Jesus

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.

Friction

We’re working through a particularly challenging passage in 1 Corinthians (11:3), but why is it so challenging? It’s about headship, head coverings, and hairstyles. Aren’t there other passages that invite us into this kind of struggle? Probably Love your neighbor’ should be a major sticking point, or “Love your enemies” even more. What about the rich young ruler who is told to sell all of his stuff? Blessed are the poor in spirit?!? Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness? Why don’t these give me butterflies the size of birds, like this verse in Corinthians?

Maybe it’s because we’ve heard them so many times, we’re sort of numbed to the weight of what has actually been said. I’ve heard “Let It Be” 1,000 times, and it doesn’t break my heart anymore. So maybe that’s it, but I also wonder if it’s because we don’t take them quite as seriously as we could. This is a conversation worth having with ourselves, with each other, and especially with God, but it’s one we’re not going to have today.

This principle of headship is in our laps, what are we going to do with it? In fact, what do we do with any and all challenging, perhaps disagreeable, controversial, polarizing ideas and circumstances in our lives? What if your co-worker thinks very differently than you do? What if your sister voted for the “wrong” candidate? What if the person next to you in church holds a different interpretation or understanding of a parable of Jesus? What if she thinks a man is the head of a woman, or what if he doesn’t? What do we do with these treacherous areas between us in all relationships?

I know the Bible is teaching us about these principles – now, learning what, exactly, they’re teaching us is why we read and study, and probably changes over time, as we do. We don’t read the same book or step in the same river twice. These aphorisms, I suppose, are misused in this case. The book and the river remain the same, we do the changing. It’s a different Chad that reads that same book, a different foot that steps in the same river. Either way, you understand.

But the Bible is also teaching us how to handle the material, and how to handle the material in community. Do you think for a second all of the people at the church in Corinth were in lock step on every point? Actually, I bet Paul and Timothy (his apprentice) had conflicting ideas. We know the disciples did, they saw different behaviors, took different meanings from the words of Jesus. What do we do then? What if they disagreed with Paul, like we sometimes do?

The thing that drives us apart isn’t a divisive issue, it’s usually how tightly we hold those issues. We grip them so pridefully, tying our identity and worth to our right-ness.

What if we’re wrong? Does that exclude us from the love of Jesus? Certainly not. And what if they are wrong? They are still children of the Loving God. According to the 8th chapter of Romans, nothing at all can separate us from His love.

Of course theology is important, but as Paul is teaching us about what we believe, he is also giving lessons about how we believe. In the next chapter, he’ll tell us that the specific tenets of our faith, if they aren’t held in love, are just noise. Headship, homosexuality, abortion, war, money, materialism, authority, submission, sex, the list just goes on and on, we’re bound to hold different perspectives. I’m convinced the issues don’t divide, it’s us, when we stop talking and refuse to sit down together as family.

I’ve seen a new dynamic at the Bridge, one that allows us to walk right into these topics without hesitation. It’s why my mood is one of excitement instead of fear or trepidation. What we get to see on a weekly basis is how it can be, where the people are more significant than our fragile egos. It’s a beautiful picture of a Gospel identity, where hands are held, and the only name that matters is Jesus.

Open Doors

This space, I find, is tending a little towards Bridge-specific content. That wasn’t the intention when I began writing it some years ago, but that’s ok. Hank Fortener used a term, “dynamic stability,” and it describes our lives, our communities, and this section of the website. We are stable because the God we serve is stable, but we hold the rest loosely, which allows us to adjust, adapt, bend, move, grow and transform. We can change course to follow the path He is calling us to tread. Having said that, it won’t always be Bridge-specific, the point is that it can be.

We began a new opportunity 2 weeks ago, a prayer ministry on Tuesday nights. I didn’t know what to expect. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t given much time, thought or energy to any expectation at all. I just know that every faith community needs a prayer ministry, right? Obviously. I called this the Open Door (with or without the ‘the’), and envisioned it as a room – with an open door to everyone – where anyone could gather and pray. That’s all.

We have a history with prayer meetings, and it’s not a great one. (Maybe that should have encouraged me to give the “time, thought and energy.”) Historically, it hasn’t been a wildly thriving enterprise, usually starting slowly and sadly fading away. Then, we are prompted to try again. I’m certain these promptings continue to come because prayer is an absolutely vital part of a life (individual as well as corporate) of faith. This time, I assure you it won’t fade away. If I’m the only one, I’ll be the only one.

But I’m not. There has been a group, passionate about this sort of expression of love and faith. Here’s what it looks like in practice, so far: We connect, laugh, share stories/burdens/celebrations/etc, write down each other’s prayer needs & requests, follow up on the previous needs & requests, and then turn some music on and sit, kneel, and lay down all over the building and pray however we pray. Prayer looks different for each of us, we all bring different lists (1 that we’ve discussed and another we haven’t, that sits on our heart and shoulders), and we all go to Jesus in our own unique fashion. Then, we pray for a minute together and go home, very grateful for the beautiful opportunity.

When I first communicated the idea for this Open Door, it was immediately clear that I was not the only one receiving prompts. Many of us were also considering some sort of group prayer. One of us was listening to a podcast, where she heard this, from Dr Alexis Gumbs:

“But I think what I remembered while I was writing that, was that all of it is happening at the same time. So we are holding the door open for the energy that needs to come through. And we are the energy coming through. And the door is there open for us. I needed to remember that. And I do think that’s another name for love, the open door, the energy coming through.”

I have no idea where the name “Open Door” came from, it didn’t appear to be particularly inspired, it was just a name (not even a clever one, at that.) Except now it seems that I do know.

Interestingly, how many times have you heard something that fits with something, or everything, that you’re working through right now and it’s in flashing neon? That same thing could have crossed your path a million other times, but this time it would be impossible to miss. I may have heard this exact Gumbs quote before, who knows? This woman who shared it with me might have heard this same podcast, and it didn’t track then. It sure does now. She heard a podcast and our announcement in such short succession that she couldn’t ignore.

We are holding the door open, we are coming through that door, the door is open for us. And another name for the all of this, for us, is love. Of course it is.

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.

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.

Yes’s & Nos

I officiated a wedding Saturday morning in a county a few hours north of the one in which I live. The wedding was for a co-worker and friend, she chose to have it up there where she and her now husband have a cabin. There was no “venue,” they instead chose to have it on a public road in front of a covered bridge. I had never been in this county, so of course this sounded strange and a little dangerous. It was neither, almost no one lives in that county. The snow on the roads was untouched until our vehicles made tracks, and we were uninterrupted.

The last hour of my trip there was on snow covered roads as more snow fell. This is not ideal. I was raised with an unhealthy fear of inclement weather. For years and years and years, I’d obsessively study forecasts and storm patterns and if they were tracking into my area, my life would be upended. I couldn’t sleep, would get headaches (or more accurately, just 1 headache that lasted until the roads were cleared afterwards), miss work or school, and become more and more irritable. I am considerably better now, but I wouldn’t say I like snow.

Winter had become spring several weeks ago, last week was 70 degrees on Wednesday!!! Except for Saturday morning. The forecast was dry, warm (very warm for the season), and sunny, except Saturday morning, when it would be cold and snowing. We all make big jokes about how weather people are always wrong, but that’s simply not true. They are significantly wrong maybe a half a dozen times a year, but I was beyond hopeful that one of those six would be Saturday morning.

I prayed for the snow to miss my path. Yes, I recognize this is probably a very selfish prayer, but I give everything to God (I know He values honesty and wants the authentic me) and let Him sort it all out, “if it’s His will.” This prayer was either left unanswered or met with a No. They both look exactly the same, right? And on this drive and since, my mind began to wander down a path where I was thinking about unanswered prayers and how many times this kind of thing becomes a real obstacle for us in our walks of faith: God doesn’t listen, doesn’t care, and on and on down these same roads.

In that particular county, at the same time, there was a woman who was getting married Saturday morning outside in front of a covered bridge. This woman had been praying to the same God, asking for a snowy wedding ceremony. The last 2 weeks, she continued to update me on the forecast, saying with overflowing excitement, “it’s still supposed to snow!” I pretended to agree and feel the same hope for a fluffy white blanket under our feet.

My No was her Yes.

And now I wonder what that means. The second I arrived, I was thrilled she got her Yes, the day was gorgeous, as was she, the pictures perfect. She deserved the day that existed in her dreams, and if I wasn’t quite so selfish, I would’ve prayed with her and also gotten a resounding Yes.

Very often, our scope of vision begins and ends with our own experience. In tragedy, we say things like, “why me/them/us???” I suppose wishing the tragedy to fall upon someone else. We pray for our team, against others, for our side and against theirs, for sunny skies and against the snow, thinking we know everything there is to know, see everything there is to see.

And they are honest – we absolutely should be praying these prayers, we should give God the truth, as it is, and as we are, right now. But maybe the real answers are the ones that expand our perspective, that blow up our limited view, and expand our hearts to include more and more interests besides our own. Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so quick to conclude what Yes’s, No’s and Wait’s are, or to assume we could tell the difference at all.

I wouldn’t pray the same prayer again. I would be the person I pretended to be, petitioning God for a slow sketchy drive AND a lovely ceremony that would last forever. I’m different today, in many ways. I’m grateful. And as it turns out, for me it wasn’t a No at all. Not even close.

A Messy Process

This morning I made a dumb joke. This is not, in itself, unusual. I make dumb jokes all the time, but this one was a little at the expense of my family and it’s been resting heavy on my heart. This joke in question was funny, mostly because everyone knows exactly how I feel about everyone who lives in this house, especially The Angel. She wasn’t angry or anything, she made a public face as if she were, because she plays along. But I don’t need her in pain to know I’ve strayed from the path, the messy hard to follow process I choose to walk.

What I do in situations like this is ask forgiveness, of her (which she gave easily), of Jesus (which He gave a long time ago), and of me (which always proves much harder to come by).

And then I ask why. Why did I make a joke like that?

A big part of what made it funny was particularly biting to me. She is my very special, very valued, sweet lady, and she deserves to be honored with my every thought, word, and action. This is something that comes naturally, as I am very well aware that she is a divine gift and a blessing to the world around her. You know this, you’ve seen the way I look at her, the way I speak about her, no one needs to tell you how much she means to me. If I thought she was (or if there was any question that I might think she was) “the bags in the other car,” it is decidedly not funny. We’ve all been in situations like that, where jokes aren’t jokes and hit too close to their intended mark. This was not that. But this was also not something that held her carefully.

So the next thing I do is ask a different why. Our words come from somewhere, usually the overflow of our hearts. In this case, I am not feeling any type of negative way about her, so where is my heart? Why is it overflowing with dirty water?

2 weeks ago I wrote, “I was apart, my heart felt muddy, confused, a little restless, distracted, and needed to be pulled back together.” This is even more true today, with one big addition. I am overwhelmingly sad, as you heard and felt before the message began. My insides swirled and my emotions vacillated wildly, I felt like I was either going to scream, cry, run away or all 3. I wished the opening silent prayer would continue for the rest of the morning (and it almost did). But I think the message made sense, and that had little to do with me, because I didn’t make any sense to me.

If it didn’t make sense, it was about authenticity, of living a wide open life of honesty and genuine engagement, and how that helps us connect with each other and destroy any and all obstacles. This is who I am, you get the ups and downs, and you get them all on the outside. But the real point is Who Jesus is. He loves me, even now, even in my missteps and dumb jokes. He forgives me before I ask, and then holds me tightly until I can forgive me, too. He says ‘those who ask, receive, and those who seek, find,’ and I believe Him. I am asking, I’m seeking, and He is faithful. Psalm 73:21-23 still says, “Yet I still belong to You, You are holding my right hand. You will keep on guiding me, leading me…” He shows me Himself, and through that lens (instead of my own), He shows me me, too.

Of course I wish I wouldn’t have said it, The Angel and these 2 amazing boys aren’t punchlines to deflect from my raw vulnerability. I wish I wouldn’t be so sad, but that is the high cost of relationship and I would never have it any other way. I wish I wouldn’t absentmindedly veer from the path, that He’d put some guardrails or something to contain me, but it wouldn’t be as meaningful that way. It wouldn’t be ours.

The circle at the end left me with few words. We ask, seek, and knock, and we hold each other’s hands as they hold ours. Sometimes we’re the ones who fall apart and others we’re the ones that hold each other together. And, as it says in one of my very favorite books, the beautiful Dr Seuss classic Horton Hatches The Egg, “It should be, it should be, it SHOULD be like that!”

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.

Tapioca Pudding

Sunday morning, as I was giving the message, I had a thought: “You have got to pull yourself together.” This sort of inner dialogue is not unusual. In fact, it’s not even that unusual to have them during the service. I prepare the way I do so that I can be sensitive to any promptings, instead of hyper-focusing on what I’ve said and what I have to say next. But this week, the “dialogue” was more like a scolding. And the voice in my head was absolutely right. I was apart, my heart felt muddy, confused, a little restless, distracted, and needed to be pulled back together.

Now, my history is one where I get moving down a path like this that inevitably leads to a deep freezing pool of self-loathing, telling myself I’m a mess, totally undisciplined, and I’ll never become anything other than who and what I am right now. So I overreact wildly. To address a perceived lack of time in the Scriptures, I’ll commit to an hour every morning, than an hour every afternoon, followed by a hour or 2 of meditation on what I’ve read. Or if I feel rotten, puffy, lethargic, and the number on the scale keeps climbing (which is, incidentally, what is happening the last few weeks), then I’ll decide to completely cut out all sugar, desserts, eliminate all snacks and maybe a meal, then increase my workout times from an hour to 3. And on and on.

For a few weeks, there has been one emergency after another dictating my schedule and attention. Instead of sheep, I’m counting phone calls and to-do items, and not surprisingly wake with a headache. Then, when people do and say the things that people say and do – we are the best, and we are the worst, right? – I feel a certain type of way, and all of that easily spills over into Sunday mornings until the Spirit chastises me and tells me to get it together, man. So naturally, I have the automatic reactive overdrive and decide all of the things I need to do to “get it together.”

I really love the creamed pearl tapioca pudding at Laudermilch’s, and this insanity got so bad that part of all the new me silliness was a life without creamed pearl tapioca. Insanity.

Like I said, this has been my history. And Jesus has already began the New Me transformation and will see it through (it says that in Philippians, and I believe it), so the first thing I do now is to turn my phone off and sit down to pray with my Bible. Where to start to get a word that would make sense of any of this, my fuzzy spinning head and heart, and bring the world outside into some semblance of focus? Just continue, is what we did. I’m working through the Psalms, so my reading began with Psalm 70 and, in verse 4, “But may all who search for You be filled with love and gladness.” I’m searching and would really appreciate being filled, that’s a good beginning.

Then I got to 74 and will spare you the pages and pages of journaling, but 74 is about getting off track, wrapped up in other circumstances, other people, unimportant questions, distracted wonderings, and self-pity. In other words, apparently I wrote it. It says somebody named Asaph did, but I’m not too sure. (Incidentally, there aren’t enough Asaph’s in the world anymore.)

(V.21-23) “Then I realized how bitter I had become..I was so foolish and ignorant…I must have seemed like a senseless animal…” Can we relate to those words or what?

But then, “Yet I still belong to You, You are holding my right hand. You will keep on guiding me, leading me…”

See, we create our lives, holding His hand, intentionally. Sometimes the decisions we make are bad ones, but other times, they’re not, and we simply need to be patient, take a breath and chill out for a minute. Getting it together doesn’t have to mean a wrecking ball – maybe it does – but it might just mean counting to 10. A knee-jerk reaction is rarely helpful or wise.

But this all hinges on the intentionality of creation. If we choose to be blown about by home repairs, unexpected bills and interpersonal friction, then we are prisoners of The Here and Now and The Here and Now gets the keys to who we are and will be.

It’s entirely possible that this post is messy and hard to follow, and that’s ok. I am messy and so are you, probably. And this beautiful process is messy and often hard to follow, with lots of stops and starts. The point is that we engage with us (our hearts, relationships, everything that matters) and figure out the weight of things, before we get stressed by the inevitable tension of living great, authentic lives. Then we don’t have to overreact, set unrealistic demands on ourselves, or even consider giving up that fantastic tapioca ever again

A Woman I Know

A woman I’ve recently met lost her husband last year. I didn’t know her then, I never met him. She began coming to a small group after her tragedy, as a broken-hearted widow trying to hold on to God, to other people, to meaning, to today, to life. She sometimes looked tired, sometimes like she had just finished weeping (which she probably had), yet she always shows up.

I stay quiet, muted in my Zoom box, watching and listening, fully present to her suffering. You know, in the book of Lamentations, the author wails “Look! See!”, simply seeking a witness to this searing pain. The crushing hurt of loss and abandonment has overtaken her, “Look at this affliction!” In Lamentations, the God she knows has “broken my teeth with gravel; He has trampled me in the dust.”

This woman I know understands Lamentations, I bet, only too well. She said last week, “I don’t trust God so much right now.” I don’t know how she felt about saying it. Sometimes, we can get so wrapped up in what we are “supposed to” say, “supposed to” do, who we “should” be, that we ignore who we are. And from behind that facade, we ignore who God is.

When I was in seminary, studying the Bible and writing research paper after research paper, more than any particular story or verse, I was surprised at what I was finding over and over. The overwhelming theme was God’s desire for honesty. Even as He was commanding rites and rituals, He was reminding us that the rites and rituals meant nothing at all without heart. If they were just sacrifices, just songs sung and hands raised in church, just plastered smiles and rote prayers, they were nothing more than hypocritical performance. The Scripture tells of a God who wants us, who we are, how we are, right here, right now, instead of our hollow dog and pony shows.

This woman I know sees the value in showing up in her weary brokenness. Which looks exactly like grace, His grace as well as her own. I think when she says, “I don’t trust God so much right now,” He probably smiles, because in her courageous authenticity, she is displaying that she does. She trusts Him enough to tell Him the truth, confident He won’t leave her, that He’ll keep His arms around her. And if she doesn’t feel it this second, she will.

And she has chosen to trust us. We have been this woman’s witnesses. We almost never get the answers we think we want, but we do get hands to hold. We get people to love us and hold us up when we just can’t do it ourselves anymore.

This is an online Bridge post, but it’s also a love letter to her (that she may never read). I want to thank her. I want to tell her how much she’s meant to me, how she’s inspired me, how she’s given me courage and strength by simply being a warrior everyday and letting me watch. I guess that’s why we were given The Church. Showing up and taking one more step is nothing to do alone, our gift is that we get to take those steps and live these lives as a community. And if we keep showing up, keep opening our eyes, hearts and hands to each other, we get to experience these moments of immeasurable beauty and love up close.