Digging Deeper into the Difficulty of Love

 

Many scholars now suggest that the world is VUCA. 

Wait, you think, wasn’t he a French philosopher from the 1700s??

That was Voltaire who was often critical of the church and advocated freedom of speech as well as freedom of religion.  But that is really a different post for another time.

Oh, you think, “You must be talking about Dr. Spock from Star Trek.  I always loved that when he would do the salute and say, ‘Live long and prosper.’”

He was a Vulcan.  But I concur that the saying is pretty awesome.

VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. 

Oh, you think.  Let’s go back to talking about Star Trek.

Actually, VUCA is important for where we have been and where we are going.  In January, we dove into and dwelled in the words of Jesus around the Greatest Commandment. 

³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. Mark 12:30-31

Rewind and remember how we have discussed ways to love yourself.  How difficult it is to love others because people are like onions (thank you, Shrek) and yet we are called into build the Beloved Community.  Because God loves us, feeds, and fuels our life with unconditional love, so that we can share/shine God’s love on others. 

Okay, but why is it so difficult?  One response is because of VUCA.  We know this now more than ever.  As another COVID variant surges and we wonder how many more.  As items unexpectedly and unexplainably disappear from store shelves and we never know what we will find when we go shopping.  As we grieve those who have died and our own feelings of uncertainty around what is “normal” anymore?  Each day offers new ways to pivot, challenges, and changes that make us feel like we are standing on shifting sand.  The world can feel VUCA politically and in our families.  The world can feel VUCA in our churches and neighborhoods – just attend an HOA meeting sometime! 

Perhaps your own life has had VUCA moments.  Feelings of anger at a family member; unsure if you should travel or not; trying to fix one problem while another spins out of control, and never feeling like things are quite settled or that you have landed on the best solution to put the problem behind you. 

I encourage you today to ponder prayerfully how this acronym speaks and shows up in your life.  My guess is no one reading this is thinking, “You know, Wes, I really am living the dream right now.  Thriving in life and leadership.  Everything is coming up roses here.”  My hunch is that you have some responses and reactions, examples, and experiences of VUCA (maybe not every letter, but I am willing to guess over half of the words relate to your life right now!).  Please feel free to share in the comments OR come talk to me OR both.  As we prayerfully ponder, lean into the first verse of one of my favorite hymns, “Won’t You Let Me be Your Servant,”

We are pilgrims on a journey,
we are trav’lers on the road;
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load.

May these words stir our hearts and sit in our souls this day.  Amen. 

Friday Prayer

 

A prayer for this last Friday of January 2022

Loving-flowing, life-giving, and life-changing God; in You we find our passion and purpose.  In You we find our curiosity and creativity.  In You we find possibility and promise and potential that we can never exhaust or fully explore in our lifetime.  Continue to let Your love guide and ground our lives.  Grant us wisdom to let Your love into our hearts, roam around our lives, and even rearrange our minds.  Let Your love be the fuel that feeds our actions and words.  Continue to call and challenge us to be love in this world.  To see moments when we can let loose Your love with another.  Continue to invite us to be extravagant with love.  We pray that just because we turn the calendar to February, we won’t leave behind the truths of January 2022.  The seeds that have been sown in the soil of our souls still need time and space to grow, take root, and before we can begin to harvest right now.  Help us tend the seeds of love for You, for others, and especially for ourselves.  Help us receive Your love, notice how others offer affirmation and affection, and how holy love permeates and persists within the well of our soul.  Take our lives and let them be; part of the Beloved Community; take this moment and this day; so that Your truth might have the final say.  All this we pray in the name of the One who embraced and embodied love, showing us the way to be love, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.    

Thursday Pause

 

This year, on Thursdays, I want you to push pause, breathe, and be aware of what is stirring within you.  It is tempting for me to just keep writing and piling on more information.  Rather than more words, today there is space. 

 

In particular, I think it is good to write down what thoughts have occurred to you over the last three weeks.  What new insights or ideas about loving God, self, or others are forming within you?  What questions are still searching and stirring and seeking some response?  Remember the root of the word questions is quest.  Our inquiries give voice to our curiosity of where we want to explore and what we want to explore.  Name, claim, and pray your ideas and questions.  Name, claim, and pray what is beginning to form and where/how you might dig deeper.  You could Google the insight to see who else has some thoughts or type in your question to see want comes up.  You can give me a call and stop by so we can chat.  You can find a book, blog post, pod cast, or just hold your insight and question leaning into it and listening to it.  Most important, pay attention and be aware of what is stirring within you today.  We have held these ancient words of Jesus about love for almost three weeks, I pray these words are working and wiggling and whirling within you in holy, mysterious ways.  May the unconditional and unceasing love of God be found in your life this day, expressed in your words this hour, and find outlets to escape into this world in beautiful, uniquely created ways by you, Beloved of God.  Amen.

Reflection Wednesday

 

We are at the midpoint of another week, the last full week in January.  How is loving God, others, and yourself going?  Are you finding ways to explore, experience, embrace and embody this invitation?

I have tried this month to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.  I can’t tell you exactly how to love God, others, and yourself because the ways I prayerfully seek to do this are appropriate for my uniquely created in God’s image self.  The ways I connect with the Creator (by talking walks and breath prayer) for you might leave you feeling empty or exhausted.  The ways I love my family and our church might feel to you like wearing a pair of shoes that are too big or small.  The ways I care for myself are ways that are meaningful and make a difference for me.

And all the above is constantly evolving.  How I love God, self, and others on January 26, 2022 is different than January 26, 2021 or January 1999 or January 1980 (which I think back then involved a lot of playing with Matchbox cars).  Jesus’ invitation into love is not a set and forget; we cannot go on autopilot; these relationships are dynamic because all relationships are fluid and in flux.  To be sure, some things stay the same, but there are subtle ways relationships expand in new directions.

Take a moment today to think back on moments you have loved self, others, God in the past.  Look around today at how those invitations might be pointing to new places.  Continue to name, claim, and pray your way into this passage that Jesus said was at the center and core of our faith.  And may God’s presence awaken your sacred imagination and give your courage to continually find ways to let these words ground/guide your life.  Amen.

Endless Loop of Love

 

I recently read that as humans we have approximately nine opportunities every day to show empathy.  I love that someone counted!!  The point is not whether the number is nine or more like ninety-nine.  The point is there are moments every day you can show compassion and care to yourself and others.  We are empowered to do this because we first receive compassion and care from God.  I am convinced that some of the most miserable people in this world are worshiping at the altar of a judgmental God; an envious God; an angry God.  What is filling the jars of our life is how we live our life.  If we fill the jar of life with negative news and anger, we probably won’t be whistling happy tunes as we waltz down the street.  I know because I can be a bit of a worrier and anxious person.  Okay, honestly, if there was an Olympic sport for worrying and pessimism, I’d have a shot at the gold!  I am often a glass half-full and cautious person.  If I am not careful, what fills my jug and jar of life will be a whole lot of nervousness.

 

This brings me back to the nine opportunities for empathy, care, concern, and showing God’s love.  The contradiction of worry and anxiety for me is that I experience daily God’s love.  I feel it in my wife’s hugs, laughter with my kids, and the heartwarming comments from you.  I preach about God’s love because I see it, hear it, encounter it, taste it in cookies and lunches share throughout my day.  And yet, my soul can be a cul-de-sac.  God’s love enters in and never exits to another person or me.  Sometimes my soul can be a dead end, but our souls were made to be in relationship.  We receive love and we give love.  We are nourished by love so we can nurture another with love.  Unlike oil or coal or other finite resources, love is infinite because it comes from the Infinite.  Or, if you would prefer that scientifically stated, there is exactly the same number of atoms in the observable world as there has always been.  Wait, you might want to re-read that sentence, because it makes my mind hurt.  There is the same number of atoms as when the dinosaur roamed, my great grandparent’s rode in horse and buggy, and when I was born.  Same.  Even as there has been massive changes, it is the same number of atoms that make up the new material.  The atoms/energy, or what I would call, “love”, is constant.  We create that love in new ways, but the more we share, the more the love can circulate.  However, just like when the Israelites gathered just enough manna for the day, I think when you try to hoard love it goes rotten and gets ruined. 

 

Nine opportunities you have today…I encourage you to keep track and see.  Perhaps you might even find ninety-nine ways to love self, others, and God this week.  Amen.

Winding Down Reflections on Mark 12

 

Two weeks ago, I invited you to hold this passage from Mark 12:28-31 close to your heart:

 

²⁸ One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

 

We dove headfirst and dwelled in this passage by pointing out that there are three invitations: love God, others, and self. 

 

Two weeks ago, I invited you to make a chart with seven rows for each day of the week and three columns for how you might live each of those invitations.  How you were going to love God on Tuesday (perhaps by walking outside paying attention to the sights, smells, and sounds); love others perhaps at that meeting or Bible study; and love yourself on Friday (which for me is the day I enjoy a bowl of ice cream as a celebration for the end of a week!). 

 

Last week, we learned from and listened to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. peach and teach about the Beloved Community as one way to expand and explore how to love God, self, and others.  We named and claimed that loving others is hard, holy work.  Other people can be like onions with layers, thank you Shrek.  We learned that others do things and say things ~ we think we understand ~ but honesty we don’t always know why we do what we do…so how in the world can we proclaim that we know exactly why your neighbor did what your neighbor did?  We are a mystery to ourselves and others. 

 

So, how do we really love others?  How do we really love ourselves?  How do we love God?  The more we spend time with this simple, seemingly straight-forward, down-to-earth, easy to understand (we thought) verse from Scripture, the more complicated and complex it is.  Which is why the chart can be helpful tool every week.  We need to be aware and awake to ways we can embrace and embody these words.  We need to be intentional in how we love others/ourselves/God ~ writing our intentions down.  Otherwise, we will tell ourselves, “Oh I am totally loving God,” as we post something on social media that blames and shames others while portraying ourselves as awesome.  Otherwise, we will tell ourselves, “I am totally loving others,” as we gossip about that person who did that thing. 

 

As Carrie Newcomer says, “Love easy.  People are hard.”  Yup.  I invite you to consider the chart again as a prayer practice and posture.  One caution, be careful that this isn’t about control.  Sometimes, I think, I will love others at that afternoon meeting Tuesday and can then miss the opportunity to show compassion and care when I am interacting with someone Tuesday morning.  We name the specific, so that we can be open to the unexpected.  The chart is not the only time, but it one time you will intentionally try to embrace and embody what Jesus said was the greatest way to life is through the threshold and doorway of loving. 

 

Prayer: God who loves order in chaos, help me also be open to the unexpected ways You show up unannounced in my life outside of my neat and tidy chart.  Open my heart, O God, to let Your love You fill me with flow forth.  Amen.

Morning Meditation ~ Prayer

 

Guided prayer for today:

 

Holy One whose wisdom found a home in the heart of Jesus.  I continue to prayerfully and intentionally and playfully seek ways to embody the invitation to love You, O God, to love myself, and to love others.

I pray for the moments this past week when I let Your love guide me ~ reminding me who and whose I am.

I pray for those moments the critic in my mind took over and pointed out all my stumbles and bumbles.

I pray for those times I felt the surge of your Spirit sharing Your love with another.  I name the people who are warming my heart aloud right now.

I pray for those times I judged and justified my superiority over another one of Your beloved children.  I name the people I struggle to love.  I name neighbors, family, friends, fellow church members, leaders, and people to whom I often find it easy to dismiss the challenging call to love my enemies.

I pray for the world.

I pray for our relationship, O God.  I pray for Your movement to be felt and trusted in my life.

I name all that is within me.

I pray for all that is before me today.

I pray for the unknowingness of this time in life.

I pray for Your beauty, wisdom, and love to go before, beside, behind, and within me every hour now and in the year to come.  Amen.  And Amen. 

Pause

 

Today, I invite you to pause, to breathe, to be.  Remember, on Thursdays, I want you to push pause and be aware of what is stirring within you.  It is tempting for me to just keep writing and piling on more information.  Rather than more words, today there is space. 

 

You can go back and re-read a previous day.

You can continue to work on your chart from last week.  Is there a moment this week when you showed love to your neighbor?  Is there a time you struggled with that?  How are you showing and sharing love with yourself?

You can review the speeches and wisdom from Dr. King or watch Shrek.

You can listen to music that makes your soul feel alive.

 

Today, the invitation is for you to do you.  Loving yourself is a relationship.  And every relationship takes time, attention, and intention to tend and grow and nurture.  Our love for others is a reflection of our love for ourselves.  So, before I type more, I am going to pause and pray that God awaken your imagination for what is needing in this moment for you to love yourself fully, unconditionally, and unceasingly ~ just as God loves you.

 

May it be so.  Amen.

Loving Others ~ Shrek was Right...

 

Shrek was right.

Some reading this just thought, “What?”

Others just thought, “Who?!?”

Still others stopped reading all together.

Wait….come back!! 

Shrek is a cartoon character from a 2001.  He is an ogre who prefers to live alone, but soon has all these fairy tale creatures who have been banished from their homes are now taking up residence in his swamp.  Shrek embarks on an adventure to restore his life and privacy by getting the fairy tale creatures their homes back.  Along the way he meets a donkey.  One of my favorite exchanges is between Shrek and the donkey.  The donkey is asking Shrek why he isn’t nicer.  Here is how the conversation unfolds:

Shrek : For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think.

Donkey : Example?

Shrek : Example... uh... ogres are like onions!

Donkey : They stink?

Shrek : Yes... No!

Donkey : Oh, they make you cry?

Shrek : No!

Donkey : Oh, you leave 'em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs...

Shrek : NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers... You get it? We both have layers.

Donkey : Oh, you both have LAYERS.  You know, not everybody like onions, Shrek. CAKE! Everybody loves cake! Cakes have layers!

 

Perhaps it is funnier if you watch it.  You can click above to watch it.

 

My point…and I do have a point…is that Shrek is right.  People are like onions.  Yes, they will make you cry…and we all have layers.  The person you are trying to love, the other, has layers too.  Why the other person does what s/he does is not always clear to you or even to that other person.  I know this, because I don’t always know why I do what I do.  Or to quote the Apostle Paul (after all this is a faith meditation – not a movie review), “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19).  In the translation according to Wes, “Why, O God, am I such a bonehead sometimes?” 

 

Because we have layers.  Because to peel back those layers is difficult and demanding.  Because we all want change ~ we just want others to go first.  The layers of your life and those of others are made up of experiences and encounters.  The layers of your life come from the moment you took your first breath.  The layers are not always evident or easily understood.  There are moments something someone said to me in my first church still come into my mind years later.  There are moments that I am still trying to prove something to someone who I met years ago and will never see again.  There are lessons I learned along the way in life that are no longer true, but I can’t seem to let go.

 

If this is true for me, what about my neighbor?  What about the person who I encounter today?  What about that family member?  Fellow church member?  What about the one who just yelled at me and honked their horn?  What about that one who will give me unsolicited feedback?  Those who want to armchair quarterback your life?

 

There are so many layers to our lives.  To try to love ourselves ~ with all our mixture of mystery and messiness ~ is enough.  To add, loving our neighbors? 

 

By the way, spoiler alert, in the end Shrek decides it is better to be in community, even if some of the fairy tale characters annoy him, then to be all alone.  I agree.

Loving Others ~ Beloved Community

 

Rev. Dr. King would often speak and write about the importance of the “Beloved Community”.  This ties to our January theme of loving ourselves, others, and God.  To be in the Beloved Community would mean that we would be with others, who may or may not be like us.  The very name, “Beloved” is to move from tolerance of others who are not like us to prayerfully working on cultivating and curating the “belovedness” of each person in the community. 

It is easy to let loose our inner critical curmudgeon and wonder if this is possible or practical??  Can we really love that person who has that political sign in his/her yard?

Can we really love that person who just posted that link on social?

Can we really love that person whose anger is lashing out everyone and maybe us?

Can we be in community when diversity divides us?

Then, I remember Dr. King preached on the Beloved Community this when fire hoses were turned on people peacefully protesting.  Dr. King said this amid racist words being spoken every day.  Dr. King said when fear was rampant.  Perhaps the more things change the more they stay the same.

In 1957, Dr. King would say,

“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”

Re-read that.  It is still profound, powerful, and true.

Dr. King would also write,

“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. The type of love that I stress here is not eros, a sort of esthetic or romantic love; not philia, a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends; but it is agape which is understanding goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.”

For me, Dr. King’s words above are preaching and proclaiming the truth that we are to love God with our full self, love our neighbor, and love ourselves.  I pray you will continue to let the wisdom of Dr. King roam around your heart and whole life this week.

Loving Others

 

On this Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, there are so many words of his that challenge and convict me – in a good way – in the best way – in the faithful, life-changing way.  In particular, I am drawn to his words in Letter from the Birmingham Jail where he writes:

 

“The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

 

There are so many powerful and prophetic quotes in this letter.  Yet, today, I realize how quickly we are a thermometer rather than a thermostat.  We are guided and governed by how many likes we get on Twitter or Facebook or what someone says in reaction to us.  We let applause and approval govern what we do rather than our faithfulness to Jesus.  This deep, abiding faith in Jesus doesn’t always mean life is smooth sailing.  Remember, Dr. King is in jail when he wrote the above words.  We are weathering a pandemic that continues to surge; political bickering that won’t resolve; fear and lashing out at each other; and pain unprocessed that fuels us rather than God’s love.  The thermometer of the world is boiling, and we can feel heat rising in ways that leave us worn out and weary.  The thermometer of the world continues to issue demands and decrees telling us what to do and be.  The thermometer of the world where we can feel judged by others, rather than beheld by our beloved-ness as God’s child.  The thermometer of the world where things move so fast our heads have no time to process and the frantic pace of painting the moving train of life causes exhaustion in our bodies, our souls, our lives. 

 

Many of you know the beautiful story that when Dr. King was worn out and weary, he would phone Mahalia Jackson and have her sing “Precious Lord,” to him over the thin fiber optic lines. 

 

To be a thermostat proclaims that I am fed and fueled by a deeper truth than what is trending on social.  To be a thermostat says my worth won’t be defined by another.  To be a thermostat says God is the One who I am called to be faithful to in what I say, do, and how I inhabit this world. 

 

Today, you might need to listen to a YouTube video of Ms. Jackson sing/preach those words to you.  You may wish to go and read the whole letter from a Birmingham Jail.  As you do, remember, Dr. King was confined and contained in a cell.  He did not have his theological library close at hand.  The quotes and references give insight to his brilliant mind and faithful soul.  You can click here to read the letter. 

 

I pray today you will do more than remember Dr. King.  Today, celebrate the deep faith of a man who sought to share God’s presence everywhere he went.  Today, let Dr. King’s words inform and influence your life for the coming year.  Today, re-commit to the on-going work of Racial Justice.  This is what our church is seeking to do with our Racial Justice Covenant being prayerfully considered at Annual Meeting this year.  I hope you have read that Covenant and felt your heart moved ~ I know my heart is inspired to work toward a world – a beloved community – we might co-create with God here in Sarasota.  I pray for God’s blessings upon you on this important day.

Loving Self

 

As we wrap up and wind down this week of diving into and dwelling with the words of Jesus to love God, love others, and love yourself, what is stirring within you?  Can you name a new insight or “aha!” moment?  I wonder what connections you made from day to day or what new directions you are starting to explore?  What are some concrete ways you can love yourself? 

 

My heartfelt prayer is that you don’t stop just because we reached Friday!  My heartfelt prayer is that you continue to find ways to both express and encounter love that sustains you and reminds you who and whose you are.  You are God’s beloved, continually formed and fashioned into the image of God.  You are more than your to-do list or accomplishments or balance in your bank account or awards that you have to dust on your shelf.  You are enough.  May this truth and Christ’s clear call to love yourself continue to prayerfully percolate in your soul for countless days to come. 

 

With great love to you all!

Loving Self

 

This year, on Thursdays, I want you to push pause, breathe, and be aware of what is stirring within you.  It is tempting for me to just keep writing and piling on more information.  Rather than more words, today there is space. 

 

You can go back and re-read a previous day.

You can continue to work on your chart (or not if that isn’t helpful).

You can review the Derek Walcott poem or share in the comments another poem.

You can listen to music that makes your soul feel alive.

 

Today, the invitation is for you to do you.  Loving yourself is a relationship.  And every relationship takes time, attention, and intention to tend and grow and nurture.  So, before I type more, I am going to pause and pray that God awaken your imagination for what is needing in this moment for you to love yourself fully, unconditionally, and unceasingly ~ just as God loves you.

 

May it be so.  Amen.

Loving Self

 

This week we are exploring how we might love ourselves.  Yesterday, we visited with Jacob who wrestled with God…letting that story open our own internal/external wrestling moments.  Today I invite you to read this beautiful poem,  Love After Love by Derek Walcott.  Remember, the invitation to read poetry slowly.  Re-read the poem three or four times.  Read the poem aloud.  Notice and name which lines warm your heart and which ones cause a furrowed brow to form creating confusion. 

 

Love after Love:

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

 

How can you “feast on your life” today?  How might you celebrate with wine and bread (I love how Walcott uses a communion reference there – communing with ourselves!)?  What love letters to yourself would you write?

 

That is a great invitation, by the way.  Write a love letter to yourself.  Or you could write down five or ten things about yourself that you are most proud of.  Or you could list a few places where you sense that you are fully alive.

 

In my love letter I might write how much I enjoy being a husband to my best friend and father to my children.  How I am grateful for YOU who read these morning meditations and writing.  How I feel alive when walk outside in ways that connect me to the Creator.  I pray your love letter to yourself would let your shy soul out into the sunlight and warmth of God’s love this day.  Amen.

Love God, Neighbor, and Self

 

How did your charting go yesterday?  Did you jot down ways to love God (like taking a walk in creation); love others (when you wave at your neighbors on your walk or slow down to talk and catch up); and love yourself (by resting intentionally and prayerfully).  I encourage you to continue this prayer practice this week. 

 

Rather than take the three invitations to love God, neighbor, and self in order, we will go in reverse, starting with self-love today.  How can you show yourself compassion and care?  Perhaps that is a hard question, especially for anyone who was raised to believe you put yourself last.  Or perhaps you were told to be careful not to get a big head.  Or you are concerned that you might come across as narcissistic.  We wrestle with how to love ourselves sometimes, especially because we can be our own worst critic.  Plus, we have a few people who love to serve as “editors” in our lives.  There are always people who want to offer you an opinion on what you should do, must do, and have to do!  There are people who try to fix or advise or save you.  When sometimes all we want to do is have someone listen.  And many days we wrestle with ourselves.  This reminds me of a beautiful ancient story found in Genesis 32:22-28.  Read now these words slowly, savoring, and letting the story connect to your story:

 

²² That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. ²⁴ So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. ²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

²⁷ The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

²⁸ Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

 

First, I have had my own Jacob-like moments.  Alone at night, at 3 am, wrestling with some fear or frustration…some anger or anxiety.  I often find that anger is tied to the past and anxiety is creating fictional problems for the future.  Anger at what happened earlier that day or that week or at some point in the past.  I reply, repeat what someone said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do or some mistake or miscue I made.  Anger demands a rewind button and wants to play that broken moment on a loop.  Anxiety loves to weave what-if scenarios.  Anxiety says, “If you write that in the morning meditations, people are going to talk.  And not in the good way of trending on social.”  Anxiety says, “Watch out, be careful.  Maybe you better wait.” 

 

I wonder, what are you wrestling with today?  Perhaps personally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually?  I wonder where would you like God to bless you?  I wonder where you are limping in these early days of 2022 (because we all thought this was a new year and a new me ~ only to find the old me is still hanging around). 

 

Let this story search out your story for connections.  May the God who can be found in the wrestling and weariness and worn-out-ness of life bless you as you seek to love yourself, others, and God this week.  Amen.

Loving God, Neighbor, Self

 

On this second full week of 2022, I want to invite you to lean in and listen to one of my favorite passages of Scripture from Mark 12:28-31

 

²⁸ One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

 

Part of what I love about this passage is that the scribe asks for one commandment; the scribe wants to know what is at number one on the greatest of all time Hebrew laws.  Remember, there were over six hundred laws in the Hebrew Scriptures, so knowing number one is a good question.  The scribe asks a simple, straightforward question.  Jesus decides essentially why select only one, when two are better, and three are even better-er.  You did catch that Jesus gives three answers, right?

Love God with your full self.  Love your neighbor.  And, love yourself.

Love God from the top of your head to your pinkie toe.  Love the other as a brother and the person in-front of you as if you were encountering God.  Love your beautiful and sometimes broken self. 

Love the Divine who forms and fashions you.  Love God incarnate in those you interact with today.  Love God found here on earth in your words, actions, and unique self.

In the coming weeks, I want to explore each of these invitations deeply.  For right now, I want to encourage you to make this practical and for this to be the reader participation part of the morning meditation.  I invite you to create a chart.  My right-brain brothers and sisters are saying, “Amen!”  The chart should have seven columns – one for each day of the week.  The chart should have three rows – one for each of the above invitations to love.  Then, I want you to write a specific way you will embrace and embody love of God, other, and self on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this week.

You didn’t realize this year’s morning meditations were going to assign homework!  I understand if you are thinking, I didn’t sign up for the advanced level of morning meditations, Wes.  Remember, I am not asking to check your homework, although I would love to talk to you more about this.  But one of the ways we make the words of Scripture come to life is by letting the words find life in us each day.  How will you love God on Wednesday?  How might you show God’s love at that meeting on Friday?  With whom will you interact on Tuesday where you might carry God’s love?  And how, through the whole week, can you let God’s love take hold of your heart? 

May this invitation speak to your heart and awaken your life as we explore one of the most central passages of Scripture for our lives in these early days of 2022.  Amen.

Happy Day After Epiphany

 

As we wind down and wrap up the first full week of 2022, I wonder, how is your soul?  Honestly, how is your soul doing?  What emotions stir within you?  What gratitude is there beneath stress or strain?  What joy hidden amid the frustration or fear?  How is God’s love still authoring your life even amid the dissonance of living in these days.

I invite you to go back and answer each of those questions.  Remember, that the point is not perfection, the invitation is wholeness.  God’s love, peace, presence, strength, and grace embraces all of me, especially the gaps, making me whole and holy re-created in God’s image.  Then, God invites me to live this way.  

This remind me of a great quote from Dorothee Soelle, "If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.'"

Are you hold, clinging tightly, grasping something right now?  Maybe you are holding onto something that is hurtful or harmful.  Maybe you are holding onto a sense of control or comparison.  Often what we hold, takes hold of us.  Wait…go back and re-read that.  Ask yourself, what are you hold today?  Are you holding hurt or joy or anger or fear or hope or love of some combination of ALL the above?  If I try to cling to control, suddenly control has a hold of me pointing out all the places I am stumbling or making mistakes or someone is doing something I don't want them to do.  If I try to cling to an image of being a “perfect” pastor, soon that will overshadow God’s grace that called me to be a minister.  In fact, often our sense of perfection comes from thinking we have to earn God's love ~ but God's affection and affirmation are unconditional (and unceasing).  If I hold onto relationships or trying to change the world or being all things to all people, those have a toxic side that can poison my life.  

Open your hands, receive the gift of grace that we don’t earn and may not feel like we deserve.  For a gift to be a gift it is always freely offered and joyfully received.  May this prayer posture guide your life this day and for countless days to come.  Amen.