Lizards, Snakes, and Spiritual Formation

 

I'm sharing a video post this week with some reptilian examples!

It's Okay to Rest

Maybe we would be more inclined to rest if we viewed it as a spiritual discipline.

Union

Today I was a bird, singing the song

   Creator gave me to sing.

I was a tree, bearing fruit nourished

   by roots deep in God’s soil.

I was a brook, babbling and sparkling

   in the sun, making its way

   naturally, beautifully.

Today I caught fire. I was all flame,

   fully alive in the flow of grace.

One hundred percent who I was created

   to be,

      like bird, brook and tree.

Today I knew union, not in ecstasy,

   but in living completely surrendered,

   bursting with the gifts of my true self

   the way a fully ripe grape bursts between the teeth.

Community

Needing community

the Spirit interceded,

bringing me to

where I am seen for

who I am,

I put down roots and bear fruit in this

place of welcome,

receiving.

Community’s gift—being seen,

being known,

being accepted—

being a part

rather than

being apart.

Confession

Isaiah 40

God, whose way leads through

wilderness, whose desert path

uproots us out of ordinary time,

forgive us when we choose

complacency over change,

ease over transformation,

numbness over attentiveness.

We prefer the false security of

easy answers, blame and prejudice

rather than the disciplines of

understanding, patience and

accountability.

Hold us in the desert long enough

to clear our vision, change our hearts,

gentle our judgments.

Hold us accountable even as you

hold us in your hand.

Flatten our mountains of pride.

Raise the ones we have despised.

Make our desert sojourn fruitful—

harsh enough to soften us, to turn

us to you in utter dependency,

so we will know that you show

your power in gentleness,

your strength in compassion,

your greatness in proximity.

Celebrating What Is

It’s a week where we are reminded to be thankful. Many of us will gather with family or friends to share a meal (or two or three). There will be laughter, stress, tears—a whole gamut of emotions. Maybe we’ll go around the table and ask folks to name something for which they are thankful. The responses will vary, and some will be predictable.

Being grateful is easier sometimes than others. But gratitude should not hinge on the acceptability of our circumstances. Gratitude is a way of being. When we are grateful people we see the world with different eyes. Grateful people still see the pain and suffering in the world and in their own lives. They feel it deeply. They hurt—both for themselves and for others. In fact, because they are grateful people, they can more acutely hold pain and suffering than those who blind themselves to their own hurt or that of others.

Grateful people are faith-filled people. They can hold the pain because they know there’s a bigger picture, a larger scenario than the pain they know. It is those who deny, numb, or ignore pain and suffering who cannot truly be grateful. When you numb yourself to pain, when you pretend it doesn’t exist, you cannot be fully present to great joy and gratitude.

To be truly grateful is to celebrate what is, to live fully in the present moment, whatever it brings, with faith and trust and thanksgiving. It is to recognize that being human means being present for all of life. Habakkuk captures beautifully what it means to celebrate what is:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails,

and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold,

and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

Over vs Through

I bought an Italian Parsley plant a few weeks ago. I put the pot in a sunny window, gave it water, and hoped it would thrive there. I snipped leaves off for several recipes that first week.

All seemed to be going well with my little plant until I returned from a weekend retreat. Yellow leaves greeted me on my arrival, even though there was still water in the dish under the pot. I got the scissors and began to trim the dying leaves, which took almost all the leaves off the plant. I wasn’t sure the plant would survive.

But just a couple of days later, I noticed lots of new leaves. The severe pruning allowed the plant to be healthy and grow. Had I simply repotted the sick plant, or just continued to water it, without any pruning, I am convinced it would have died completely.  

That little plant reminds me that avoidance of difficulty, or glossing over one’s pain (think Monty Python—“It’s only a flesh wound”) does not create the opportunity for growth that going through difficulty, enduring the pruning, or feeling the loss makes for us.

When we are seriously wounded, healing takes time and attention. You wouldn’t tell someone with a broken leg to just get over it. The leg has to be set, protected and immobilized, so the bones can knit back together. The inner wounds of bullying, betrayal or rejection are no different. Wounds take time and attention to heal. Ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist is just as unhealthy as wallowing in self-pity.

A friend told me that cancer was the best thing to happen to her. She let go of her go-go pace, allowed her body to rest, and spent time with God. Her spiritual growth through the process of chemotherapy was tremendous, and she is a different person now—filled with a peace and wisdom that only time, reflection and stillness can bring. She told me how she felt sad watching others who, while undergoing chemotherapy, tried to maintain their lifestyle at the same level of activity as before their treatment. She said they missed the gift that their treatment offered—to go deeper with God. They were focused on getting over cancer. My friend focused on going through.

To go through, we have to let go. We have to relinquish our timetable, our sense of control. When we go through loss, pain and wounding, when we allow the pain to teach us, we learn that there is much we no longer need. Pruning makes space for something new, something that cannot grow without enduring the difficult.

Jesus fully went through his suffering. He drank it, without any self-pity, to the last drop. He died, the ultimate pruning, but he rose from the dead. And how did the disciples know for sure it was him? Because he rose with his wounds. He bore the scars in his resurrected body, a constant reminder of the suffering he endured.

Jesus, my parsley plant, and my friend remind me of the gift of going through, of allowing the pain to give us new life.

Living Up to Our Capacity

For a lunch and learn at my church, I’m facilitating a series of some of the words we use in our faith. The inspiration came from Amazing Grace, a book by Kathleen Norris. One of the words we discussed was perfection.

When you read Matthew 5:48: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect, you may dismiss it as an impossible mandate. But in a devotional by Laurence Stookey, he points out that we should think about perfection as capacity. A pint jar can be as perfectly full as a gallon jar, though each holds a different quantity. So then, what Jesus may be challenging us to do is to live up to our capacity.

To live up to our capacity, we have to be aware of our capacity. Many of us are trying to live a life that we are not equipped to live. We have a certain image that we want to project, and we fail to do the introspective work needed to know for what we are gifted or not gifted. Thus, we fail to live fully because we are trying to live someone else’s life with someone else’s gifts to meet someone else’s expectations of us. We are trying to fill a jar that isn’t our jar.

I like that capacity and capable are so similar. We are capable of living up to our capacity, but to do so, we need to strip away the masks we hide behind to seek approval from others. We need to learn to see ourselves as God sees us, to live the life God dreamed for us to live when we were being knit together in our mother’s womb. When we understand and embrace who we are with all our gifts and our limitations, we joyfully desire to live to our capacity. 

Uncertainty as Gift

Uncertainty is not something we generally welcome. Most of us like to know what’s coming next. We want to be in control of our situations. It’s disorienting to be in the dark about the future, or to believe we are out of control.

Deep down we know that nothing is certain, that we really are not in control, but in day to day life, we often act as if we have to have certainty and control. The problem with desiring control and certainty is that they can paralyze us and close us off from spontaneity and growth.

In a daily email I receive, I recently read this contrast between joy and happiness: Happiness is the absence of discord; joy is the welcoming of discord as the basis of higher harmonies. Happiness is finding a system of rules which solves our problems; joy is taking the risk that is necessary to break new frontiers . . . Joy is the experience of possibility, the consciousness of one’s freedom as one confronts one’s destiny. In this sense despair, when it is directly faced, can lead to joy.

While this quote says nothing of control or certainty, the contrast between happiness and joy paints a picture of happiness as a sense of certainty and the ability to be in control of a situation, while joy embraces uncertainty as necessary if one is to experience freedom and growth. Joy can tolerate short-term discomfort because in the long run, hope and joy are connected.

If happiness hinges on our sense of certainty, we swing between happiness and frustration, anxiety and even anger depending on whether or not we feel certain of what is coming next in our lives. If happiness fluctuates like a wet-weather stream, joy has the constancy of an underground aquifer. A joyful person understands that life is uncertain and that control is illusory and thus does not attach his or her well-being to such transient circumstances.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.”

To be patient with stages of instability is not easy, but the joyful person understands that instability is part of life, part of the movement to something new and that God is in the instability, pruning us for new growth. Welcoming uncertainty and instability, with the understanding that they are necessary for the journey, enables us to see them as gifts rather than as something undesirable.

Healing a Different Brokenness

I am the Lord; at the right moment, I will hurry it along.

                                                                                                                                Isaiah 60:22b

Two weeks ago I broke a bone in my hand. I have had to make adjustments to compensate for the lack of use of my left hand (fortunately, I am right handed). It takes me longer to do many things (like typing this blog post), I have limited my driving and there are some things I simply cannot do by myself. Moving slower means that I have to eliminate certain items from my daily to-do list. This means I must be content with less efficiency and productivity.

I am no longer making big plans for myself each day. I am allowing more space in my schedule and, surprisingly, I have been content with the ability to do less, with slower progress in what I am able to do, and with adjusting my daily schedule around when my husband can take me to and from work. What I know in my head, I am now accepting in my heart—I am not in control.

The verse above reminds me that any thought I have of being in control is really an illusion. God is in charge of the moments of my life. I am grateful for the patience that comes with this recognition. I hope I will remain this way even after my hand is healed. I thought what was broken was my hand. I wonder if the greater brokenness in me is the notion that I am in control, that my agenda is of utmost importance and that my worth is tied to my productivity and efficiency. More significant than the healing of the broken bone is the healing of attitudes and behaviors that have been barriers to increased trust in God.

In John 15:2, Jesus says that the Father prunes branches that are producing fruit so they will bear even more fruit. The “pruning” caused by this lack of mobility and corresponding lack of control is bearing fruit through increased stillness and patience in my life, and through recognition that life isn’t about my productivity or effectiveness or my agenda, but about trusting God with my life. With that trust comes the peace of not having to meet a set of expectations (which are mostly my own). Instead, I am free to recognize that God loves me both in my brokenness and in my healing. As Sister Kathleen Flood reminded us at the Academy for Spiritual Formation, my faith is making me well.

Plastic Fruit & Poison Ivy

We’re praying this so that you can live lives that are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way: by producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God

                                            Colossians 1:10

Two years ago we had pole beans in our garden. They grew well and had lush green leaves but we only got a handful of beans. We also had some scrawny tomato vines that produced an initial flurry of tomatoes, leading us to think we would have great production all summer, but because they were such weak vines, they quickly perished in the heat.

Neither plant was an asset to the garden. What we want are plants that both grow and produce fruit. That is what God wants from us as well. I can apply myself to knowledge about God, participating in Bible studies and analyzing scripture. If that is the extent of my effort, I am nothing but an educated fool, a big empty sack of information, all head but no heart. I may know scripture, but I use it as a weapon against others, a sword that divides instead of a balm that heals.  In contrast, if I devote myself only to service, I may produce fruit, but it is fruit that comes out of my own strength and ability, and I will likely burn out. The folks that say “I’ve done my share of church work” are a good illustration of fruit without growth.

Fruit production, if it is to be sustained and Kingdom-bringing, has to be augmented with growth, and vice versa. There has to be inward growth in faith and in intimacy with God (knowing God, not just knowing about God). We don’t force the fruit. We focus on being connected to the Vine. If we do that, the fruit production takes care of itself, by God’s action in and through us.

I believe that a significant reason the institutional church does not appeal to folks is that they don’t see us growing and producing fruit. Often, the growth people see is knowledge that defends and excludes. When the focus of our “knowledge” is on condemning instead of understanding, on certainty instead of mystery, on proving ourselves right instead of recognizing our own blindness, then what we proclaim as growth is poison ivy.

In our efforts to keep Christianity “pure,” we produce vapid fruit—perfect and pretty to look at, but devoid of taste—like a Red Delicious apple. Our fruit just looks like one more activity for people to add to their already overstuffed lives. Without passion that is cultivated through a growing relationship with Christ, church gets dropped from one’s to-do list.

I would rather be part of a church filled with characters—misshapen, odd-looking fruit—than a church that looks like a bowl of plastic fruit. I want to be with those who hunger and thirst for more of Christ, who live hopeful and faith-filled lives instead of lives of pessimism and gloom. I want to be part of a church that is a living, breathing, growing plant, where fruit production is the result of being rooted and grounded in Christ.

Bare Minimum

Some who were present on that occasion told Jesus about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. He replied, “Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did. What about those twelve people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think that they were more guilty of wrongdoing than everyone else who lives in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.”

Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’” Luke 13:1-9

As people told Jesus about those murdered by Pilate, I wonder if they expected to hear that their death was tied to some sin on their part. Jesus’ response about the people killed by a tower leads me to believe that might have been their motive. Instead Jesus tells them that there is no difference in the ones who died and the ones who are listening to Jesus teach. He takes the spotlight off these victims and places it on those standing before him.

We are likely to ponder such matters as well. We want to know how God is going to treat others or we try to link disaster and other tragedies to sinfulness, instead of reacting with love and compassion or looking inward at our own lives. We want to be thought of as “good people” and may use our lack of exposure to difficulty as a sign that we are favored over others.

But Jesus demonstrates that being “good” is not the same as bearing fruit. He tells them (and us) to change our hearts and lives, and goes on to demonstrate what he means with a parable, where our “goodness” is likened to a fruitless fig tree that does nothing but soak up the Word and produces nothing from it. It takes the nutrients but does nothing with them. Am I guilty of going through the motions of being a “good Christian” while at the same time judging and criticizing and living unmindfully of others and of God?

But then Jesus, the gardener, comes and offers us another chance. Yet it is a chance with conditions. Jesus takes the law and prophets and applies them to us, in terms we cannot squirm out from under. It’s not enough to follow the law. We are to love others as ourselves. The prophetic word was not only for those to whom it was originally addressed. It is for us as well. We are told that it is blessed to be poor, to love our enemies, to give without reserve, to forgive without keeping score. We bear fruit not by doing the minimum required. All that does is produce the tree. We bear fruit by self-sacrifice, generosity, compassion and love. When we are focused on the bare minimum, we don’t bear fruit. It is by going beyond the minimum, by not even considering the minimum as a “good” standard, that we bear fruit.

Roots and Fruits

The survivors of Judah’s family who have escaped will put down roots and bear fruit above. 

        Isaiah 37:31

Fruit does not come without good roots. The outward signs of discipleship result from putting down good roots in the love of Christ as Paul says in Ephesians 3:17-19:  I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God.

If you have ever had a potted plant, whether a houseplant or a potted flower, vegetable or herb for your garden, you are familiar with root bound plants. When a plant cannot spread its roots because it is confined to a pot too small for it, the roots will grow more and more entangled. If the plant gets too root bound, it dies. Even if a root bound plant is planted where the roots can spread, the damage may already be too great to reverse. I have pulled up dead plants in my garden only to discover that the roots had never recovered from being root bound.  The problem with a root bound plant is that the damage is not visible from looking at the plant.

In the church, we often put more emphasis on the fruit than the roots. We encourage service, generosity and hospitality. We send people on mission trips and recruit greeters and feed and clothe the poor in our communities. We serve on church committees and teach Sunday school and sing in the choir. All these are fruits. But without a good root system, the fruits dry up due to burnout, or lose their sweetness due to resentment or become diseased and poisonous due to lack of faith. With little attention given to the roots, the fruits are no longer beneficial. Like a root bound plant, the damage may not be visible to the casual observer.

How much time do you give to reading the Word, praying the Word and living the Word? Does study of scripture and sacred texts happen for you on a daily basis at a regular time and place? Do you give your best attention each day to growing in intimacy with God, or is your attention haphazard and irregular?

When I hear people talk of being burned out on “church work,” I know that they have failed to attend to the roots. When I hear someone mispronounce a common Biblical name, it saddens me because they are missing out on the joys of familiarity with God through the scripture. When I see church leaders anxious and fearful, I sense that their roots are shallow and weak.

In many churches, much time is spent talking about how to increase numbers of members and contributions. We look at fruit, but we fail to devote attention to the roots. We talk more about evangelism and relevance than we do about spiritual formation, which is how our roots are made strong. We give our attention to doing rather than being, falling headlong into our Western belief that productivity is king.

The church will continue to suffer as long as its members focus only on fruit. Passion for God can be ignited through service, but it cannot survive without becoming rooted, which is the work of spiritual formation. It is the heart, our passion for Christ, which produces healthy, fruitful service. When Christ is everything to us, then fruit cannot be restrained.

Waiting and Preparation

We have just come through Advent, a season of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus. Soon we will be in the season of Lent, the season of preparation for Easter. Waiting and preparation permeate not only the Christian calendar, but also our lives.

Biblical examples of waiting can encourage us in our own waiting.

• Abraham and Sarah waited until he was 99 years old for the son God promised them.
• The Israelites waited forty years to enter the Promised Land.
• Elizabeth and Zechariah waited years to have a son.

These are just a few examples. I am sure you can think of more.

Waiting is not always a welcome activity. However, waiting provides time for preparation. Waiting changes us.

Early in 2005, I began to be restless. I had worked hard to build an accounting practice. I had amazing employees and loyal clients. Our firm had achieved local and statewide recognition, earning numerous awards. Life was good. But after returning from a mission trip to New Orleans four months after Hurricane Katrina, I was berated by an angry client because I had been out of the office after Christmas and was unavailable to meet with him for year-end tax planning. Having just spent a week working with a family that lost all their material possessions and yet witnessed to our team because of their faith and peace, I was stunned at the reaction of this man who blamed me for the predicament caused by his own procrastination. I began to ask myself, “Is this how I am to serve God?” After months of prayer and listening and waiting, I sold my accounting practice, thinking that I would focus on helping small business owners develop practices to run their businesses more effectively and thus improve their emotional well-being.

I learned that God’s ways are different than my ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). My plans were stymied, and instead, I was given the gift of Sabbath (although at the time it didn’t feel like a gift). Out of that Sabbath, a book was born, and doors opened for me to share God’s work in me with a wider audience. Instead of speaking to business audiences about time management and business development, I was sharing about God and God’s living word.

I sensed God calling me to a ministry of spiritual direction, to walk with others through their questions and experiences of God. Participating in the 2-Year Academy for Spiritual Formation and the Spiritual Direction program at Perkins School of Theology, I have experienced the affirmation of that call. During this time of preparation and waiting, I put my accounting skills to work for a nonprofit organization. The stability of a regular income allowed me to pay for my studies and the flexibility of my work schedule allowed me to continue writing and presenting programs for various groups.

But during Advent, I realized it was time to devote myself fully to this call of God on my life. I’ve left my job, fully committed to the path God has placed in front of me. The waiting is over and I am beginning a new chapter in my journey of discipleship. Thanks be to God!

Active Rest

Oh rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.
-Edmund H. Sears

Third verses of Christmas carols are sung less frequently than the first, second and last. While I have sung the carol “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” I was not familiar with the third verse, which ends with the words above, until I heard “Midnight Clear” by The Digital Age. In the aftermath of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday, all before Advent has even begun, maybe the best thing I could do this holiday season is rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

Quite frankly, rest is not something we value, probably because we think of rest as unproductive and if we want to be anything at all, it is productive. Our society measures everything in terms of output and results, and those results had better come quickly. Resting and waiting are viewed as unproductive.

Even in the church, we fall victim to our culture’s obsession with productivity. I think that’s why we struggle with how to pray. We pray for results. We want our prayers to be effective, to produce a desired outcome. If that outcome is not obtained, we tend to think we have somehow prayed wrong. I believe that is why so few of us embrace centering prayer. Sitting silently for twenty minutes just seems unproductive. The promise of a growing inner peace that comes over time as one faithfully practices this spiritual discipline is not alluring enough or quick enough for us to patiently persist in such prayer.

Maybe we would do well to consider rest as an active verb rather than as passive. For rest, in the spiritual sense, is not sloth. Rest is more like fallowness, a time of being still, becoming more aware of yourself and thus, of God, and maybe, just maybe, hearing the angels sing, rather than rushing through stores listening to carols piped in over Muzak as we frantically try to secure the latest toy or gadget for someone who already has plenty of toys or gadgets.

Active rest is what happened to Elizabeth and Mary, as they carried the promise of God in their wombs over nine months. As their babies grew inside them, they could do nothing to rush the process of birth along, and their pregnancies came with a responsibility, as pregnancies do, of taking care of themselves so that their babies would have the best chance to thrive. While there is much that needs to be done to bring Christ to others, such as feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and dying, and sharing our abundance with those who have none, that cannot be done at the expense of our own rest, or the Christ we deliver will be sickly and weak, ineffective for the long journey of faith.

So how are you growing the promised Christ within you this Advent season? Do you feel the presence of Christ growing in you as you prepare your heart for Christmas, or only a growing sense of anxiety over getting the right presents? My greatest wish this season is that we all would rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing. What greater gift could we give to a weary world?

The Burden of Effectiveness

For much of my working life, I sought to be effective. I read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People more than once and sought to employ those habits in my own life. They are good habits and I still have the book, unlike many of the books I’ve read over the years. Effectiveness gets things done, and as Stephen Covey pointed out in the book, effectiveness is about getting the right things done. I have observed that many people equate busyness with effectiveness. We tend to value people based on how busy they are. Movers and shakers are approved, while sitters and thinkers are often overlooked.

We need to learn to value waiting, watching and listening. These may appear to be ineffective, especially when the mantra of our society is “don’t just stand there, do something.” But waiting, watching and listening allow us to dig beneath the surface of people and issues, to learn to understand both ourselves and others. These habits cause us to slow down and pay attention, which is not an easy behavior for many of us in our hurry-hurry existence.

Effectiveness becomes a burden when we try to apply it to our relationship with God and with others. Jesus wasn’t about effectiveness. As a group of us discussed healing in Sunday school, one person wondered why Jesus did not heal every leper, wiping out all the leper colonies. That this question was raised shows me that Jesus focused more on relationships than on productivity or effectiveness. He waited, watched and listened. He acted, but he did it within the context of relationship. He talked to people and listened to them. He observed the bent-over woman among all the people coming and going in the Temple (Luke 13:11-13). He felt healing power leave him as a woman in a crowd touched the hem of his robe (Matthew9:20-22). He heard Bartimaeus calling to him even though everyone lining the roadside was cheering for him (Mark 10:46-52).

And after his death, he did not immediately send the apostles out to continue his ministry. He told them to wait. That doesn’t seem very effective. We talk about building on momentum, and certainly Jesus’ resurrection, his appearances to the apostles and others, and his ascension would have been momentum boosters. But Jesus tells them to wait in Jerusalem until they are given heavenly power.

I expect they were motivated and itching to do something. We catch a glimpse of that when Peter decides to go fishing (John 21:3). Jesus shows them the importance of waiting, watching and listening one last time, for even though he modeled such behavior for them in his life on earth, they were not always quick to catch on.

We need to let go of the burden of effectiveness and realize that building relationships with God, with others and even with ourselves is how we learn to love God, love others and love ourselves. Relationships are not built by effectiveness but by paying attention—waiting, watching and listening—so that our action is a loving response, not just “doing something.”

Singing My Authentic Song

During the summer months, my morning walks put me outside as the sun is beginning to rise and the birds begin to sing. There is a particular sparrow whose song is one of my favorites to hear. Last week I was at Lake Junaluska for SoulFeast, and I noticed that every time I was walking back and forth to Morning Prayer or to workshops, I heard that same sparrow’s song. It’s a simple, sweet song, with a few variations, sung over and over again.

I wonder if this sparrow ever gets tired of singing its song. I wonder if it ever wishes that it could sing the songs of other birds. I wonder if it ever wishes to be a mockingbird, which loudly and enthusiastically sings the songs of other birds and even mimics other sounds it hears. (Once, I heard a mockingbird singing the backup beep sound. It was so authentic sounding I began looking for the vehicle that was producing it!)

I wonder how much I am like the mockingbird, listening to and singing the songs of others, rather than sticking to my own song. In an effort to please others, I can end up singing what I think someone wants to hear, rather than singing with my authentic voice the song God has given me to sing. The problem with trying to please others is that I can end up sounding like the mockingbird, singing only little bits of each song, so that I sound disjointed and scattered. While God created the mockingbird to string together the songs it hears, God did not create us to speak with every voice we hear.

Over the past couple of months, I have been discovering my authentic song. I’ve examined my spiritual gifts, thought about my deepest desires, and looked at how my choices either move me toward my deepest desires or take me away from them. Through this process, I realize that I have spent a large part of my life as a mockingbird, singing whatever song meets the expectations of others. Because different people have different expectations, I’ve switched songs depending on my audience. Trying to keep up with so many songs created much dis-ease within me, and I did not realize how much this was affecting my relationship with God until I began to peel away the layers of songs that were hiding God’s authentic song for me from myself.

I don’t believe the process is complete, but I have come to understand that for me to be who God created me to be I need to be a sparrow, not a mockingbird. I need to sing the song that is uniquely mine to sing. Some may like my song, some may not. That’s okay, because ultimately, the one for whom I sing is God. Not everyone will hear my song, and it’s not up to me to make sure that my song is heard. It is my task to faithfully sing my song, trusting that God will use it however God desires. And that is certainly sufficient for me!

Bad Yeast

"Watch out!" Jesus warned them. "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees." At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn't brought any bread.


The disciples are so much like us. We argue and fret over the most trivial things while Christ is trying to get us to pat attention to things of eternal significance. We argue over the color of carpet or whether it's appropriate to bless animals, while people are hungry and hurting in the community around us and around the world.

The disciples were fretting about missing a meal while Jesus was concerned about teachings that freed others from the oppressive rules of the religious leaders. We fret over budgets while Jesus tells us to trust him to provide all we need. We argue about whether to sprinkle or dunk when baptizing when Jesus would have us preach his word to those who are lost. We debate the theology of infant baptism while children suffer abuse in our own communities. We complain if something is changed in the order of worship while others are dying for worshiping Christ. We criticize how our youth dress for church instead of being thankful that they are there to worship God.

And what does Jesus tell us? Maybe we need to beware the yeast we are spreading, the bad yeast that poisons our churches and harms the cause of Christ in our world.

Ripe Fruit

My garden is reminding me that fruitfulness is a process, one with stages that must happen in a particular order. Jim and I have looked for weeks for some fruitfulness from our tomato plants. We started them from seeds, and they have grown into nice plants, with lots of blooms, but no tomatoes. We finally spotted some marble-sized green tomatoes last week.


As a Christian, I am called to bear fruit. Paul even describes some of the fruit I am to bear in Galatians 5. Yet, just like the fruit in my garden, there is a progression that is necessary for me to be fruitful. First of all, the seed of God’s word must land in the right soil. In other words, I must be receptive. I have to want to hear God’s word for me. Seeds must get the right amounts of water and sunlight and have the right temperature to grow in. Likewise, I have to be watered and nourished by regular and daily Bible reading and devotional time. I have to be around others who encourage my growth as they are growing themselves. I need to be in worship regularly and in an attitude of expectancy and attentiveness. If I do these things with discipline and regularity, fruit will begin to appear.

The fruit I’ve seen on my tomato plants is not yet ready to eat. If I picked the tomatoes now, they would be hard and sour. If I go out to serve before God has prepared me, I will also be hard and sour. I will resent serving, viewing it as an obligation rather than a gift of love. There have been times when my attitude while serving was like my green tomatoes. I served, but I did not exhibit any love, joy or gentleness! I was self-focused and more interested in my own self-promotion than in serving Christ. I needed more time to grow and I needed to receive my nourishment from the body of Christ.

When my tomatoes are ripe, three things can happen to them. I can pick them and eat them. They can fall off the plant and the seeds can make more plants. Or they can remain attached to the plant until they rot. The least desirable option for a tomato is to cling to the plant until it is completely useless. If it falls to the ground, at least it will produce seed, which will produce more plants for a greater harvest. If it is picked and eaten, it provides sustenance and strength to the one who eats it.

It is here that the comparison of my spiritual life with a tomato makes me uncomfortable. For me to be fruitful, I can’t just stay ensconced in the church. If I do that, I will eventually rot and be useless fruit. Fruitfulness for me as a Christian involves letting go and surrendering to God’s will for me. His will could be that I remain close to the plant while producing seeds. Or his will could be that I am consumed for the sake of others. Both require my surrender, my obedience. God chooses the nature and type of service. My role is to be spiritually ready and joyfully obedient—ripe, juicy and sweet for God!