Love Is Not Smart

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.


Reading this is like taking a trip down a path. It is sunny, but the trees shade your path. The birds are singing, you are smiling, all is right with the world. La-de-da-de-da! Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast. On and on, good words, honorable words, true words. But you get to verse 7 and it is like you are hitting some rocking road. Love ALWAYS protects, ALWAYS trusts, ALWAYS hopes, ALWAYS perseveres???? Wait a minute!! What if the object is not worth my protection? What if the person is not trustworthy? What if the situation is hopeless? What if every ounce of my being is screaming for resolution, but none is found??? The birds have stopped singing, the clouds are forming, and the world is suddenly not right at all.


Love is not very smart if it puts itself out there to be abused. It is not very savvy if it puts all its eggs in one basket just to see them dropped and broken. It is surely not wise if it hopes in someone who is a hopeless cause. Surely it cannot go on when there is nothing and no one to go on with.

But you see, God is just that. If there was a picture next to love it would by God or the physical incarnation of him, Christ our Lord. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Okay, I am feeling better now. He has the shoulders to bear under that. He is able to do all those superhuman things.

But my teeter totter has not finished rocking. If my prayer is to grow into His likeness, and it is, then this is me too. Not the perfect form of Love, but shouldn’t I have the ever increasing desire to be all this? How do I do that? I am in a pickle. There are folks in my life that I cannot trust, they have hurt me. There are folks so vulnerable, I do not have enough energy or resources within me to protect them. There are things going on in my life that are trying to snuff out the candle of hope burning in me. And, God knows (literally) that my perseverance tank is running mighty low. So how do I do it?

Is it that in every human being there is a spark of the divine? No matter if they have acknowledged it, no matter if they have denied it. And the love of me, as it grows reaches out, seeks them out and somehow connects in a way that I might not even be aware of. As I grow in Him, do I just do that? Grow In Him! I hope so, I really do….

Bars and Chains

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

Because the LORD has anointed me
To bring good news to the afflicted;
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And freedom to prisoners


Isaiah 61:1






Early, this past Sunday morning, as I sat in my empty sanctuary, I could almost picture the people that would fill the pews. As I did, these words of scripture came to mind.


Later as I looked over the congregation from the choir loft, I saw the reality in the faces looking back at me. Had I not been prepared, I would have been picking out the “two-fers”. Those who darken the door of a church only on Easter and Christmas. Before that scripture, I would have hoped they received something from the worship experience. Something that would bring them back or, even better, walk them down the aisle to profess their faith.


But now as I saw their faces, I saw something else. I saw captives and prisoners. Not just in those unknown faces, but also in the familiar faces of my family of faith. It dawned on me that so many of us in that room were being held captive and we did not even realize it. The bars were ones that so many of us shared, they were almost invisible. Cells of addiction to work or play. Prisoners to ill health and financial woes. Bindings of greed, anger, lust, and guilt were so entwined, freedom was barely a distant memory.


Hope was the message preached this past Sunday and it is the message the world of today is dying to hear. Hope in a freedom that seems so elusive. A freedom that must be desired before it can be realized.

As it was proclaimed in our worship, I realized the actual “setting free”was not in a number on our rolls, a trip down the aisle, or even tears on a cheek. It was the ability of His Word to do a work in a heart. Unseen and often unnoticed. But inch by inch, link by link, chains could be removed and there was no knowing if this Easter Sunday was the day when the final link would be shattered or the prison door flung open.


Because, He does nothing without our permission or our agreement. And to make that decision, we must see the prison bars and have hope that it is possible to be set free. That is our mission and our call to preach.

Undeserved Love

Undeserved Love......

That is what the Easter message truly is.   God reaching down to a hurting, messed up, needy, sinful creation.  And in doing so,saying "You are my beloved".  And the proof was on the cross.

In thinking about this, I thought about who we love undeservedly.  We love our families but that is out of blood connection and somewhat duty.  We care for co-workers and friends.   But here again, in our busy lives we do not go too deep.  There is only so much time and energy left after our day or work and play that can be expended.  We seek to invest in those friends that are low maintenance.  Much as we choose the shrubs in our landscaping.  Friends that require little of our time and energy.  That we can pick up from time to time to enjoy.  That give as much as take.  That reciprocate our care and concern.  Needy, high maintenace folks are shunned or at least avoided.

But you see, that is not how Jesus worked.  He not only acknowledged the needy and lost, he invested in them.  He loved them and healed them.  I never thought about it, but I am sure many of those healed and fed were in the group of followers that followed Him from city to city.  Still needing to be near Him.  To see Him and touch Him.  Much like the woman with the issue of blood, I am sure these least of mankind drained power from His very essence.

So as I approach Good Friday and prepare to be confronted with His final act of benevolence, what am I to do with this over the top grace? How do I begin to emulate that in my life and my living? Where do I find the time to "love" as He did?  Who do I choose to invest in? What must I give up to do this? 

Lord, where do I even begin....

A Glimpse of Heaven

I enter this Holy Week with a great sadness.  A young couple I know has lost their 2 year-old little girl.  She had a congenital heart defect and was on the list to receive a new heart.  It just was not to be.

This great tragedy is compounded by the fact that her four year old brother died one year ago this month from the same ailment.  It was not even known at the time he had the condition until he collapsed at a sporting event and died subsequently.  

In praying for the young couple, I was at a loss for words.  What solace could there possibly be for the loss of 2 precious children?  How could someone ever get over something like that.  Even silence,  tears, and moans could do no justice to so great a tragedy.  But what came to me, in that expression to God, was a plea for heaven.  If the young couple could just see a glimpse of the place their children now lived.  If they could see the face of Jesus and the love He has for their babies.  The heavenly host who have so wrapped their love and their support around these two darlings - perhaps that would be of some comfort.

As the week has progressed, I thought of another parent.  How did God perceive this Holy Week we are traveling through?  How does a parent watch and wait for what He knows will unfold?  How can He know that He will literally sit on His hands and that His will is for His Son to do the same?  What pain and agony!  A torturous death that could in all actuality be avoided.  And for what?  A world that would scorn, scoff and curse His name not only in that moment but for thousands of years to come? 

Was that glimpse of heaven what sustained them?  Did God realize in a few short days, His Son would be released from the earthly bonds He had submitted Him to thirty three years prior.  Was He picturing Jesus once again joining Him, sitting at His right hand, ruling with Him over heaven and earth?

And was the fact that this one act of sacrifice on the parts of them both, would open heaven's gates in a way that nothing else had, would, or could.  That the division between perfection and imperfection, sinner and saint, good and evil - all would be bridged by the very act of their mutual suffering and pain.  The same glimpse of heaven would become a reality for us all. 

I am sitting here loved, saved, and sanctified because They did!

Alleluia!!

Do You Feel It?

 Have you ever been prayed over? 

I mean “laying on of hands” prayed over?

I have on a few occasions, but the time I never will forget was when I was in the 7^th grade. We had a lay witness team come to our church.  It was a revival movement of the Methodist Church during the 70’s.  A team of youth and adults would come to a church for a weekend.  They stayed with families within the church and just witnessed through a series of meetings.  For the youth, it culminated in a prayer circle on Saturday night.  A chair was placed in the center of the circle of youth and anyone desiring prayer came forward.  Other kids from the circle were invited to come forward and touch their friend and pray for them.

In the volatile emotional world of teens, there was a lot of crying and soul searching.  The beauty of the chair and the circle was that there were no divisions.  Star jock had his hand on the biggest nerd of the group.  Cute cheerleader held the hand of the shy wallflower.  We cried and prayed and our youth group was never the same again.  At the altar call on Sunday morning I went forward and gave my life to Christ.  As an adult, I think it was an acknowledgement of something that had been transpiring since I was a child, but it was a turning point none the less.

In the scripture for this Sunday, I think back to that time.  Jesus is praying for his disciples.  Put yourselves in their place.  He has washed your feet.  He has shared bread and wine with you.  Saying it was His body and His blood.

Now He has told you that He truly is going away and some type of Holy ghost is going to take His place. And now He is praying for you.  You can almost feel His hands on your head.  Feel that as you read these words take from John 17:

   “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.

The word that kept coming back to me in reading this was “glory”.  Looked it up in the Greek and it means to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged.  Jesus was to about to be glorified. 

 You might say, he had been.  But you see, what Jesus had revealed of Himself was not a piece of lint in comparison to the majesty of His glory.  And in being revealed, it would in turn glorify God. Not in the earthly sense, Jesus was approaching the most degrading, humiliating part of His life.  

But don’t you see, we are to enter a Holy Week that traces the trip to that point.  All of Christendom was born on the cross that Jesus died.  Talk about glory!!

He tells God that glory has come to him through the disciples.  Take a look around the table.  You have fishermen, zealots, collectors – a rag tag bunch of men.  But men who have given up livelihood, homes, and family to follow an intinerant preacher.  They have glorified Jesus by their very presence at His side.

But Jesus does not stop there, He includes us…

  ²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

He has given us His glory. He has deemed us worthy by His death and resurrection.  We are to be included.  Though we may never have seen His face, nor heard His words.  We are worthy of His blood and His gift.

Wow!

   ²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

Lord, I am humbled by this gift

Because right now, I see all those that have stood in Your presence between me and this time

I see Christians that gave up their lives for your Word to be proclaimed. 

That were persecuted for a printing a page from your Word

That came to these shores to seek religious freedom

I feel the hands of my grandfather and grandmother that took me to their little country church to worship

My parents that insisted I attend church every week and learn more about you

And the legacy that has burned in my bones and I have passed on to my children and grandchildren

May the flame never die!


Amen

Easter Truth

When I was a young mother, I was torn between two camps.  My fundamentalist friends were determined that their pre-schoolers know  the whole truth and nothing but the Easter truth.  The exact events of the crucifixion and resurrection.  All the gory details.  Their children had to know, right along with their colors and ABC's, that Jesus Christ died for their sins.  How else will they know what a sacrifice He made for them.  


My friends that swung a little further the other way, felt that Easter should be a time of little seeds planted in moist cotton balls, deep inside Dixie cups.  Watching and waiting for the new life that would emerge from the seed.   Or a chrysalis, ready to open, a new butterfly, symbol of metamorphosis - life from death.   Not a word about B-L-O-O-D or the C-R-O-S-S.   I was torn between the two, wanting to be the good Christian mommy I knew I should be. But somehow, I found my own stand.    I came to the realization that if my daughter did not know and love Jesus, His death would be just another sad story.  Love first, sacrifice later.


Twenty plus years later, I am again working with children and Easter is again knocking at my door.  But I am older and wiser and I see things a bit different.  I still feel the children should know and love Him, but they must also know how much He loves them.  For that was the gift of Easter.  Love came down for us at Christmas.  But Love died and rose for us at Easter.  


Here is a poem I wrote about my earlier dilemma.  A little dark and edgy, I warn you....

Easter Truth

Should little ones learn

In Sunday School rooms

That their dear Jesus died

A horrible death

To save their sweet souls

So with each sweet breath

They can raise their voices

To sing Alleluia

Symbols of that death

As common to them

As their dolls and toy trains

Their burden to tote

Until each of them speaks

The gory tale by rote

Sweet voices singing

‘Bout rivers of blood

Alleluia

Why would you let them

Play with nails from His cross?

Metal and heavy

With sharp pointed ends

Could put out their eye

Or might pierce their hands

So how could you let them

Play with nails from His cross?

Alleluia

Or let a little one

Wear a thorny crown

Could you bear to see

Their perfect skin marred

It’s sure to leave them

Wounded, perhaps scarred
So on those dear heads

Please no crown of thorns

Alleluia

Or dress one so young

In a blood stained robe

Perhaps torn in shreds

They’d surely ask why

And when they were told

It would make them cry

So let’s not dress them

In His bloody robe

Alleluia

In the eyes of a child

Crosses are made of gold

Worn about the neck

And robes made of satin

Or nautical suits

And heels of white patent

The only thing marred

On a small child of five

Alleluia

For He begged the children

To gather round his knee

His joy to watch them

Play with fuzzy chicks

Or hunt egg’s colored shell

Laugh at pollen touched noses

From the lilies they smell

His hugs to enfold the

Sweet children He died to save

Alleluia

The Maze

I am sure glad apps were not around when I was young. I had enough issues just keeping my nose out of a book!  I just love to play games. Sudoku, Crosswords, Hearts, Spades, Jeopardy, I could go on and on!!


But one I am presently fascinated with is a maze. I just started playing this app, so for now it is pretty simple. I hold my tablet more or less flat and tilt the sides up and down so that this little silver ball moves around corners and down alleys.

 Now it is not a maze in the truest sense, because I am looking down and I can trace the ball to the end before I even start. To experience a true labyrinthian maze, you would need to be following one incorporated in a landscape. You can find a few here, but there are quite a number of intricate ones in Europe, particularly in England and France. Hedges are maintained at a height higher than the average person. Twists and turns take you from what seems dead-end to dead-end. People have actually gotten lost in them and have had to wait for folks to find them. Seems funny, but I bet it could be a bit fearful for the person who was lost.


Life is a lot like a maze. We have all been at those points where we don’t know which way to turn. Many times one direction or opportunity seems the same as the other. We pray, asking for God to give us a sign, some answer, but often it seems He is silent. We start off on one path to find ourselves at a dead end. Or go through one of those episodes in life where we know we are traveling the wrong path, and we just don't care.


I belong to a small group of maze buddies. It just happens to be my Sunday School class at church. I have had the privilege of being in that group for the past 20 years. Some of the faces have changed over time, but we are all on this maze called life and I guess their mere presence there tells me that we all want to choose the right path. It's funny, but looking back I don’t know what I would have done without them. 


Times when I was just so tired of the twists and turns, they were there to encourage me. When I would get to a dead end for what seemed the "umpteenth" time,  I would feel like just sitting down and crying.  Sometimes, I literally did.  There they would be, putting an arm around me.  Many times crying along with me. Times when I was heading down a particularly thorny path, I would find them walking beside me.  Letting me know they had been down a tough road themselves and if they could make it,  so could I. Their sight extended no further down the journey than mine,  but they were there to share their stories, their tears, and their laughter with me. I could not imagine this trip of life without them.


And that has made all the difference.  In my maze, or I guess you can say…my life