Category: Life

Mother Teresa: Where Love Is Learned Best

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date September 7, 2012
2 Comments on Mother Teresa: Where Love Is Learned Best

Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves. He is not out there; He is in you. ~Mother Teresa

Love is learned best in the places we would rather not be.

Nobody has proven that truth better than Mother Teresa. Her book, No Greater Love, was one book that found me and refused to let go.

In her ministry to the destitute and dying, Mother Teresa gifted the world with a living illustration of the greatest commandments: Love God with all you are, love your neighbor as yourself.

By being obedient to the extent few of us attempt, by responding to the call of Jesus to “come be my light” among the “unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for” in the streets of Calcutta, Mother Teresa left a hard-hearted world astonished. And wistful for something she had.

“By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the heart of Jesus.”

Was Mother Teresa the exception?

Let’s be honest. Mother Teresa seems impossible to imitate. We have trouble loving the person in the room with us, let alone loving impoverished strangers a world away.

By blood, we care for our own.
By citizenship, we are a nation self-absorbed.
By faith, we divide and point fingers at one another.
As to our calling, we have stopped listening for God’s heartbeat.
As to our hearts, we are owned by a thousand demanding idols.

But some of us long, when the clamor grows quiet, for the tangible, touchable presence of Jesus–we just don’t know where to find him.

In her book, Mother Teresa shares her secret. Prayer. Every day was begun with prayer and Communion. Every evening the nuns would gather for “an unbroken hour of adoration.” Greater intimacy with Jesus led to greater understanding for each other, led to greater compassion for those they served.

And in the eyes of the least, as she embraced their wounds as her own, Mother Teresa found the presence of Jesus despite his “distressing disguise.”

Where would you rather not go? Who would you rather not love? What if you knew that by going and loving you would find Jesus?

photo credit: Ludie Cochrane via photo pin cc

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Faith Life

Hope For A Small Heart

Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of Himself . ~Mother Teresa

Like the Grinch, most of us walk around with a heart two sizes too small.

In the land of the small-hearted, decisions are made based on the questions, “What is the least I can do, what is the minimum requirement, how close can I get and still have it count?”

We are relational bargain hunters and coupon clippers, pleased with our skill at getting something for close to nothing. Forget the high-maintenance and the many, give me the few and the easy–I can only love so much.

Be honest, now. Haven’t you thought it? I’ve heard it from the wise–“even Jesus narrowed it down to a few.” Common sense tells us, “we can’t be all things to all people, no one can love everybody.” True enough. The trouble is that by refusing to love the many, we seldom love the one.

Picture A Balloon

What if our hearts are just as elastic? As a balloon is only as large as what it contains, a heart is only as big as what it loves. When my heart is filled with self, my concerns, convenience, and consumable pleasures, I stumble at love–bumping and bruising myself at every turn.

But when my heart contains God himself–a spacious landscape opens within–nothing and nobody is left despised.

When I was a child we sang these words, “O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee.” I know now this was not a one-time invitation, but a daily emptying of the smaller loves that crowd him out.

Heart Hope

No effort of yours can make your heart grow by three sizes–you will only end up faking it. Trust me, I know. To allow it to be stretched by another, to come small but willing to expand, will work every time.

Try it. Next time you feel put-upon and Grinch-like irritation at the noisy annoyance of others, stop and pray. Fill my heart with you. Stretch and grow me until I can let in all of you, and so the whole, hurting world. Amen.

How about you? Is your heart grinchy or growing today?

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Faith Life

Sabbath Quiet: The True Vine For Bewildered Branches

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date September 2, 2012
1 Comment on Sabbath Quiet: The True Vine For Bewildered Branches

Love Jesus generously. Love him trustfully, without looking back and without fear. Give yourself fully to Jesus, He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness. ~Mother Teresa

The True Vine For Bewildered Branches

I AM the true Vine, and my Father is the Gardener.

He lops off every branch that doesn’t produce. And he prunes those branches that bear fruit for even larger crops.

He has already tended you by pruning you back for greater strength and usefulness by means of the commands I gave you.

Take care to live in me, and let me live in you. For a branch can’t produce fruit when severed from the vine.

Nor can you be fruitful apart from me.

Yes, I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in me and I in them shall produce a large crop of fruit. For apart from me you can’t do a thing.

If anyone separates from me, he is thrown away like a useless branch, withers, and is gathered into a pile with all the others and burned.

But if you stay in me and obey my commands, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted!

My true disciples produce bountiful harvest. This brings great glory to my Father.

John 15:1-8 The Living Bible

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Faith Life

God’s Lullaby: What He Wants You To Know

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date August 31, 2012
4 Comments on God’s Lullaby: What He Wants You To Know

O Lord, you have made us very small, and we bring our years to an end like a tale that is told; help us to remember that beyond our brief day is the eternity of your love. ~Reinhold Niebuhr

The year I decided to let God make me real, my daughter was born. Staring into her tiny face, I saw myself from God’s point of view–dependent, demanding, loved beyond belief.

And amusing. For so long I thought changing my own diapers and rummaging through the fridge, needing help from no one, was what he preferred. How often did he roll his eyes?

But now I understand. Like a helpless newborn, what else can I do to survive but to wail? And who can blame me if I greedily cling to the one who responds without fail, whose warmth and nourishing presence are my world, my hope?

Can you leave your grown-up presumption behind long enough to hear his lullaby?

God’s Lullaby

Come needy.

Leave your competence, your stoic self-sufficiency, your fear of being a bother or appearing less than perfect. Come as an infant, wrinkle-faced and red-rashed. Come hungry, come irritated and frustrated with life beyond your control.

Lay in my arms and look into my eyes. I know what you feel. I know what you battle, and I know what battles you.

I entered your world empty, a helpless, dependent child. I left it in pain, a broken failure in the eyes of most. I’ve lived what it means to be human.

I’ve tasted the baffling stew–wonder and confusion, beauty and blemish, triumph and disappointment, I’ve drunk deeply of both sorrow and joy. I too was tempted to reject my humanity–become beast or idol. To wallow in brute pleasure or usurp the Father’s rule.

I know what you know, but I know more. My vision fills with meanings you cannot see.

1. Little things you miss:

the sun-slanted pattern across the floor,
the rain-scented breeze through your open window,
an unexpected kindness–

reminders delivered every moment by me, “I am here.”

2. Big things you fear:

Events and movements so big and grand, in this life you can only see their shadow. Those shadows threaten, and you turn from me to stumble off on your own.

And every day I sing, “Come needy. I’m the One who can make it right.”

Have you heard God’s lullaby?

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Faith Life

God Wants To Make You Real

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date August 28, 2012
8 Comments on God Wants To Make You Real

God calls us, as He did Adam, to come out of hiding. No amount of spiritual makeup can render us more presentable to Him. ~Brennan Manning

I am an impostor.

I know exactly where on that dusk-blurred trail I admitted it. For years I had struggled to become a more acceptable, lovable version of myself and now it was clear–I had failed. Shaken by a mixture of despair and unexpected light-heartedness, I raised my arms in surrender. The jig was up–my false self took a fatal blow.

Why had it lived at all?

At some point I must have decided that my real self, with her endless questions, doubts, struggles, incompetence and imperfection was as discouraging to God as she was to me. Over time, my version of a relationship with God, and with anyone, became, “stop being needy, only approach God and others when life is beautifully arranged.” Those moments seldom came.

Getting Real

Later I underlined most of Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child, penciling comments in the margins–“yes, this was me!” The book gave me words to understand the image-management, approval-seeking, masks I wore–as do we all–to cope in a world hostile to authenticity.

Brennan Manning’s promise, in a letter written to his own impostor self and, unknowingly, to me: In the reconciling presence of the risen Christ, you will learn “to live by grace and not by performance.”

Holy High-Maintenance

The Psalms, awash with God-approved greedy need, used to shock me. Now they are my well-thumbed delight. I open to Psalm 143 and marvel at David’s two-fisted grip on God’s collar:

Listen to me
Remind me
Empty me
Answer me
Reassure me
Show me
Rescue me
Teach me
Lead me
Preserve me

The psalmist presumes you come to God troubled, doubting, empty, impatient, worried, confused, at your wit’s end, ignorant, incapable and friendless. God expects to find you in your unvarnished, hapless, human condition. Because you are not God, and where else can you turn?

And when you bring the messed-up, flea-market-reject parts of your real self to God, what can you expect in return?

Unfailing love.

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Psalm 143:8

What masks do you wear? Do you dare come to God as the real you?

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Faith Life

Disneyland Dreams

Fantasy and reality often overlap. ~Walt Disney

Disneyland. Little girls in princess attire, mouse-eared moms. A damp-haired toddler, one Tigger-bounce away from a meltdown, rubs his sticky eyes. I nod in sympathy.

Humidity and happiness compete for our allegiance as the temperature climbs. It occurs to me that in one day I will bump into more sweaty strangers than my ancestors knew existed.

Desperate dreams…

There was another time the strains of zippity do dah failed to inspire. Seven years ago, Disneyland with the family–in the dim light of the Aladdin show I let frustrated tears come. After long months of prayer, a roller coaster of hopes raised and stomped on, another disappointment. A call had come while we waited in line, “Sorry, you didn’t get the job.” My son’s jaw clenched as he turned off his phone.

“When you wish upon a star your dreams come true,” crooned the mocking voice in my head. I focused my desperation not on the cricket, but on the God who awakens our dreams. “Is it all a lie? Do our prayers, do we, matter to you? Are we left to hide from our longings, to accept whatever fate decides?”

Later, as the nightly fireworks faded, I heard an answer.

“My child, I have something so much more profound to give you than the shallow mythology of this place. If you live as if Follow Me means Acquire Me, magic wand included, only disappointment waits.” I swallowed hard. “Yet,” I whispered back, “nothing is impossible with you. You taught us that tiny seed-faith moves mountains, and we have planted all our hopes in you.”

…come true.

Recently, as I strolled through Disney’s enchanted lands with husband and daughter, my son welcomed new students to high school algebra. I wonder if seven years ago he didn’t get the job we prayed for, because God had in mind the job he was made for.

“Take delight in the LORD,” the psalmist urges, “and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Dream. Let God enfold your dream into his. And watch while he makes the together-dream come true. That’s what Jiminy Cricket really meant.

Do you trust God with your dreams, with the deep desires of your heart?

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Faith Life

True Theology: Live What You Know

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date August 21, 2012
9 Comments on True Theology: Live What You Know

The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still. ~A.W. Tozer

Theology is my life-long love. I read it, debate it, study it. I sometimes defend my version of it with a passion that surprises me. Here’s the problem. Theology is not so much the study of God, but the study of what others believe about God.

Which is appropriate. We don’t reinvent the wheel with each generation. Our faith stands on the wisdom of the past.

But if the truth we are defending is the truth we have been told, a reflection of the bubble surrounding our thought life, how can we know it is truth?

Power struggles waged on websites and from pulpits distract and wound the church. Gate keepers and destroyers of tradition alike form a death grip on ideas and verbally stone any nuanced discussion in between. Hostility is passed down the pews behind the offering plate, and the message is clear: whatever you do, don’t believe and act as they do, or you will be next.

Engage in the battle or drift with indifference? I have sampled the futility of both. There is a better way.

Live what you know

Stop nibbling and start devouring. Open your Bible and eat the entire meal. Read it, not just a few proof-texts, not just the chapters that confirm your own bias, but the whole story–looking for God’s overall plan, his heart, motives and desires.
With humility and an open mind, and the sincere intention to allow the Spirit of Jesus Christ to penetrate your defenses, invite him to shake and reshape your assumptions.
Then tangibly live out the heart, motives and desires of God in the world he told us he loves.

This is true theology, this is true religion, this is what changes the world.

How have your assumptions about God been shaken lately?

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Culture Faith Life

10 Habits Of Life Uncurled

Every time you do something that comes from your need for acceptance, affirmation, or affection…you know you are not with God. ~Henri J.M. Nouwen

The woman gripped her grocery cart and muttered disgust as I passed. The aisle was crowded and it was clear I had steered through an opening without waiting my turn. My first impulse was to give her a hug–my day was going fine. But I’ve been in that muttering place, when the slightest offense left me reeling.

Last week we looked at the 10 habits of the self-absorbed. A wood shaving describes our sin nature–curled into itself, protecting the deep wound of disconnection from our Creator. The topic is a timely one. Politicians and preachers alike applaud the individualistic orientation exemplified in Ayn Rand’s paean to narcissism, Atlas Shrugged. Has it ever been so socially acceptable to be selfish?

But selfish is not what we were made to be. A reader’s recent comment rings true:

…the way I rid myself of self-centeredness is not to somehow discipline myself in difficult, tempting situations; but rather to allow God to “crowd out” pride with His love.

Beautiful–love crowding out pride.

This is every person’s problem: we don’t know how deeply we are loved. We don’t feel welcome, we don’t feel blessed, we sense we are vulnerable and threatened, so life is reduced to strategic self-defense. We don’t understand that we are wired to respond to Love with love, and to allow our gracious, other-centered Savior to uncurl our souls.

But we must practice the habits of grace if we would resist the pull inward.

10 Habits of Life Uncurled:

Take the worst seat, the last place in line.
Find quiet ways to serve those who can’t repay.
Argue an issue from the opposing point of view.
Give the attention you crave to somebody else.
Speak ten grateful words for every one grumble.
Let others talk–be silent and listen.
Live open-handed, releasing control.
Say often and out loud, “I could be wrong.”
Treat with respect the NO of another.
Journal the feelings you are tempted to avoid.

What habits help your soul uncurl?

Image credit flickr-milomingo

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Faith Life

Songbird Sing

Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she has wings. ~Victor Hugo

A songbird perches on the highest branch of my neighbor’s tree, thrilling me with its tale.

What does it cry? What lyrics attend the anonymous melody? If I knew the words, I could sing along.

“All nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres,” the hymnist observed. “The birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white declare their Maker’s praise.”

Why is my tongue so silent? What ancient wound has left humans, alone of all creation, mute and turned inward, singing our bitter songs of injury and offense? Why don’t wanderers and poets hike through forest and meadow to hear our songs, to receive our blessing, to catch a glimpse of the One in whose image we are made?

One day, with camera in hand, I rambled through an alpine meadow. With every slight turn of my head the mountains, trees, grasses, wildflowers and lake bent toward me–“over here, don’t miss this scene!” The distasteful task of self-promotion was my morning’s struggle–the curse of the introvert with writing to share. To say, “look at me” or “see what I’ve done” seemed wrong. To remain hidden, more humble. I heard a whisper,

Look around, this is what redeemed self-promotion looks like. Who is getting the glory?

I paused, attentive. Sun-splattered leaf, petal and pine cone, rock and dancing water–all in one voice sang a wordless hymn to their Creator. “Look at me! He made me!”

Songbird Sing

Melanie lifts her head and points her camera at shy creatures only she, with practiced eye can see. Scroll up to see one enchanting result.
Ginny gathers words, like rare herbs and wild berries, to be crushed through her pain into books of healing and hope. You can find her books here.
Lily knows mountain peaks by name and laughs with joy from hard-won summits, rehearsing beauty for earthbound ears below.

Songbirds are made to sing.

What song has been given to you to sing? Why do you hold it in, what do you fear?

Lily

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Culture Faith Life

10 Habits of the Self-Absorbed

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date August 10, 2012
12 Comments on 10 Habits of the Self-Absorbed

Love is based on trust, and it is hard to trust anyone in a culture of narcissism. ~Christopher Lasch

We weren’t made to stand alone. We weren’t created to love best our own image. We weren’t meant to sing the song of the self-absorbed, but we do, by default.

Martin Luther described original sin as our nature “deeply curved in on itself.” A professor illustrated Luther’s thought, placing a curled shaving of wood in my hand. I rolled it gently across my palm and imagined God’s grief over each tightened coil.

In 1979, Christopher Lasch described contemporary America in the title of his book, The Culture of Narcissism. His words were prophetic, written long before Twitter, Reality TV or the shrill paranoia of our time. What once was a narrow psychological diagnosis is now our marinade.

The diagnosis is not surprising–we recognize narcissism when we are targeted, we instinctively reject manipulation or contempt. But we excuse ourselves from the verdict.

Until God rolls us gently across his palm and invites us to look again.

10 Habits of the Self-Absorbed:

Demand perfection: No failure tolerated, life’s a competition.
Road rage: You deserve to be first and get the best, the world is there to serve your interests.
Take offense: All criticism avoided, disagreement must be squashed.
Crave approval: Addicted to admiration, you “fish” for your next fix.
Pity party: You feel deprived and mistreated, life is unfair.
Lack empathy: It’s not your fault if they hurt, they probably asked for it.
Helicopter parent: Your self-image lives or dies on your children’s performance.
Embrace self-importance: Your opinions are the gold standard, contempt and criticism live on the tip of your tongue.
Exploit: Lies and manipulation get you what’s wanted, others’ preferences don’t matter.
Avoid feelings: Never look close, never go deep. You may not like what you find.

I’m nailed by at least three. Those who know me well might add more. What about you? Which of these hit home? Blessed are those who can admit the truth. They’ve taken the first step toward life uncurled (Matthew 5:3).

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