Cross Words Journey

This is the question my son, Carter, posed the other day.  We’d been at the grocery store where he and his brother rode around in a cart shaped like a fire engine, which is awkward & elephantine for the one pushing the cart.  In the van he asked, “Mom, when do you know to call the firemen.”

As I’m want to do I launched into an answer without carefully considering it, “Well when you see something on fire like a…”  (it is at this point my parenting gene kicked in and yelled: don’t scare him!  Name something unlikely to burn!)  I paused to pick a good item to throw on the imaginary flames and Carter chimed in, “Like a bush?”

“First you’d better see if it is God in that burning bush before you call the fire department,” I replied.

Scoffing, he said, “Mom!  I’m not Moses!”  It hadn’t crossed his mind that God could (and probably will in one way or another) appear to Carter himself.  I told him that all things considered he should check first.  And of course Carter then asked me the question of the ages, “How will I know if it is God in that bush?”

How do we know when God appears to us?  Let’s start with something far less abstract.  Where does God connect with us? Through the Word, the Bible.  If you don’t have one: get one.  It matters very little which translation you use, but you should be comfortable with it.  I personally use both the NIV and NRSV translations.  How do we talk with God? Through prayer and meditation (which is a fancy way of saying: listening once in a while).  Paul says in Ephesians 6:18, “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”  So when you think you’ve been encountered by God in nature, through a sense of calling, in a dream ask God, “Is this really you?” when you pray.  There is no harm in asking God to confirm an uncertain feeling you have; in fact it is a Biblical tradition.  Look at Gideon!  (Judes 6, esp verse 17)

Now as for Moses and the burning bush, let’s just consider what he encountered.  “[At Horeb] the angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in flames of fire from within a bush.  Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.  So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight - why the bush does not burn up.”  Exodus 3:2-3

Moses moseys over to the bush engulfed in flames!?!  What?  Brave!  Courageous!  I often fear that I’d run for safety if God chose to appear to me in such a way!  I take heart in the idea that self protection is a natural human reaction, but I fear that I’m not strong enough for God to bother appearing to.  After all, I might take it the wrong way and run.

You see God appearing is not about the person God appears to.  Moses is important yes, but God could have gotten Israel out of Egypt another way, regardless of the Cecil B DeMille interpretation God’s plan is not contingent on Moses alone.  God appears in myriad ways to further God’s kingdom in this world.  To empower the body of Christ as his hand and feet in the world: loving, working, worshiping.  This is why God comes to us and calls.  You don’t have to be Moses for God to appear to you.  Get used to it because odds are God will come to you one way or another!

So is the burning bush, dream, vision, sense of call really from God?  Well, are you inspired to find out or to run for your life?  Is it a haunting (aka Holy Spirit) experience?  Do you feel like the subject keeps returning to the fore of your mind?  When you listen to God in prayer (standard communication mode), what do you hear?

And what is the result of your burning bush?  Are you consumed?  Is the call you’re feeling making you diminished in any way?  Don’t confuse  diminished with changing your life.  When God calls  you change.  But God’s calling is overall nourishing spiritually to us.  God wants nothing less for us than a full, burgeoning relationship with God.  Ask yourself, Am Ion fire for God but not consumed?

How do you tell when a burning bush is actually God?  Ask.

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Galatians 5: 22-23

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law.

I wouldn’t say that I’m an impatient person, but then again I’ve never been known as one with loads of patience either. Frankly I never really thought about having patience or losing my patience until I became a mom.

Now I think about patience a lot. My oldest son is learning so many new skills and learning takes patience. If I get frustrated waiting for him to put his shoes on then he gets frustrated too. The basic lesson is: impatience gets us no where – fast!

Thanks to these Bible verses I’ve had a revelation about patience. The apostle Paul in writing to the Galatians lists these “fruits of the Spirit” because they are vital nourishment for whole lives.

The Galatians really needed to be reminded that these fruits come not from our own strength or ingenuity but from God. (Who doesn’t need that reminder?)

I need patience; but rather than possessing it – I receive it. It comes from turning to God daily, remembering my baptism, living in Christ.

I see now that I haven’t really lost my patience. Nor has the Spirit stopped offering fruits to me. But sometimes I stop the daily practices that make me attentive to receiving the fruits of the Spirit.

Abiding Spirit,

Thank you for always offering the fruits I need to live a balance life especially patience. Help me keep turning to you and receiving this nourishment.

In Jesus’ name, Amen

*Originally published in 2006 for Your Daily Bread.

Since I’ve written last we’ve let an offer on a house expire and we’ve learned we can’t afford our dream house and I’ve been muttering, “Lord, help my unbelief” constantly!

Carter, my 4 year old, said when looking at one home, “I wonder if this is the house God has in mind for us?”  He smiled as he said it and my heart was full, but we’re no closer to a home today than when we started the process.  When, exactly, will we find the house we’re to call home?  I feel physically ill just thinking about renewing the process in 10 days when we return to our new city.

I’m sad people!  And I’m praying for distraction so that I’ll quit orbiting my own mind with worry.  I’m praying that the devil steers clear of me because I can feel the old temptation surging within me to wallow and languish in the mire of sadness mixed with anger.

Lord, help my unbelief!  I know that you have something for us but could you lead us there quickly please?  I don’t know which way is up in this process anymore.  Where should we compromise?  Where won’t we have to compromise?  Keep me fixed on you Lord.  I love you.  Help my unbelief.  Amen

We made an offer on a home!  We’re excited, I think.  Kind of scared.  And we’re languishing in the process of the waiting game.  What if the seller says, ‘no?’

Each day there are times when I’m convinced we’ve made the wrong choice on which house.  The problem is that there just aren’t alternative choices for our family.   It may be that we return to house hunt again, starting the process anew.  I wonder if next time our stress level would be the same?

Grace has brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home.  Amazing Grace.

We’re looking for homes in our new city with growing panic.  Of the 9 we’ve toured not one warrants a second look.  Super out of date or super out of price range.  We feel we’re reasonable people who don’t require a McMansion and we’re willing to work to do some updates, but nothing fits with our vision of home.

So we’re praying and I hope you’ll pray for us too.  We know God called us here, to this new job opportunity for my husband and new community for our family.  We know that God will certainly bring us to a new home.  But in the meantime….we’re disappointed, panicked, sad.

My sister, a youth director, and her boss, a pastor, clashed recently about a mission trip to Mexico.  He micro manages by his own admission.  She refuses to worry about unforeseen conflicts for this July trip when it is, after all, only March.  She has things planned out: contingencies covered, transportation & lodging arrangements made, volunteers, chaperones,  Bible studies, prayer partners, funding + fund raisers.  He is worried that she isn’t worried and suggested she is, “Putting the Lord to the test!”

I mention this incident because I’m riding a fine line of trust and control.   I believe I’m gifted by God to make reasonable judgements, decisions, plans, etc.  But I also  believe that God’s plans (Jer. 29:11) supercede anything I create.  I’ve felt God’s calling and I feel God with me now.  But more than anything my sinful self longs to lash out against God, to rail for the discomfort I’m in during this process.  At this moment I don’t feel like trust, I feel like tirade!

I ‘m resisting with all my strength.  At the end of this journey will be the perfect home for us and all this will be worth it.  Right now I’m hanging by a thread!

Abiding Lord Jesus, touch my heart and mind.  Raise my eyes to you.  Keep me focused on your love, your grace, your plan.  Help me trust the time it takes to lead us home.  Amen

The adrenaline is rushing!  Lying in my bed reading (Agatha Christie), I heard a giant screech and cracking sound.  Some one (an idiot) ran into the telephone pole outside our home and drove away!  The pole is snapped in half and barely standing; the energy company is on the way.  The street is littered with debris.  People who saw it said the driver was going 70mph.

I live in an old neighborhood where telephone lines aren’t buried, but the poles are set back from driving traffic.  So really, the pole ought not to have posed a problem.  How could a person be so stupid?  Reckless with their life and with the lives of others?  My children and I play out there all the time during the day right in the area where this car went through our yard.  It makes me sick to think of the possibilities!

I’m a bit angry about this, and scared.  I know that I’ll have to do the one thing that will make me feel better: pray for that stupid driver.  This is how my life always works: I get angry and solace comes from the Lord, specifically when I pray for the person who made me angry.  At first when the anger is white hot, I just mumble something like, “God bless so-and-so.”   If I pray for another person invariably God changes my heart toward them.  Frankly this is nothing short of a miracle because my anger wants to dig in and hang on.

So tonight I pray, “God bless that person who drove like an idiot.  I hope they’re okay even though I can’t imagine that they are.  Amen.”

Carter is busy coining new words.  One is thumbernail, meaning the nail on your thumb.  Another new one is ‘Easterrific!’  Definitely said with an exclamation point attached.   He will say something is Easterrific  “just like Jesus.”  I’m taking this to mean that he finds such a thing unbelievably great.

And isn’t that exactly what Jesus is?  Unbelievably great.  I can scarcely  wrap my mind around God’s love for us through Christ Jesus.  It brings me to my knees quite literally.  I am in awe that God loves me that much.  I hope during this Easter time you’ve reflected on this love for you, for all of us.  It is a conundrum as Paul states in Ephesians.  He prays we can understand the enormity of God’s love through Jesus Christ while at the same time accepting that the why and how of God’s love is not something we will comprehend.  Today it is hard for us to accept mystery in anything especially in a God we commit our lives to.  But in Christianity there is a lot of mystery because, well, we’re not God!  (Thank God!)  And the love of God is a mystery, one in which we may see the enormity but not how it is sustained or true.  We must trust with faithful hearts that it just is.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Check out all of Ephesians 3:14-21 (These verses were read at our wedding!)

An odd worship experience this morning.  Today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Palm Sunday is a tense day of the church year.  It is filled with hollow celebration because of an undercurrent of knowing something is about to go terribly wrong for Jesus.

We’re Easter people.  We know how the story ends and why it has to happen this way.  Yet every year part of us roots for Jesus to live.  We know Jesus is unjustly crucified and want it to end like a movie: God sweeps down from the sky saving Jesus and establishing Him as an earthly ruler.  Palm Sunday is as close to that happy dream ending as we come.

Even though we know what will happen later this week, even though we know how it all turns out, we need to celebrate Palm Sunday.  It is an important part of the Lenten journey.  But apparently many people aren’t taking the time to observe Lent.  Well, at least not in my church.

Today we celebrated a mixture of Palm Sunday + Maunday Thursday + Good Friday.  The only reason I can figure our traditionalist Pastor chose to do this is that the body of the congregation isn’t observing the Maunday Thursday and Good Friday portions of the Easter story.  They are going from the celebration of Palm Sunday to the celebration of Easter without the reflective, sad, painful stops in between.

People have to know what happens on Thursday and Friday, otherwise Easter means nothing!  So it is good that the church makes sure they get a taste of the whole week on the one day they come, Palm Sunday.  And our usual service was unusually packed today.  People come to church for Easter and Christmas, but at least they’re coming!  And as a church it is important to help everyone understand the immensity of Easter, especially those who don’t come regularly.

Lord Jesus, make me let go of my old ways so that I do not stand in the way of your Word.  I know I like Holy Week the “old way” best, but the old way is gone.  Help me get over the format of worship and just worship!  Amen

My husband took a job in Green Bay, Wisconsin!  We’re really excited.  Well, I am except for the whole Packer thing.  I’ll be biting my tongue a lot.  I like cheering for football, but I stop at worshiping at team.  Any who…

This was a long decision and mostly we sat at indecision.  One day my sister shared these song lyrics with me:

If you say, “Go,” we will go.

If you say, “Wait,” we will wait.

If you say, “Walk out on the water,” and they say, “It can’t be done,”

We’ll fix our eyes on you and we will come.

It totally changed my thinking.  I was so worried about every potential thing.  But then God lifted my face by the chin and I could see and trust again.

Here I am, Lord.  Looking at you.  Lead me.  Amen