Audio Message

Teleological

“Don, all relationships are teleological.”

I asked him what the word teleological means.

“It means they’re going somewhere,” Al said. “All relationships are living and alive and moving and becoming something. My question to you,” Al said seriously, “is, where is the relationship you’ve started with this woman going?”

This is a passage from a book called Scary Close, by Donald Miller (who wrote Blue Like Jazz, which happens to be the very first spiritual book I ever read.) It’s about plans and visions. He later writes, “I would never walk into my office without a plan. As the leader of my company, my team depends on me to know where we are going and how important each of them are to the journey. I can’t believe I almost went into my marriage, which is infinitely more important than my business, without a plan.”

He’s writing about a romantic relationship, and his point is deeply convicting to me. It’s making me consider where my marriage is going, and if it’s actually where we think it is, and if it encompasses the values we both hold. Sometimes, we can start with a plan (loosely held, of course – God has a way of changing the plans written in pen) and over time, for whatever reason (busyness, distraction, laziness, success, career, taking the other for granted, and on and on), we lose or ignore our initial vision. Then we’re just moving mindlessly, hoping to end somewhere good.

But that’s not exactly what I want to talk about here, together in this space. The word teleological is used here to describe relationships, and that might be the only proper usage, but I haven’t really cared about proper usage before, so I’m not going to start now. Our own interior lives – physically, emotionally, intellectually, and I would suggest most importantly, spiritually – are teleological, too. We are going somewhere, and to pretend that we’re not, or that we can move in a certain direction without a plan, is itself a plan, but it’s a dangerous one that will lead nowhere.

We have 5 year strategic plans at work, but none for our greatest work of art; our lives.

It is confusing (and sort of maddening, if I’m honest) that we would be so resistant to change, if we choose to be intentional with our lives. We notice there’s food between our teeth, so we decide to floss (and then floss). That sounds reasonably obvious. But when we notice red lights on our dashboard or food between the metaphorical teeth of our soul, we completely ignore it, and we justify that, in ourselves and others, as being our fear of change.

We’re going somewhere. So, where is it? Are we leaning into a new future, holding on to the past, or just sitting down in the aisle like I used to do in the toy section of the Hills department store, hoping eventually to get what I want.

A plan doesn’t mean it’ll be easy or smooth, it simply means we get to choose our pain. Will the inevitable pain be meaningful, as we are on the road to becoming who we have been created to be? Or will it be random and chaotic, just turbulence on the dark road where we happen to find ourselves, with no purpose or significance?

But it does require examination, honesty, vulnerability, and courage; 4 characteristics that have been phased out by comfort, immediate gratification, and convenience. It’s really time to take them back, to take us back. We are Resurrection people, who desperately need to engage our imaginations, invite them back into our lives and dream again about where this could all go, if we would only show up.

Saturday Afternoons

Last week in this space, I wrote that I sometimes get the overwhelming privilege of officiating weddings. I’ve always liked weddings, because I have always really loved marriage. Even before I fell in love with Jesus, I found this particular gift of His deeply significant. I’m certain I wouldn’t have used the word sacred, but that’s exactly what I felt. In the best of situations, the space is thin, God stands with them as they make their promises before Him to each other. It’s impossible to understate the weight of this moment that will affect the rest of their lives.

Last Saturday, at a cool old barn in the country, I had the opportunity to do it again. I can be found on an app (a story too long to explain here, maybe another time), which means I don’t often know the couple as well as I’d like. These 2 were lovely, I knew that, and I liked them a lot, but at the time, as I arrived for the wedding, I didn’t know how extraordinary they were. (I could write forever, with great detail, but I’ll try to do my best not to. Try.)

The ceremony was outside on a perfect day, and as the guests filed in, they were dressed peculiarly. I didn’t know what was going on, except to say it was wonderful. I’d later ask and discover the style was called “steampunk.” As a very old man, I try to stay up on things, knew the word, had heard it before, but was unfamiliar with it in the wild. If you Google “steampunk” and choose images, you’ll see exactly what I saw.

Culturally, we are moving towards a blurry, undifferentiated everything. Nothing is set apart, nothing is special. People regularly show up late for everything, and that’s a shame, but we also show up late for weddings, and that is much worse than a shame. That is heartbreaking in its disrespect – for the couple, the commitment, and the institution, as well as for themselves. But we also now arrive dressed in t-shirts and shorts, as well. The lines defining common and sacred are erased, and in these cases, it doesn’t make everything sacred, it does the opposite.

These steampunks had prepared for weeks or months, and looked like all the money in the world. They cared so much for their friends and the day to set it aside, to make it different from all others. We should all have ‘family’ like them. Each one was absolutely stunning, fit for the first day of a new marriage.

My message is usually about the kind of love called agape, which is a love that doesn’t care if we want to. We see love not as selfish, temporary feelings and emotions, but as vital decisions made every minute of every day. This couple chose a film quotation to be read, and that passage, with lines like, “when [love as a feeling] subsides, you have to make a decision…love is not breathlessness…not excitement…not eternal passion…love is what’s left over…an art.” This “left over” love are “roots that grow towards each other.”

Then, then!!! The vows they wrote for, and read to, each other left all of us awestruck. He is not an overly gushy, public orator, but he was eloquent and soft, kind, awake to the gift he had been given. She began and spoke of love as noun, how he made her want to believe in it, but she still did not. She believes in the noun as verb, as a choice. In the most gorgeous poetry you’d ever hear, she detailed a list of “I will choose you’s.” I will choose you when we do this. I will choose you when we do that, when we feel this, when we don’t feel that, over and over, each one more impactful than the last.

When she finished, this professional officiant had no words. The right words were “please put the ring on her finger and repeat after me,” words I had said a hundred times, words I could utter in my sleep, and words I started no less than 3 times before realizing I could not say them at that particular moment.

We had not planned anything together, didn’t share messages with each other, this was solely the work of the God that was there, then, celebrating in that moment, and is also here, now, present in this moment. He moved in each of us, in our solitude, in our individual preparation (which was obviously never individual at all), to craft a masterpiece of divine love and revelation. Of course, I was speechless, how could I be anything else?

This matters today, because there are many things I don’t understand and cannot fix, that are emotionally exacting a great toll. Just one specific example of too many is the local school district, which is in ruins, crumbling around our heads as we whistle through the debris. I ask why? What is happening? What good could possibly come from this wreckage? What now? Doesn’t anyone see?

And as I ask/scream those questions, I am reminded of Saturday afternoon. I am reminded of the many previous “Saturday afternoons,” where God spectacularly revealed the Hands we were in, and were always in. If He was there, He might be here, too. Maybe instead of crumbling down, instead of falling apart, maybe these things are falling into place. Maybe to build His new masterpiece, He (or we) have to tear down the old. I’m not sure, I don’t have any evidence of any of it, but that’s what trust is, right? To have faith that the same God who brought Rachel & Brandon together and has been creating their wedding day for who knows how many years is also working in the schools, relationships and offices we think are broken beyond repair. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts that work, He’s going to take our breath away, like He has a million times before.

1’s & 2’s

Many years ago (far too many to think about for long), a very close friend said that she wished her daughter would find a man who looked at her like I look at the Angel. I can’t say I knew what that meant, then, I was simply looking at my special lady. It wasn’t calculated, like I was performing for an audience who would immediately decide that I was the most Wonderful Man on Earth, romantic and love struck. (Obviously I was, and am, none of those things, except probably love struck.)

Now I know what her comment means. (And the “love” I knew in the phrase “love struck” isn’t even close to the “love” that I know now, the old one was a child’s love, emotional, temperamental, and, sadly, selfish. My definition of love has sure changed, but I am still love struck;)

I get the amazing honor of officiating marriages, in addition to the even more amazing honor of being a pastor of a faith community. I meet lots of engaged couples, and walk alongside people in various states of relationship in the ministry in which I have been called and in which I have embraced. Sometimes, the relationships are rock solid and inspiring. But often, those relationships are hurting and/or broken, the engaged couples are shaky, and the love they are chasing to the altar and have based their marriages on is the teenage kind.

One of those couples, due to marry in September, is a beautiful exception. The man is kind and gentle and looks at his fiancé with such devotion it almost makes me cry. They have been together for years and the first several years were not easy. Not at all. There were challenges & trials that would have driven the majority of couples apart, but he remained. They remained. People that show up and stay are very remarkable. I left our recent meeting shortly after them and caught him opening the passenger door for her. He didn’t know I was there, the performance was for no one but her, which probably makes it no performance at all. It’s just what he does. Of course, this isn’t to say opening car doors is the main evidence of love, but it is context.

I asked if they were writing their own vows, and that is usually met with the answer, “I really want to, but he doesn’t.” I don’t think that answer is charming. This couple, though, she said, “I don’t think so,” and he tilted his head and asked why. After her answer, he said, “I’d like to, I’ve already been writing them.”

A few times, I’ve asked the bride-to-be, “Are you sure?” I will not ask this couple. Their love is deep and real, the agape kind. Hopefully, there’s a truckload of Eros and Philia, too, but I don’t care about those nearly as much. They are sure.

Almost every wedding, I leave and say prayers that their love will transform into agape and they will stay together and slow the trend in the marriage statistics that say more fail than ever before. I will pray for them, but I don’t need to hope for transformation. I will just pray they remember to choose each other every time.

I know how I look at the Angel, and how I feel about her, and how I choose her. I’m not special, not the basis of countless romance novels or rom-coms. I have more than my fair share of faults that you are well aware of by now. I am not such hot stuff. But even I can notice that the way we love each other is rare, indeed.

The way I’m writing it in this marriage book I’m working on (still!!!!) is in terms of 1’s and 2’s. First, the 1, always and all ways, is Jesus. But with that fundamental exception, the 1 should be our partner, significant other, spouse. If he/she is the 1, our selfish nature is quiet and the love will likely be an intentional, agape love. We will look at them (and treat them) with kindness, patience, forgiveness, with care, we will love them, even in those times we don’t particularly like them. Way too often, in our relationships, we are the 2, coming in behind anything: another person, work, sports, bowling, video games, cars, working out, etc. The secret here is that, what we think the 1 is never the actual 1. Instead, the 1 is always ME. This is not the healthy love/care for yourself, it’s grounded in What I want, What you can do for me, How you can make me feel. This sort of relationship ends with any uncomfortability for me, and I’d call it “falling out of love,” or my personal favorite nonsensical excuse, “I still love them, I’m just not in love with them.” Really, it’s just that they are no longer meeting my every need when and how I want. They are the 2 in this fragile union.

She is not his 2, and that is worthy of the greatest celebration.

Imagination

This series on love (based on the Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13) is awfully uncomfortable. I’m not sure how something so disruptive could have ever made the leap from a wild animal into a soft, cuddly stuffed toy. How could a passage designed to crawl into our hearts, and expose our selfish instincts in such an aggressive way, ever be a sterile poem our grandma’s read at weddings to which no one pays any attention? How could “Love keeps no record of wrongs” not tear each of us to shreds when we so clearly do?

There are songs & artists I love that seem alien. Like what they do, what they are, is something far off that I have no category for outside of themselves. Their creativity is shocking. They keep me at a distance, standing on the sidelines or sitting in the cheap seats.

Others make me want to sing.

Some books make me want to never write again. Yet others drive me right to my notebook.

The basketball world changed when Steph Curry remade the game. We could never in a million years do what LeBron James and Michael Jordan can do, the game is far off, like superheroes and mythology. Steph makes us think we could do it, too. We bought basketballs and went to the local hoops and shot all day. Jordan left us in awe, Steph inspired us to play.

It really doesn’t have much to do with the quality. Steph is an unbelievable basketball player, and the truth is, we probably couldn’t do what he does. He’s one of the greats. High Fidelity is an A+ work of fiction, and makes me want to create an A+ work, and perhaps more importantly, makes me think I can. If Nick Hornby could do it, maybe I could.

What does this have to do with the Love chapter? What does Steph Curry have to do with Paul’s letter to the Corinthians?

The Bible wants us out of our seats, wants us to play. Sure, the ideals of “Love is patient and kind,” are high, maybe we can’t get there (certainly not all the time), but what the Bible does is tell us over and over who we are. We are not space aliens, we are made in the image of he Living God, and we have His power (the same power that raised Jesus from the dead!!!!) inside of us, and with that, all things are possible. If Paul does his job, and if we do ours, the vision is compelling, beautiful, and better yet, the kind that explodes our imaginations to where we actually participate as He changes our lives. This newly engaged imagination inspires us to be patient and kind, to not anger quite so easily, to think about throwing our records of rights/wrongs in the garbage where they belong. We begin to look for people and ways to love.

These words are tickets backstage, they’re invitations to sing. They’re tigers that have never been safe or comfortable, they weren’t supposed to be, but we are told that we are the artists of our lives. We are the songs. And what it means to be made in the image is that we are designed with the creativity to re-write the code of our own game into one where the players always hope, bear all things, and never fail. We simply have to start to shoot.

Letter to the Ephesians

For the last several weeks, we’ve focused on a specific kind of love. A love that doesn’t care if we want to, and acts anyway. We continue to talk about the importance of loving God and each other. Any time we study the Bible, the danger is that the emphasis is placed on us; what we think, say, and do. It seeps into this conversation easily, so we constantly have to be reminded of who we actually are.

The entire 1st 3 chapters of Ephesians (1/2 of the letter) are devoted to Jesus Christ and God’s “secret plan” to bring “all things” together. There is no mention of anything for us to do. The closest Paul comes is in 2:10, “…so that we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”

There are prayers (1:15-23, 3:14-21), really really beautiful prayers, asking, hoping, that we see and understand this grace, kindness, and peace that have been shown, given to us. There is explanation and context to the world around us, and how it has been transformed. Every wall has come down. We have been reconciled.

It is only in 4:1, “I beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling…for you have been called by God,” that we get any indication that our lives will change now, in this new reality.

The order is vital, it has to be this way. Otherwise, we would start to believe that our actions & behavior are the things we use to get God to love us. We already have an idolatry problem. For us to continue in the delusion that we earn anything (ESPECIALLY our own salvation – “Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done” 2:9) only solidifies our ridiculous conviction to build higher and higher on this sand.

So Paul attacks that heresy for 3 chapters without a mention of response, without a mention of behavior. With very little mention of us at all, really, other than being the vessel God pours His love into, and the recipients of His grace, lavishly bestowed.

Our verbs in the 1st 3 chapters are “praise,” “receive,” “trust,” “come,” but the one used most often is “are,” as in “we are ____.” We are loved, forgiven, chosen. Next is “understand,” as in “may we understand” what has been done on our behalf.

The other verbs, and there are many, tell what He has done. The actions are by Him, He does, and we receive. We simply receive.

In chapter 4, and for the rest of the letter, Paul moves into what we can do – “be humble and gentle, patient with each other,” etc. Into what to do and not do, as children of God, worthy of our call. If we’re not clear on chapters 1-3, then 4-6 won’t make sense. It’ll be confusing and easily distorted. We’ll start to think the story is about us, and what we do.

It’s not.

This is a story about love and grace. Our response is just that, a response. We have been rescued, and we are now free to act from a place of profound thanksgiving. We simply can’t begin in chapter 4. The movie doesn’t make sense if we come in an hour late, and neither do our lives.

Yes, it’s a big deal that we love, always, in all ways. But our acts of love are the result of our salvation and transformation, we love in response to the overwhelming divine grace, never ever the other way around. So who we actually are is His. We are loved beyond reason or limit, completely and unconditionally. And that is very Good News.

How It Was Supposed To Go

Sunday’s sermon was supposed to look a different way, supposed to feel a different way. Usually, I create inside of a narrative (sometimes stated, but more often in my head giving directions). There is a thread that runs through everything, each point, connecting the verses we study like a puzzle.

Last week’s message in my notebook/iPad was not unusual in this regard. It was entitled “Loving?” and followed this framework. The transitions were in place, the pieces formed a single cohesive talk. This was how it was supposed to go, as if we were walking a smoothly paved path – even if we didn’t know quite where it would lead.

Of course, it wasn’t smooth and it wasn’t cohesive. I was pretty surprised to discover that it was much more of a series of bullet points, rather than a story. And, added to that, the natural conflict & dissonance contained in the topic (boundaries) was more pronounced than expected. Instead of a smooth path, it was a trail that was poorly marked with uncertain footing.

I didn’t like the feeling. I felt exposed and vulnerable. This was not how it was supposed to go at all. I prepare well, write and write, edit, soak in the teaching before trying to convey it; I am very careful and aware of potential turbulence or danger zones.

Each week, I say to the Angel afterwards, “did everything make sense?” Sunday I didn’t. Never ask a question if you’re not prepared for all answers, right?

Immediately following the message, in the narthex during the final worship song, it clicked in my head, the path and the connections clearly emerged. It would have been very nice to see a few hours earlier, but we don’t always get to choose.

And after a full day reflecting on the morning, that’s probably the point. We don’t always get to choose. When I say, “how it was supposed to be,” how else could my posture be but arrogant? As if I know! How is it supposed to be? Who knows? Why couldn’t God have spoon fed me that realization hours earlier? Maybe to illustrate my futile attempts to control Him…

This, obviously, doesn’t discount my preparation. I know the message backwards and forwards, so that I can be sensitive to The Spirit and to the hearts of the listeners. We control what we can, and then we release the rest. Except when we fall into the lie that all is “what we can” control and try not to release anything. Except when we decide “how it is supposed to be.” I think I know, and again and again, I am faced with the harsh truth that His ways are higher than mine.

This message, the one that felt disjointed and awkward, left the room dead quiet as we all (me too, the disruption opened me up in new ways to these truths) wrestled with, first, the fact that boundaries are just an extension of our too-narrow definition of love. Then, then: Love (agape) without action might not be (and most likely isn’t) love at all.

No story of mine, no amount of craft or artistry could clarify those lessons. In fact, perhaps craft and artistry could’ve unintentionally obstructed their impact. Maybe they needed the unsettling atmosphere to tear down our tightly constructed walls of comfort.

I sure wasn’t comfortable, my walls were certainly exposed to those wrecking balls (and many others) and agape doesn’t care. Agape doesn’t care how I think it’s “supposed to go,” and couldn’t possibly care less about my control. I don’t know that I would’ve chosen this new route. But it’s best that He leads this, and every, journey, because when we can finally let go and stop trying to strangle each second with our white-knuckled expectations, we get to experience some very sacred moments together. Like Sunday.

Agape Doesn’t Care, but I Do

I’m sitting here, still dreaming. Sunday morning, I suggested something that I often suggest: Love could/would change everything about the world we live in, on every level. So I’m dreaming about that.

I’m thinking about marriages and friendships, churches and schools. This pyramid scheme of love, where we love someone (or 2), then they love someone (or 2), allowed to naturally multiply using the agape definition, would leave modern culture virtually unrecognizable.

Without dishonoring posts & comments on our social media sites, it would just be an open space for family pictures, cat videos, and memes. Entire industries would vanish. Imagine a life free of envy, free of wanting anyone’s donkey. How different would our lives be if we were simply grateful for our own donkey’s? If kindness were the currency in grocery stores and classrooms, we would not be so afraid, hiding behind masks to keep from being today’s targets.

There was a story of a group of people keeping reminders of grudges and vendettas – what would we be able to do with the intellectual/emotional bandwidth we currently devote to bitter resentment? What about if we always protected, always persevered?

It’s a really good dream, but I think maybe my biggest problem is that it doesn’t feel so impossibly far away. It’s more like a parallel timeline that would easily merge with a few small adjustments from each of us. Like if I didn’t say those things about those people, that’s it. I don’t drag them through the mud, and I don’t feel horrible for opening my mouth. Then that negative energy never sees the light of day, is never expressed. What has been done in our impatient frustrated rage disintegrates, as we breathe and pray instead.

Sounds simple when I say it, right? It’s probably not. But it helps me “always persevere.”

I’ve already tried the other path, where I’m sarcastic, cutting, self-loathing. Where I assume the worst of you and me. Where I tear down before I am torn down. Where I am desperate and hopeless, endlessly searching for more evidence that it’s all broken beyond repair. Where it is what it is, and we are what we are.

And after that, all I felt was miserable. But loving you (and me and my neighbors and the cashier and the tv stars & politicians) and thinking about the pure, true, and beautiful makes every moment brighter. We get to choose the stories we live, and the glasses we wear through which we see our surroundings. We can choose something new and fresh. As it says in the book of Deuteronomy, it’s all set before us, we can Choose Life.

Last Night

This is what I just wrote for my personal blog (lovewithacapitall.com). I’m posting it here, for you, a little because baseball has taken so much of my time. But mostly because you care for me so much and so well, and I think you’d like to know what happened…

With this blank screen in front of me, I know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to say it. Or even if I should, Our words should be used to build, and that is usually what I try to do in this space, but sometimes the point is in our bad behavior, hidden in our our most regrettable moments. And writing anything is about honesty, especially in a non-fiction blog situation. If we feel like the writer is curating an image, what on earth is the point? Anybody can wear a mask and lie. The only way to find connection is through a mutual authenticity, and sometimes that is ugly on the outside.

Last night the baseball season ended. The first day, I sat the boys down and said something like, teenage boys are awful a lot of the time. But that’s only because they usually deal in Lord of the Flies type social dynamics. They’re mean, sarcastic, cutting. They mock and tease, try to shrink others to make themselves appear taller. This is ridiculous and rooted, as everyone knows, in fear and a raging insecurity. They wear masks to try to hide the overwhelming inadequacy in their hearts. 

Of course, this is not just teenage boys. It’s just as much women at your office or men at the grocery store. We act out of our perceived lack, and that makes us nasty and awfully dangerous.

So I tell them we will not do that here, we will operate from a different reality. You don’t have to be insecure here, you don’t have to be afraid. We’ll stand up straight, support and love each other. And that’s largely what happened. Errors and mistakes were easily forgotten, lots and lots of encouragement was poured out like water, and we won everything there was to win.

A side note: It’s not often enough that the best people are the best performers. The kindest, gentlest, most caring people don’t always win. When they do, as was the case this season, it must be acknowledged and savored. As written in the masterpiece Horton Hatches The Egg, “and it should be, it should be, it should be like that!”

Last night was the league celebration, where they got the trophies they had earned through hard work and commitment – to themselves, their gifts, the game, and each other. The second place team in the year end tournament was also there to collect theirs, as well. 

Then the coach was invited to give the medals to the players, and he (clad in sunglasses and a skull t-shirt instead of a team/sponsor/uniform shirt), wearing an uninterested disguise, walked to the front, using foul language and disrespect as weapons.

Another side note: I don’t mind foul language, not much is offensive to me, but there is a time and a place. A youth sports event, in front of the league administration, players and parents, is not the place (whether they’ve all ‘heard it before’ or not.)

He handed his medals to the players without regard for them and their work. Then as we got ours, he made a derisive comment and they all refused to acknowledge any of us, as we collected tournament and league championships, and our players received their all-tournament & MVP awards. 

It was so so sad. It might have been something, anything else if the behavior wasn’t so hollow and obvious. My heart broke out loud, I wanted to cry and give him a hug.

My question was, why? Why would anyone want to discount or diminish an achievement, any achievement, of another? But I already know. The desperate quest for proving your worth, and the accompanying terror of not knowing if you’ll ever find it, is very powerful and has crushed far more than just him.

I don’t know if my team made the connection. When we were alone, I reiterated the importance of living free of the inadequacy/insecurity that weighs down so many of our moments – I wonder if they recognized that they were given a perfect illustration of the result of a lifetime under the vicious boot of unworthiness, like the ghost of Christmas future.

As for the boys I coached, I told them they were beautiful, that I was so proud of them (championship or not), and that they were loved. I told them every minute we spent together was an honor for which I could never adequately express. Then we said goodbye for the last time this season.

As for that guy, I wish he hadn’t embarrassed himself so thoroughly. But more, I wish and pray that he finds some sort of peace in who he is and feels the familiar arms of a loving God around him, whispering in his ear that he is, and has always been, loved.

And as for me, (to again borrow from Horton and his egg), they sent me home happy, one hundred percent.

Living Letters

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

Yesterday, I casually repeated the saying that ‘we are the only Bible some people will ever read,” and it elicited a stunned comment on the livestream. I see that I was wrong to toss it around like that, it is anything but casual. This phrase is heavy with significance and conviction. Sometimes, we can hear something enough that it becomes familiar, and in that familiarity, loses much (if not all) of it’s impact.

We’re about to talk about the love chapter (1 Cor 13), and it has been very much sanded down through thoughtless use. It has become nothing more than a pretty quote for a greeting card. Pretty, and innocuous. Those verses are lots of things, but innocuous isn’t one of them. They aren’t soft or inoffensive, they are seismic in their effect. It’s simply impossible to remain unchanged once we actually hear them, as they are. But that is for another time.

You’re the Bible people will read to see the Living God, to see His love and kindness, His grace, forgiveness, His work in a human life. Paul writes in the Bible’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians, that we are a letter from Christ, written by the Spirit. What does that mean?? What does that mean in the grocery store, the stadium bleachers, on the road?? What does it mean to our in-laws? For that matter, what does it mean for our spouse? Would those closest to us see our lives as Divine love letters? Or are we more letters of petty disagreements, cutting remarks, and rage?

It’s a shocking passage – The God of the Universe chooses to use us to communicate to a hurting world, to be His masterpiece, His letters. We know we are made in His image, we’ve read that since the beginning, but the Truth of that, too, has faded. If we knew we were made in His image, would we say the things we do to ourselves, would we be so mean in our own heads? If we knew our wives, husbands, children were made in His image, would we still use the same words, or the same sharp tones?

Usually, we can see this in others. Think of how you came to faith… It was a living letter (a parent, neighbor, teacher, etc), wasn’t it? Someone showed you grace, spoke a fresh word, shined light in darkness, and we caught a glimpse of the face of Jesus. It’s much more difficult to see ourselves as that someone. We can often see ourselves as “just” something or other, “just” a whatever, but mostly “just” me. There’s no “just” about you, about us. There’s no “just” a letter from Christ, never “just” written by the Spirit.

There’s responsibility in this, of course, but there is also honor, and dignity, and gift. And the question, as always, is: What will we do with this grace? What will we do today? This very moment?

A Choice

We’re moving through a section in Scripture on the Spiritual Gifts in Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians (chapter 12). In the message yesterday, while discussing the gift called “the Discerning of Spirits,” I revealed the Angel has this supernatural gift. She knows things about people immediately upon meeting, and I don’t. I naively just like/trust/believe everyone, so I ask her to tell me if I should, and then behave accordingly. Or as accordingly as I am able.

It all sounds so easy and neat, like it doesn’t hurt to submit to her giftedness, or hasn’t taken years and years. It’s not, it does (or, it did), and it has.

Spoken while explaining several of the gifts, this sort of submission was implied in all of them.

Some people have wisdom and the ability to counsel from this platform. At that point, we face a pretty rough choice. Will we listen? Will we follow the advise? Will we submit to the wisdom of another? And will we submit when it contrasts with our ideas or actions? That’s the trick, and the answer is usually no, in a landslide.

When the Angel began to share this gift with me, I never ever listened. After all, I knew better – because I always knew/know better. I liked them, they were funny and cool, and her lovely scrunched up eyebrows were needlessly suspicious and cynical. I was forgiving and un-judgmental. And then she was proven right. And then she was again. And again. And again and again and again. I didn’t know better, after all, and that is a bitter pill to swallow. Now, when people want me to meet someone special to see what I think, I say, “that’s fine, I’d love to meet them (because I love to meet everyone), but what about Angel? When will they meet her???” She wasn’t ever judgmental, and I wasn’t more forgiving, she was very wise in these circumstances, and I wasn’t. I still am not. I didn’t love people more than her, she loves everybody, too, just in what may look like a different way than me.

Note: this doesn’t happen too often. People, by and large, are awesome, trustworthy, and beautiful.

I work in a weight room and am involved in training some young people. I share what I’ve learned, and nearly every one discounts it in favor of what their little buddies say or heard on TikTok or what they’re already doing. We’re all mostly the same, our stubborn pride isn’t a characteristic that fades with age or maturity. It only dims with attention, awareness, and the humility to remind ourselves that it’s possible that we might not know every single thing. There is a chance, however slight, that someone could know more or have insight to which we might be blind.

Entire MASSIVE industries are built upon defending our prideful arrogance. The loop of “you’re right, smart, and in…they’re wrong, dumb, and out.” We won’t be “judged.” It’s our opinion that matters – “trust yourself, follow your truth.” And we will fiercely protect where and who we are right now. We will not be anything so antiquated as “wrong” or “mistaken.” The lifestyle might be unhealthy, but it is mine, mine, mine.

I’m wise in other areas. I have lots of other gifts, and so do you. As far as my instinctual (sometimes misguided) enjoyment of everybody, I now like that part of me, and so do you, right? I’m ok being wrong. Wrong isn’t so bad, anyway. It means we are dynamic beings, we change and our opinions evolve with knowledge and experience. It’s what’s called a growth mindset in the local elementary school. It’s also what Jesus calls us into, to lay that arrogance down and wrap our arms around Him instead. As long as we’re living these loops, building walls to protect the altars to ourselves, we can’t grow, and if we stay tied to who we are now, we can’t become all that He’s created us to be.