Category: Uncategorized

This week, I've had the humbling priviledge of walking alongside a family who is journeying with a loved one in her last days on this side of the New Heaven and New Earth. In the midst of a week of celebration and gratitude (it is Thanksgiving week here in the United States), there are phone calls to the hospice, sleepless nights wondering if she is going to survive until the morning, and deep hope that they will have one more day with the light of this life still in the world.

The words that I keep coming back to in order to describe this time resonate around a theme: deep, humble, honest, grace, love, grief, beauty and glory.

There such honest grief here in this family, and a recognition that this pain is mingled with joy. No one is trying to pretend this isn't happening, or dealing with it in a detached, distanced way. No one has said, "Well, she's going to be in a better place."

While those may be effective and sometimes necessary coping strategies for some familes, for some people at one time or another, the hearts of everyone here are alive. Alive to God, alive to the risk of losing the one they love, alive to grief and possibility and laughter amidst deep pain.

As I look at the faces, particularly the face of this woman's daughter, I see the face of Christ. Jesus was honest in his grief—over Lazarus, yes, but also over Jerusalem, a broken, wayward city that wasn't what it should or could be. Death isn't what we are made for, it isn't part of the original plan, and as it comes in to steal, rob and destroy. And, yet, death isn't the reality of the people of God. For the Beloved (which is us), there is so much more, so much waiting for us that is beautiful, glorious, full of grace. We, like Jesus, have to walk through that valley of the shadow of death in order to get there, to be fully resurrected. And the rest of us have to wait on the other side of glory, giving our family members the grace of letting them go, and being plunged into the deep well of grief over that which isn't meant to be.

How can we possibly risk this? Even knowing what's on the other side, how can we choose to walk through this with our hearts wide open?

As I watch this family, and see the face of Christ in each of them, I realize that this reflection is the glory that is mentioned in 2 Corinthians 3:18. It is Christ within them, bearing them up, pouring out grace upon grace. And it is Christ sharing in their grief, as He knows and cares for every sorrow we have, weeping with us.

Grace, grief and glory. In this thin space between this world and the next, there is almost more beauty than my heart can handle. This is what it looks like to live with your heart fully alive, vulernable to the pains of the world and, more gloriously, to the life of Christ through you.

For this, to walk with this glory, pain and beauty, I am thankful.

Another wonderful blog post by Ann Voskamp (who I will need to extol here on my blog sometime very soon) on a blog I'm unfamiliar with, Heart to Heart with Holley.

This one is a correspondence between Ann and Holley, talking about how to be in the world wide web but not of it.

Enjoy…

* * *

How To Avoid Getting Caught in the World Wide Web:
Letters between friends about Social Media: #1

a letter from Ann Voskamp to Holley Gerth

::

Dear Holley, woman with a heart as wide as hope itself…

Do you remember first asking me —"How do you be in the world wide web but not of it?"

How can we navigate this cyberweb and not get caught in it?

Creating buzz while we are soundlessly being wrapped tighter and tighter…. till we are slowly eaten alive…

I know. What does any of this web stuff have to do with anything real, really? The world wide web, these blogs, this thing called "social media" — isn't all just a little bit — virtual? Unreal? Disconnected to the stuff of our life, our hearts?

Media, it comes from the Latin word meaning "middle." This way we're communicating here, right now, on this screen, this is in the middle of us, you and I, the middle of our world right now, and social media is the medium by which we are gathering as a culture right now — readers on one side of the screen and writers on the other — and if this is at the middle of our society right now — how do we ensure God is in the middle of it?

Read the rest of this amazing letter here.

A friend and fellow Anglican recently posted a wonderful meditation on Luke 13:24-27 on his blog (which is worth reading for his poetry, fiction and general life musings). An excellent and thought-provoking piece, I thought that I'd share it with you, here. I'm including the beginning of his post, and then linking to his blog, so you can read the rest of it there. Enjoy!

"Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will
seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up
and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the
door, saying, 'Lord, open up to us!' then he will answer and say to you,
'I do not know where you are from.'  Then you will begin to say, 'We
ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets'; and He
will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you are from…'"

~~~

The Lord ends his statement with a preposition, twice.  Apparently the
narrow door has something to do with more than grammar. His words ring
strange though, almost bumpkin, especially spoken into the sophisticated
air we currently breathe.  We strive with the question –
who am I? – some of us our entire lives.  We pass the striving on to our children and our children's children – do you know who you are?  In light of Jesus' riddingly poor grammar, I wonder if our question may be too broad.

Read the rest of this entry here.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been enjoying the summer thunderstorms that we’ve been having these past few days in Colorado (at least, if you're IN Colorado). Sure, it’s been oppressively hot. Sure, we’ve had to scurry inside with our kids and cut play dates at the pool short as the storms advance over Pike’s Peak. Yet, at the same time the lightning shows have been incredibly impressive, the booming thunder shaking the windows and reminding us how small we are in this vast world God has created.

I wish I could appreciate the storms in my own life with the same kind of laid-back acceptance and anticipation of beauty.

I’ve been reading Psalm 18 a lot recently. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been reading the “rescuing” parts of Psalm 18. The parts where God says He’s going to show up, or that He will rescue me because He delights in me. You know, the good parts.

The parts I haven’t been reading? The parts about His anger. Or the parts about how He shows up with smoke from His nostrils, or a consuming fire from His mouth. The parts where the Psalmist exalts because he got to crush all His enemies with God’s help. The parts where God shows up in darkness. Darkness, for goodness’ sake.

“He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—the dark rain clouds of the sky,” the psalmist sings, probably in a throaty bass.

Last summer was full of thunderstorms, too. I remember, because I always ended up driving in them, somehow. And I was reading Psalm 18, then, too (I’m a slow study sometimes.)

Full of thunderstorms—and hail. Which meant hail damage. Not only to our poor, beleaguered vegetable garden, but to our roof. On one particularly bad afternoon of hail, my car took some serious wounding.

This was not okay with me. I had been crying out to God about some other situations in our lives, and more damage to our property simply didn’t seem like a good thing. We were in a tight situation financially, and we had a daughter’s college bills to pay. We needed some rescue, and we needed it now. More storms just didn’t seem like the answer to prayer.

Funny enough, though, they were. The morning that I spent meditating on Psalm 18:12, angry at God for His seemingly nonchalant sense of irony, was the same morning that our insurance adjuster told us how much insurance money we’d get for the hail damage to my car. It was enough to fix the majority of the denting and pay our bills.

God smirked at me. With hailstones and bolts of lighting, He repeated to me.

Okay, okay. I get it.

And here we are again. Another summer of storms. I’m guessing that I’m not the only one embroiled in them, whether they’re the physical drenchings we’ve had over the past week or the kind of spiritual or emotional maelstroms that seem to strike out of nowhere, leaving you breathless and confused.

He makes darkness His covering.

I appreciate Psalm 18. It’s full of delight and victory and truth and life. But it’s also full of the contradictory methods of God, the ways that He shows up in the darnedest places, with the most unconventional methods, that seem a lot more like killing our tomato plants and scaring our dog than caring for our hearts.

But at the same time, He’s coming. He’s here in the darkness with us, and the storms. He’s parting the heavens and coming down, because He said He would never leave us or forsake us, and He’s really good at keeping His word.

My friend and fellow spiritual director, Mr. Kelly Bowers, and I were discussing resistance at our regular mentoring session. In spiritual formation parlance, resistance is any time anyone (myself, the directee) actively or passively moves away from a topic, a question or an experience. As we were speaking, God was reframing the understanding of resistance Later, Kelly sent me his reflections on the topic as he discussed this issue with God. I thought his words and reflections are such a precise understanding of resistance and the gift of God that it is to us in our spiritual journey that I got his permission to share his journal entry with you.

Resistance—as a good thing. Tara spoke of it in this way, and as we conversed and I thought about this, it, resistance, became a blessing. It indicates a pressing in by Your hand. Grace helps me in knowing resistance in not sin, not something to be ashamed of or to infer reproof or condemnation, but rather to recognize it indicates some tension between my heart and Yours. All too often I view resistance as something to affirm the poor message of "What is wrong with me" when actually it is a profound presence. It indicates an invitation by You into something new, something that may require more of me than I think I have but it is, nonetheless, an invitation into that which is good and holy.

How does this make you think differently about the times that you have resisted God or His work in your life?

Another post on Renovare's website…

How is your Lenten fast going?

If you're anything like me, two weeks into Lent, you've already broken your fast a few times.
Whether by accident or neglect—and I've been guilty of both so far—breaking a fast is often evidence of how deeply a thing controls you, taking your or my attention away from God.

And yet, there's a subtle challenge to what we do with ourselves, with our hearts, when we break a fast before its prescribed end. 

Read More…

In a society that is overworked, overextended and overwhelmed, Sabbath is the antidote. Rest, restoration, life.

Today's Friday favorite is a quote on Sabbath that really challenges our (and my) need to produce in order to be valued or loved (neither of which are the truth or basis of God's love of us.)

Friday Favorite: Sabbath Is…

“Sabbath is
…taking a day a week to remind myself that I did not make the world and that it will continue to exist without my efforts.
…a day when my work is done, even if it isn’t.
…a day when my job is to enjoy. Period.
…a day when I am fully available to myself and those I love most.
…a day when I remember that when God made the world, he saw that it was good.
…a day when I produce nothing.
…a day when at the end I say, ‘I didn’t do anything today,’ and I don’t add, ‘And I feel so guilty.’
…a day when my phone is turned off, I don’t check my email, and you can’t get a hold of me.”

(from Rob Bell. Velvet Elvis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005, p. 117-18.)