imagination

Words

My reading lately has been pointing in the same direction. Everything I see or hear, intentionally or otherwise, sticks to the theme, like neon arrows moving me along a certain path. It feels as if it’s a conspiracy to make absolutely sure I don’t miss it, subtle as a sledgehammer.

This obvious theme is the words we use.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, if you’ve been awake and aware. The manner in which we speak to each other is disheartening, at best. We cut, we divide, we use our mouths violently to inflict the most damage. We used to try to retain some semblance of civility, even courtesy, but now that is mostly gone. Our fear and insecurity has outweighed our humanity, so we weaponize our posts and remarks, using tones we wouldn’t have dreamed of a few short years ago. Even when they’re not directed purposefully at others, our words are hopeless and cynical. We obsess over problems and worst-case scenarios.

I’m finished doing the same thing here, pointing out the broken parts. Instead, we’ll use one of my very favorite questions: What now? Where do we go from here? Is it really as inevitable as we’ve accepted?

Starting with the 3rd question, of course it isn’t. The tomb was empty, and nothing ever again can be said “is what it is,” because it’s simply not. It can be different and it can be today.

As for What now? and Where do we go from here? I have some ideas.

Proverbs 15:4 Gentle words bring life and health, a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. Proverbs 18:4 A person’s words can be life-giving water. Proverbs 12:6 …the words of the godly save lives, and 12:18 …the words of the wise bring healing. James 3:9-12 Sometimes [the tongue] praises Our Lord and Father, and sometimes it breaks out in curses against those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth…this is not right! Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? Can you pick olives from a fig tree or figs from a grapevine? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty pool.

The tongue has the power of life and death (Prov 18:21), and I’m guilty of both not acknowledging that overwhelming fact and not caring. That James passage cracks me like a giant egg with that praising God AND curing those made in His image. Right? I’m too often a salty pool. I’ve crushed spirits instead of healed, brought death instead of life.

So, here’s the idea, and there is an order. Waiting for others to change first, for us to respond got us all in this mess. Let’s just operate as if we’re the answers to our own prayers of reconciliation, and go from there. Let’s be fresh, life-giving water. Let’s be springs (instead of salty pools). We’ve tried to gauge & match the temperature of the world around us, and it has been a resounding failure. That temperature is way too cold. It’s time for us to set the environment. We can decide to forgive, to not hold grudges, to call up, build, point out beauty everywhere we see it, give grace, give the benefit of the doubt, throw away our scorecards and start new.

Yes, of course, this is sometimes going to end up hurting. Some of us are monsters and will take advantage of our kindness and love. It’ll feel like we’re alone, and we’ll second-guess, “what can we really do?” Yep, that’s all true. But it already hurts, we’re already taken advantage of, beaten up and attacked, the only difference will be why.

We can start to push against the tide of darkness. You know, the more I think about it. We only think we’re pushing against the tide. It’s probably more like this garbage of inhumanity is like a dam – that our original bend, present since our creation, to worship, to engage in authentic relationships, to love extravagantly, is actually the tide and once we can all bang hard enough to cause a few cracks, it’s only a matter of time until it all comes down. And that all starts with a word.

Dreams

I just finished reading My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman. This isn’t my first time reading it and I cried just like I did each of the others. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s inspiring and hopeful, and reminds us all why we don’t just give up when the news gets so bad and the searing pain of engagement gets so intense.

I turn down corners of pages that contain words, sentences, and/or passages that move me. When I re-read books, I look forward to those pages and sometimes I read the page several times and have no idea why I turned down that particular corner. Others, I know immediately. One of those turned down corners held this peach: “Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.” 

I’m thinking about the things we like and why we like the things we like. Maybe we choose the books/songs/movies, for whatever reasons (we like the cover art or it’s cheap or our friend gives us a gift). Or maybe those books/songs/films choose us (and we’d find them in our path somehow, over and over, until we finally pick it up when we’re exactly ready and explode). Do we like those things because we’re a certain way, or are we a certain way because we like them? Or a wonderful dance between the two? Maybe we are predisposed, open to the impact of a book about an 8 year-old girl, her grandmother, wurses, and monsters born of sorrow, and when we find each other, we join this dance.

On another page: “And probably a lot of people think Maud and Lennart shouldn’t do that, and that types of people like Sam shoudln’t even be allowed to live, let alone eat cookies. And those people are probably right. And they’re probably wrong too. But Maud says she’s firstly a grandmother and secondly a mother-in-law and thirdly a mother, and this is what grandmothers and mothers-in-law and mothers do. They fight for the good. And Lennart drinks coffee and agrees. And Maud bakes cookies, because when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been broken in too many ways to ever be fixed again, Maud doesn’t know what weapon to use if one can’t use dreams.”

I hope we’re all fighting for the good. In fact, I believe we’re all fighting for the good, in the way we fight for the good. (Well, mostly all – some people are selfish psychos who want to cause damage, but there are so few of them… Well, it’s like this. Bad pizza exists, but pizza is so rarely bad that it’s hardly worth ordering our lives around. Most bad pizzas aren’t psychos, they’re bad pizzas born of sorrow and loneliness and despair, and that sort of pizza doesn’t want to be awful at all.) So we’re fighting for the good, trying to find what weapons are ours to use. 

Dreams are a Swedish cookie, that’s what Backman and Maud and Lennart are referring to. But when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been frozen in too many ways, maybe the other kind of dream is necessary, as well. (Actually, Maud and Lennart are the only ones referring to the cookie. Backman is obviously referring to both.) We get our imaginations drummed out of us very early, until we believe this is simply “how it is,” that people are untrustworthy, and all pizza is inherently bad. Reclaiming the truth requires, first, a dream. A dream that things can be better than they are, that we are worth fighting for, and that holding hands is still the best way to remember that all isn’t lost, that we are alive and that we are together.

Maybe amazing art like this is what made me so naive and awesome. Or maybe these books affirm my naïveté. It’s fun to think about but, in the end, who really cares? We have dreams to bake, people to love, and fighting to do.

Answer

Former President Donald Trump pled not guilty to 34 felony counts, but as you can imagine, there’s no way that’s what we’re going to talk about here. Ha.

So, in the past few weeks, I’ve been asked several variations of the same question: “The world keeps getting worse and worse, people keep getting worse and worse, I’m feeling a crushing amount of despair and hopelessness, I’m sinking. What do you think/do about this?”

I understand the question, and I really understand the tears that usually travel with the words. We all see what’s going on, we all feel it. We’re sad, depressed, lonely, anxious, stressed, frustrated, angry, wondering how anything will ever get better, if anything will ever get better. I feel that, too. I’m not sure any of us are immune to those emotions, if we’re honest. A lot of the problem is that we’re hardly ever honest, and that ridiculous pretense (that we’re all ok, everything’s fine) is isolating us from each other, forced to face this darkness alone.

My answer to this question begins with the foundation that we’re not alone. We were never supposed to do any of this by ourselves. In Genesis, before the fall, one thing was “not good” – for the man to be alone – so He made him a companion. When the prophet Elijah was suicidal in a cave, God didn’t necessarily tell him things would be awesome, but did tell him where he could find some other people. 2 of the most powerful words ever uttered are “me too.” I’m scared. Me, too. Ok. Let’s be scared together. Things are always less scary together.

I see the same news, the same trends, the same division. I just might come to a different conclusion. We are certainly on a destructive path, I just don’t accept it’s inevitable we arrive. After all, it’s Easter and we’ll celebrate a resurrection. Death was the last word until it wasn’t, and if we actually believe that, nothing is impossible or hopeless.

So now what? A guy I follow on Instagram uses the phrase, “we do the things.” We get up and get outside, put our feet in the grass, take a walk, drink some water. We listen to our favorite playlist and lift heavy weights. Whatever the things are for us, we do them until we can breathe. Does it actually help to reverse the spiral? No, but it quiets the noise so we can remember what will: to Love God and to Love each other.

I no longer think it’s a top down solution (if there ever was a day I did). It’s you and me loving Jesus, each other, our neighbors, co-workers, enemies, and in-laws. We lean in, show up and forgive 70 x 7 times. We love our kids and all of the other kids, we relate with respect, have tough conversations, listen. We stop minding our own business and start walking together, hand in hand, carrying each other’s burdens.

Seriously, can you imagine how every single thing would change if, instead of entering every room from a place of inadequacy and fear, we stood on abundance and value? Instead of having to prove ourselves worthy, we just know we already are and there is nothing left to prove. If there was nothing to ‘win,’ we could listen with kindness and respect. Instead of operating out of the things we are not, we would rest in alllllll of the things we are. When we are no longer imprisoned inside a cell of the images we construct to ‘protect’ ourselves, we are free to run and fly.

We have been called to point to this reality, to live out of this beauty and joy and get it all over those we are blessed enough to meet. Can you believe there are some of us who don’t know and haven’t heard that we are loved? That we have been made on purpose, in/by/for love? Some of us don’t know the tomb is empty. I know! This is wholly unacceptable.

Here are some lyrics to a song by Andy Grammer, Naive:

*So call me naive. But I believe you’re gonna be okay. And call me naive. But tomorrow will be better than today. And if it’s stupid to see the good in everything. Lord, help me please, help me to be naive. See, I believe This life is something beautiful and sweet. I believe That love pulls me to you like gravity. And you could say I’m gullible. And I’m blind to all the lies and tragedies. I just think we focus all our time On poison and not the remedy. So call me naive. Say I’m living in a world of make-believe. And call me naive. But I don’t know another way to be.*

We get to choose, and as for me, I’ll choose to see a new Kingdom bursting through right in the middle of this one.

Maybe that’s naive, or maybe that’s the deepest level of realism. Either way, this is what we’re here for, individually and as the Bridge – to be naive. So, we’ll focus on the Remedy, whose name is Jesus, and the remedy, which is love. We’ll pray, we’ll do the things, we’ll love like crazy.

What could be a better time to take a sledgehammer to the cultural despair than Easter? (Actually, now that I think about it, I guess there is a better time: now;)

Lord, I hope I stay this kind of naive.

Eyes To See

I wrote this for my other blog, lovewithacapitall.com, and I think you might like it, too. Incidentally, the site that publishes our sites (now called Jetpack) gives a writing prompt every day. Today it’s, “What word best describes you?” and in light of the following, it’s clear I’d like to say grateful. And not so incidentally, today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 79 today. I miss him more some days than others, and today is one of those. Maybe that is why I feel this post so deeply. Or maybe I would feel this post so deeply everyday, because I’m the man he raised everyday. Yes, very very grateful.

I go to a local store for something called creamed pearl tapioca pudding on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday. And then I drop it off with the Angel at her office, along with a fountain soda as thanks. What I tell her is that it needs to be refrigerated and I’m unable to access our fridge. I don’t need to take it to her. I take it all through the winter, when my car is colder than any available appliance, mostly so I can see her for those 30 seconds.

Yesterday was Tuesday, and while I was there, I was overwhelmed, speechless and in awe of this woman. I sent her a text from the parking lot that read, “No kidding, I can not believe I get to be married to you. You are a KNOCKOUT,” and then I added 2 emoji faces with hearts for eyes. We’ll only talk about how she looks today, but as you probably already know, the beauty on the outside isn’t close to how lovely she is on the inside. She’s pretty far out of my league, but that’s her problem, not mine.

The point is that sometimes we can be so familiar with something that we take it for granted, easily and often. I live with this Angel, see her everyday, in pajamas and in heels, I know she’s gorgeous. I know her smile in my sleep, the way her eyes shine, how her laugh sounds, her skin feels. I know all of this, but there are surely lots of moments where I don’t truly appreciate all of this.

And there are so many things just like her (well, not just like her), but equally overlooked, or dismissed as common when they are anything but.

Pizza, Lord of the Rings, vinyl, this blanket, Catfish, creamed pearl tapioca. There are things we couldn’t wait to get, absolutely had to have, and changed our lives, that we don’t even give a second thought today. I’m not sure we need a change of scenery nearly as much as we need to open our eyes to the current scenery, because at some point that new scenery is going to be the current scenery we are looking to change.

I haven’t listened to The Queen Is Dead in months, and the last time I did, I skipped some tracks. It’s a perfect album, and I treat it so cavalierly that I skip tracks. We eat in front of the tv or in the car, concentrating and appreciating nothing. We see sunrises and sunsets everyday more perfect than the finest art. The Angel is so stunning she could stop clocks. 

How and when did we get so distracted and jaded that we miss all of this splendor? Somewhere we were sold the lie that there was anything in this fantastic world that is “ordinary.” Ordinary is for the blind and imagination-less. In the Bible, scales fall from the apostle Paul’s eyes and he can finally see things as they are, see reality as it is. Maybe our scales need to fall, as well. I don’t really want to take anything for granted anymore, and I certainly don’t want to take people for granted ever again. I don’t want to become so familiar with laying like spoons with the Angel that it loses it’s tender warmth and simply becomes something we do. It IS something we do, but it’s not simple at all, it’s also significant and perfect.

I wonder how many other things in our everyday lives are significant and perfect, if we only had eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel them.

Trust Falls

As I’m working, studying, preparing, it’s very hard to focus on the small verses because today I’m preoccupied with the macro-view. The entire finished puzzle is obscuring the individual pieces. And that’s ok. But here’s where I am:

Last week, 1 Corinthians, chapter 10 began a historical account of Israel during the Exodus. That was strange, random, but we talked about why (a reminder as well as a warning) and that’s probably right, but now I think there’s another reason.

Earlier in this letter, Paul had been walking us through a way of life where we can subject our wants, desires, rights, our selves, in the service of another. That we should either eat or not eat idol-sacrificed meat, either accept or not accept payment for our ministry work. We have these rights, but the story doesn’t end with what we have, it’s only the beginning. What will we do with these rights of ours? And sometimes, what we are called to do is to not exercise them.

And that is overwhelming to even consider. The point is no longer to win, and we love to win. It’s not to be right, and we get so much of our value from our right-ness. It’s not to get anything. Seminal 80’s band Depeche Mode sings, “The grabbing hands grab all they can. All for themselves, after all. It’s a competitive world.” What are we grabbing?? What are we competing for??? In a culture that measures our worth in status, money, and power, how does a 2,000 year-old letter play that asks us to give those things away willingly? Not well. It’s not hard to see why the Scriptures are more and more marginalized, even inside the church. The theology of the prosperity gospel has so much more in common with the American Dream than the Sermon on the Mount and almost nothing in common with chapters 8 & 9 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

If our worth isn’t measured in wins and losses, or net worth, or square feet, then how is it measured? How do I prove myself?

Paul answers that with a history. He acknowledges our fragile insecurities and desperate need to win with stories of clouds, seas, and communion. Whaaat?

The big ask is that we put ourselves second or third or last on purpose. It’s a trust fall, right? What if we do that, what if we lose, give up our right, release our white-knuckled grip on image-making and control? What if we stop running and everyone passes us, and Paul was wrong???? What if there isn’t enough, if we aren’t enough, and we are stripped bare and empty? What if we close our eyes, fall backwards and there’s no one to catch us?

Faith is not simply faith in anything. If I put my faith in my bunny, there’s a great chance she won’t come through in crisis. It matters absolutely in what (or Whom) we put that faith. So as Paul details manna, water, provision, rescue and salvation, he’s making the argument for faith in Jesus Christ. To follow Paul’s utterly terrifying counter-cultural invitation, there has to be someOne trustworthy to catch us. Is there?

So, yes, Paul, through the Exodus, reminds us to stay awake to the blessings and privileges crackling all around, warns us of the obstacles that we refuse to give up, AND also continues to frame all of human history as a series of glorious illustrations of God’s faithfulness. Our eyes are closed, we’re only waiting for the courage to fall into His arms and start living.

Encouragement

I think the passages we’ve been swimming in lately are very convicting. The Scriptures pierce our skin and souls and explode from the inside out, scattering our long-held notions, ideas and beliefs all over the floor, leaving us to decide what we’ll recover, if anything at all. The writer of Hebrews says (in 4:12), “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Alive, active, sharp, penetrating, dividing, judging – all of those things are not exactly what we particularly like. We do things for lots of reasons, but being penetrated, divided by words sharper than a double-edged sword is not an easy Sunday morning. Or any morning, for that matter.

These chapters in Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians tell us to value others over ourselves and our desires, our rights. Nothing about this is a default setting, is it? We don’t wake up thinking how we can serve our neighbor, how we can allow the traffic to merge in front of us, how we can make ourselves smaller, make ourselves last. Yes, He said the last will be first, but that takes a gargantuan leap of faith. We have to be last first, and in a culture where last is nothing to be, it feels like a rigged game.

Of course, it is, but not in the ways in which we are accustomed.

So we come and read, listen and hang on by our fingernails. We go, sometimes kicking and screaming. We are in a rushing river, knowing we are supposed to be swimming upstream, but simply staying where we are is enough for today.

I’m calling this Encouragement, and it’s different from other posts. (I wrote a book once where I collected these posts and they made up the 2nd half, I’ll do that again with the 2nd book which is fairly close to finished – this will not be included, this is just for us, today.) I’m thinking about you, how you continue to come and open yourselves up to these words written hundreds of years ago, even though it requires an extraordinary vulnerability. You are courageous beyond measure. It’s funny, I’m writing that you are immeasurably courageous in acknowledge that you have been wrong, misguided, lost, that you are not in fact perfect. In a culture that takes such great pride in a viciously desperate need to be right, you are the exception.

You follow. You serve. You plug into a community not to get, but to give, as He did. You would much rather tie the towel around your waist and wash dirty feet than have yours washed. Do you know how remarkable that is? You say, sure, I have the right… Sure, I can, but should I? How will that affect my brothers and sisters?

We have been conditioned to climb the ladder by any means necessary, stepping on all those in our way. You wonder how to lift them, how to keep them from stumbling.

You are creating a whole new world, where faith, hope and love are the primary values. It’s hard, and super scary to stand so counter-culturally in a tsunami of opposition. That’s why we have each other. When we hold hands and reference lyrics from a punk-rock song, we affirm that even though we are scared, we are not alone. We are here, now, today, and the greatest of these, then, now, and forever, is love.

You are beautiful and wildly inspiring in your exceptional devotion to Jesus. So, continue, fam (as the kids say), let’s take this one step at a time, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine, and we’ll keep moving forward together.

Into The Light

Sunday we discussed marriage, single-ness (if that is even a word…it doesn’t feel like it is), and sex. The Apostle Paul writes about these subjects often, they’re found in many other spaces in the Bible, yet every time a sermon in church is based around sex, it’s met with a certain level of surprise and/or uncomfortability. This unease increases even more when the topic becomes sex between married couples. I suppose I know why, but it’s points to an early breakdown that has led us all down many different, unhealthy paths having little to do with sex at all.

The cracks begin with a bizarre learned aversion to conversation, especially about the most important topics. This aversion leads to a pathetic lack of communication that gives rise to the lie that sex is dirty and obscene and should be kept out of view. Obviously, this secrecy (like all secrecy) is the doorway into any number of dark rooms that are steal our dignity and are dishonoring to our hearts, souls, bodies & spirits.

When we build entire structures around the notion that some things need to be hidden in the darkest places, guilt and shame grow like mushrooms. Shame isolates us, and we stay sick with imaginary diseases. Sex isn’t shameful, isn’t dirty or obscene. It can be, but just because something can be misused doesn’t mean the thing is defective.

I can’t say the first talk I gave on sex didn’t give me deep pangs of anxiety, but I can absolutely tell you that it doesn’t now (any more than anything else. I still get butterflies of excitement every single Sunday, and I hope they never stop.)

The more we talk openly & respectfully about anything, the less power it has over us, the less fear-inducing it is. The more we can drag into the light, the less mold can spread. The 30th difficult boundary conversation is much less threatening than the first, and as it loses power, we can much more treat ourselves and each other with kindness instead of control. That need for control is rooted in fear. And control and love simply cannot coexist, so the more we can remove that fear, the more love we can display, the more love we can freely give.

If I don’t need you to see everything my way, vote for my candidate, behave the way I want you to, I can then allow you to be you, listen, actually listen, and maybe exercise some empathy (in some cases long dormant) and find the common ground that is always there. Common ground and understanding are nearly impossible to discover from behind thick walls of fear.

If we can talk honestly about marital sex and it’s many gifts (intimacy, connection, affection, I could go on and on), then maybe it won’t be a monster in the corners of the church. The Church has long been afraid of human sexuality, maybe she should be more concerned with secrecy and isolation. But again, just because the Church & religion have been misused, doesn’t mean they’re worthless. Quite the opposite. They are perhaps more valuable, more important, now than ever. But we can’t ever get to reclaiming the actual divine picture of The Church if we’re too proud or too frightened to mention Her and/or address the ways She’s been defaced. Think about the violence done in the name of Jesus, and imagine the horror and hopelessness if we threw Him away because of the offenses done in His lovely Name.

So we’ll keep talking about the beautiful purity of sex and the way it’s been dragged through muddy alleys. We’ll keep screaming about the immeasurable joy of marriage and mourning the damage too often done in the context of a lesser view. We’ll keep having these discussions with hands open in love, reclaiming these life-giving words and concepts, and we’ll do this all together.

New Years Worksheet

Yesterday, we continued a discussion on the Story we find ourselves in, as well as our role in it. I can’t think of any better day than New Years Day to look back, reflecting on what has past, and look forward, considering the future. Where have we been, where are we going? What have we learned, where have we grown, where have we fallen, where have we soared?

Where Christmas was a discussion of THE GIFT, New Years is one of response. As we move through Advent and Christmas, we enter a new season: Epiphany. The significance of Epiphany, The Christ child is here, what does that mean? He has come, so what now? Our lives are our answer to the question of Epiphany, our answer to His coming, our rescue, our salvation.

A great, meaningful life (which we can also call a faithful response) doesn’t happen by accident. We don’t get where we’re going without an idea where we want to go, or a knowledge of where we’re called to go. Again, this conversation is about the call, what Story, Whose Story, we’re in and what our part is.

Each person’s individual calling can be different, but one thing is always certain: It’s God’s Story, and He gave us all a call in common.

This common call is found in the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

GO and MAKE DISCIPLES. We talk a lot about the first part (“As we’re going”), not as much specifically about the 2nd (“make disciples.”) How exactly do we do that? How do we make disciples? With our words (1 Peter 3:15 “Worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to give an account”), song, beliefs, doctrine, time, $, energy, and I’d suggest, most importantly, with our lives.

So, what kinds of lives are they? New Years is a great time to ask these questions and set path forward. Years ago, a woman opened my eyes to the value of a ‘word for the year’ to set my focus upon, to set this path upon.

What’s important with any path is that we’re on it. We need to start, take a step, move, join, jump in. Where is yours? Where are you being called to take steps? What do you think?

Here are our questions to ask: What kind of life am I living? What needs attention? What needs to change? What needs to be fed?

The cool thing about living a life WITH Jesus is that no one has to give us much direction here. You are probably feeling something very specific to you and your circumstances, listen to that. God is speaking, we simply aren’t listening too much. Or we’re ignoring what we hear, for whatever reason, usually fear. We just might need to stop and be quiet long enough to listen to the Spirit moving within our souls.

We are the artists of our lives, what sorts of lives will we create???Where do we start?

Zechariah 10 contains the idea of a plumb line. A plumb line is a string with a weight designed to set a straight line to build walls. We’re not building walls, we’re building something much more important. He is our plumb line. He is (according to the scholar Creasy:) “the straight line by which we measure our crookedness.”

The idea of a plumb line is to have a YES – something to look & move towards.

What makes your heart sing? What excites you? What stirs your heart? What are you being called into? As you answer, let your community help, encourage, spur you on, and love you as you go out from this awesome Dinner Table.

There is one more idea in Zechariah 4:10, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…”It is NEVER too small, God loves when we start, when we take a step towards Him and His Story. The greatest achievements all have 1 thing in common: somebody started. How do you build a temple? A brick at a time. How do you build a life? A brick, a step, a bite at a time, on purpose.

1 last (not always obvious) thing before we get to some more questions; To use a plum line requires we have one. To line ourselves up to Him, we need to know Him and what He says. We need to walk with Him, read His Word, pray, spend time, let His Spirit guide us and speak to our hearts.

The word of the year for the Bridge is “Love.” What does it mean in our lives to love Him? To love each other? What does it mean in & for this community?

So what’s yours? (And no reasons why not!! Who knows what’s possible when nothing is impossible?) What kind of life are you building? Where will you give your attention? (And tell someone – tell me;)

What I do know is that we’ll keep our eyes on the plumb line, dreaming, praying, listening, building this Bridge, and getting our love all over everybody. That’s the thing that set apart the early church and it’s same thing that sets us apart today.

The Last Post of the Year

This will be the last post of the year, and I’m thinking back on the year, while looking forward. I totally recognize that everything I write at this time of year shares a common thread. This is no surprise, here or anywhere (I am by no means unique in this – every post anywhere shares this common thread.) It’s a natural transition.

Often times, circumstances coerce us to move, our situations force us to turn. Something has to, we only change when that pain becomes larger and hurts more than the pain of staying the same. Though it doesn’t always feel like it, it’s mostly a necessary, positive step and will usually leave us better than we were before. The big problem with this sort of transformation is that it’s an individual, lonely journey. Yes, if we’ve been blessed and intentional with that blessing, we have a community to hold us up, but they cannot know where we are in the deepest parts of us. That’s why the first step is so frightening and intimidating, it is one that feels as if we take it alone. (We aren’t, of course, but it certainly seems like it’s totally in the dark.)

This time of year is abnormal because we all stand in the same dark space with the same invitation in our hands. Who were we, who are we, and who will we become?

It’s an invitation that confronts our beliefs about what is possible.

Even the characters in the Big Story we tell around Christmastime were given the same invitation. I wonder if there were others that said “no” or “I can’t,” or “what if You’re wrong,” before Zechariah and Elizabeth received their angelic visit. We know Abram’s father, Terah, had the opportunity to “GO,” which he refused, before Abram was given his call. They were all faced with the same choice we are, will this be a space where we say “Yes?” The five we read about (Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus Himself) all answered; this was the life they said yes to.

Can we say the same? Is this the life we said yes to? Is it the one we will continue to say yes to? Or is it simply the one we have?

As Patricia beautifully phrased in Saturday’s retreat, “We are invited to giving birth to all that can be.” We spend so much time at the Bridge (because the Bible spends so much time) discussing the vital role imagination plays in faith, hope and love (“but the greatest of these is love”;) Will we have the courage to be so vulnerable to dream of something different, something new? Faith is the assurance of things we can’t see – that takes God-breathed imagination. So, will we? Or is it just what it is, what it has always been? Is this just the way I am, and will always be? What keeps us from answering that invitation to give birth to all that can be?

Yes, we’re scared to fail, to fall, but you understand by now, we’re also terrified to shine & fly. I don’t know what the Bridge can be, I don’t know what I can be, but I do know I’m beginning to get more and more comfortable to the idea of finding out. I’m absolutely convinced we all have a divine call that is our own (in addition to the command to Love God & each other, and The Great Commission.) Maybe this year we would hear it. Maybe we already have, we’re just been full of reasons why we might have been mistaken in what we heard. Who knows? I just know we’re in this together, “let’s take this one step at a time, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine,” so this year, let’s agree to be open to the possibility. After all, this Christmas story begins with a baby (!!!) and ends with an empty tomb (!!!!!!!!!!!), so maybe our wildest dreams aren’t big and amazing enough for this kind of God.

So, my brothers & sisters, have a truly joyful New Year.

Plumb Lines

As we race towards the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, it is my practice to reflect on where I’ve come from and look to where I’m going. I pick a focus word or 2 and make a plan to move forward (in pencil). There have been times when what is in front of me is intimidating in its scope, like staring at a smooth, slick wall stretching up into the clouds. Where do I even start?

If you’ve ever watched the show Hoarders, as the houses fall into such a state of disrepair, the people fall into a state of apathy. The work is so vast, it’s hard to see any way out. They have no idea how to clean what used to be their home but is now just a storage space for dirty dishes, trash, and junk. There is no end in sight, no light at the end of a massive tunnel.

A life can feel exactly the same. I remember many times, for seasons or years, where my soul was one of those houses. There were behaviors that didn’t serve me well, destructive habits, the worst tape loops playing in my head, self-sabotage, all buried under an avalanche of unhealthy perspectives. The task, cleaning me up, creating new pathways, was so enormous, I ended the next year with, at best, the same work ahead as the previous.

What I so clearly see now is that the answer is the same, put a few dishes in the sink today. Then a few more tomorrow. In the Bible, the exiled Jewish people return home and work begins to rebuild the temple. The old temple that had been razed was so grand, fantastically ornate and glorious, how could they ever possibly rebuild that one? The prophet Zechariah wrote, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” (Zech. 4:10)

There is a Japanese concept called kaisen, where continuous small, almost imperceptible changes compound, leaving the company, or process, drastically transformed.

I think this is what Zechariah is talking about, kaisen, or small beginnings. Set a plumb line – in this case, set our eyes on God and His vision for the temple, or our lives, families, communities, nations. This plumb line stays static, not swaying to meet the popular, convenient, or comfortable, and we begin to build with that as our guide. One block at a time. One dish. One moment. One lie in the tape loops that screamed in my ears. Just one. One step. We don’t need to know when the tunnel ends, or even where it will lead. We have a plumb line, and that plumb line is trustworthy and certain.

I know one step seems insignificant. We want to lose 100lbs by working out for 7 hours a day every day, but the next time that works will be the first, and we end up doing nothing. If we eat a bag of Oreos every day, maybe instead of eating none, we eat a bag minus one today. Or we do 1 pushup. Or read 1 verse.

We set the plumb line, don’t despise the small beginnings, and know that Our God, Our Creator rejoices to see the work begin. Then, the next year, we look back and barely recognize the person who began the work. We are increasingly new. We can see our bed and sleep in it without risk of suffocating under all of the ways we harm ourselves.

There is an old adage, an answer to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. Maybe this year, we start taking bites.