Prayer

As we arrive at the door way to 2018 ~

May the lessons from your life this last year teach and tell you ~ may your ears, hearts, and soul be open to these truths.

May you let loose your grip on pain and fall into the way of forgiveness ~ knowing that forgiveness is not forgetting nor excusing nor just a one-and-done moment but it is realizing that you need to stop drinking the poison of anger and expecting the other person to hurt.

May you hold fast to the holy and whole moments of your life this last year ~ for those are what can be a small flash light in your life in the days and months to come.

Let the rear view mirror...the hindsight of 2017 guide you.

As we cross over, with one foot in 2017 and the other in 2018, let this threshold of the present day teach and tell you something.

Life is full of such thresholds where we are not fully finished with one thing and the new things is not fully yet reveals.  In-between is a state of life that we often take up residence.  So, linger here today.  Listening and learn from this moment.  Find insight on this last day of the year.

As tomorrow dawns and 2018 arrives like an unpainted canvas on which you will start to color and create your life...

I pray you will breathe.

This is not a test.

There is no one right way.

You are not defined by your resolutions or resolve, you are a beloved child of God.

So may that truth and may God's grace guide you every day in this New Year.

Grace and peace everyone. 

New Years Preparation

As we arrive at the threshold of a New Year, take a moment to ponder prayerfully this past year.  Hold the events, encounters, and experiences in the palm of your hand.  I pray as you do, you might know that you are being held in the palm of God's hand.  As you rewind and remember, think first about those moments of great joy.

For me it was our family vacations; a retreat in South Carolina, baking cookies with my daughter, connecting with church members in meaningful ways, Sunday morning worship, moments when I felt the warmth calmness, and times when I saw/felt/heard more than a trace of God's grace.

Linger here on the moments of joy...it is so easy to want to rush to the resolutions.  We can take the turn to negative too quickly.  So, sit and stay awhile in the good.  Maybe even go back and keep adding to the list, especially as we now turn to starting to process the pain from the last year.

Because we often carry with us the anger, anxiety, annoyances, brokenness, hurt, and harm for ages past.  Over the years, these weigh down the luggage of our life.  Over the years, these can (whether intentional or unintentionally) crowd out the space where we might otherwise carry the grace and good in life.  Yet, we do need to name, notice, and negotiate our way through the struggles/strive.  Most wisdom teachers tell us that even the pain has something to teach us.  Yet, we are quick to race, run through the valleys where the shadows loom large.  We are quick to cover up our hurt with the word, "I'm fine" (usually said unconvincingly with exasperation that at once wants both the person asking to drop it and for that person to dive in deeper to help us when we feel like we are drowning).  So where is that kind of stuff rummaging and roaming around your life?

For me there is both an external and internal declension here.  External in the difficulties I have in turning on the news or in relationships or scars from the words of others that won't heal.  And those external parts seep and soak into my soul along side the perfectionism drive and what Kent Dobson often describes as the "loyal soldier syndrome" ~ where we are continually trying to please others.  Together this can be an intoxicating cocktail of daily life.

Again sit with this.  But not like a scale.  Too often we want to say the good outweighs the bad or keep adding to the good side to tilt the scale that way.  Or too often we are quick to judge which side of our list ~ the good or the bad ~ has more items there as if life was about keeping score.  Just sit with this past year.  When you are ready ask the question ~

What do you have to teach me?

Listen. 

Breathe and be.

Listen for more than a trace of God's grace.

Listen.

Amen.

Bonus Carol: The First Noel

The First Noel...first two verses:

The First Noel the angel did say

Was to certain poor shepherds

in fields as they lay;

In fields as they lay, keeping their sheep,

On a cold winter's night that was so deep.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,

Born is the King of Israel.

They looked up and saw a star

Shining in the east beyond them far,

And to the earth it gave great light,

And so it continued both day and night.

We sometimes miss the more controversial or scandalous parts of Christmas.  Exhibit A is that God's grand entrance plan is in a barn?!  In the immortal words of Timone from The Lion King, "Talk about your fixer uppers!"  I am from Iowa, I don't enjoy barns...might be one of many reasons I am no longer there.  Exhibit B is that guest list for witnessing this holy interruption are shepherds, who were seen as shiftless.  To follow a star might be Exhibit C.  Imagine telling a friend that you are going to follow this amazingly bright star to some undisclosed location...they might ask, "How are you feeling?"  

Yet, we often nod when we hear these details in church, rather than raising an eye brow and exclaiming, "What in the name of all that is holy?!"

But that is part of the point...God's ways don't always make sense, but they do make a difference.  God's ways don't always go with the flow, but they teach us the flow of God.  God's ways (like parting seas and calling to people of questionable character and confounding us) are perhaps the most beautiful Carol of them all.  I pray that you will continue to listen to the music of God in your life.  Continue to be open to God's wisdom which may sound odd and peculiar but is certainly holy.  Continue to hold lightly onto the truths we have encountered, for they still have much to teach us every day in  2018.

Grace and peace ~~ 

Carol Thirteen: Joy to the World

On this Christmas Day...enjoy this beautiful version of the joy to our whole world.

I pray you have found these past twenty-two days as much as I have posting about these beautiful carol.

May this day offer you more than a trace of God's grace...fill you to overflowing with God's unconditional love...may laughter come easy...and joy fill your heart.

With love and blessings ~~

Carol Twelve: O Holy Night

On this night when Christ is born...
On this holy night...
On this silent night...
When our prayer of O come, o come Emmanuel is fulfilled in a stable!
When the long expected one enters in afresh and anew.
So, come all ye faithful to encounter, experience
This mystery that came upon a midnight clear.
When Hark! the Herald angels sings and angles for the realms of glory invite us to sing with gusto.
So let us wonder as we wander to...
O Little Town of Bethlehem.

I pray the Christmas Eve service fills you with the hope that God brings life in unexpected ways, peace in peculiar moments, love in serendipity and joy for our whole world.

Most of all, I pray you sense more than a trace of God's grace tonight for a thousand holy nights to come.

With much love, grace and peace ~~

Carol Twelve: O Holy Night

Listen to this beautiful rendition of O Holy Night...

My favorite line of this hymn...that sends goose bumps racing up and down my arms ~ shivers down my spine is at the first stanza

O holy night the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth

And the soul felt its worth...that is what this whole season of Advent is about.  And not just for one holy night would our souls feel their full worth, but every single day and night.  To reiterate, we are not a problem to God.  God's entrance into our world was to teach and tell us about love made incarnate, in the flesh, real, tactile and tangible.  The sacred love, however, that preaches acceptance, unconditional grace, and radical equality is always going to step on the toes of the powerful who prefer to divide and conquer...who prefer fear-based messages...that everything is someone else's problem.  When we feel our soul's full worth, however, we cannot contain that or keep it to ourselves.  If our soul is worthy...so is our neighbors...(note the line, "His way is love and his gospel is peace").

In some ways, for me, this Carol is the cliff notes, compact version of the Gospel. This is what is all about.  Knowing that grace embraces all of us, changes us (and even challenges us).  For a few fleeting moments on Christmas Eve, we know this to be one of the truest truths in the whole world.  The challenge is transformation, letting this notion really sink into and saturate everything we do and say and who we are.  Just as it is a journey to Bethlehem to behold this truth, so too is it a journey to live this truth every day.  We rarely get it right all the time.  But within grace is forgiveness and a call back to our full, authentic, soul bearing selves.

I pray this Carol causes you to sense God's presence so close this day and as we anticipate the holy night tomorrow.

Prayer:  Let us see, sense, be open, and moved by the holiness of every single night.  Amen.

Carol Eleven: Silent Night

Practicing what I preached...wrote...last time about just being in the midst of the holy.  I invite you simply to listen to this beautiful version of Silent Night letting it wrap around you with a warm embrace that lets you breathe and be.

Enjoy.

Prayer: (inhale...counting to three) (exhale...counting to four).  (Breathe in peace...breathe out worry.)  (Breathe in hope...breathe out the need to micromanage, control.)  (Breathe in joy...breathe out smiles.)  (Breathe in love...and be/belong to that love.)  Repeat as many times as needed or necessary ~ caution ~ may be all day.  Amen.