Known Part 3

 

If you look in your Bible at Psalm 139 you might notice this Psalm is attributed to David.  While many tend to have a positive view of David, he was not always the hero of the story.  There is a time he was attracted to a married woman, named Bethsheba, so he sent her husband to the front lines of a war where he was killed (2 Samuel 11).  Eek!  You can’t make this stuff up, it is in the Bible.  Imagine David praying the words below:

 

O Lord, You have searched me
    and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I get up;
    You understand my thought from far off.
³ You search my path and my lying down
    and are aware of all my ways.
⁴ For there is not a word on my tongue,
    but behold, O Lord, You know it fully.

⁵ You put Yourself behind and before me,
    and keep Your hand on me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is lofty, and I cannot fathom it.

 

Now imagine you praying these words when you do/say something you wish you hadn’t done or said.  After you called someone a name or lashed out in anger at someone who just happened to be standing there or blamed someone else for your brokenness.  Imagine God knowing not just the good parts of life, but the ones we tend to keep hidden in cardboard boxes in cobwebbed corners of our souls, hoping/praying no one goes back there!  Not family, friends, yourself, or even God!

 

But the Psalmist says God does and will go to every corner of our being!  God knows our movements.  God knows us better than we know ourselves.  God surrounds us, which means God can sustain us.  To be fully known is both our most heartfelt prayer and sometimes our deepest fear!  Re-read that sentence.  We want to be known, but we also tell ourselves that if someone really knew us, they wouldn’t love us.  So, there is the contradiction.  Here is the truth: God does love you.  Paul picks up on this in Romans 8 ~ nothing separates us from the love of God.  What is your reaction?  Honestly.  Do you still want to object and argue that God couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t love you?  How is that going?  God loves you fully, unconditionally, and unceasingly.  Let this promise take hold of your heart on this day and every day.  Amen.

Known Part 2

 

This week you are laying down your summer homework alongside Psalm 139.  Please remember, this is not for a grade!  Please remember, even if your rectangles of places are half-drawn and your circles of people incomplete, and you haven’t even started on the starlit moments of life, God is there.  This is what the Psalmist is singing to your shy soul.  Hear the opening words of Psalm 139 again, this time from the Message paraphrase.  Read these words aloud so you can hear as if God is saying/singing/blessing you with these words:

 

God, investigate my life;
    get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
    even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
    I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
    before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
    then up ahead and you’re there, too—
    your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
    I can’t take it all in!

 

I am struck by that last sentence ~ I can’t take it all in!  Even after examining and exploring the various components of my life, even after having new insights into my life, there are so many mysteries.  I sometimes feel like, rather than a masterpiece of art, my life is like Legos scattered across the carpet by a toddler.  Even though we curate and carefully construct our lives in scrapbooks or Instagram posts, behind the scenes and screenshots, there are so many emotions.  Because our minds protest and insist that everything be neat and tidy, we tend to fill in the uncertainties of life ~ our own and others' lives ~ with a false sense of confidence.  We say, “Oh I know exactly what you are feeling,” to someone who is grieving.  But everyone’s grief is different, unique as their fingerprint.  On the one hand, when you say you know how the other feels, you are trying to connect.  On the other hand, not everyone has the right to hear your opinion/thoughts.  This is holy for us to remember.  Recall from last week that powerfully challenging line from Ecclesiastes: “A time to keep silent.”  The advocates among us think, “Wait, you can’t stay silent/quiet now.  We have to say something!!  Do something!!  Get your cape because we are off to save the day.”  Notice the wisdom writer of Ecclesiastes doesn’t say that you should always, forever and forever, stay quiet or silent.  The writer didn’t say, “Just stand on the sideline and don’t speak until spoken to.”  Rather, quiet can be God’s first language.  As the mystics say, there is a reason that the words silent and listen share the same letters!!  When we are quiet, we can listen to what others are really saying, let God get a word in edgewise, maybe hear our own shy soul, and possibly enjoy the stillness without our addiction to perpetual motion.  Let the psalm above wrap around you, hold you, and remind you that God loves all of you.  Full stop.  Period.  Amen.

Known Part 1

 

For the past month, you have listened to your one wild and precious life.  You have charted people, places, experiences, and encounters.  You have been time traveling as you realized your parents preached a gospel of what was expected of you.  Your family of origin served up a story alongside the mashed potatoes at meals every night.  Your teachers, friends, and culture have taken the red editorial pen to mark up your life.  Then culture told you that you were responsible/accountable for authoring your one story ~ never mind the fact that some conditions were set in stone ~ like where you were born and who you were born to. 

 

There is no new assignment to add to your chart/artwork of your life this week.  Rather, I invite you to breathe and be.  Take a deep breath and slowly exhale.  Take in the oxygen of God’s love, letting it warm your heart and tickle your pinkie toes.  Now exhale all the toxins of carbon dioxide that have been collected within you.  Exhale that comment from that person who has been living rent-free in your mind.  Exhale that expectation that you must be perfect, know all the answers, and come up with the best joke for your sermon.  Exhale the waiting for the doctor’s appointment and the frustration that others are not who you want them to be (because we are not who we want to be either).  Exhale pain.  Exhale the unfinishedness of this life. 

 

Breathe and be.

 

Slowly read, pray, these words ~ say them aloud so that your shy soul can hear them. 

 

O Eternal One, You have explored my heart and know exactly who I am;
² You even know the small details like when I take a seat and when I stand up again.
    Even when I am far away, You know what I’m thinking.
³ You observe my wanderings and my sleeping, my waking and my dreaming,
    and You know everything I do in more detail than even I know.
⁴ You know what I’m going to say long before I say it.
    It is true, Eternal One, that You know everything and everyone.
⁵ You have surrounded me on every side, behind me and before me,
    and You have placed Your hand gently on my shoulder.
⁶ It is the most amazing feeling to know how deeply You know me, inside and out;
    the realization of it is so great that I cannot comprehend it.

⁷ Can I go anywhere apart from Your Spirit?
    Is there anywhere I can go to escape Your watchful presence? (Psalm 139)

 

Which word/verse/idea leapt off the screen and landed (maybe with a thud) in your mind or heart or soul?  I know for me, it is, “You (God) even know the small details (of my life)”.  My first response is, “Eek…that means God know what I said to that driver who cut me off in traffic.”  My second response is, “Can God really love all my warts/wants/wounds, the ones I keep hidden from others (and myself)?”  And my third response is, “Maybe this is what is so amazing about grace!”.  Hold this passage and let it hold you, listen to how the psalmist, centuries ago invited people to let God hold our whole lives.  Amen.  

Seasonality of God ~ Prayer

 

Wisdom-writing, song-singing, silence-tending, presence-sharing God, meet us here and now in this messy moment where breaking down and building up are happening in us and around us.  Meet us here as we try to tend to the rips in the fabric of life, even as stress creates another hole for us to mend.  In a moment when hate is too loud, and love is too easily missed or dismissed.  God, meet us with Your presence.  Let us sit in the mystery and marvel of life in ways that open us to You.  Continue to offer us grace, peace, hope, mercy, justice, and love that makes our wounded spirits whole.  Even in our blessed brokenness and uncertainty, help us reach out in very human ways to others.  Be with us at this moment and every day this month.  Amen.  

The Seasonality of God ~ Soundtracks of Faith

 

For those of a certain vintage, you cannot hear Ecclesiastes 3 without hearing The Byrds’ song, Turn! Turn! Turn! I think this is good.  Because your life has a soundtrack.  Your life has a melody and music that has been playing, maybe in the background or being blasted from your stereo right now.  As you look over your life, what music connects to a place or people?  For example, I can think of the connection between “Let There Be Peace on Earth” and the place summer camp, even still seeing some of my friends’ faces around the campfire as we sung that hymn.  Or I think of 80s rock bands that connect with my move to Des Moines and listening to those songs with my friends.  Or I still hear the song that my wife and I danced to at our wedding.  Music teaches and tells us truths that ordinary words (like mine) just can’t do.  So today, to your chart, list songs ~ doesn’t have to be from the hymnal ~ that defined or described the seasons.  Or what song/songs today are helping to soothe your soul?  Do you hear other songs, besides The Byrds, in the words of Ecclesiastes?  Play with music today.  Listen to music today.  Let the notes reverberate and resonate in your soul.  Amen.

The Seasonality of God

 

Teacher: For everything that happens in life—there is a season, a right time for everything under heaven:

    A time to be born, a time to die;
        a time to plant, a time to collect the harvest;
    A time to kill, a time to heal;
        a time to tear down, a time to build up;
    A time to cry, a time to laugh;
        a time to mourn, a time to dance;
    A time to scatter stones, a time to pile them up;
        a time for a warm embrace, a time for keeping your distance;
    A time to search, a time to give up as lost;
        a time to keep, a time to throw out;
    A time to tear apart, a time to bind together;
        a time to be quiet, a time to speak up;
    A time to love, a time to hate;
        a time to go to war, a time to make peace. (The Voice Translation)

 

How are these words stirring and singing to you as we continue to lean in and listen to the wisdom of this passage?  Are there insights that you’ve discerned and discovered by returning to these words over the last few days?  Are there lingering frustrations because you are trying to figure out when there is ever a time for war or hate or killing?  I know those 3 or 28 on the list certainly cause my mind to whirl and soul to swirl, and eventually I conclude I can’t rationally and reasonably explain everything!  One of the lines I love is about mourning and dancing.  This makes me wonder if maybe this list isn’t about separate, segregated, segmented times, but about how the two times on each line above might influence the other.  Is there a connection between keeping and throwing out?  Are some of the times inextricably in tension with each other?  Because at funerals, I have seen tears that no box of Kleenex can stop and laughter that heals the soul.  I have witnessed people share honestly raw emotions and find healing from the ache.  How have love and hate always been counterweights to each other and at the same time coexisting?  How have war and peace always been not distant and disconnected, but so close that we barely know where one begins and the other ends?  I pray today, you might see these 28 ingredients as part of the recipe of each of our lives, that when they get mixed and mingled together, they each contribute to the stew we serve others in our stories.  Hold this.  Hear how these words have been part of your life and continue to be part of the song we are all singing, both individually and collectively these days.  Amen.

The Seasonality of God

 

There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:

A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace. (The Message Translation)

 

One of the truths hidden in plain sight in this poem is how close to creation these words are.  We live in a world of air conditioning, electricity, 24-hour shopping, with delivery right to our doorstep.  To the writer of Ecclesiastes, you might as well have been describing an alien planet!  In the days when these words were written, people were either farmers or herders.  Sure, there were a few merchants, soldiers, officials, priests, and rulers, too.  But most people had soil in their souls and under their fingernails.  Living intimately with the land and around creation means a different experience compared to our world where we are sheltered from the elements and have a supermarket on every street corner.  Look at the second line about planting and harvesting.  This isn’t just poetic prose; this was the profession of many who first heard these words.  Farmers know that there is one time to plant and another time to pluck up.  Juxtapose this with the truth that we live in a world where we expect to get fruit and veggies, even out of season.  In a world of convenience, we forget that an apple in the middle of July doesn’t taste the same as one plucked from the tree in October up north.  Same with the words about killing and healing.  Too often, my mind wants to go to extremes, partly because that is what we hear too much around us.  Partly because this poem keeps swinging us from one extreme to another like a giant swing.  The word “kill” can make me think of images of war, refugees, mass shootings, and arguments over sensible gun laws.  Yet, the context here, in an agrarian culture, is more about killing a chicken for dinner or offering a dove as a sacrifice at the temple.  We might also think of chomping on a carrot that is giving us energy.  This brightly orange and beautiful vegetable absorbed from the soil, sun, and soaking rain to grow.  I mentioned on Sunday that because we live in a world that loves to push and pull us to political/economic/religious edges, we might be tempted to classify, categorize, prioritize, and idolize some of the 28 times named above as either good or bad.  But it doesn’t have to be so.  Has there been a time when you needed to cast away a stone that was too heavy?  Has there been a time you ended a relationship for your own well-being?  Which of the 28 times in this list leap off the screen for you?  Which of the 28 times sit uncomfortably in your stomach, causing indigestion?  Which ones connect to the timeline you worked on in July?  Sit quietly, listening for God’s wisdom in these words intersecting, interrupting, and interpreting our lives right now.  Amen.

The Seasonality of God

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace. (The NRSV)

 

What are your responses as you reflect on the words above?  I know I have lots of feelings when I hear/read these words.  I feel both comforted and challenged.  This passage takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions, each line a pendulum swing from one extreme to another.  The wisdom writer in Ecclesiastes starts with the mystery of birth, life, and death.  I don’t remember my birth, and I don’t know when I will draw my last breath.  In some ways our lives are mysteries from beginning to end.  I think of the beautiful Psalm 90 that says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  It is tempting to see that word, “number,” as a mathematical equation to solve or a calendar event to control.  We don’t know how many days we have.  The author, Oliver Burkeman, estimates that each of us has about 4000 weeks of life.  In a world obsessed, addicted, and stressed out by trying to get everything done and be the best version of yourself, we feel/carry the weight of time on our shoulders, pushing us down into the ground.  Perhaps it isn’t only gravity that keeps us connected to the earth?  Centuries before Burkeman encouraged us to be thoughtful, prayerful, curious, open, and loving in how we live, both the Psalmist and Ecclesiastes combined theology and philosophy into a recipe for us to taste.  This connects to charting the art of your life.  You started with people and places, mixed in experiences and encounters, thought about God’s presence, experimented with the words: faith/hope/and love, and yesterday we spoke about the seasonality of the Sacred. This is a foundation for you to lay beside the words above.

 

This week, I invite you to lay this passage alongside your timeline/art project of life.  The words above are not only about the individual.  As a pastor, I do many funerals.  I am confronted, confounded, and challenged by the fact that life is finite and how much of life is beyond my control.  As you look at your timeline, are there significant births and deaths you might note?  When did your parents, spouse, child, loved one, soul friend, pets who are like family, or others die?  How did you process that pain and grief?  I don’t think you get over grief like a common cold.  Rather, you find ways to pick up the pieces, some of which are sharper than a shard of glass and some of the broken pieces shine with new light through the jagged edges.  Each day we gather experiences as one way God is co-authoring your story.  You might consider how each move you’ve made to a new home involves new beginnings and endings.  Or each person you’ve met is like encountering a new story, or each rupture in a relationship that can’t be repaired no matter how much duct tape you try to apply causes ache that might still be persisting.  Let this opening line of Ecclesiastes create a spaciousness in you to explore the mysterious ways of life/death/resurrection that is a thread/theme in each of our stories.  Amen.

Shape of Faith, Collective of Hope, and the Way of Love

 

Creatively composing God, thank you for the endless ways You bring/blend faith, hope, and love together in our lives.  You take the spices of faith, hope, and love to create new recipes in each of our lives.  Give us appetites to taste and see Your goodness in others’ stories about faith, hope, and love.  Let us have ears to hear and eyes to see that the diverse ways You were at work in someone else’s story can be both unique and unifying.  That no matter how different someone else’s experience is, there might just be one word from You, O God, in the stories that other person shares.  Help me stay curious, especially when I encounter someone who has all the warmth of a porcupine or the personality of a wet blanket or acts like a bully.  Help me ask, “What happened” rather than fill in the story that I know all about why they do what they do.  Let Your faith in us awaken us in new ways.  Let Your hope open to new possibilities.  And let Your love constantly flow and be what fuels my life this day.  Amen. 

Shape of Faith, Collective of Hope, and the Way of Love

 

 But now faith, hope, and love remain; these three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 (The Voice Translation)

 

So far this week, you have played with the words: faith and hope.  To be sure, these two words can be partners or sometimes in tension.  We might cling to these words with tight fists or watch them flutter away the second we let go of our grasp.  Let’s add one more word: love, which Paul says is the greatest.  He is borrowing from his Jewish upbringing in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6, where the prayer prayed each day is to love God with all your heart, soul, and life.  Side note: Paul spent all of chapter 12 in 1 Corinthians arguing against rating and ranking; only do that at the end of chapter 13!!  Sigh, but this does remind us that our human-size lives are always full of contradictions! 

 

How has love held you in the past?  When has love been like a safety net, and when has love failed you or you fallen through that net because of a hole that was too large?  When was the last time you felt fully loved?  Does love feel different now than as a teenager?  How has our cultural gospel of romantic love overshadowed the communal connection of God’s love that tethers us together impacted how you read/think/view this word? 

 

I know that is a lot of questions!  You may take just one of the above.  Or go back through the people you listed with each place you lived from week one and draw a heart around those who embodied love for you.  Who helped you hold onto love in times of stress and strain?  In what ways might love have a chemical reaction with hope and faith that Paul lays out in the formula of 1 Corinthians?  May your ponderings today bring smiles to your face and strangely warm your heart in beautiful ways.  Amen.

Shape of Faith, Collective of Hope, and the Way of Love

 

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.  1 Corinthians 1313 (The Message Translation)

 

Yesterday, you traced the shape, shade, or size of faith in your life.  Maybe faith as a teenager was a circle to hold your life that suddenly shrank to a dot in your college/young adult years.  Maybe faith was a square as a child that became a beautiful cumulus-shaped cloud that keeps changing across the sky of life today.  Remember, this is never one-and-done; you keep working on your life with the One who is co-authoring alongside you.  Today, I invite you to hold the word, hope.  Was there a symbol of hope as a child?  For me, that word makes me think of my Christmas list as a child; I hoped I would get the gifts I listed.  As I grew up, I had hopes that were like dreams for what my life would be.  As Rev. Sarah Bessey says, hope is a team sport.  I see hope as active and activating and animating not only within me, but between me and others.  What role has hope played?  Or ask: how full your hope tank is and why?  I hear many today feel hopeless because the events of the world seem so large and troubling.  And from history, I hear that people have faced hate and hurt as a constant theme and thread.  Is my hope dependent only on external evidence to validate it?  Is my hope built on God’s presence, which can feel more nebulous?  Is my hope sinking sand?  You could go through a hymnal or Google hymns with the word “Hope”, how is that word set poetically in motion in those hymns?  Play with the word “Hope” and trace how that word showed up or disappeared throughout your life.  May this invitation awaken your awareness of the story you are telling yourself about this word and how it works in the world, in your heart, and with God.  Amen.

Shape of Faith, Collective of Hope, and the Way of Love

 

And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.  1 Corinthians 1313 (NRSV Updated Translation)

 

Yesterday, I invited you to look at the mystery of your life, that we don’t always know fully what we are doing.  Every day you wake up with the ingredients and information from your past to meet the unknown present/future moments you will encounter.  The story in your mind, heart, and soul all try to help you navigate the waters of today.  Side note: sometimes the story in your mind is different from the story in your heart.  Hence, we don’t have a single, unified story, but rather, stories all competing to control the steering wheel of our lives.  I know this is happening for me when I feel a pit in my stomach.  When my mind, heart, soul, body, and life are out of alignment, that is when I wake up at 3 a.m., which is the worst possible time to try to figure out life! 

 

On your art/chart this week, I want you to trace the three words of God’s story: faith, hope, and love.

 

Look at that early column of where you lived, the people you knew, the stardust of experiences/encounters in that place, and who God was; what did faith feel like there?  I know for me in Cedar Rapids at my UCC church, faith at an early age was a box to fit into.  God was a certain way, and I had to appease or impress God to earn a gold star, which, by the way, was exactly what I got on the attendance chart in Sunday School!  As a teenager in Des Moines at a different UCC church, the wider culture was all aflutter about “thinking outside the box”, so I thought God couldn’t be contained or confined; God was the “holy other” (thanks to Karl Barth for that phrase).  In seminary in Minnesota, I learned God was the ground of being (thanks to Paul Tillich for that phrase).  God in my first church became the stable ground where I could build my deep desire to be a good minister.  Do you start to see how faith has taken different shapes depending on where I was, who I was around, and what was happening within/around me?  Faith is never constructed or deconstructed in isolation.  Faith is impacted and influenced by what is all around us and who is around us.  Remember from yesterday, in the nanosecond between an encounter and your response, your mind/heart/soul fills in a story.  And because our body is built to conserve calories, we will take the easiest path/the one that is known.  You see, Frost was right that to take the path less traveled involves intentionality, attention, and doesn’t happen all that frequently because it requires energy in an exhausted world.  Today, you may want to draw a shape of your faith or write down descriptions of faith tracing through the timeline of your life.  Or maybe what role faith played in that moment.  I realize all three words (faith, hope, and love) are not easily captured.  Please be gentle with yourself.  Remember, you are not turning your chart of the art of your life for a grade.  Nor do you have to finish this right now!  There is grace and space as you listen to your life.  If you have questions about this, let me know.  Amen.

Shape of Faith, Collective of Hope, and the Way of Love

 

I invite you to look at the art/chart of your one wild and precious life that you have been working on with God over the last month.  One of the invitations of this process is for you to see your life for the mystery it is.  You are a combination and conglomeration of experiences and encounters, events and emotions.  This makes you, you.  No one else has the same recipe for life, even though every human shares the same 99% DNA.  Hold that mystery in your head, heart, and soul.  We are the same and different.  From the recipe of your life, you tell a story.  A story about needing to do things for yourself, cause no one else will do it for you.  Or a story that the world is a dog-eat-dog place and you are wearing Milk-Bone underwear, so you better protect yourself.  Or a story that if you want peace in the world, you need peace in yourself.  Is there a story you tell yourself about yourself? 

 

As your story unfolds unpredictably and uncontrollably every day, you keep adding ingredients to your life.  You talk to that person or go to that meeting, for example.  And let’s say Fred says something sarcastic.  In the split second between the words leaving and leaping from Fred’s lips and your response…in that nano-second…. your brain will fill in a story.  And because your brain is built for efficiency and wants to take the path of least resistance, the story will be familiar, firing along neuro-pathways that have already been formed and forged in the past.  Your experience with Fred, coupled with your past emotions with Fred, alongside how you have been taught/caught to deal with sarcastic people, in that blink-and-you-miss-it moment, fills in space and fires a reaction or response.

If you happen to like sarcasm or agree with Fred, you join him in laughing.

If you happen to believe that Fred doesn’t know his head from a hole in the ground, you go a different direction.

If you think Fred is the odd-ball and should be ignored, you go to that place.

You have a story you tell yourself about yourself, others, and God.  I am inviting you to become awake, aware, and alert to that story.  One invitation for this summer homework is to wake up to why you do what you do when you do it.

 

The challenge of our faith is to let God re-write our narratives in new ways.   Or as Ian Morgan Cron once said, “You need to give up the old idea that you know what happened.”  Eek!  What do you mean?  “Of course,” my inner defense attorney jumps to her feet and declares, “I know what I am doing!  I am an adult.”  But my shy soul says, “Wait, let’s see where this goes.”

 

We live in a world addicted to certainty and confidence.  We live in a society that preaches assertion and get what you can while the getting is good.  And we bring that bigger story into church with us and expect, demand, that the Gospel of Jesus conflate and conform to our story, or else we will find a new church that doesn’t challenge us as much.

 

Where does the idea that you, I, we, me, none of us really know fully what is happening land in you?  When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that we see in a mirror dimly, I think this might be part of what he is saying.  Does the idea that we have stories operating in our minds and controlling our lives/reactions/decision make sense, or do you resist, even reject such an idea?  Hold this invitation as you look at the art/chart of your one wild and precious life this week.  May you hold your life lightly for the mystery it was, is, and will always be.  Amen. 

Where God Shows Up Prayer

 

God of many names and who shows up in so many ways, thank you for Your presence in my life.  With Jacob, I give thanks that I now see You were there in that moment where I first thought You had taken a trip to Pluto.  With the Psalmist, I now notice that You were there in that pit experience.  Thank you for the people and places because I trust there is nowhere You are not.  Thank you for the good and the bad, for I trust that You are not finished yet.  Thank you for the incompleteness of my life this day.  May You and I continue to collaborate on the story of my life.  Loosen my grip on the keyboard, thinking that I will write down first.  God, find ways to interrupt my life with goodness and grace I need and that You have always overflowed my life with thus far.  In the name of the One who shared Your love everywhere he went, to every person he met, in every moment (the good and bad) where he found himself, Jesus our Christ.  Amen. 

Where God Shows Up Part 4

 

Our Buddhist friends have a wonderful phrase: “When the student is ready, the teacher arrives”.  I’ve had lots of teachers over the years.  Some of these professors shaped my soul, others left me feeling cold.  Some taught in formal classrooms, and others, in places where I didn’t expect to learn a lesson. As you look over your artwork and chart of your life, where are the teachers?  Sometimes, teachers in my life didn’t show up in the best of times.  Sometimes the teachers came at the exact moment when I was overworked, overwhelmed, and overextended.  Sometimes the teachers came not with calm, comforting words, but with coals, like the ones that burnt Isaiah’s lips.  Other times the teacher wasn’t a fellow featherless biped at all.  The teacher was a canyon or cave that taught me something I couldn’t learn from a book.  The teacher was a song that my soul needed.  God, for me, is at work in both the tending to our exploration and our moments of quiet.  God teaches in words, people, silence, confusion, slowly figuring something out, and continued mysteries we will never completely resolve but that keep us curious.  Where, when, and how has God been a teacher in your life?  Note this on your artwork/chart of life.  Then, what does that say about God?  For example, if God shows up in a tree swaying in a breeze teaching you how this part of creation weathers storms of life, maybe God is more than an old, white man on a throne with a long beard.  If God shows up to tell you about love in the form of someone who previously hurt you, maybe God is more than a cuddly, cozy blanket of complacency.  How, when, and where did God show up in sanctuaries and beyond the four walls of a building, reminding you that God is never contained or confined.  May this truth awaken You to the fingerprints of the Divine, God who continues to sink God’s loving presence, shaping you in beautiful ways.  Amen.

Where God Shows Up Part 3

 

Yesterday, you looked at the places and spaces where you have found yourself.  The soil that still rests and resides in your soul.  And I asked you to ponder: where was God, especially in moments when you felt in Exile or Sheol or a Pit?  Where was God amid the difficult experiences you named and noticed last week?  Sometimes God shows up disguised as other people.  Sometimes God shows up in ways we never anticipated.  One of the tensions is that highlights and lowlights live side-by-side without neat and tidy conclusions.  One of the tensions is that we can’t resolve everything like a balance sheet.  In Genesis 1, God/Spirit/Logos/Word surfed over the chaos in creation.  That isn’t just some ancient truth; it is a promise of God in your life every day.  God surfs over the chaos creatively trying to bring forth life.  And yet, I have free will to either listen or get caught up in focusing only on the brokenness.  This week, we are diving deep into where God was and how God was weaving threads of love into our lives.  This is never a one-and-done assignment.  Sometimes the more distance I get from a moment, the clearer I see.  Sometimes what seemed like the worst thing ever in that moment twenty years ago feels now like a blip.  Maybe you’d even forgotten about that moment until you started working on these invitations in the Morning Meditations.  Which you say, “Thanks a lot, Wes, for bringing back that memory!”  And, perhaps you are now remembering the sweetness of a moment in your 20s that also had gotten boxed up and stored in the cobwebbed corners of your life.  Keep looking at the places, people, highlights and lowlights, noticing how and where God was at work in you, through you, and I know for me, sometimes despite me!  May these moments of meditation help you glimpse the mystery of your one wild and precious life.

Where God Shows Up Part 2

 

We all need safe, sacred spaces.  Even before Maslow offered his hierarchy of needs, Scripture shares with us places where God’s comfort and care made all the difference.  From a Garden of Eden given to our ancestors, to wrestling with Jacob beside a river, to even a foreign land when Egypt became a place of security in a time of lack during the life of Joseph.  Scripture is also clear about moments when the places we find ourselves don’t seem safe and secure from all alarms.  We hear about the crying out in Egypt when the Pharaoh didn’t learn his history and oppressed the people.  We hear about Exile when the people of God found the promised land in rubble and ruin.  We hear about the Roman occupation in the time of Jesus.  In fact, so much Scripture is written for and by oppressed people.  The Psalmist describes this as Sheol, or a pit.  Jesus called it Ghanna, or a burning garbage heap.  And, Scripture proclaims, even God is there.  As you look back on the places that have left soil in your soul, where are those Sheol, Gahanna, places?  Or maybe you were living in paradise, but it felt in your life was shattered and scattered because of oppression or grief or pain you couldn’t process?  Look back over the places you’ve lived/named in previous weeks as well as the corresponding lowlights.  Was there a tension?  I know that well, living in a place where people come to vacation, and yet, here in the tourist mecca of Florida, people struggle to make ends meet; we do not care for our unhoused neighbors, and our immigrant friends live in fear.  People are grieving and hurting.  We pass laws discriminating against our LGBTQ+ siblings and those whose skin tone is not white (even though we still share 99% of the same DNA).  Prayerfully ask in those moments where you felt far from Eden: Where was God?  For some, you felt God show up in hugs and love, even in the pit.  For others, you felt alone, confused, and angry that God didn’t swoop in and save you instantly.  Today, just notice the threads and themes that tether and tie your life together.  We don’t always have answers for what God is doing or how God shows up.  The mystery that both fascinates and frustrates is that God is not predictable or plays by the script we want God to write.  Yet, with the Psalmist we can say, “Even if I make my bed in Sheol, You (O God) are there.”  (Psalm 139:8).  Or with Jacob we can profess, “God is in this place – truly.  And I didn’t even know it.”  (Genesis 28:16).  Let us sit with our lives, not as math problems to be solved, but mysteries that are unfolding before us and within us.  Amen.

Where God Shows Up Part 1

 

In Isaiah 6, we hear how God swooped in and showed up in Isaiah’s life in a way that discombobulated and disoriented him.  Isaiah had just gone to church, thinking, “Maybe I will have a bagel for lunch.”  At some point, Isaiah realized God was there.  The truth is that God is always there.  As the mystics say, “There is no place God is not.”  Yet, there are certainly places and among certain people where it is nearly impossible to figure out what God is up to in that moment.  When I look back, with my soul squinting and mind spinning, I suddenly realize the Sacred had been there all along. 

 

When have you felt like God showed up in your life?  To be sure, it might not have been as splashy and spectacular as Isaiah 6.  God’s robe may not have cuddled you.  God’s angels probably did not serenade you.  But your shy soul, like Isaiah, shouted out, “Here I am, God!  Pick me!  Pick me!!”  Like you were back on the baseball, kickball, softball field of your youth, hoping not to be the last one standing waiting. 

 

How has God shown up in your life?  Maybe through music, art, reading, conversations, hugs, friendship, smiles, listening ears, trees swaying in the breeze, or wading in the water.  Maybe through laughter or quiet, maybe in your home or thousands of miles away from your bed at a place you always wanted to visit.  As you look over your timeline of places you’ve been, people you’ve met, highlights and lowlights, where has God been? 

 

I confess that I have a hard time finding God in the difficult parts of life.  When my soul is sagging or when grief has paid an unwelcome visit.  Where is God among people whose presence is like fingernails on a chalkboard of my soul?  Sure, theologically and theoretically, I say that everyone is created in God’s image, but some people offer abundant evidence to the contrary.  Today, scan over the artwork/chart of your life from the last few weeks.  Think back to your childhood home: was there a cozy corner where you felt safe, wrapped in the Sacred?  Or in College, was there a church you wandered into or went to because of friends, and suddenly God was there?  Look back over the last ten years in the photo album of life: where have you encountered God?  May you discover how God’s light and love have led you thus far and continue to be part of your life to this day.

Prayer

 

Crafting, creating, conducting, composing, and copy-editing, God, thank you for the ways You are still writing a melody, harmony, and holy story in my life.  Thank you for the mystery of places where I have been and the people I’ve met/encountered.  Thank you for the stars that shine brightly within me through moments that linger and leave the warmth of light in my heart.  Thank you, even for moments when the light wasn’t as bright, and I still shed tears thinking of that experience.  There are highlights, lowlights, and so-so lights that have been collected as I moved through each day.  Help me stay open to You as we near the halfway point of this year.  Help me stay grounded in Your soil and guided by Your stars.  Awaken me and keep me always aware that You have been, are, and promise to always be near.  In the name of the One who embodied Your love, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.  

Stardust of Experiences and Encounters Part 4

 

Did you know that there are over 9000 stars in the sky that you could see with your eye, without a telescope?  Did you know that you can only see about 2000 stars on any given night, but you need to be far away from any artificial light source, and it needs to be a moonless night?  Did you know that stars are born in batches and are categorized by the light they radiate?  Who knew the Morning Meditation would be a science lesson?  The point is you can’t see every star – true scientifically and in the art project of your life.  Some stars in your life shine brighter and leave you soaked/saturated in ways that other star moments did not.  Last Sunday, we looked at Moses’ story of encountering the burning bush.

I wonder if he walked past that burning bush the previous day and didn’t see it.  Maybe he was chasing Gus the Sheep, who had wandered away again!  Maybe he was scrolling on his phone, playing Wordle, or gazing at the last star disappearing as the sun claimed the sky.  Maybe God tried to get Moses’ attention by making bats form words in the sky, but Moses was looking at the sand.  Maybe God tried to have the wildebeests sing a song, but Moses just said, “That’s odd.”  We don’t know.  I do know that not every star gets wished upon, noticed, or named.  You and I could fill our papers with galaxies of stars ~ reviewing our calendars or diaries, combing our lives, and still miss moments.  You might just now remember a house/place you lived in for a short six months or that friend whose love made a difference, but you lost touch decades ago ~ and out of sight can be out of mind.  Or just now you thought, “How could I forget that experience or event?”  Listening to your life, the unfinished sacred symphony, isn’t a one-and-done homework assignment; it is the invitation of a lifetime.  Breathe, permit yourself to complete what you can now, knowing that you can return to this again and again.  May you continue to pay attention to the stars over your head that illuminate the stardust in the solar system of your soul.  Amen.