Prayer

 

God, the heavens and earth, the soil and stardust in our soul, are proclaiming the wonders of Your presence.  There is an entire library of wisdom in the palm tree outside our window.  There is a story every blade of grass growing is preaching right now.  God, we tend to dismiss and discount how Creation is Your first testimony.  We tend to turn toward human wisdom as so much better.  But really, God?  We confess that human wisdom is what got us here, in this world we are not sure how to love and people don’t understand and systems that are out of control but we don’t know how to fix.  Help us, God.  Slow us down, God.  Help us go outside and have a conversation with a tree exchanging our toxic carbon dioxide for the oxygen of Your breath.  Help us lean in and listen to the purple flower.  Help us hear Your love in the bird song.  Help us find ways to be in harmony with what is all around us, even the valley of dry bones and smelly fish stomachs where we sometimes find ourselves.  Let Creation have a voice that we honor and hold and can heal us for the sake of the World You created and still so love.  In the name of the One who surfed over the chaos with you and preached in a field of lilies, Jesus the Christ.  Amen. 

Dried Up Bones

 

Stars.

Campfire of a burning bush and the smell of s’more.

The belly of a fish with undigested bits floating in the swallowed sea water.

 

Creation is a main character throughout scripture.  How has creation played an important role this week for you?  Where did you walk by a field of purple and notice God’s creativity (thank you poet and prophet Alice Walker for that beautiful insight).  Where did you sense the warmth of God’s love like the rays of the sun?  Where have you felt saturated by God’s power like a soaking rainstorm?  Where do you feel afraid of the lions of other’s words where they hide thousands of knives inside with a smile on their face?

 

All this leads us to Ezekiel standing in a valley of dry bones.  Here Creation isn’t wondrous or beautiful.  Ezekiel didn’t take out his iPhone and post a picture of himself there.  Ezekiel didn’t start singing, “For the beauty of the earth, for the splendor of the skies.”  Ezekiel was looking for the first Uber ride to come by and get out of there. 

 

Creation reflects to us our destruction and devastation.  When we over farm a land, the soil cries out in protest.  When we try to grow crops in climates that don’t cooperate, draining nearby water sources, Creation groans.  When we demand more and more, kicking the can down the road on climate change, we find ourselves in the valley of dry bones. 

Perhaps your bones feel weary and worn down.  Perhaps you wonder, like Ezekiel, what difference you can make.  I wonder if Ezekiel stood there, starting at his sermon to the bones feeling foolish.  I wonder if he tried to preach about the power of life, and it was all just a little half-hearted.  As someone who speaks in front of people each week, I can tell you that energy is a two-way street.  There are days when I have stood in Ezekiel’s sandals wondering if what I am saying is making any difference.  And there have been moments when my bones, soul, life have dried up.  There are seasons when the weather pattern in my soul is going through a drought.

 

Where are there dry bones within you?  Spiritually?  Emotionally?  Physically?  Relationally?  You are not an isolated individual on an island population of one.  You are a conglomeration and collection of countless different people and places.  There is an entire library within you of other voices.  You are a Bible worth of books.  Some of those stories are hope filled like Abraham beneath the stars.  Some of the stories are life-changing, like Moses before a burning bush.  Some of the stories are icky and sticky and stinketh like Jonah.  Some of your stories tell of bones, trying to do something you are not sure will make a difference.

 

May God, whose breath is within you right now, inspire and infuse your words and life and actions this day.  And my God’s love, hope, peace, and presence guide you.  Amen.

Whale of a Tale

 

This week we have gazed at starry nights with Abraham and felt the warmth of campfires with Moses that can change our life.  Today we find ourselves in the belly of the whale (or really a big fish) with Jonah.  Creation here has taken center stage.  I love how God swallows Jonah and then spits him out in the sand through this fish.  I love the image of Jonah in that stomach with the undigested bits of kelp and minnows and seaweed ~ so sorry if you are reading this while eating breakfast and just lost your appetite.  I picture Jonah there and suddenly my life doesn’t seem all that bad after all.  This story reminds me that not all habitats are hospitable, not all gardens are “Eden”. 

 

Wait, what environments right now seem inhabitable to you?  Could be at work, committees, volunteers, your neighborhood, family reunions coming up, or watching the waters for an approaching hurricane.  Where is Creation not just filling you with awe but with some dread, this could be outside or in the comfort of air-conditioned setting where you find yourself.

 

Creation is not just beautiful, there is danger in Creation.  Our ancestors knew this.  One of the reasons we have a fight, flight, freeze, and flock part of our brain was our ancestors needed to remember the smells, sounds, sights, and locations of the tigers who threatened them.  One of our evolutionary adaptations was to develop a sense about where danger lurked and lived.  The ability to feel the change in air pressure or read the clouds.  Today, it is not necessarily lions or tigers or bears ~ oh my ~ that causes our fear, too often today we fear the other.  Which is exactly what Jonah was fleeing ~ the other.  Jonah was fleeing from the Ninevites, those people who voted that way and believed that idea and dared to breathe the same air as he did.  How in the world could God ever care for people like that? 

 

Jonah shows us what happens when our cynicism and clinging to our own correctness leads to scales in our eyes.  Jonah preaches and teaches loving our enemies before Christ said those words.  Jonah confronts us with the hard truth of loving people we don’t like.  This is not easy, but it is a truth every person reading this knows deep in your heart.  We have people we want to love but seem to have the nuclear code to cause our hearts to race and anger to flood our face.  Perhaps I would rather be fish food than love that person today.

 

I invite you to consider, who are you running away from today?  Might be a co-worker, family member, friend who just posted that conspiracy theory on social.  Is there a place where you’d rather spend three days in the belly of a fish than three hours with that person?  What does it mean to you that God calls us to love when we’d rather hate?  Hold these questions with an openness that stirs our spirit to what God is up to in our lives these days.  Amen.

Creation as a Central Character

 

This week we are exploring and experimenting with the lessons Creation is teaching and telling us.  We are examining how Creation is not a supporting character in Scripture, but key and central today in our lives.  Creation is God’s first testament before any words were written down.  Creation was God’s original way to proclaim God’s presence long before the Bible was ever written or told.  Yesterday, we stood beneath the starry sky with Abraham, naming and claiming our prayerful hopes and dreams and desires.

Today, we stand with Moses before a burning bush.  I love this story for so many reasons.  First, I love campfires with the smell of smoke and s’more and the sacredness of warmth.  Second, I love that God decides the way to get Moses’ attention to be a fire that never needs another log to keep burning.  Third, I love that once God has Moses’ attention, God upends Moses’ life by telling him to go back to where he came from.  “Go back to Egypt” ~ you know that place you fled and left skid marks in the sand because Moses had killed an Egyptian guard.  And Moses said, “Come again, God?!?”  Surely God doesn’t call us back to where we have been, does God?  Surely God knows we are all about progress and moving forward, not trying to retrieve the past.  God seems to know what William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead.  It’s not even the past.”  You carry with you experiences and encounters and events that have shaped you…or sometimes misshaped you.  I don’t know if we can ever “get over” the past, especially when it is painful.  Perhaps we find a way to make some peace, find some meaning, or (most of the time) package that hurt away in a cardboard box shoved to the corner of our soul.  Moses couldn’t run away from what was.  Creation witnesses to what was.  Think of the rings of the trees telling the story of good times of abundance and bad times of drought.  Think of plants growing sideways toward light.  There are rarely straight lines and consistent colors in Creation.  Creation continually adapts to and adopts what is.

Finally, I love how when Moses asks for God’s name, God says, “I AM.”  Present tense.  God is right now.  God is right here.  You don’t need to go out there on some great or grand adventure to part unknown.  As a matter of fact, trying to find God in our ordinary life is one of the invitations to the Spiritual life.  I pray today you might discover a burning bush ~ something of God ~ as you go about your day.  I pray you might sense God’s claiming your whole life ~ the past, present, and future.  God’s love to you.  

Creation as Central Character

 

Throughout the month of August, we are turning toward scripture passages where God’s creation is an important character.  Too often when we read the Bible, the setting and scene, the place where the narrative happens becomes a forgettable backdrop.  We miss that Jesus taught and spent most of his time out on the road (insert Willie Nelson crooning, “On the Road Again” here).  We miss that Jesus didn’t need to bring a lily into the sanctuary when he showed this as a sermon illustration, because he was standing right next to one.  The disciples could see the lily, smell the lily, touch the lily.  Creation was not just a minor bit character, but rather a central player in Scripture.  Yesterday, we stood with Abraham beneath the stary night of the sky hearing God’s promise.  We noted that God’s promise doesn’t immediately, instantly happen, it will be years before Sarah is pregnant with the possibility of God.  To be sure, God’s time frustrates us.  Has God not gotten the memo that we have a timetable here to do justice?!?  Has God not gotten our invite on our Direct Message about the steps in the process that God is responsible for?  Why isn’t God checking the texts we sent?  Creation preaches and teaches a different timetable that doesn’t live under the demands and decrees of clocks and constantly checking our iPhone.  Your flowers don’t care if you need them to bloom at a certain point for your pool party this summer.  The rain doesn’t seem to distinguish who deserves to be saturated.  Creation reminds us that we are not in control and in charge.  We do what we can, where we can, and release the rest.  It is not easy, because there is always, always, always some voice (internally or externally) demanding that what we have done is not enough.  You need to do more!  Abraham stood barefoot with his toes sinking into the sand beneath that stary sky.  His soul realized that he had both soil and stardust within him.  He was a great recycling, regenerating project.  In fact, you have some Abraham and Sarah dust in you, somewhere, because energy/matter/Creation itself is constantly being renewed and resurrected.  Today, I invite you to go outside and look at the stars.  What promise do you long for? 

 

Maybe for peace where there is too much violence ~ both physically but also verbally and emotionally.

Maybe for healing in your own body or someone you love.

Maybe relief and release from the pain you feel from a heart shattered worse than Humpty Dumpty.

Maybe for hope that persists, even when others say you are foolish.

 

May the One whose love lights the night sky with thousands of stars hear your heart and remind you that You are beloved, no matter what happens today.

Prayer

 

God help us draw the circle wide for You are a circle whose center is everywhere, and Your circumference embraces all people and the whole planet.  God thank you for words we can borrow and the patchwork quilt of language that we weave together with every sentence we speak.  May we share the prayer of laughter and tears.  May this liminal space we cross from hour to hour and day to day be a holy space where You hover.  Help us find fences, both ones that are helpful and ones that are not.  Grant us wisdom to know when we need to mend or maintain and when we need to break through these boundaries.  God, thank You for ways You continue to move in our midst every day.  Keep us awake and aware to You this day.  May Your love, joy, peace, and grace ground us each day.  Amen. 

Do Fences Make for Good Neighbors?

 

Today, there is one final quote from Luis Alberto Urrea.  He says, “Anywhere you want to go, there are these weird fences. And I can look in any audience and see fences. And so, yeah, I think we miss each other. And yeah, I’ve tried to train myself to be able to listen and not just react automatically. I think that’s — and that goes back, maybe, to my theological mania, too: that I just think that there’s a great loneliness.”

 

Where do you encounter fences in your life?  It could be in relationships with others or yourself.  The truth is that not all fences are external, some within us.  There can be fences around our hearts or souls.  There can be blockades and barriers we put up to shelter and shield us from the hurt of the world.  Sometimes each moment of heartbreak and soul ache puts up another section of the wall in our internal life guard us.  We build fences constantly within us and around us. 

 

Today, I invite you to notice fences.  Make a game of it.  Every time you notice a fence you enjoy a M & M.  Or see if you can come up a fence with every letter of the alphabet – again this can be internal or external.  Or what if you make a competition with a friend about who can find the most barriers.  I hope you will continue to explore and experience fences in life.  May you encounter God who continues to break down barriers; Christ who builds bridges between people; and the Spirit who moves in our midst.  May you know peace, joy, hope, grace, and love.  Amen.