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Faith Life

Finding Today: A Guest Post By Robert Rife

Lone surfer

Today.

It is surprising how much time one can spend yearning for an unknown future or pining after a rose-colored past. I for one have lived too much in this unhealthy and unnecessary tension.

The healthy version of the already but not yet is the glowing embers of a faith in what has already happened, what is presently happening and what is still to happen. That is a tension worth exploring.

The Gift Of Today

I am speaking in more general terms. Today is like no other before it and unlike anything to come. It is absolutely unique in every way. Of course, it will have many features seemingly identical to those previously experienced that will give it a certain…predictability, at times ennui. But, for anyone seeking to practice life with God, it is anything but.

Life can be routine but hardly predictable and never dull.

Therefore, it pays to be consistently grateful and regularly hopeful.

I entered this day with old, familiar fears, recognizable yearnings and comfortable proclivities; the stuff that is my warp, woof and wake. God is not unfamiliar with these things in me. Nor is God particularly vexed by them since, to quote G.K. Chesterton, “sin [read all that doesn’t quite make the grade in life’s terms] is the least interesting thing about us to God.” Good thing because I’m especially gifted at it and have a few spectacular ones to my credit. Viewed through the wrong lens, they might easily be misconstrued as a jaunty tip of the hat to the devil (who or whatever that is).

To live life perched atop the twin cliffs of unfulfilled longing and unrealized dreams is to lean precariously over a bubbling cauldron of self-pity and willful blindness. That is an ugly, unwelcome concoction to be sure. It smells bad. It’s dangerous and never very fortifying.

God brings so many people into my life. Some want someone to hear them laugh and rejoice. Others are hurting, needing the Jesus touch, which, at that exact moment, can only be brought by me. God is both willing and fully capable of doing so without me. But why, when I’ve been given the gift of inclusion in the secret schemes of heaven while living on earth?

The fact is that I/we, have been given life, physically and spiritually. I do not want to waste such a precious gift trying to foist upon the world the unwieldy clubs of self-pity, regret, self-doubt, self…anything. In seeking to be healed, I must seek instead to become an agent of healing. And I can only do that as I open my eyes to what my eyes first see.

In the days and months that drift lazily past like a prairie stream, things have changed. My mind has changed on stuff. I think differently about who I am and who I am not. I feel differently. I no longer feel the need to grope desperately in the darkness for any shred of passing light but, in the waning dark, revel in the growing light. As they say, “it’s a God thing.” Instead of grasping for things over which I have no control, I am striving to submit honestly and readily to things as they are; the life I am currently living.

The life I have is the one I embrace. Regardless of what may still be lacking, I lean into all that is and hope for what can be; for what is yet to come.

I am finding today.

Are you learning to live in “today?”

Robert Rife, a music and worship minister in Washington state, is a poet, writer, singer/songwriter and holds an MA in Spiritual Formation and Leadership. Check out Robert’s Blogs, Innerwoven and Rob’s Lit-Bits.

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Sabbath Quiet: Holy Discontent

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. ~ Jesus Christ

Early spring trees

Holy Discontent

Let us in all the troubles of life remember that our one lack is life–that what we need is more life–more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely, alive.

When most oppressed, when most weary of “life,” as our unbelief would phrase it, let us remember that it is, in truth, the inroad and presence of death we are weary of.

When most inclined to sleep, let us rouse ourselves to live.

Of all things, let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented. We need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent.

Discontent, I repeat, is the life in us that has not enough of itself, is not enough to itself, so calls for more.

He has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out, not for death, not for the repose of forgetfulness, but for strength to fight, for more power, more consciousness of being, more God in him.

The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, which he does not feel, does not even always desire. He believes in a power that seems far from him, that is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest–rest as far from death as is labor.

To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, “I am weak; so let me be. God is strong”; to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do and be and live, even when we are weary–this is the victory that overcomes the world.

~George MacDonald (1824-1905)

Have you listened to the voice of your discontent?

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Without Fail: Save Worry For Another Day

All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons. ~John Donne

The sun

The sun rises this morning, as it has every day without fail.

When the first slanted rays tease me awake, my heart is still beating, sending oxygen-laden cells to brain and brawn alike.

Gravity still works, the furniture isn’t floating; when I throw off warm covers and plant a foot on the floor, it stays.

The hot water is both hot and wet.  The coffee pot perks and the smoky aroma hasn’t changed.

I open the back door and step outside, the ground remains solid beneath my slippers. The azaleas are in showy bloom, Spring following Winter following Autumn…

…without fail.

I breath in cool air, the same cocktail of oxygen and nitrogen (with a few flavorings added) I breathed yesterday. Birds chatter their familiar morning agenda. One of the 920,000+ varieties of Creator-cared-for insects buzzes by.

Water is still clear as it sprinkles the grass. The dog, ever predictable, disdains the lawn’s paw-dampening threat.

Back inside, I find my coffee mug intact, it hasn’t unbaked back to clammy clay. With the first cautious sip, a surge of dependable dopamine courses through my brain.

The sofa squats comfortably where I left it. There, my book lays open, a still-sharpened pencil holds my place, words fill the pages in the same orderly lines as before.

I sit in silence, close my eyes and listen.

I am here, without fail. I haven’t changed, your life is held in my hands. Trust me with your worries. Trust me with each moment. My mercies are new every morning.

Save Worry For Another Day

What worries you? What drags your thoughts into dungeons of dread and concern? How deep are the ruts from pacing the floor of your mind, what if, how long, why not? Is it your:

  • Growing prayer list
  • Long deferred dreams
  • Terrified glance into the future’s crystal ball?

We try to figure life out from the muddled middle, and soon begin to sink. We forget that this morning the sun rose, and will rise again tomorrow, and the next day…

…without fail.

God's faithfulness

Without fail, are you keeping your eyes on the Faithful One?

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Sabbath Quiet: A Perfectionist’s Peace

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. ~Anne Lamott

Piano Perfectionist

Raise your hand if you are a perfectionist.

J.B. Phillip’s, the famous Bible translator admitted, “this obsession for the perfect can make us arrogantly critical of other people and, in certain moods, desperately critical of ourselves.”

Sometimes I picture a tiny courtroom bench, with a toddler banging the gavel and pronouncing judgment on a row of unsuspecting stuffed animals, and then berating herself. The toddler is me. My patient heavenly Father leans against the door, biting his tongue…

Perfectionists may believe in God’s forgiveness. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not God’s approval we are seeking, instead, “the tyrannical super-Me condemns and has no mercy on myself,” as Phillips sadly notes. Perfectionists assume we know better than God. Our own hearts condemn us.

A Perfectionist’s Peace

God is infinitely greater in wisdom and love than we are and, unlike us, knows all the factors involved in human behavior.

We are guilty of certain things, and these we must confess with all honesty, and make reparation where possible.

But there may be many factors in our lives for which we are not really to blame at all. We did not choose our heredity; we did not choose the bad, indifferent, or excellent way in which we were brought up.

This is naturally not to say that every wrong thing we do, or every fear or rage to which we are subject today, is due entirely to heredity, environment, and upbringing.

But it certainly does mean that we are in no position to judge ourselves; we simply must leave that to God, who is our Father and “is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

It is almost as if 1 John 3: 18-20 is saying, “If God loves us, who are we to be so high and mighty as to refuse to love ourselves?”

J.B. Phillips (1906-1982)

How do you address the perfectionist tendencies in you?

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Sabbath Is Not A Suggestion

 We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms. ~Wayne Muller

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I flunk sabbath more often than not. I will work 24/7 if someone doesn’t hang a Closed For The Day sign around my neck.

Perhaps the Puritan work ethic still lingers in the New England water supply, and I drank my fill as a child.

It doesn’t help that I work out of my home–I see sticky notes wherever I turn. Even my sleep is ink-stained and thesaurus-haunted.

So, it’s easy to shrug off  God’s emphatic command, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), until I take a closer look at what God is saying:

Commandment #4: You have seven days in a week. Six are for getting your work done. One day is for rest–no work. This is the rhythm of life, composed at Creation, and you are a creature, remember?

Misunderstanding The Sabbath

There may be arrogance lurking behind my productivity–can the world still function if I stop? But something else makes me veer away from Sabbath-keeping: the legalism implied. Sabbath is about what you’re not allowed to do, and what you are required to do, right? Which makes “the day of rest” just another form of work.

Jesus encountered the same confusion, and got scolded more than once for not getting sabbath right. How did he respond?

The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath (Mark 2:27).

Recently I read Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Sacred Rhythms. In her chapter on sabbath I learned,

  • Sabbath reminds us we are finite, our strength is limited, and only God can be all things to all people.
  • The heart of sabbath is to cease work so we can rest and delight in God.
  • What do you do on Sabbath? “Whatever delights and replenishes you.”

Sabbath Experiment

So, with some trepidation, I tried it. I took a whole day of a busy week, and said no to work. I stayed away from my computer, and read only for fun. I took a long walk, I played the piano and sang hymns, I called a family member just to chat. I smiled at God and let myself see him smile at me. By the time I took the dog for her evening walk I felt rested, at peace, my spirit reoriented to simply being, a creature enjoying my Creator.

The world did fine without me.

The next morning I got back to the piles, expecting to feel the pressure of backlog. But instead I felt refreshed, and the work-load no greater.

Time is elastic when we delight in the God who invented it.

How are you at sabbath-keeping? What replenishes your spirit?

Photograph by Melanie Hunt
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Book Review Faith Life

Invisible by Ginny L. Yttrup: A Book Review

I am created in God’s image! When I hide in shame—I hide Him too. ~Ginny L. Yttrup

Can butter make you invisible?

I love butter 2

  • Ellyn, gourmet chef and butter lover, certain her dress size excludes her from love.
  • Sabina, a psychologist running from pain, convinced her past disqualifies her from joy.
  • Twila, a young woman with an old soul and a new tattoo fights the urge to make her body disappear.

Together, these three women represent the many ways we humans hide and hurt and hope. As the story unfolds, courage is found to open their hearts to God and each other. They learn to say no to the whisper, “The way God made you is not good enough.”

I just finished the book and already I miss these quirky women and their honest but gracious banter. My finger itches to text them, wondering if they would join me for coffee; if in the embrace of their friendship I could find healing too.

I care about made-up people! Novelist Ginny Yttrup has done it again.

Her award-winning books (Words, Lost and Found and now Invisible) strike a deep chord in me, touching old wounds I avoid or bluff my way through. I love Ginny’s characters and God loves me back through them.

This time it’s about body image, and where I turn when empty and hungry, instead of to God. I’m reminded of ways I isolate instead of letting others see me struggle.

Invisible is about hospitality, as Henri Nouwen defined it: The creation of a free and friendly space where we can reach out to strangers and invite them to become our friends. 

Don’t you long for that? In a world where hostility screams loudest, God has ordained healing to happen through the hospitable heart of one offered to another. Many of us find this welcoming space in the pages of a good book.

Buy Invisible:

  1. If you know someone (it may be you) who struggles with shame or body image issues, who doubts they are beloved of God. Better than a self-help book, every page sings with the implications of Imago dei–we are created in the image of God.
  2. If you are confident in your self-image but love a well-crafted story about friendship, and God’s redemptive healing, set in beautiful Mendocino. Here’s the link for Invisible to Amazon.com. and Barnes & Noble and Christianbook. com.

Henri Nouwen wrote: Just as we cannot force a plant to grow but can take away the weeds and stones which prevent its development, so we cannot force anyone to such a personal and intimate change of heart, but we can offer the space where such a change can take place.

This is exactly what Ginny’s books do.

Have you ever experienced the hospitality of a good book? 

9781433671685-325x500

 

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But The Greatest Of These Is Love

Love’s redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. Death in vain forbids him rise, Christ has opened paradise. ~Charles Wesley

Mel Sunrise

What Wondrous Love

To shame our sins He blushed in blood;

He closed His eyes to show us God;

Let all the world fall down and know

That none but God such love can show.

~Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Lent is not a season of deprivation, but a return to love’s true source.

With those words we began a long lenten look at 1 Corinthians 13. In French, the word lent means slow, and for some of us slow grates. We are trained to look for quick results and stunning progress, but the journey to love takes time.

The path–with boulders to be climbed, and brambles that tear at the fabric of our confidence, and whispers on the breeze that we are fools to try–offers no short-cuts.

When the Easter hymns have faded and the chocolate eggs all been consumed, don’t forget: you were made for the hard work of Love. To let yourself be loved, and to pour out your life in love, and it is the most difficult thing you will ever attempt, and the one thing you will never achieve, unless you cling with all your might to Love Himself.

  • Do you doubt you are loved? Remember the Cross.
  • Do you feel powerless to love others? Remember the empty tomb.
  • Do you fear the cost that comes with love? Jesus says, “I am with you always, to the end of he age.”

Finish, then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee;
changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.

 ~Charles Wesley

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Good Friday: A Scandalous Grace

He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood availed for me. ~ Charles Wesley

A Scandalous Grace

By Annie McPeak

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I don’t really know what I’d expected.  She was only five feet tall, if that, as she emerged from her cell.  Her body was bent under a weight as she shuffled forward, her gaze fixed downward.  When she finally looked up, I recognized her from the six o’clock news.

She was the one who’d thrown her two small children off the bridge and was nearly ready to jump when a passerby tackled her.

I’d been told the other chaplains were “too busy” to visit.  She sat emotionless, eyes downcast, as I wondered what kind of monster throws her own children to their death.  Looking up tearfully, she finally spoke.  “Chaplain, I’m a Christian.  I know what God thinks of murderers.  I’m going to rot in hell, aren’t I?”

Was this a question or pronouncement?

What could I say?  God would have to give me a reason to speak grace. “Well…” I hesitated, still wrestling with the horror of such evil, “what does the Bible say?”

Her voice was monotone.  “Revelation talks about murderers being thrown in a fiery lake.”

I knew the Scripture, and at that moment such judgment seemed justified.

Suddenly, a picture of the criminal on the cross beside Jesus flashed through my mind.  He’d humbly admitted his mistakes and asked Jesus to remember him.  I reminded her that Jesus said the thief would be with Him that day in Paradise though he couldn’t undo his sins.

A tear dropped to her hands below.

After several silent moments, she asked, “When I die and have to face my child on judgment day…well…how can he ever forgive me?”

At that moment, my ears caught the words of the singer on the television overhead:

He became sin who knew no sin; that we might become His righteousness; He humbled Himself and carried the cross.  Love so amazing!  Jesus Messiah… blessed Redeemer… Emmanuel…*   

That was it—Emmanuel—God with us.

I thought of the ways God had been with me in the midst of my own hell, and realized that God was there with this woman too, beside her in her prison cell of remorse, her quagmire of guilt, and had already made a way for her—even her!  He would stand beside her on that day she faced her Maker and her son.  Jesus’ sacrifice had paid the price for forgiveness—an unreasonable grace—most would say “a scandalous grace” for so hideous an act.

As I walked out of the jail that day, I couldn’t help but think of my own sin—the many regrets I could not undo.  And then I realized that without such grace—without such scandalous grace—we’d all be lost.

* Jesus Messiah by Jesse Reeves, Daniel Carson, Ed Cash, Chris Tomlin Copyright © 2008 sixsteps Music/worshiptogether.com

My friend Annie McPeak (a pseudonym) serves as a chaplain at a maximum security women’s correctional facility where she ministers to inmates who have committed crimes ranging from substance abuse to murder.  Annie marvels that the inmates who acknowledge their sins and receive God’s grace in Jesus Christ become truly transformed and experience a greater freedom than many who have never been incarcerated.  

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What You Look At You Will See

O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, and where and how to find you. ~St. Anselm

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

At present all we see is the baffling reflection of reality; we are like people looking at a landscape in a small mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!

(1 Corinthians 13:12 Phillips Translation)  

Today’s Squint

The trouble was, I couldn’t see. For seven years I hid my nearsightedness. Too vain to wear glasses, I faked it–staking out front row seating, not because I enjoyed teacher attention. Small, well-lit classrooms helped delay the inevitable.

With college came larger and darker auditoriums where even first rows were far from the chalkboard action. After a long-avoided visit to the optometrist, I emerged onto the sidewalk, contact lenses stinging my eyes, and gasped, amazed. I almost grabbed an innocent bystander and yelled, “Trees have leaves!” Not vague clouds of green fuzziness, but individual, sharply defined foliage. I gaped in wonder, drunk with the arboreal splendor around me.

Tomorrow’s Vision

The time will come when our blinded eyes will be opened. Some of us will weep in sorrow at the waste, as the perishable objects of our earthly focus fade from view. Some of us will gaze with joy at what we always strained to see–with 20/20 vision we will know God as we have always been known.

What if the clearness of our vision then depends on where we fix our eyes today?

 Look And See

I am not asking you to make many reflections, to produce grand and subtle considerations with your intellect, or to feel deep devotion.

I only ask you to look at Him.

Who can prevent your turning the eyes of your soul (but for an instant, if you can do no more) on our Lord?

You are able to look on many ugly things, then can you not gaze upon the fairest sight imaginable?

Your bridegroom never takes His eyes off you!

He has borne with many offenses and much unworthiness in you, yet these have not sufficed to make Him turn away. Is it much to ask that you should sometimes shift your gaze from earthly things to fix it on Him?

You will find that He suits Himself to whatever mood you are in. He longs so keenly for our glance that He will neglect no means to win it.

~Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Where are you looking these days?

This is post sixteen of our Lent To Love: A Return to the Source series on 1 Corinthians 13. Why not subscribe today and join us on the journey? Here’s a link to my guest writer’s website I forgot to include in my last post: ginnyyttrup.com.

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

 

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Identity With An Expiration Date

Jesus knew who he was before God and in God. He could therefore resist the temptations to live his life out of a false center based on possessions, actions or the esteem of others. ~David G. Benner

fireman dog

Mistaken Identity:

  • The poses I practice.
  • The costumes I wear.
  • The posturing that earns me the right to breath air.

False Identity:

  • What I have.
  • What I do.
  • What people think of me.

Our identities are always in crisis because the false ones come with an expiration date.

The Identity Bin

A circle’s worth of children sit cross-legged on the floor. As I, the music teacher, hand out rhythm instruments from the plastic bin, their eyes plead,

Please give me claves or castanets! Darn, boring old rhythm sticks again. How will I stand out? I can’t compete with the cabasa’s scritchy sounds. I could be something special with maracas in my hand. The teacher must like me least of all.

The music begins. The students bang their instruments as loud as they can and eye each other with envy. But at the end of the song, the instruments go back in the bin.

Exactly The Point

the Apostle Paul’s makes in 1 Corinthians 13: 8: “Hey guys, you know those spectacular spiritual gifts that have you preening in the mirror, or hanging your head in resentment? They will all go back in the bin!”

What brings us applause and approval today will share the fate of quill pens tomorrow. When Christ returns, they get tossed in the bin–no one will need them, no one will care.

  • Who needs prophetic sermons, when the sound of God’s voice fills the air?
  • Who needs scholarly expertise when God himself can be asked?
  • Who needs mountain-moving faith when the mountains have been moved for good?

Are you building your identity and sense of worth on the temporary gifts of today? Forget your clever cabasa and your clanging cowbell. Start over-performing in what matters.

The Only Identity That Lasts

And so I return again to knowing myself as deeply loved by God. I meditate on his love, allowing my focus to be on him and his love for me, not me and my love for him.

And slowly things begin to change. My heart slowly begins to warm and soften. I begin to experience new levels of love for God. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, I begin to see others through God’s eyes of love.

David G. Benner in, Sacred Companions 

Have you forgotten the gifts you envy or admire will expire? 

This is post fifteen of our Lent To Love: A Return to the Source series on 1 Corinthians 13. Join us on the journey to Easter!

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