Psalm 121

I will lift my eyes to the hills

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the Lord!

Now I realize I live in a part of the country most people would describe as flat.  Sure, as Wisconsinites we get a bit defensive about that...start talking about topography and rolling hills near New Glarius and the joy that is looking out over a harvested corn field to see for miles and miles and that at least we are not as flat as Nebraska!

The psalmist talks about looking to the hills for help, which for most of us we take to mean that this psalm is about the beauty of God's creation and how God's fingerprints are all over the world.

But something a bit more subversive is going on here. 

You see Psalm 121 was often sung by pilgrims as they were traveling.  Sometimes in places they had never been to before...in a foreign land...in unfamiliar territory.  Now stop and think...if you don't know where you are going and don't have your smartphone/gps/or even a map with you, a hill may not exactly be the most welcome sight.

The reality is that a hill...for all it's beauty...is also an excellent hiding place.  You don't know what is on the other side.  You can't see.  And sometimes hills were places where thieves hid out or animals perched.

Sometimes a hill can be beautiful....sometimes a hill can be dangerous.

This past Sunday I encouraged people to lean into life...with all its blessedness and brokenness.  I am finding out this week, that was easier said than lived.

Can I look around at the places in my life that I am just unsure about, don't know what to do about, or am even scared about and say that God can be found there?  We all seem to accept God is with us in the mountain top moments, or when we are on top of the hill.  But when we are in the valley or when we can't see very far in front of us because something is obstructing our view...what about God?

The psalm suggests God is there.  Maybe not in the same ways as when the laughter comes easy....but God is still there.  I pray for those places in your life right now that feel like a hilly moment...one that is obstructing your view...one that you just don't know what to do about...that the traces of God's grace will be there.

Maybe saying the words of the 121st psalm over that moment might help.

Maybe naming it as a hill might help

Maybe asking for God to help might even offer you the peace it offered pilgrims for centuries.

May the traces of God's grace be found in your journeys this week where it feels like you can see for miles and miles or if it feels like you are in the valley of hills.

Blessings

Desert Prayers

Okay...so my yard doesn't look this bad...yet.

But it has been a dry, hot, desert-like summer in Southern Wisconsin. I have not had to mow for weeks. The only green patches in my yard are weeds. And suddenly a 90 degree day feels cool and refreshing.

And as I was walking across my parched and crunchy grass the other day, I thought about times in my life when it feels like my soul is parched and dry and in need of a good drenching dose of something.

In those arid moments some talk about how God seems distant. For me, that is not quite what I feel like. I feel spent and tired even though I sense God is near. I just feel thirsty even though I am gulping from the well of prayer. I look around at the beauty of creation or hear someone offer me a trace of God's grace and it just doesn't seem to sustain me the way it does in other seasons.

It sort of feels like a few days ago when it did finally rain for about 1/2 hour...but it was just not enough. What happens when in the midst of prayer and praying it does not feel like enough? What happens when all the good advice about how prayer can change things and how it will help your health and yet you still feel like you are wandering around the desert?  Sort of like the People of God in Exodus.

For 40 years they wandered and wandered and wandered around an arid area. In some ways that gives voice to the desert moments in our life. Those extended Exodus periods are draining. Most of what I have read about prayer counsels me to just keep going, just keep wandering.

Sometimes that works.

Sometimes we need to find another path.

Sometimes we just need to find a shade tree to rest in for awhile.

If you had to describe your prayer life today as a season...what season would it be?
Summer-like with relationships to God and others either growing or parched?
Fall-like with relationships to God and others feeling like they are entering a transition time?
Winter-like with relationships to God and others taking a rest or hibernating?
Spring-like with relationships to God and others sprouting up new life and possibilities?

Once you know where you are today...you might consider asking...

When did I experience the other seasons? What was going on at that time?

Maybe you feel a bit like you are in all four seasons!

Those are big questions for any season.  But they are ones that I will continue to ponder prayerfully today and in the coming days.

For today and the coming days may the traces of God's grace sustain you and stir around you no matter what season you find yourself in today!

Blessings and peace!

Prayer Postures

Really? 

Part of me wants to laugh...somewhat sarcastically...at such an image.  Part of me wants to cry that what we've turned the Christian life into is essentially a follow the directions, paint by numbers, there is a right and a wrong way to do things kind of checklist.

As best as I can tell, when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he talked very little about the actual posture of prayer...and instead gave them evocative words that stretch the imagination and push back against the ways of the world.

Think about the petitions in the Lord's Prayer:
Daily bread...enough just for today without worrying about tomorrow
God's Kingdom...not our kingdoms which we protect with violence and power and money
God's forgiveness...not revenge

And yet, posture does make a difference.  If I am slouched down in my chair when I try to pray, it clues me into the fact that maybe something is weighing me down...maybe something is so heavy on my shoulders that the gravity of its force is pushing on me. 

If I can't seem to sit still when I try to pray, is it because I am giddy or because I am nervous or because I think that I have to do it all and can't stop long enough to pray? 

I think part of entering into prayer is to notice our physical body.  After all we claim as central to our faith that you are created in the image of God.  That is profound and beautiful and a great place to start prayer.

Doug Pagitt and Kathryn Prill have written a book about the postures of prayer.  Some of the prayer postures include looking up (as a sign of hopefulness) or rubbing your hands together like you are putting on lotion (as a sign of kindness) or standing still (as a of openness to reconciliation).  It is a good reminder that what our bodies are doing during prayer matters and can actually be incorporated into our prayer itself. 

If you'd like to glance at the book, it is on my shelf.  I encourage you to be open to the network of fibers, muscles, and bones that are inter-connected and sending millions signals to your brain every single moment, like right now as you are reading this post. 

Are your shoulders tight?  Mine kind of are.
Is your breathing easy or labored?  Mine feels easy.
Overall what kind of signals are going off that you might not be noticing?  Tiredness?  Energy?  Hope?  The warmth of sun on your skin?
That matters and makes a difference when we enter into prayer.

And I think can help open us to the traces of God's grace in our life.

Blessings and peace

Psalm 42

Over the last week, I have read and re-read Psalm 42.  

What I noticed most is the wonderful tension that is woven into this psalm.  What I hear in these words is the writer struggling and trying to make sense of why it is that she feels so lousy given the goodness of God.  Why does he long for God when just on Sunday (or Friday night given this was written by a Jewish person for the Sabbath) he went skipping and singing into the temple?

We have a shortcut for asking these sorts of profound, deep, almost unanswerable questions today.  Simply put we ask, "Why me?"  A shopping cart rams into our car in the grocery store parking lot and we ask, "why me?"  Our boss piles more and more work upon our already overflowing, messy desk and we ask, "why me?"   The dentist utters the phrase "root canal" and we ask, "why me?"

And here is the point we can't stress enough: it is an appropriate question!  It is a biblical question!  The psalmist doesn't feel bad for asking the question.  She doesn't get caught up in a cycle of guilt that maybe she shouldn't be talking to God like that. 

The tension comes not from guilt, but from trying to resolve two conflicting claims as people of faith we try to hold together: God is good and suffering happens within our life.  Tom Long calls this the "impossible chess match."  The psalmist does not resolve the chess match.  Put another way, suffering's king is not defeated within the words of the psalmist.  But I think there is incredible value within our prayers to name that tension and how I experience that tension in my life. 

The psalmist ends with prayerful hope, that one day she will sing again, even if people ask her, "Where is her God?"  The psalmist knows God is present, knows God love even in the midst of difficult moments, and it leads her to deeper prayer.

May it do so for us and may we notice traces of God's grace in our midst in the coming days!

Blessings and peace on these warm summer days!

Prayer Part One

If you Google images of prayer you come up with countless images of folded hand and heads bowed.  It is the traditional prayer posture.  The one most of us unconsciously assume when someone utters the word, "Let us pray."  

Because prayer can fall into a rut, I think it is important every few months to examine our prayer practices both personally and corporately as a church.  This week in church, I have revamped the liturgy just a bit to link our call to worship and confession together as one unit.  I do that so hopefully we feel like we are praying our way into worship.

But as our church tries out new forms of entering into worship, it is a good time to also look at our personal prayer life.  Over the next several posts I am going to offer some thoughts on prayer.

To be sure, I am stepping into a living stream of words upon words that have been poured out on this topic.  There are countless books and sermons on this topic.  But hopefully through these posts it will give you something to ponder both for your own faith and for our lived together faith as Christians.

A few of the posts coming up will deal with the fact that Jesus taught a prayer.

Another post will look at Doug Pagitt's book on prayer postures.

Other posts will simply offer a prayer practice for you to engage.

For today, I want to encourage you to pause and think about how you would define prayer to another person.

Is prayer about a petition to God, to get God to do something?

Is prayer naming a reality in your life, a reality God already knows?

Is prayer frustrating at times because you wonder if God really hears or if this time set aside is really making any difference?

I think of prayer as counter-cultural.  In a world that exists 24/7, always on the go, show me what you have produced lately, prayer says an emphatic "NO" to that.  Prayer says that it is not all about me and what I do, prayer is radical trust in God, even when it seems like things are going to hell all around me.  Prayer is best summarized by Psalm 42, especially verse 7, the deep calling to the deep.

If I had to define prayer, I would start with it being the deep within me calling out to the deep within God.

I invite you over the next few days to read and re-read Psalm 42.  Savor it, like you would an ice cream cone on a warm summer day.  What thoughts come into your mind and heart when you read this psalm?  What insights or questions does this psalm awaken when read through the lens of prayer?

Give that some prayerful thought and so will I for my next post.

May the traces of God's grace awaken the deep within you connecting to the deep, abiding presence of God in your life this week.

Blessings!

Endings

Today is my last day of class in the doctorate of ministry program at Luther Seminary.  In some ways it is an ending.  There will be no more classes.  There will be no more assigned reading.  There will be no more preparing to spend three weeks here at Luther.  Because it is an ending, there is grief.  As crazy as it might sound, I will miss it.  I have been blessed by the conversations over the last three years.  They awoken me to new ideas.  Just yesterday I learned what the six chief parts of the Christian faith are according to Martin Luther.  

Okay...perhaps not all that exciting, but it gets my brain thinking new thoughts and the synapses firing making new connections.  I will miss reading books I might never have picked up.  I will miss the chapel services where I could sit back and worship.

At the same time I realize it is not really the end.  I have research to do, writing to do, and next April I will defend all of that will unfold in the coming months.

But for today, I want to think about endings.  They matter.  Ever get to the end of a book or movie and feel frustrated by the way it ends?  Either it was too neat and tidy or it wasn't tidy enough or just did not seem to fit where the plot of the book/movie was going.  

Endings also matter in our life.  That is why I think there is something profound and sacred about our Jewish ancestors celebrating the Sabbath on Friday night to Saturday.  It gives space to look back at the end of the week, to reflect on where God was over the last week, what remains unanswered/unresolved, and most importantly Sabbath gives space to rest and remember who we are (the People of God) and whose we are (God's beloved children).  

As the sun sets tonight, I invite you to think about the ending of this week.  Where have you sensed God?  Where do you struggle to make sense/meaning of life right now?  How can you rest knowing that the One in whom you rest is both your ending and your beginning?

May the traces of the One who is the Alpha and Omega, our beginning and our ending be with you.

Grace and peace

Parables

My class this week has been working through the parables Jesus told his disciples.  I thought the picture above is appropriate.  While we might remember some of the parables of Jesus about the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son or the five foolish bridesmaids who did not bring enough oil or how the kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed - we have sometimes domesticated these parables.  

What we often do with parables is to turn them into good advice rather than the radical pictures of God's realm that we are invited to participate in right here and right now.  Jesus challenged people's understanding of what was kosher and stretched people's comfort zones.  You think you know who would do the right thing: a rabbi or priest...but along comes a Samaritan?  Really?  That was unexpected, shocking, and even offensive.

This week we've spent trying to reclaim and remember the jagged edges of these parables.  Not so we can hurt each other, but because at that edge we find God's presence calling us into a Kingdom that is not like the world we live it.  Yet, by listening to the power of the parables, we hear what God is like and what our communal life as the People of God is to be like.  

I invite you to think about and re-read your favorite parable.  Let it linger.  Ask where is God in the midst of that parable?  Where is that jagged edge?  Where does this powerful parable call us as God's people?  Those are the questions roaming around my mind this week and I invite you to join me in the prayerful and faithful pondering.

May the traces of God's grace sustain you and guide you.

Blessings!