector, I must realize that the Pharisee is standing next to me in the very same Temple. And...that's something. I think. 

Changes

The truth is that no matter what changes you want to make to your life or to yourself, even the good ones, it will fundamentally change something about the way you relate to yourself...something you didn't anticipate.

None of us likes everything about ourselves. We don't. There's something that each and every one of us would change if we had the chance. Something small, something big, something deep, something cosmetic, something everyone sees, something only we see, something we are, something we feel. 

But very few understand that changing something about yourself feels like it changes the fundamental nature of who you are, too. 

Even if it's something you didn't particularly like about you. 

Because you've only ever had a chance to live in your body. You haven't gotten to try anything else out; you've always been you. That means that even the things you don't like, you've learned to live with. Whatever that means for you. You have learned to live your days with the burden of the thing you don't like about you and in doing so, it has become part of your story. 

That time it kept you from doing something you wanted to do. That moment when it became more defining than you wanted it to be. That chance meeting that suddenly became something else entirely because that part of you came out and it changed the tone of everything around you. Your story is told in moments like these, and in these moments, you have been...well...you. 

Pile enough moments like these up, and you're convinced that if you're ever given the chance, you'd jump at it - at any opportunity to change this thing about you. 

But if you actually do get that chance, you suddenly wonder...who are you without it? 

Sometimes, it's because that thing is just fundamentally us. I mean, if you don't like your nose and you want forever to change your nose and you finally change your nose, then when you look in the mirror for the first season, you're not going to recognize yourself in the same way. Something about you is different. Something about you is lost. 

Sometimes, it's because the thing we don't like about ourself consumes so much of our energy, so much of our head space, so much of our attention that once we change it, we don't know who we are without that pet project any more. Who am I if I am not obsessing about this broken-ish thing that I hate about me? Who am I if I'm not the person trying to overcome it? 

Don't get me wrong - it can be a blessing. Absolutely. But it's also...a grief? It's a major fundamental change in the nature of the self that we're living in...a person with whom we are intimately connected, even in the things we don't like about that. And all of a sudden, we lose that part of ourselves and even if we wanted to lose it, even if we did it on purpose, something's...different. And we have to learn to deal with that. 

I think more of us need to think about that before we go on changing things. We need to honor the stories we're living now, even with our ugly bits, so that we really understand what it will mean to separate from them and move on when that opportunity comes. If, that is, we decide that we really want to. 

Sometimes, I'll tell you from experience, we find that the things we thought we hated about ourselves are the things that have created the very details in our stories that we're most fond of and you know what? Maybe we're not willing to lose that after all. Not when it really comes down to it. And...that's okay, too. 

Just something to think about. 

Living with Yourself

"You speak so quietly. You have a very soft voice." 

I laughed. Out loud. 

"What?" she asked. 

Quiet was just never something that I had considered myself. Ever. 

And yet, the more I thought about it, the more this speech therapist might have been onto something. Folks had been telling me my whole life how quiet I was, but I could never believe them. I've never felt quiet. In fact, every time I have opened my mouth, I have felt dramatically loud...which may be how I learned to be so quiet. 

Fast forward to this week, and I finally understand why. 

As it turns out, I have a medical condition that causes something called autophony - hearing your body sounds, including your voice, in your head. 

A couple of months ago, I was sitting around talking to my mom and was being driven crazy by a noise in my head that wouldn't stop, and I told her it was "like the sound you hear when you hear yourself blink" and she started laughing at me. It was the first time in my entire life that I started to think there was something abnormal about that. But I've always heard my own voice that way, too. So of course, I have always thought myself to be a loud person. 

Sometimes, to be fair, I am a little loud. Usually, that's because I'm self-conscious about being too quiet and am trying to project more. Whatever. 

Anyway, I tell you that story to tell you this: 

The condition that causes my autophony is also causing some of the other problems I'm dealing with, and after receiving a proper (though still preliminary, with more testing pending) diagnosis this week, I've been told there are options to fix it. Obviously, I got extremely excited about the opportunity to fix the other problems...problems that are frustratingly life-affecting. 

But that night, as I laid down and started to really process the hope and the fresh optimism that the day had brought me, I realized something: 

Fixing this problem would also affect my autophony. Fixing these other problems will affect how I hear my own voice. 

That realization stopped me in my tracks. 

All of a sudden, I wondered what it would be like to fundamentally change the way that I experience myself in the world. Seriously. I don't know what it's like for someone without autophony. I don't know if you can hear your own voice at all. I don't know if you only hear it coming into your ears. I don't know what it's like to live without this.

The way that this has the possibility of changing the way that I experience myself is...something to consider. 

Anyway, I tell you that story to ask you this: 

Of all the things you're fighting right now in your life, of all the things that are broken, of all the things that aren't the way you wish they would be...how would it change your experience of yourself to change them? Have you thought about the changes it would take in your own being to process something totally different about the human you know best in this world - yourself? How do you deal with that?  

Seducement

We're talking about Joanna, a disciple of Jesus who is mentioned by name in Luke 8 and 24. He identifies her as being the wife of Chuza, the chief steward for Herod. And, as we talked about yesterday, a lot of feminist theologians have jumped all over this, claiming she must be named so that we can understand how Herod knew so much about Jesus, as if the king wasn't paying attention to what was happening in his own realm. 

But I told you there's an easier, better way to interpret Joanna's presence in the Gospels. And here it is: 

She is the seduced. 

Let's back up here for a minute and start from the beginning. Or, the beginning-ish. Joanna is the wife of the king's chief steward. But if you go back through the Scriptures, there is another such woman named in the Bible. 

Or not named. 

She was the wife of Potiphar, Pharoah's chief steward way back in Egypt. Remember this? 

Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery after revealing a couple of dreams that he had about how his brothers, the other 11 tribes of Israel, would bow down to him, while he was wearing his special coat of many colors that demonstrated his father's special love for him. When Joseph arrived in Egypt, he was sold into Potiphar's house as a slave. Potiphar was the chief steward for Pharoah. 

After he had been there awhile, and we don't know exactly how long, Potiphar's wife found herself alone with the rugged Hebrew, and she attempted to seduce him. When that didn't work, she grabbed his coat as he ran away, made false accusations against him when her husband came home, and got him thrown into prison, where he should have rotted and died, except for the fact that God gave him a special ability and a hedge of protection so that he could save the entire world, and especially his brothers, from certain death, fulfilling several prophecies while doing so. 

Okay. That's the back story. Now, fast forward back to Joanna. 

Joanna is the wife of the chief steward, but this time, she's not the seducer. This time, Joanna is the seduced. She is captivated by the Bridegroom, by the Lover of her soul. She's not creating stories; she's swept up in them. 

In the story of this special son whose Father has a special love for Him. In the story of this son of Abraham, son of Isaac, son of Jacob, Son of God whose brothers will all bow down before Him. In the story of this Hebrew given special ability and a hedge of protection so that He could save the entire world, and especially His brothers, from certain death...fulfilling several prophecies while doing so. 

Do you see it? 

Joanna in the Gospel of Luke is the echo of Potiphar's wife from Genesis. She is the redemption story of the seducer, who has become the seduced. The one so desperate to be loved has discovered that she is loved...and becomes a lover herself in return. A follower. A disciple. 

She doesn't grab onto the edge of His coat; she wraps Him tenderly in grave clothes. 

Do you see it? 

Joanna is one more story that God is re-telling in the New Story. One more scene that gets rewritten when Jesus gets on the scene. One more woman who becomes a symbol of redemption because yes, Jesus loves her. 

The Bible tells us so.

Maybe she had Chuza's ear and he had Herod's and she played some kind of behind-the-scenes role in everything that unfolded in Jerusalem for a few years. We can't rule that out. But given everything we know about the Bible, about the way God tells His story, about what is written right there for us, is this: we've seen Joanna before...and now, we see her with Jesus, transformed. 

And isn't that what Jesus does best? 

Joanna

Let's talk about Joanna for a minute. 

If you're wondering who Joanna is, you can find her mentioned by name only twice - in Luke 8 and 24. Joanna was the wife of Chuza, who was King Herod's chief steward. She also happened to be a follower of Jesus. 

Most of the time when you hear Joanna mentioned, it's in the context of the crucifixion of Jesus. That is, someone has done some deep digging through their Bible and discovered aha! Joanna was a disciple of Jesus, and Joanna's husband was King Herod's chief deputy, so obviously, Herod had heard a lot about Jesus "through the grapevine," as it were, because Joanna obviously had her husband's ear, and he might even have been closet follower of Jesus when, you know, it was socially appropriate for him to do so, and he in turn had Herod's ear, so he probably told Herod a lot of stuff about Jesus and voila! Jesus is known by the king. 

This is an interesting take. And it's not one I think we can outright dismiss. But I think it's lazy...and I think it makes a lot of character assumptions that change the way we read the story. 

For example, if Herod is getting his information about Jesus from Chuza, what kind of king is he? Jesus is a big thing happening in the region. Everybody's talking about Jesus. Everybody's coming out into the streets to follow Jesus around. It's not like Herod looks out his window and see a single guy walking around who seems kind of different; there's always a crowd around Jesus. Any king worth his weight would take notice of this. 

Not only that, but there's talk among some of Jesus's followers (and some who are not His followers), that He's the rightful "King of the Jews." Pilate will even write this on a proclamation above the Cross and hang it for all to see. In three languages, so that everyone can read it. Now, if you're the actual appointed king at the moment, don't you think you'd already know something about this guy walking around that some are claiming to be king? Don't you think you'd want to know everything about Him? He's a threat to your position, potentially. 

So there's a Guy in the kingdom of Herod who draws crowds wherever He goes and who is proclaimed by many to be some kind of King, and the feminist theologians, who want Joanna to have some grand, big role in the story of Jesus, tell you that she's the one who...maybe indirectly...told Herod everything he knew about Jesus. So that when it gets down to it and Jesus stands trial, the leadership of the region already knows something about Him. 

See, Luke is also the only Gospel writer who tells us that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod first, then Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate. Is it because Joanna had told Herod so much about Jesus that he was willing to let Him go? Had Joanna told Herod so much that Herod has talked with Pilate already, maybe numerous times, about the Man? 

When Jesus stands in the royal courts of the region, there's a certain interpretation of the Scripture that wants you to believe that Joanna's voice was somewhere in the room. 

Maybe it was. 

But that requires a lot of conjecture, a lot of interjection of our own cultural norms and maybe even our desires, and a lot of sanctified imagination. 

I think there's an easier way to interpret something meaningful from Joanna that doesn't require all that.... (I'll tell you tomorrow.)