Faith as Not Knowing

 

Some thoughts about faith, surprise, wonder, and worship.

Yes!

2 Corinthians 1:19-20

Christ is risen and so am I:

   my first thought on waking today.

What great surprise—

   the powers that rule are overthrown

   not by force but by love.

Greed, jealousy, hate, fear outwitted.

Peace, joy, grace, abundance flow

drowning the armies of small-mindedness.

Sing, dance, praise the God of life,

the God of love,

the God of YES!

Emmanuel

Matthew 1:23

Holding the day lightly, here

at its commencement, clean page

not crammed full of plans,

I want to leave large room

for God to be with me.

Not as the persistent weed growing

in an impenetrable wall,

or the penny in a parking lot that I

acknowledge but do not take with me,

or the perfunctory blessing said before I

mindlessly eat my food.

Today I want to marvel at sky

with the wonder of my elderly friend

who praised it from the hospital window.

I want to breathe into a tight muscle,

fully aware of my body’s shape in that moment

on my yoga mat. I want to savor the silence

before the day shakes itself awake.

I want to see all who cross my path,

sensing the energy of communion

with the whole human family.

I want to be fully present to food and friends and flowers,

and the feel of wind on my skin, and to know,

in every breath, every blink, every beat of heart,

that God is with me.

Pieces

Ecclesiastes 3:1-20

My life—a jigsaw puzzle,

each piece necessary, but alone

lending no clue to the larger picture

and no box to guide toward completion.

Some pieces that appear to go together

don’t. Unlikely combinations surprise me.

Yet each piece a season, an event—some light,

some dark, but all unite,

making whole. Hope is learning to see

as the Puzzle-Maker sees, the

Imago Dei scattered across the table,

slowly coming into view as I connect

each piece. To see myself

fully human, fully

beloved when the image is not

what I imagined it would be—this

is the key to working

without a box, the key to

becoming whole.

Hope That Doesn't Disappoint

Momentum can be deceiving. When life appears to be clicking along smoothly, one can get lulled into thinking that expectations will continue to be met.

But life really isn’t predictable, even when all indicators point in a certain direction. Palm Sunday turns into Good Friday. Good Friday becomes Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday is jolted into Easter Sunday. Highs become lows, and lows can unexpectedly become highs. The best way to handle life’s wild or even not-so-wild swings is simply to find God’s presence in every moment, low or high, and be grateful.

Our water well project in Guatemala seemed to be going according to plan on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday morning it appeared that we would dedicate the well the following day. Our translator, Blanca, and I went to the school on Wednesday morning to teach what we thought would be the final hygiene lessons. We told the principal that the dedication was planned for 10:00 a.m. the following day and she said the whole school would attend in their school uniforms. It promised to be a great day of celebration for the community of Monte Cristo!

But when we arrived back at the drill site following the dismissal of school at mid-day, we were greeted, not by anticipation and excitement, but by worried expressions and long faces. There was no water. The well that had seemed oh-so-close to completion was not producing water. It was a difficult afternoon and the ride back to Antigua in the van was the quietest hour and a half of the entire trip. We did not know what the outcome of our week would be. While we knew the community would get a well, we did not know when that would happen. I grieved for the families, for the children who would show up in their uniforms on Thursday, for Estella, at whose home the well was sited, and for the folks on our team who had put so much effort into drilling the well.

That night, I woke up during the night and was thinking about the turn of events. A phrase from scripture popped into my head: hope does not disappoint. I held onto that phrase, a gift and a promise from God.

In a marathon day on Thursday, a new well was begun. Word had travelled through the community and when we arrived at the school, the children were not in their uniforms (which was a relief to me). We taught more lessons, primarily about how to have a healthy community. I could not help but think that one way a community is healthy is by bearing one another’s burdens. In our shared disappointment about the first well, the village sustained each other and us.

On Friday morning, when fresh, clean water poured out of the new well, it was glorious! I think we were even more excited because of the disappointment we had felt two days prior. Hope did not disappoint us!

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.(Romans 5:3-5)

Moments of Joy

I recently traveled to Chicago with my husband for a conference he had there. Jim had meetings from breakfast until suppertime. We had events in the evenings, so I pretty much had the whole day to myself.

I went with little agenda, but a commitment to pace myself.  I had been to Chicago on vacation with our family back when our sons were in middle and high school, so I had some familiarity with the city and thus, did not have a list of places to see or things to do. I challenged myself to travel with a greater awareness of place, to be fully present to the people I encountered and the places I saw.

Each day, I made a list of moments of joy I experienced that day. Here are some of those:

o   The quiet of St. James Cathedral prior to worship

o   The sleepy smiles I received from a just-awake toddler in a café at lunchtime

o   Smiles returned as I walked along busy Michigan Avenue

o   Witnessing a young couple holding hands as he walked and she guided her motorized wheelchair along the sidewalk

o   A dog at the kayak rental shop along the Riverwalk, who wanted everyone to throw his ball for him to fetch

o   The young man at the restaurant who made my lunch with joy

o   The unexpected sound of raindrops on Lake Michigan in a moment when the din of morning traffic broke

o   A pigeon at a pub, its eye on a crumb just inside the open door, sizing up whether to come inside and snag the morsel

Such moments are all around us, every day. Maybe you want to challenge yourself to be more aware of where you are as you go through your day. You don’t need to leave town to do this. You don’t even have to leave your house! All it requires is that you pay attention and be fully present in the present moment.

Seeing God in All Things

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.

                                                                                                --Meister Eckhart

This past Sunday afternoon I had made blueberry jam and two loaves of multigrain sandwich bread. As I reflected on Meister Eckhart’s quote above, I thought about how I saw God in these two activities.

Baking bread is always sacramental for me. As I dissolve the yeast and add flour to it I think about Jesus’ statement about how the Kingdom of God is like yeast that permeates a whole batch of dough. Seeing the dough rise I reflect on the risen Christ. And whenever I smell the bread baking, I am taken back to my experience in the two-year Academy for Spiritual Formation, where the aroma of freshly baked bread filled our worship space when we gathered to celebrate Eucharist each afternoon.

My jam making also gave me opportunity to experience God. The fruit itself is gift, a reminder of how God bountifully provides all we need. As I crushed the berries, I thought about how we most often come to deep devotion to God by being broken. We have to know our own insufficiency to embrace God’s sufficiency. As I saw the blueberry pulp where once there were individual berries, I thought about the contrast between self-focus and giving oneself to the community for the sake of God’s kingdom. Just as jam is not possible without broken berries all mixed together, so the Church is not the body of Christ if we do not give our whole selves to each other.

Is it possible to see God in all things? In unpleasant as well as pleasant instances? When things don’t go the way we would choose as well as when we are in our happiest moments? I believe that our ability to do so depends on the expansiveness of our view. Can we rejoice in the success of another, even if we have experienced failure? Can we see that it is better that we do not demand our rights so that another’s rights can be honored?

I am challenging myself to look more closely at the mundane and the marvelous, and the joyful and sorrowful, at the painful and pleasant—and to see God. Maybe this is something you try for yourself.

Experiencing the Miraculous

Control is an illusion, although we usually live as though it is a certainty. We meticulously plan and execute our plans and as long as everything goes off without a glitch, the myth that we are in control is perpetuated. I wonder if this is why we fail to see or believe in miracles. Our propensity to explain away events blinds us from seeing the Holy Spirit work in ways beyond rational explanation.

If we are lucky or blessed, we get to be swept up into the mystery of God’s miraculous power. Our mission team experienced such an encounter with God’s miraculous and mysterious ways, for we saw the work of the Spirit in a way that defies rational thinking.

On Thursday morning of our week in El Salvador, we were on our way to the village where our team was drilling a well and teaching hygiene lessons. Rain the night before had made the dirt road we travelled daily more rutted and bumpy than usual, and our driver, Angel, drove slowly. As we passed a sugarcane field not far from our destination, I felt the van suddenly lurch to a stop. Out of the sugarcane three hooded men appeared and blocked our van. Two were armed with machetes and the third had a short barreled shotgun.

Angel told us to stay put as he got out of the van to talk to the men. None of us moved or said a word to each other as Angel and one of the men had an intense dialogue that none of us could understand. In what seemed simultaneously like an instant and an eternity, Angel was back in the van and we were on our way, charged to say nothing in the village. A former gang member himself, Angel told us these men were gang members who had intended to rob us. When Angel explained to them that we were Christians, there to drill a water well in the village, they let us pass without incident on the condition that we divulge nothing of the encounter to the villagers. We obliged, saying nothing to each other until we were well on our way to the mission house that evening.

With work to do in the village, I did not think much more about the incident until that evening, when we were finally able to process as a group the day’s events. In our team’s conversations with each other and as we’ve shared the story with others since returning home, the miracle has become increasingly apparent to us all.

There is power in the name of Jesus. Angel stressed to the men that we were Christians, there to serve the village, and they let us go without taking anything from any of us. Angel’s past life as a gang member was more than coincidental in that encounter. And Angel’s name – well, that is amazingly obvious!

Our team had feared that this incident could kill future well drilling trips from our church, yet when the story was first shared upon our return, people were caught up in the fact that we were let go without anything being taken from us. The Spirit has been at work by taking what could have been a negative result and turning it into an awe-inspiring demonstration of God’s power and presence.

Our team has been praying for these three men. Our lives are forever bound up with theirs, and we wonder how God is at work in their lives because of their decision to let us pass without taking anything from us. What prompted such action on their part? Surely it is the unfathomable mystery of God, a miracle beyond rational explanation and we had the privilege not only to experience it but to be able to share it with others!

Bird Habits

We put a new bird feeder out in our yard recently. It replaces a feeder we’ve had for years that’s mounted on a pole set in concrete. After all these years, the squirrels have discovered they can jump to the feeder from the fence. Since both the feeder and the fence are not easily moved, we decided to abandon that feeder completely and replace it with a feeder that will exclude squirrels by closing when a squirrel (or a heavy bird) sits on it.

Because we haven’t taken the old feeder down (remember, it’s set in concrete), the birds are not moving to the new feeder. I have watched for several days as birds continue to land on the old, empty feeder, looking for seeds where there aren’t any. I have watched nuthatches go around and around the feeder, checking every opening over and over again, looking for a seed, when a feeder full of seed is only a few feet away. They are having a hard time breaking their habit, and the result is they are not getting the food they want. They can see the new feeder from the old, but have not explored it because they are fixated on the old feeder.

A friend of mine often speaks of the insidiousness of habits. We get into certain patterns of life and end up going through them mindlessly. Certain habits are good, such as tooth-brushing, but often our habits numb us to possibilities for something different and better. Often, whatever discipline we take on for Lent, whether it is giving something up or taking on a new behavior, reminds us how habits can define us and control our lives. Sometimes, our Lenten discipline becomes a new habit, replacing a current habit with a more beneficial practice.

Isaiah 42:20 is a verse that speaks to the numbness that can come with habits:

You have seen many things, but don’t keep watch.

   With ears open, you don’t hear.

Even spiritual habits can become ineffective. We may go through the motions of morning devotions or Bible reading and find that Isaiah’s description fits us. We read but do not comprehend what we read, or we listen without absorbing what we are listening to. James describes this so well as he warns his readers not to simply go through the motions of discipleship: You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. Those who hear but don’t so the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. (James 1:22-24)

Our habits can be the stumbling blocks to our growth in discipleship. Habits can strangle Christ right out of our lives if we fail to take stock of their influence over us. We can miss the ways Christ is at work in the world and prevent Christ from working in us when we are so committed to certain habits.

If Lent can be a time to break habits, we may discover new ways to experience God. God can only enter us through our broken places, and broken habits can open us to new ways of paying attention to God. We can shake off the numbness that habits can bring and see and hear how God is at work in the world and in our own lives in new and fresh ways. I don’t want to be like the nuthatch that keeps going around and around a place where there is no food. I want to be aware of God’s Spirit speaking to me. I want to see the opportunities for discipleship open all around me. Come Holy Spirit! Blow away the numbness of mindless habits and fill the space with You!

Missing The Star

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”        Matthew 2:1-2

Why is it that no one saw the star except the magi? How did everyone else miss it? I thought about that this morning as I walked in the predawn darkness and looked at Saturn, which has been shining brightly in the early morning sky recently.

If the magi traveled from a long distance, and if Jesus was already two years old when they arrived, how is it that this extraordinarily bright star did not capture the attention of others? In two years, no one wondered about it?! These magi were from far away, yet they knew that the star foretold the birth of the king of the Jews. Apparently, no one in Judea realized the significance of the star or took the time to figure it out.

I am humbled by the curiosity and determination of these magi, who were awed by what they saw, understood its significance, and laid aside their life obligations to travel a long distance for a long time to honor a seemingly insignificant small child. They could see what others could not. They were willing to look where others would not. They could embrace the possibility that the king of the Jews could be found in an unlikely place.

What am I missing because I am caught up in my own life’s agenda? How am I blinded to the possibility of God’s work in others because of my preconceived notions? Am I too busy to be curious? Do I worship busyness and productivity as my king and miss the birth of the true King?

Look up, people! See that star! Wonder about it! Be curious! See the Christ in a baby, or in a toddler, or a teenager, or the person right in front of you! Let us all lay aside our agendas and marvel at what is happening in this season. God is here, right now. O come let us adore him!