An Aid to My Celebration

During the midst of Advent I read a story about a cobbler, Mrtain Avedeitch who lived in a certain town.  He lived in a small basement room whose one window looked out onto the street, and all he could see were the feet of people passing by. But since there was hardly a pair of boots that had not been in his hands at one time for repair, Martin recognized each person by his shoes. Day after day, he would work in his shop, watching boots pass by. One day he found himself consumed with the hope of a dream that he would find the Lord's feet outside his window. Instead, he found a lingering pair of worn boots belonging to an old soldier. Though at first disappointed, Martin realized the old man might be hungry and invited him inside to a warm fire and some tea. He had other visitors that evening, and though sadly none were Christ, he let them in also. Sitting down at the end of day, Martin heard a voice whisper his name as he read the words: "I was hungry and you gave me meat; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in. Inasmuch as you did for the least of these, you did unto me."

I found that as I read the story of Martin the Cobbler it became an aid to my personal celebration. Tolstoy's words offer something of a creative attempt to capture the wonder of a God who comes near and helped me picture the gift of Christ in accessible terms. Notably, the story was originally titled:Where God Is, Love Is.

I’ve recognized for years that the Christian story that informs the Christian calendar gives its followers time and opportunity to remember the coming of Christ in a specific context—in Bethlehem, in the Nativity, in the first Christmas. But it also presents repeated opportunities and reminders to prepare for the coming of Christ again and again. Like Martin eagerly waiting at the window, the Christian worldview is one that asks of every day of every year:  How will Christ come near today? Will I wait for him? Am I ready for him? Am I even expecting to find him?  I am reminded to keep watch, to be prepared, and to continually ready my heart and mind for the one who is already near!  Then at the same time the Christian story, I think, would have me to remember how unexpectedly Christ at times appears – as a baby in Bethlehem, a man on a cross, as a person in need.

It is said in the book of Titus, "the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people." How and where will grace show up this week? In order to stay alert to the rich possibilities, I’m convicted to keep before me the radical thought of all that God has offered: a Christ child who comes down to me, a redeemer willing to die for me, a God willing to redefine what is near—all so that I might be where God is. Christianity is not an escape system in order for me to avoid reality, to live above it, or to be able to redefine it. And it seems to me that Christianity is a way that leads the world to grasp what reality is and, by God's grace and help, to navigate through it to an eternal home in God's presence.

Father, God, Your story indeed feeds the hungry, takes in the stranger, and orients a seventy one year old me who is ever-looking homeward. I confess that the focus of Christ's coming is the message of Immanuel—God is with us. I confess the focus of Christ's earthly ministry is the declaration of the cross—God is for us. I further confess the focus of Christ's resurrection is the promise of a future and his imminent return—You will take me safely home. Until then, God, You surround me, even when it seems most unlikely.  Amen 

My Take Away From Charlie Brown

I smile frequently these days as Bettyann, Michelle and Clair share their emotions about the “Christmas story” series on the Hallmark channel.  I razz the three, reminding them that the stories have no truth, only productions of someone’s fantasy writing.  But then, I was thinking the other day, that are some stories, that are not true; that move me whether I’ve heard or seen them when I was younger or now at seventy one.  An example is the release of the first Peanuts movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas.  That was three years before Michelle was born and was instantly loved by me at 23 years of age and a college student. Every time I have seen it over these 49 years, I enjoy it just as much. But it almost did not make it past the television executives who hated it. The movie was criticized for everything from being too contemporary in music, to being too religious in tone. But audiences everywhere confidently disagreed. Having aired every year since 1965, it is now the longest-running cartoon special in history.

One of my favorite scenes, which I share with many, finds Charlie Brown on a hunt for the perfect "great big, shiny, aluminum tree—maybe even a pink one" as instructed by Lucy for their Christmas pageant. At the tree lot, Charlie Brown walks through row after row of flashing, shiny spectacles of color, trying his best to choose well and please his friends. But then he sees a small, natural tree, nearly overshadowed by the flash and glitter of the rest. It is pitiful and loosing needles, but it is the only real tree on the lot. In a moment of confidence, Charlie Brown chooses the unlikely sapling over all the others and is thus the target of laughter and mockery by all. 

Watching that scene I thought, it seems to me that I have always seemed to know intuitively that there is something remarkable—perhaps something even sacred—about being selected long before I understood the implications of choice at all. That someone saw anything worth choosing in this sickly little tree is a turn in the plot that quiets me to the point of having a lump in my throat. Charlie Brown claims the unlikely, pathetic tree as his own, and there is a part of me that feels claimed too.

The story of God among the world is filled with the language of claiming and calling, gathering and choosing. Yet, stripped of the story and its characters, these words often offend some. There’s speak of the injustice of a God who claims anyone, who shows signs of favoritism, or calls anyone particularly. I think they forget what they felt deeply as children—namely, that being claimed among a group of the prettiest and the smartest and the fastest is not about deserving it at all.

In a country of wealth and grandeur, the people of Israel were slaves who were exploited and abused. They were overshadowed, inconsequential, and cast aside, not unlike the tiny tree in the vast lot of color. But God came near and claimed an unlikely people, picking them up, giving them a name, collecting them like a hen gathers her chicks. The book of Deuteronomy recounts the fledging relationship: "For the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye" 32:9-10.

God's gathering of the Israelites was not based on prerequisites. Yet it was far from passive and unfeeling, emerging from God's love, mercy, and wisdom. The prophets would later describe it as the selection of a bride for a bridegroom, and Christ would later describe himself as the bridegroom who came even closer to beckon that bride to his side. God's own are referred to as the "apple of his eye," an expression reserved for those who are most endeared to us. The original Hebrew for the expression can be literally translated as "little person of the eye." The idiom is surprisingly close to the Latin "pupilla," from which we get the word pupil. The word means "little doll," and was applied to the dark center of the eye because of the tiny image of oneself that appears when looking into someone's eyes. In these words, it is if God expresses, "If you get close enough, you will see that it is you who is held in my eyes." God's claiming is inherently personal, the story of the Incarnation a claim that God would gather every chick, every creature, every soul.

Father, God, I thank You for my claim on Christmas.  But I must confess that to often my choices are inherently the same.  When my spirituality is based on preference it fails to consider the one it rejects, which is particularly ironic when it rejects to a distaste of exclusivity. If You have come so near to choose a forgotten nation, to love them out of no merit of their own, and give them Your name regardless, can I not consider You behind all of the things I have to say about religion and exclusivity? And if You come even nearer, sending Your vulnerable son to reach a dejected me, to cleanse me and claim me out of no doing of my own, and give me Your grace regardless, will I not stop to consider the one I reject when I accuse him of injustice, tyranny, or favoritism? Thru all my struggles of choices I am eternally grateful for the incarnate God of the Christmas, Who’s story continues to give the weak, the unwise, and the forgotten a new place and name: "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people."

I'll Be Home For Christmas

I don't make it a habit to read poetry often.  Maybe twice a year, but this coming year I commit to imbibing much more. It's been over the accumulated years I've found that I gravitate to T.S. Eliot as one of my favorite if not my "go to poet."  Although, it takes me a great deal of time interpreting for myself what most poets are telling me I think in reading the poem Journey of the Magi, it seems Eliot is imagining the reminiscent thoughts of one of the Magi who journeyed from afar to witness the birth of Christ.  Using the voice of a pagan king, it seems to me that he is portraying the weight in the soul of one who has truly confronted Christ, the king. This is how the poem concludes, powerfully for me:

"Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt I had seen birth and death.
But had thought they were different, this Birth was
hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
with an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death."

Coming in contact with the Christ, proclaims Eliot, setting one's eyes on the child who was born to die is in a very real sense like dying myself. Although the poem strikes a somber note in me, I find that it is the very note echoed triumphantly throughout the New Testament Scriptures. The apostle Paul readily utilized the words and imagery of death to describe life in Christ. For example he writes in Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."  Jesus uttered similarly, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

I think that especially, during this Advent season, I find myself a bit more watchful and waiting, remembering and anticipating with those who first watched God step into the world through the mean estate of a dirty stable. As I look at the small crèche beside our dinning table I sometimes have a mental vision of those who first set their eyes on the child who was born to die, becoming, in a sense, as Christ was on that first night, homeless and out of place. I also remember, too, that I am still far from home, longing for a kingdom I only know in part. For having embraced the person of Christ, the I proclaim the reality of his kingdom and find myself as Eliot describes, "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods."  These past couple of weeks of Advent my heart has been awakened to a sense of homelessness, stirring a longing for home, and reminds me - as I spoke of in my last journal entry – in the darkness, that I am waiting for the return of the king.

In what I think probably was one of the most comforting conversations between Jesus and the disciples, Jesus gives a description of this home and the certainty of an invitation inside. "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going" John 14:2-4. Compounding this hope, his words are followed by one of his most quoted promises. As Thomas replied, "But Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Jesus answered: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

Christ is the herald of my homelessness and the harbinger of my home, even as he proclaims this very kingdom among us and himself as the way inside. As another of my favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton, once penned,

"For men are homesick in their homes,
and strangers under the sun...
but our homes are under miraculous skies
where the Yule tale was begun."

Father, God, the story of Christ's birth is a certain message of hope and home for me. I realize that You sent Him to take on the fullness of humanity became homeless that I might come home. He still proclaims a kingdom among us and continues to prepare us a place within it. I pray that I and every other heart, is or will prepare him room.

My Theology of Darkness

Bettyann and her friend, sitting in the back seat, driving to a dinner spot, the other night were overheard commenting about the already encroachment of darkness of the winter months. Where I live, in Florida the light begins to recede around 5:30 PM which is not at all bad compared to my discovery of about 4:30 PM here in the Northeast part of the country, visiting and celebrating the Advent season with Amy, Jason, Sarah and Brayden.  Then again it's still nothing compared to what folks in Kotzebue, Alaska experience at the height of winter where daylight is but a mere two hours. 

But for some strange reason, I love the shorter-days and the darkening skies of winter. For me, the darkness of winter invokes nostalgia for the days of huddling up in my “comfy clothes,” creating plans and projects for the days and months ahead. There are, as well, other gifts that I find only enjoyed in the darkness of winter and in this season of lessening light. 

For me, darkness and night evoke ominous images. I remember reading in To Dance With God that early inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere—who did not separate natural phenomenon from their religious and spiritual understanding—saw the departing sunlight as the fleeing away of what they believed was the Sun God. Darkness indicated a loss of hope, absence, and cessation of life. Events of my early childhood caused me for many years to create a fear of darkness.  I can't tell how often I've been afraid of what I cannot see in the dark, and throughout much of my life what is seen inhabits the mysterious realm of shadows. I can seldom remember the times when darkness has not represented chaos, evil, and death, and therefore has not often been thought of in either romantic or nostalgic terms. 

Over the years I've learned that for many individuals—even those who live in sun-filled hemispheres—the darkness of life is a daily nightmare. Despair, chronic loneliness, doubt, and isolation conspire to prevent even the dimmest light. The darkness that comes only as a visitor during the night is for many a perpetual reality. Is there any reason to hope that the light might be found even in these dark places? Are there any gifts that can be received here?   

It is not by accident that the season of Advent coincides with the earthly cycle of fading light and increasing darkness. With its focus on waiting, repentance, and longing, many a Christian views Advent as a season of somber reflection. Yet, even as the light recedes in winter, the season of Advent bids all to come and find surprising gifts in the shorter days, in the womb of pregnant possibility, and in the anxious anticipation that accompanies waiting in the darkness. Those ancient peoples who watched their sun-god disappear found that there were gifts that could be had even in this dark season. They took the wheels off of their carts, and decorated them with greens and garlands, hanging them on their walls as mementos of beauty and hope. Taking the wheels off of their carts meant the cessation of work and a time to watch and wait. As Gertrud Nelson writes about this ancient ritual, "Slowly, slowly they wooed the sun-god back. And light followed darkness. Morning came earlier. The festivals and summer seeds come to life in the unlit places underground. Costly jewel stones lie embedded in the dark interiors of ordinary rocks. Oil, gas, and coal reserves lie far beneath the light of the earth's surface. The dark depths of the ocean teem with life." 

While the dark is mysterious and often ominous, it is also a place of unexpected treasures. A couple of weeks ago, while planting bulbs at Quiet rest, I thought of the way in which Sally Breedlove expresses it in her book; Choosing Rest: Cultivating a Sunday Heart in a Monday World, "Spring bulbs earth, sky, and sea can only be observed in the dark."

I also notice that spiritual gifts, too, often emerge out of the darkness. The writer of Genesis paints a picture of the Spirit of God hovering over the Moses received the Law in the "thick darkness where God was." God's abiding presence was the gift from the darkness. Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, the God of Israel also promises: "I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name." Indeed, the long-awaited Messiah would be revealed to those "who walk in darkness" and who "live in a dark land."

For anyone who might stumble across my thoughts and are dwelling in the dark season of despair, for those who are afraid in the dark, and for those who grope in the darkness, the promise of treasures of darkness may spark a light of hope. "The recovery of hope," writes Nelson, "can only be accomplished when we have had the courage to stop and wait and engage fully the in the winter of our dark longing."

The hope of Advent for me is that God is in the darkness with me, though my experience of God may seem as clear as shifting shadow. Yet God's coming near to me in the person of Jesus is not hindered by the darkness of this world or of my life. I may fear my dark despair hides me from God, but the treasure of God's presence awaits me even there—for I believe with everything within me the darkness is as light to God. primordial chaos and the darkness that covered the surface of the deep. Out of the darkness of chaos came the light of creation. The covenant promises of God to give children and land to Abram were forged "when the sun was going down... and terror and great darkness fell upon him."  

My Theology of Tears

On a recent flight from Ashville to Fort Myers, having spent a few days at Quiet Rest preparing the gardens for the winter, I immediately thought of  my two daughters first cries when I was overwhelmed by the plaintive cries of a young child in two rows behind me.  I remembered how they typically made all those sweet coos and sound that endeared them even more to me during those first few months of not being sure what I had gotten myself into.  They would even offer a tiny laugh when I would make a silly face at them.

And then, seemingly out of the blue, they would cry. I remember being amazed of how Bettyann knew just what the cries indicated. Sometimes it was anger at being put on their stomach; sometimes it was a cry for food; other times, it was the weary crying of fighting off inevitable sleep. Added to my amazement as a new father was; as I listened carefully, I could begin to hear the difference between the various cries of each one’s limited, yet profound vocabulary.

On the air flight, like my newborn daughters, I thought of how the child was trying to communicate with his mother through the only means available to him. With each piercing wail, the tears suddenly streamed down my own eyes. And I thought about how my own tears were the only way I could express the place of deep sorrow that arose in me as I listened to wave after wave of his sobs.

There is something about a baby’s cries that connects to someplace deep inside of me. For most, especially when sitting on a crowded plane as I was, the sound of a baby crying pierces ears like a scratch on a chalkboard or the siren of an emergency vehicle. But for me, the cries of all young children vocalize all that I cannot say and all that I feel inside. From plaintive wail to frustrated, angry cries, whether they emerge from my own grandchildren, a child beside me on the plane, or at a presentation of Frozen at Disney, these cries articulate the deepest yearnings of my own heart.

In this particular case, the young child’s cries connected to deep losses I have suffered. His cries told stories of grief and heartache I bore in my own spirit on behalf of friends and loved ones. His tears expressed for me the bitter sorrow over lost opportunity, frittered years, idle moments when opportunity might have been seized rather than squandered. And so, I cried with the child—the child vocalizing all that I could not say, but that which I deeply felt and I don’t know but I think the two ladies sitting on the inside and across the aisle where uncomfortable as the one ask me if there was anything she could do and the other reached for something to whip my tears.

I have learned over the years that the response to tears is to admonish them away. “Don’t cry,” “be thankful” or “look on the bright side” are dismissive statements, as much as they are meant to comfort. Yet, there are so many moments in life that cannot be expressed or soothed by words. They are too deep, too visceral to be simply captured by a clever turn of phrase. Instead, tears have become a necessary articulation of my heart, speaking out the groans too deep to be uttered.

I believe tears are a language of their own. Whenever I am tempted to dismiss them or to try to overcome them, I am encouraged towards their free expression because of the way in which my Christian faith values them. Throughout the sacred pages of Scripture, there are tears. The tears of the grieving, the weary, and even the joyful—tears speak what the mouth cannot say.

The psalmist speaks of God gathering up tears in a bottle, writing them in a book, as if they tell a unique story. The apostle Paul speaks of the Spirit groaning with utterances too deep for words. The ancient Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, is often called “the weeping prophet” and Isaiah characterizes the “suffering servant” as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

Then, I don’t think it was just a sentiments event when this suffering servant, Jesus, who wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, moved by the weeping of Mary, Martha and all those who had gathered to mourn his loss. He didn’t just shed a single tear; he wept, crying out in anguish over the death of Lazarus. In a world that values strength, stoicism, and in contrast to those traditions that espouse detachment, I find myself comforted that there is room for my tears, value in grief, and a God who comes near to the brokenhearted.

Father, God, I affirm Jesus presenting a living picture of what You are like,  and tears are not foreign to You.  You are not removed from human pain, but have borne under it in the flesh, in Jesus. I believe my tears are understood, welcomed and honored by You who  feels. And this gives me great hope these later years of my life for the all too frequent days when tears are as much a part of my days as laughter. And it helps me better understand Jesus’s own words of blessing on those who mourn: Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. If all of this is true, then let the tears flow freely, just as they do when the young child cries. 

When Do I Say "Amen"

This past Friday, I was invited to attend a revival meeting and was spiritually enthusiastic and eager to worship as nostalgic memory kicked in of the special “revival” meetings of many years past. The songs we sang were beautiful to me and I didn't need a hymnal as words of love for the Father and Jesus came like flowing water.  No courses of any kind, just "old" hymns of praise and worship. There was such a sweetness about only a piano, organ and the sanctuary full of other voices in accompaniment. Tears had filled my eyes by the time we were seated.  I realized I haven’t carried a handkerchief in my back pocket for years and Bettyann wasn’t with me to ask for a Kleenex.  After singing and the instrumentalist had taken their seats is when the worship service went completely awry.  I was prepared to celebrate the person of Christ, but in the end I wondered if we were celebrating without him.  I will not expose the name of the church, the denomination it was a part of, or even what the sermon was about, as that has not stuck in my memory of a day and a half. I only remember the rabbit trail that led us down a darkened hole of condemnation.  From body piercings and baggy pants to dancing and politicians, the list was long, the frustration clear, and the rationale was fired with as much passion as the targets that had been chosen.  The preacher concluded with a warning.  "For hell is a fearful reality, and many—maybe even those near to you—will find it their final place of unrest."

"Amen!" the person in front of me called out.  "Yes, amen," said several others in agreement.

My heart sunk further into my soul.  Did they know that "Amen" means "Let it be"?

Remembering it has brought a certain despair to the surface.  Except, what I once remembered only as a particular worship service in a particular place on a particular Friday evening, I now remember as an illustration of the worship service I am all too capable of leading at seventy one.  When I allow myself to cling more to negativity or fear than to Christ, when I cherish words of death more than words of life, when I spend more time complaining about what is wrong with people in or outside church than putting energy into being the church, this is exactly the worship experience I recreate—and there are far too many voices willing to shout "amen" at the end of each sermon.  In my opinion, Christianity in many circles of believers, sixty five and older, has sadly become synonymous with negativity.

In his sermon "The Weight of Glory," C.S. Lewis took note of a subtle shift in the language of his day, which he felt was the first detour in a road leading far away from Christ.  Writes Lewis, "If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness.  But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love.  You see what has happened?  A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philosophical importance." Lewis goes on to explain the ideologies that grow out of subtle shifts of language.  The positive answer requires a perspective that looks outward at others—those who are the recipients of the virtue or else the one from whom this virtue arises in the first place.  On the contrary, the negative virtue shows that our concern is primarily with ourselves—our own self-denial—and hence the appearance of good virtue.  To this Lewis notes, "The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself."  In other words, the Christian story has lots to say about what is wrong with the world.  But thankfully, this is never the end of the sermon.  (And of course, both the Old and New Testaments have a lot to say about complaining, fear, and anger.)

I recognize, regardless of philosophical outlook, it is very true that I live in a world that is full of bad behavior. I also hold that I live in a world with many philosophical pitfalls and believe in a story which offers both commentary and correctives.  But God help me; that my spiritual story also proclaims boldly that the world is simultaneously full of the glory of God.  Therefore I have every right to be far more excited to see faith than to see fault, to prefer far more to see a kingdom fully alive and authentically graceful than quick to complain and deciding who is in and out of that kingdom. 

This same spiritual story that compels me to defend my faith also informs me to do so with gentleness and reverence—so that those who abuse me for my "good conduct in Christ" may be put to shame 1 Peter 3:15-16.  The same spiritual story that bids me as a follower of Christ to do all things "without complaining and arguing" instructs me to do so because it is by my "holding fast to the word of life" that I demonstrate a truly different message than that of a crooked and perverse generation Philippians 2:14-16.  Moreover, the same teacher who died to defend the person of Christ called his followers to stay focused on the kind of person Christ is:  "For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not 'Yes and No'; but in him it is always 'Yes.'  For in him every one of God's promises is a 'Yes.'  For this reason it is through him that we say the 'Amen,' to the glory of God" 2 Corinthians 1:19-20.

In any worship service that I ever create with my words and my actions, with the things I do and the things I leave undone, how remarkable if there is good reason for those around me to say "Amen."

Me - Upgrade? You're Joking!

I was standing in line at the Verizon store for a deal that I couldn't pass up.  It’s been over two years now and well past the time to replace my cell phone that the battery was loosing more and more juice, faster and faster every day.  Giant red signs told me about the bargain I was about to seize when the person in front of me turned and told me how the newest and greatest multi-media advertising frenzy had drawn her into the store and the weekend sale, a mail-in rebate, and an additional store credit that were going to make the phones themselves quite reasonable. But then reason checked in for me.  I thought;  “They are thinking my reasoning is something they want me to check before I step through the door. With such a deal on the phones, upgrade after upgrade after upgrade becoming suddenly attainable and somewhat distressing to turn down. Each step toward a better plan, a better phone, a better way of communicating seemed so small and so necessary.”  I said, to the young lady, “I’m not going to wait, see you later,” and walked out. 

A few days later, I was confessing my weekend enchantment with upgrades to a fella  with a penchant for technology, at my favorite coffee house, and my story was quickly met with stories of his own. "Whether looking at smart phones, or iPads, or cameras, I find myself wanting to wait 'just one more month' knowing they will soon come out with the next model, knowing whatever I buy today will be outdated tomorrow," he told me. Yet even foregoing technology, we seem to live in a culture of upgrades. Cars and houses, flights and meal-deals ever tempt us with the constant option of bigger and better and newer. Whether looking at a computer, a career, or even a relationship, upgrading, in some cases, has quickly become a consuming way of life for me. In the culture of upgrades, my coffee acquaintance noted, “contentment is elusive.” I realize that I sometimes chase after crowns that disappear the moment I seize them.

Walking in the last chapter of my life, where the world seems desirous of installing the hope of acquiring more and becoming greater, there are those who stood and if I look hard enough, probably stand today with a hope in dire contrast. That's my soul's desire!  Like John the Baptist standing among the crowds of Jerusalem announcing hope of the coming King. As he offered a testimony far weightier than any status or upgrade, he revealed a posture in life far different than the one easily held then and today. “The bride belongs to the bridegroom,” he said of his relationship to Jesus. “The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less” John 3:28-30. In other words, the crown that will most adorn me is not my own.

A few years later, the apostle Paul says something quite similar. Whatever I could dare boast of, whatever I might accomplish as a spiritual being in this life, Paul, hands down had me beat. “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.” I'm thinking that if there was a way to upgrade one’s spiritual status, Paul would have been sitting in first class. But I have never found such a category in the New Testament of the Bible. I suppose that's why I sort of smile and laugh inwardly when someone uses the term "good Christian or bad Christian." There isn't a way to achieve more or to become more than I am already freely offered in Christ. “My grace is sufficient for you,” Paul was told in prayer, “for my power is perfected in weakness” 2 Corinthians 12:9a. As a follower of the risen Christ, I am to become less; he is to become more. “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” 2 Corinthians 12:9b.

Father, today I take the posture in my soul of one that receives his King! Christ’s grace is my identity; his crown is my only hope. I willingly resign to the fact: “I am not the Christ,” said John the Baptist. But there is one who is. 

My Issue of Remembering

The word “souvenir” comes from the French word meaning “to remember.” At least once a summer I have the opportunity of browsing through the crowded Nantahala outdoor shop near Quiet Rest while waiting for my son-in-law, Mitch, to meet up with me after his run of the class 4 waters of the Nantahala river.  I am always tempted to purchase a shirt from the overstuffed racks of t-shirts, hats and the such but then my very cold “up-side-down” experience and rescue from the same river, at sixty nine years hits my memory and I intentionally pass the opportunity of the purchase.  I don’t suppose that I will ever have the same memory of romantic encounters that my son-in-law will have years from now.  And I think he enjoys the souvenirs I purchase for him as Christmas gifts or on other occasions.  Each time I dawn the long sleeved T I purchased four or five years ago, bearing the word Nantahala, now, only serves to remind me of a another time when I had visions of conquering white water and falls or maybe feeling like I've sold myself out as the prototypical, easily-targeted, junk-buying tourist when someone says; “I like your shirt” or “I've been there!”

Then I was reading an article in the doctors office the other day where the creators of a souvenir shop in Buchenwald, Germany, claim, though controversially, to be bearing the less-materialistic origins of the word. The shop opened in time for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp where an estimated 56,000 people were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. Their souvenirs range from plaques embedded with stones from the camp to sprigs taken from the surrounding forest to be planted elsewhere. Moneymaking was never the point, the founders maintain; the project has always been about building bridges of memory, actively confronting history, and hoping to extend the somber lessons of the Holocaust to future generations. The original article came from the New York Times.  From outrage to appreciation, reactions have been understandably varied. My own are admittedly mixed. Can materialism be set aside in a souvenir shop? Can history only be “actively confronted” with an object in hand? More notably, how might I best go about the vital act of remembering?

Last Sunday, I attended mother to the chapel at the facility where she resides.  There was a small crucifix standing on the table in front which I assumed was left by the catholic chaplain after the previous mass proceeding.  As the chaplains of the day entered, without hesitation the crucifix was removed and put with clutter on a back shelf.  I immediately was struck and glanced around the room, observing resident’s faces.  On one particular ladies face was a distant wondering, frown, head and eyes intently moving and searching for the crucifix now hidden among stacks of paper, flower arrangements, pictures, etc. of the back shelving. I saw her later in the hallway and asked if she were Catholic.  In her ten minute personal, elegant, and committed, elder voiced answer, I was freshly reminded of the power of remembering.    

I’m finding there to be a great amount of Christian Scripture calling the world to the act of remembering: remembering the story every person is a part of, the moments God has acted mightily, the times humanity has learned in tears. “Remember this,” God uttered in history, “Fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come,” Isaiah 46:8-10.  The story of faith is one that requires memory. God has moved; God is moving. Remember.

But how?

“Actively,” the answer seems to come, and with great weight, for it is possible to forget. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. Teach them diligently to your children, talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9.  Memory plays a vital role in the story God continues to tell.

Father, God, I thank you for the provision of memory.  By the precious Holy Spirit quicken my memory so that I might fulfill Your command during this season of life.  Amen  

My Struggle With Identities

One day, some time ago I thought; I'm going to read the Old Testament book of Ruth. I read more carefully this umpteenth time finding it to be a careful commentary on the interplay of self and social identity in its characters. I was so fascinated with the prospect that I watched the 1960 movie: The Story of Ruth, primarily to see how it was interpreted by the writer and director. In my reading and the film there is no opportunity missed to describe Ruth as the perpetual outsider. She is referred to throughout the story as "Ruth the Moabite" or "the Moabite woman" or even merely "the foreigner." In fact, even Ruth refers to herself as a foreigner. Yet her seemingly permanent status as an outsider is juxtaposed with her wholehearted declaration to identify herself with a new people, a new land, and a new God. "Where you go, I will go," she says to her mother-in-law. "Where you stay, I will stay; your people shall be my people, and your God my God."

Over the years I have had struggles with identity and found it to be a complicated thing. Most recently when I have tried to identify myself with something new, something I know to be true, something given to me or chosen for myself, it seems it may only be a peripheral identity.

I have read about the nineteenth century poet Francis Thompson who led the turbulent life of one caught between such dueling identities. His father wanted him to study at Oxford and become a physician, but Francis wanted to be a writer and moved to London to pursue a career. Sadly, he lost his way in drugs, and for the rest of his life he would oscillate between brilliant writer and homeless addict. He lived on the streets, slaking his opium addiction in London's Charing Cross and sleeping on the banks of the River Thames. But he continued to scribble poetry wherever he could, mailing his work to the local newspaper. The editor was immediately taken, noting there was one greater than a Milton among them, a slumbering genius with no return address. Thompson acknowledged that he was running from God, and in fact, spent his life wrestling between his identity as a child on the run and his identity as a child who had been found. Once succumbing to the pursuing Christ, he penned the famous words to "The Hound of Heaven."

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him,
down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
A down Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

I realize my deepest pains have a way of shaping who I am and what I see. Thompson's divine pursuer is one Ruth did not yet know, and Naomi could not see. Interestingly, the first time Naomi spoke directly of her God within earshot of the foreigner who pledged to follow this God, it was to say that God had made her cold and grieving. Naomi imparts that her name should no longer be Naomi, which means "my delight," but Mara, which means "bitter." "For I went out full," she says, "but the LORD brought me back empty."

Naomi's words are honest. Her grief is unfathomable, and the very meaning of her name seems a cruel irony. But she was also not seeing everything clearly. Tightly wound within Naomi's identity was her status as a widow, her status as empty. But she was not only a widow; she was not alone in her grief. She had not returned entirely empty. Naomi returned to Judah with the gift of a loyal daughter-in-law who had pledged to discover the God of Israel, maybe even as Naomi rediscovered the God of Israel again herself.

Am I a business owner-chaplain, retiree-employed, employer-friend? How do I secure relationships as an aging father, grandfather, friend, comrade, confidant, new resident, or even customer? It has often been in the battle of my warring identities that I most clearly discover who I am. In the midst of defeat, in the presence of adversity or dejection, God is still coming to me as I am, as see myself, reminding me that I am made in the image of the divine and gives me a fresh identity. Naomi was indeed bitter, and she had every right to cast off the identity of delight in her name. Ruth had chosen a new life for herself, but she was indeed a foreigner, and was reminded of her status as an outsider at every turn. Even so, these identities would not sway the God who loved them.

Father, God, thank You for the book of Ruth. Thank You for revealing that You are always somewhere in the interplay of the dueling identities of my life, and in the end, You seem to inform all else. I have found You to be the One who cares for the outsider in me, the one who brings an empty man through his bitterness, the one who brings a redeeming value to my person. Moreover, thank You for being the one who would eventually bring the Messiah through the bloodline of two widows; a foreigner named Ruth and a grieving woman named Naomi, too seek and save Bill Prather and his household.

Suffering Through Absence

There where two of us left at the oiled clothed, picnic type table, where each morning we have breakfast with a dozen or two from the valley and nearby hallows. Both of us are in our seventies: he in his late and me in the early decade.  It was an unusual two hours, as our conversation shifted into talking openly, over refills of coffee and then an empty styrofoam cup, about our lives from the time of our beginnings to the present. Most revealing was the effects of the sadness at the events surrounding the loss of our fathers. My, now friend, lost his father twice. The first time, he was lost through divorce when my friend was just a young child. He was left to grow up in the glaring presence of his father's absence. The second time, his father was lost to him through death, just as he had begun to experience the renaissance of their relationship. Given just a few glimpses of his father's presence, my friend has lived the majority of his life in the midst of his father's absence. In suffering the absence of his earthly father, not by any choice of his own, my friend struggles to understand God’s presence in his life. It is difficult not to view God as one views one's own parents or caregivers. And so, my friend persistently seeks after God, even though his experience of God is one of absence.

We spent a lenghty period of our conversation about how this same experience of absence, sadly, has repeated itself over and over again in the ravaged testimonies of those who struggle to hold on to faith, or those who have lost faith altogether. We reminded each other and gave examples where acts of violence and suffering in our communities seemingly go on without notice and unchecked by divine government. We both agreed that those who live in the midst of absence too often experience a cruel vacancy; an empty throne room with an empty throne.

In recent days, I’ve been reminded of the words of Job, ancient in origin, speaking the same language of absence of which, at least, my new found friend and I am still, in some way, experiencing today:

Behold, I go forward, but He is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;
When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.

The story of Job is at least in part a story of God's absence. While the narrator of the story and the readers of the story know the beginning and the end, Job finds himself in the silent middle struck down by tragedy. His story painfully reminds me of the mystery, when in moments of great need, God has been too often missing. Job's cry has beenmy cry, Oh that I knew where I might find Him that I might come to his seat. Job clings tenaciously to the hope that he would find God, and find a just God in his case. "I am not silenced by the darkness," Job proclaims, "nor deep gloom which covers me" Job 23: 17.
Called to "light the light of those in darkness on earth," Mother Teresa wrote in Come Be My Light, that if she ever became a saint, "I will surely be one of darkness." The paradoxical and unsuspected reality of her mission to the poorest of the poor in this world would be that she herself would live in terrible darkness and in the midst of God's absence. In the middle of her ministry, she wrote to one of her spiritual directors, "This untold darkness, this loneliness, this continual longing for God which gives me that pain deep down in my heart...is such that I really do not see....The place of God in my soul is blank...I just long for God and then it is that I feel—He does not want me, He is not there....I hear my own heart cry out, 'My God' and nothing else comes. The torture and the pain I can't explain."

At times, not unlike me and my fatherless friend, like the anguished Job, Mother Teresa experienced the profound pain of the absence of God in her life as she ministered to those largely absent from the radar of compassion and care. She, herself was a light, but she experienced little light in her own heart and life. She was indeed a light in the darkness, but she experienced little of the illumination of God's comforting presence in her own dark existence.

And yet, the paradox of her life reminds me all toward  spiritual and mental health, that the experience of God's absence need not lead me to the darkness of despair, or to conclude that God is not there or does not exist, but can propel me to embody God's presence to others who grope for God in the darkness, assured by my own search that there is indeed someone to find. Even in my father’s death and my friend's experience of fatherlessness, He brings comfort and care by sharing His story through writing. And perhaps, as I give the gift of presence to others, I will experience God anew, just as Job did: Job 42:5 I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees Thee. 

Father, I give You all my praise this morning, especially when I am reminded of the Psalmist's words. "If I go up to the heavens, You are there;  if I make my bed in the depths, You are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even ther Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast.   

Answering My Grandchildren's Questions

Sitting here this early morning, ruminating, especially about family, allowing my mind to wonder back some forty years ago when Michelle and Amy were born, then skipping down the years that followed.  I remember how they came into my world.  Barraging Bettyann and me with questions. As infants, they were not doing the questioning.  It was Bettyann and me.  But in their own ways, their voices were heard and the questions poured forth. Why is she crying? What does she need? How do I do this? Of course, it wasn’t long before the voices shifted and it really was our daughters barraging us with questions in a different way.  Neither had  to be the type who’s inquisitive nature left us exhausted, it was just that they were two years apart in age.  Just enough so as when the question of the old was answered, the younger would ask “why.”

Before the miraculous events at the Red Sea even took place, God instructed Moses to tell the Israelites that they were in the makings of what would become a festival.  To a people yet bound in slavery, God commanded them to celebrate forever the things that were about to take place.  And God added, "Then your children will ask, 'What does all this mean? What is this ceremony about?

LORD's Passover, for he passed over the homes of the Israelites in Egypt'" Exodus 12:26-27. Your children will ask. What I was taught many years ago in my studies in developmental psychology, it is now that each of my four grandchildren are asking questions because they are curious, because they are interested, because they want to know, and because they believe I have the answer. But I’ve noticed questions also form on the lips of one particular grandchild simply because, I think, she loves to ask. Inquiry is an imperative part of a developing young life, and my grandchildren’s lives are immersed in a culture of questions. Yet, I’m thinking, as their grandfather, who gives short and succinct answers, am, like Srie; easily making the mistake that answers are all they are looking for. In other words; hearing the question as a problem to solve with an answer. I'm thinking that a culture of answers is not the answer for foundational living. While nerves and photocytes may explain the glow of the firefly, perhaps the question was more accurately probing the miracle of light. I’m asking myself, how many times have I silenced the wonder of inquiry of my grandchildren, with a “quip from the hip” in place of informing their curiousness.    

It’s been sometime last summer that a study on the faith and belief of today's youth laments the growing inarticulacy of students when it comes to talking about what they believe. The study relates the language of faith to something like a second language in our culture. Acquiring a second language requires listening to others speak, studying the lessons of language, and practicing it until a person’s voice is found. The researchers were troubled as they realized how seldom teens found opportunity to practice talking about their faith. They were astonished by the number of kids who reported that this was the first time they had been asked by an adult what they believed. One replied as if he was caught off guard, "I don’t know. No one has ever asked me that before."

I cannot help but add here: I was so pleased, a few weeks ago when my eldest granddaughter was asked to and without equivocation committed to giving her personal testimony of her relationship with Christ on film.   

Such a study, as this one, mentioned above, offers many angles for analysis for me. But I often wonder if, in the spirit of this information age, I boast in and practice getting endless and instant answers, all the while failing to notice that I am too soon interrupting questions with explanation. I’m asking myself; is this perhaps the abundance of answers stiffing my ability to probe deeply the truths and mysteries of faith and religion?  I’ve noticed over recent years that I have seldom looked for opportunities to practice talking with my grandchildren, let alone acquaintances about the things I cease to wonder at. 

To the children who first celebrated the Passover feast, inquiry must have been abounding with anticipation. The unleavened bread stood out from what they were used to eating, the lamb was prepared with extraordinary care, and the adults seemed marked by a hopeful sense of urgency.  "What does all this mean?" would have come naturally out of eager mouths. Parents and grandparents answered with the stir of recollection, "Today we celebrate the LORD's Passover, for he passed over our homes in Egypt and brought us out with his mighty hand."  Their answer offered within it the weighted truth of the Exodus—and no doubt their eyes were filled with the same boundless wonder I will experience when I go beyond the questions of Grace, Sarah, Claire and Brayden.  

Hospitality: Important To Me Anymore?

I’ve noticed that with each gathered year of life, my desire for inviting people into my home for hospitality sake has become less and less. Of late I’ve been thinking about that.  Why over the years the seeming disinterest when I used to be hyper-desirous of “inviting people into my home?”  I think the desire sprang up in my childhood. My parents' home was one, not unlike most, that an open invitation to “come on over,” was ever present.  Many a Sunday, after worship was spent sharing a pot roast or casarole, either at our home or someone else’s.  I think that’s about time the “crock pot” came on the market.  Then over the years it became easier to meet at a restaurant, I suppose.  And slowly but surely after Bettyann and I established our home, it became a sort of cloistered dwelling. We used it with particularly, guarded intention. It was only on very special, scheduled,  thought out, planned out, occasions used for hospitality.

 

 Well, in ruminating, reading and praying on the past and present aspects of my personal hospitality, I’ve been more and more convicted about my role in providing spontaneous hospitality as I realize that Israel’s people were called to be God’s people and God alone was to be their God, but this identity was far from one that gave them permission to stave off every neighbor and keep every foreigner at bay.  Hospitality was written into the very consciousness of the people of Israel.  They saw that they were living in "none other than the house of God" and as such their very lives were to signify the master of the house.

As I read the story in 2 Kings 4 I wonder if this didn’t play into the woman of Shunem thought in entreating the traveling Elisha to stay for a meal.  Later realizing that her guest was a servant of God, she took hospitality to all new heights.  “She said to her husband, ‘Look, I am sure that this man who regularly passes our way is a holy man of God.  Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that he can stay there whenever he comes to us.’”  

Though the hospitality I offer may not include the physical building a new room onto my house, the image is difficult to forget.  And yes, I have given it thought of building more guest accommodations here at Quiet Rest if it were not for limited resources.  As I mature in my love for God, I often find God asking me to do the very things that God has done for me: “In my Father's house are many rooms,” said Jesus. “If it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" John 14:1-3.  I’m thinking, hospitality is a command I am given because I have been given a home.  I welcome others because I have been welcomed.  Not only in my physical home but in my person! I build rooms in my life for strangers, outcasts, and neighbors because I, too, was once a stranger when the Son prepared me a room.

I also think I ought to also build rooms simply because my neighbors need them.  In Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous sermon on the Good Samaritan, he distinguishes between asking “What will happen to me if I stop to help this man?” and “What will happen to him if I don’t?”  King then asks himself, "What will happen to humanity if I don't help?  What will happen to the Civil Rights movement if I don't participate?  What will happen to my city if I don't vote?  What will happen to the sick if I don't visit them?" So, I understand a bit more that choosing to do nothing in terms of hospitality, service, and justice is still very definitely making a choice.  What will happen to my neighbor if I refuse to see his need for the room in my life I can offer? 

Further, I'm also beginning to discover that God not only encourages my hospitality for the sake of the one who might receive it, but also for the sake of others that will see it. I ran across an old 2008 article in The New York Times, on line, where Nicholas Kristof makes the observation that in certain countries where danger and instability are constant threats, “you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians.”  He continued in the article, “In the town of Rutshuru in war-ravaged Congo, I found starving children, raped widows, and shellshocked survivors. And there was a determined Catholic nun from Poland, serenely running a church clinic.” Just last week I saw and listened to a Catholic priest who refuses to leave his congregation in a city of Iraq where terrorist are about to occupy. 

More than ever, at age seventy one, genuine hospitality is perhaps one of my most effective means of being the salt and light Christ has called me to be.  On multiple levels, by building a room for a neighbor is preaching a sermon, and it may well be the only description of the good news those who behold the act will ever hear.

 

Father, God, with Elisha and the Shunammite woman, I want to live out the rest of my life in nothing other than the house of God.  Might the people with whom I come in contact respond to my hospitality with the surprise of Jacob, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it."

Living Reality At Seventy One

I’m finding it much easier now, after the last two years, the down loading and reading of books from the Kindle.  When it was suggested to me, I fought the very idea. I had began building a personal library of “I can hold them in my hands, keep them on my shelf,” books, during my early twenties, growing it proudly over the next forty years. But in my sixties and now early seventies - the years of down-sizing, I find it a blessing to have a Kindle and grateful heart in still having the desire of returning to reread some of those “old” books, remembering how inspiration, creativity, desire and challenge leaped upon my thoughts and imaginations from their pages.  Books like The Hiding Place written by Corrie ten Boom.  As I was rereading it, awhile back, I thought suddenly and alarmingly something I can’t remember giving intentional thought too at previous readings. That being; there is a “fleshiness” to the faith I profess. That the glory of God has a Body, and it is within the reality of my body.  In my flesh. The body of Christ on earth finds its identity in me.

It  was in the words of Mr. ten Boom, "The master of this house demands that we open the door to anyone that knocks," that I saw this identity was both living and active. Fittingly, he was referring to himself, even as he was referring to the Master who first alluded to the image.  This line he offered to the many who objected to his behavior.  To Jews in danger, he simply opened the door.

As I placed the reading in my lap, put my chair in the prone position, and closed my eyes, I once again visioned and referenced the words of the Master as if I were standing with those surrounding him that day, in Matthew 25:35-36: "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." Today, I am as convinced, as on that morning,  that I am his hands, his touch, his house. I am also convinced, that at this stage of my life, it is more important than ever to be Christ’s body, and realize I live among neighbors who God sees as Christ himself.

Thus, I would argue that the biblical vision of my neighbor is imperative to Christian ethics and apologetics, to the call of Christ to go and make disciples, and to the telling of my personal story and the story of the God who saves.   When Mr. ten Boom decided to wear a Jewish star after it was ordered that all Jews must thereby distinguish themselves, he made the decision to live among neighbors, to see fellow human beings, not people with differences, not people beneath him, nor men and women facing an adversity that had nothing to do with him.  "If we all wear them," he said to a man standing in line for his star, "they won't be able to tell any difference."  For me, the greatest task is not arguing, reasoning, defending, or preaching, but living as Christ's Body, living the words I profess, every day, every way, with a love for both Word and neighbor, and a clear vision of the God who spoke them both into existence. Now, I pray that I'll demonstrate it today when I’m in heavy traffic in the left lane and desperately need to turn right. 

A friend of many years told me the other day that he was praying that I would  be convicted to "pursue pulpit ministry," as I have such a powerful gift of preaching.  Frankly, heeding the call of loving my neighbor is quite different than living as if I must have a listening congregation (and that's where I may have got sidetracked, somewhat, on my journey past) in order to further the words and mission of Christ.  Corrie and Betsie's witness in the concentration camp was made audible not because of their words but specifically because they lived with an ethic quite different than the cruelty the camp fostered.  When life itself was stripped of dignity and hope, their way of living eventually built trust among those around them and earned them a hearing.  John Stackhouse notes the harder, yet vital task of living apologetically, in his book: Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today, when he writes "It may be, in fact, that it is precisely for lack of sufficient 'corollary apologetics,' as I sometimes call them, that so many people in our communities today generally are not deeply interested in what Christians have to say theologically and philosophically." To me that means being a neighbor who is living the words I hope one day to offer aloud.

In fact, the wide-ranging ministries of the disciples after the resurrection of Christ also reminds me that I am to live in such a way as to make disciples as I go along.  Even at my age, in the mountains, at the doctors, on the shore, in the store or clearing the table after dinner. It also reminds me that this means being the church, being who I am, and living what I profess, even when it would be far easier to follow another ethic and identity entirely.  Before their arrest and subsequent sentencing to the concentration camp, the ten Boom's pastor pled with them to follow an easier ethic:  "It is the law," he said referring to illegality of harboring Jews.  "And Christians must obey the law.  Think of what you are risking for one Jewish baby."  But Mr. ten Boom knew there was yet a higher law, "We are meant to obey the law of the state—if it does not go against our higher law of God."

Like the ten Booms, the confessing church that stood up to Hitler's regime was not trying to being relevant or contemporary, liberal, conservative, or rebellious; they were simply trying to be confessional.  Saying no to Hitler, they were being who they claimed to be.  They were living the reality of gospel they professed with their mouths.

Bill, you believe that Christ has risen from the dead!  Are you then not to live as a man who has found the "really real"?   In the words of a dying Bestie ten Boom, "There is no pit so deep that Christ is not deeper still."

Abridging My Story

I was browsing, recently, the Kindle, for books and ran across an abridged version of C.S. Lewis's The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and wondered what on earth they could cut out.  Because it is a story I am so familiar with, because every scene is a small but important part of the whole, I can't imagine being satisfied with anything less. The abridged version would in my mind most certainly be deprived.  That set me in to s thinking about the word "abridged," which Webster defines as deprived or condensed.

 
Gregory Wolfe, editor of Image, a journal exploring the arts and religion, tells a story in; Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery, about telling stories for his kids. He describes the memorable bedtimes when he attempts to concoct a series of original tales. "My kids are polite enough to raise their hands when they have some penetrating question to ask about plot, character, or setting," he writes. "If I leave something out of the story, or commit the sin of inconsistency, these fierce critics won't let me proceed until I've revised the narrative. Oddly enough, they never attempt to take over the storytelling. They are convinced that I have the authority to tell the tale, but they insist that I live up to the complete story that they know exists somewhere inside me." Kind of like, my reaction to the incomplete version of the Narnian classic, children seem to detest a deficient story. 

Yet there is no doubt that my sense of the guiding authority of story and storyteller often dramatically lessens as I have moved from childhood to a mature aged adult. Thinking back, in my young adult mind, literary or biblical stories took an authoritative back seat (though they remained enjoyable or even, in some cases,  believed) as an awareness of my own story, of which I began to think of myself as the writer, emerged. Even now, when there is a desire to view my stories in the context of a larger narrative (the Christian story or the secular humanist narrative for instance) the temptation to choose an abridged version is real. Choosing the parts of the bigger story that speak to my life is deemed both attractive and practical.

The book of Acts (3:12-16) is largely concerned with documenting the stories of men and women in the context of the narrative of God. For me, It is a detailed reminder that within the details of my life is the image of a storyteller and the presence of story beyond my own. As Peter and John heal a man crippled from birth who was often seen begging outside the temple gates, the crowd is astonished. Seeing their reactions, Peter speaks directly to the confused and fragmented thoughts of the crowd. "You Israelites," he says, "why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you."

As, I sit, writing, sipping hot green tea and watching the sun rise on the migrating ducks casting shadows on the small lake, I’m also thinking!  Yes, thinking that the people of Acts desires me to hear that the story I am a part of has a beginning, a middle, and an end. "Indeed," concludes Peter, "all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers."  I’m thinking that as I turn seventy one within the next few days, MY story lies somewhere within God's story. And  thinking back to childhood, that I am not meant to be satisfied with the abridged version, but to walk forward as an heir of the kingdom of the great unabridged storyteller.