Bringing Faith to Life
questions
How can I connect with a Creator I cannot see?
29 months
We connect everyday with things we don’t see, many of them in an old, familiar way. What does this for you?
For me it is my dad’s old sweatshirt. Turned inside out, it was my favorite outfit as a kid. Even in the coldest weather, I could put it on over whatever else I was wearing, push up the sleeves, and shoot hoops on my driveway. On wet days, the puddles didn’t stop me. If I missed a rebound and the ball went splat, I’d just wipe it on the tummy fuzz of my sweatshirt and put it back into play. That shirt worked just as well for hitting tennis balls against the garage door, fielding grounders off the brick wall, catching pop-ups in the backyard, or circling the driveway in roller skates.
Yep, I was always on the move. Not because my parents told me to, and no, I wasn’t practicing for a big tournament or to make the all-star team. I just loved how it felt to move, whether I was lofting a ball that swished through the net, striking a ball in the center of my racquet, catching a ball securely in my mitt, or propelling myself around the turn on wheels. Movement taught me how to listen to my body so I could feel the inside of me. Physically. Through trial and error, adjustment and repetition, I improved my aim and perfected my form.
It would have never occurred to my eight-year-old self that movement could be a contemplative practice. But my grown-up self knows that it certainly was and still is. It helps me to listen, to be thoughtful, reflective, focused, and stilled – just not always while I am still. What could be more natural?
We each have a body and the Psalms tell us each is fearfully, wonderfully, and uniquely made by our Creator’s design. Where better then for God to meet us than in our very own flesh as we experience life according to that design? Even if we aren’t primarily kinesthetic learners by nature, our physical selves are the one thing we know God gave us just for this lifetime. We take our bodies with us everywhere we go! And wherever we go, God promises to go with us.
This notion is the launching point for Made to Move: Knowing and Loving God Through Our Bodies. It is not a fitness book or a weight loss program; it is a devotional workbook inviting you to use your body as your textbook.
As Christians in progress, seeking to live lives that more closely resemble the life of Jesus, we are commanded to love God fully with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. That’s an invitation to experience faith physically. When we allow our bodies to help us connect with God and neighbor, not just metaphorically or philosophically, but tangibly and concretely, we make our faith real. That God is as close as our skin, as mobile as our joints, as strong as our muscles, as magnificent as our minds, and as constant as our heartbeat.
Made to Move is also a fresh way to introduce faith to others (children, teens, family, friends) who are skeptical or who have had little or no religious background or Christian education. Because we share a physical nature, the body and how it works provide a great meeting ground to kick off discussion and conversation. For instance:
- We want a strong core so we can both stand firm and move well: what is at your core?
- We need a firm foundation so we don’t slip and fall: how firm is your foundation?
- Our heartbeat is constant and responsive to our needs: what is constant for you?
- Human arms are designed to hold, reach, and lift: why do you think we were made that way?
People today are looking for reasons to believe. We need to give them some concrete examples and opportunities to ask questions.
As a practitioner of a physical faith, I have come to call myself a kinesthetic Christian. Movement was my first language, and it remains my learning language; the best way I know to connect with the God I have come to know more fully as I have matured in faith. Even though my middle-aged body can’t do all that it used to when I was an agile youth on the field of play, God is still teaching me through it. It’s the place we meet and have a loving conversation in the language we both know, the language of the human body.
If the whole purpose of our lives is to know and love God more, surely God has given us a way to succeed. What could be more unique, more personal, or more perfect than the bodies we came with?
What gets your attention?
05 years
We all notice, don’t we? The thing that wasn’t there before. The thing that isn’t but was. The thing that’s different from one image to the next. Heck, that’s a puzzle I loved to do as a kid! Find all 10!
Yes, if we’re paying even the slightest attention, we notice when something has changed, been moved, seems out of place or is acting strangely. That’s why airport security admonishes us, “If you see something, say something.”
The funny thing is, we were made for this. It’s a survival mechanism. Really. Our perceptors (my new word: receptors for perception) are designed to alert us when something might be dangerous. Did you know that your body responds more quickly and forcefully to a critter crawling UP your arm than to the one crawling DOWN? Yep. One is a threat to the jugular; the other may only nibble a finger or toe. No biggie.
So, given this design, it’s not surprising to find that something moving quickly in our peripheral vision draws our attention. Someone behaving oddly gets our gaze. Someone dressed distinctively gives us pause. Honestly, when something or someone is different, it is hard to look away — even when it’s impolite to stare.
I find it at least a little bit comforting to realize that it isn’t just my socio-cultural bias at play here: a good bit of this responsiveness is programmed in. I’m designed to notice different and be wary, AND I’m drawn to seek the similar because it brings me comfort. It’s our instinctive nature to distinguish among and between in order to seek safety, security and well-being. It’s the same for all the animals in the animal kingdom. Draw close; protect your own.
Today’s world, though, is demanding more of me and of us. It is calling us away from the basic animal in our nature toward what is unique to our human nature. Yes, we have biases — ingrained, learned and polished over years of practice. There’s no disputing: We do prefer this to that. We understand this and not that. We accept this and reject that. But our humanity has been dealt a brilliant extra card: a mind that can notice its bias and reject it.
It’s a small thing really, to catch myself in the act of assigning a story to someone I see but don’t know, whether it’s on the TV, in the news or in the parking lot at my local shopping center. I have discovered that I can nip that thought right in the bud, though. In fact, I’ve taken to giving myself a little swat on the thigh to say, “Stop that right there, you!” That’s what you’d hear if your earbuds were listening in to my brain. I trust you aren’t, but the Big Someone Else surely is.
So, I figure I ought to listen, as Lincoln put it, to the angels of my better nature. They’re telling me to: lead with forgiveness, err on the side of generosity, assume the best in the other — until further notice. Lotta grace flowing down that stream. Grace I don’t always even give myself. Got a lot to learn.
Ironic, the difference between what gets your attention and what you give your attention to. Every animal in the kingdom comes pre-programmed for survival. We humans have the capacity to discern, decide and re-direct. Thought by ever-loving thought.
Is God Good All the Time?
47 years
“God is good …All the time!
And all the time …God is Good!”
Ah, the call and response of a faithful people. We like knowing how to respond. But do we believe it? Is God really good all the time? for the parent who’s just lost a child? for the man who’s just received a dire diagnosis? for the teen who is bullied, the wife who is abused? what of the family without a home? the children who live in fear? The list goes on and on.
Is God really all that good? Certainly a good God would have none of this.
Recently, I attended a funeral service for my friend Bill. He had been a good husband, good father, good son, good uncle, good friend, good businessman, and, by all accounts, a good Christian. His family suffered with him through nine months of brain cancer before they lost him. Is God still good?
What is good? According to me, it’s an outcome; it’s a judgment; it’s the feeling I have when everything goes my way. On those days I chime right in: God is good all the time and all the time God is good. But Bill and his family and friends remind me that that’s not the good that God is.
God is love; that’s way more than good. God made this substitution, so we can know that:
- God is patient.
- God is kind.
- God does not envy, does not boast, is not proud.
- God is not rude or self-seeking.
- God is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.
- God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
This God I can actually see in those circumstances of sorrow and hurt and pain and loss. There may be no good in any of those, but there is God. God is so much better than good.
More than this, love is not just what God is but what God does.
- God always protects.
- God always trusts.
- God always hopes.
- God always perseveres.
Since Love does that, so can we, if we believe in love. God is there, no matter the circumstance, providing what we need to respond in love to the one who is in need. When we offer protection and trust, and when we hold onto hope that perseveres, we are in love. Love never fails.
God is so much better than good. God does good, in and through us, when we let God.
At Bill’s memorial service, a man came to the pulpit to share memories of their longtime friendship. “People come into our lives for one of four reasons,” the man began. “To add, subtract, multiply or divide. Bill was an add-er.”
Oh my yes. Bill added so much; and somehow, there in the saddest of circumstances, it seemed that what Bill added, God was multiplying. Love is like that.
What did God mean when He spoke me?
0What right have I to be here on this earth?
Here,
taking up space,
demanding time,
using resources.
What right have I to demand that things be done my way?
according to my plan,
within my specifications,
according to my schedule.
I have no right to these. Not any claim on these.
Any more than you or you or you or you.
Nevertheless, I am here.
I’m meant for something.
Meant to be someone.
Maybe I’m just meant.
What if, when God spoke me into existence, the one who I am today is exactly what He meant, exactly what He had in mind, and exactly as He hoped?
Wouldn’t that be something?!
Did the Resurrection really happen?
29 years
Does it matter if the Resurrection actually happened?
This was the question we considered in my adult Sunday School class at a church I used to belong to. I was a regular at Sunday school, where we considered issues of faith and its practice as a matter of course. Sunday school was organized and led by the laity and always promised a lively discussion and discourse. But one Easter Sunday, a bunch of us who came for the sunrise service and stayed to participate in the other morning services had gathered for Sunday school only to realize nothing had been planned. So a class member took charge asking the question of the day: Does it matter if the Resurrection actually happened?
Our class leader didn’t think so. It’s so unreasonable, unrealistic, so hard to believe, she argued. My faith is in Jesus. If I follow him, that’s enough. Whether or not he was actually raised from the dead doesn’t matter.
I found my heart oddly soured when nods of assent went around the circle. Wait a minute, that’s Easter, this is Easter! I wanted to say. But I didn’t because I couldn’t. I couldn’t justify my response or defend it against this rising tide of head nodders satisfied with the Son of Man who showed us the way. This man healed the sick, cast out demons, calmed storms, silenced his detractors and regularly attracted crowds. Isn’t that enough?
Well, no. Because if that was enough, he’d still be here, healing and casting and calming and teaching. But, and I think all authorities agree on this, he is not. There are no longer sightings of Jesus, the good man. He did die. And scripture tells us that when they went looking for Him, He wasn’t where they put Him. Word was, they were looking in the wrong place. He had gone to Galilee and would be receiving people there. Go and see.
Easter, to me, is about the go and see. Could it be possible that a man has died and yet lives again? Not according to any text book I’ve ever read. And not, apparently, according to my Sunday school leader. She was taking the safe approach: let’s be satisfied with the Jesus we know. If we go looking for him as if he’d come back to life we might not find him, and then where would we be?
The thing is, we need more than the tame Jesus we find believable. Now more than ever, we need Christ who is beyond belief. One who works miracles, walks on water, and who accepts death on its own terms so we can know there is life for us beyond the death of all that is un-good, un-kind, un-fair and un-godly in us. Christ died so we can know that those things in us are mortal; we can live without them. We are better without them. He came to show us that life. Not just in eternity, but now during this one.
Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. (John 14:19)
Last week I visited an historic site on the western coast of Florida called Historic Spanish Point. It was filled with the stories of ancient peoples and settlers enduring hardship and trials. The most recent inhabitants considered it sanctuary and rest. The grounds were alive with story and layer upon layer of meaning.
The guide took us to see “Mary’s Chapel,”a tiny sanctuary that, in it’s day, was open to all who might come.
Next to the chapel was a centuries old graveyard filled with headstones proclaiming the inhabitants, pioneers and patrons who had found a home here. Oddly intertwined among the headstones was a trunk sprouting a few brown and dying ferns. “That’s the resurrection fern,” our guide told us. “It looks dead, doesn’t it? But in a few days, when the rains come, it will spring to life. No better place to have a resurrection tree than in a graveyard, eh?”
Oh my, yes. I’m so grateful there is such a tree in the graveyard of my life.
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (1 Corinthians 15: 12-14)
How Could Someone DO Something Like That?
0
How could someone DO something like that?
This is what we ask ourselves when events like the recent crash of the German passenger plane happen. Or bombings at a marathon finish line. Or shootings at numerous schools. Or museums. Or places of worship.
We are faulty, we humans. But are we at fault? Can we help ourselves?
A pastor friend once remarked, the line between good and evil is drawn straight through every human heart. Yes, I feel this potential in me. Perhaps that’s why these atrocities hit “home.” Because I can see the possibility alive in me to do what I know I should not do, perhaps in a way that is permanently destructive. In this temptation toward evil, I must continuously choose good.
What if our mind is confused about which one is which? What if the truth is so veiled that all we see is evil and it is masquerading as good?
I am told — and the Bible says — that Jesus died to save me from my sin. That I can come near the One who is completely Good because the separation between us, the cleft of sin, has been banished. But what of my heart – the one I so very well know – that is part good and part evil? How can I turn from my own faulty choice to God’s will?
The truth is, anything that turns me away from the Absolute Good is evil for me. That turning is different for each of us, because different temptations beckon. Absent this awareness and I am the pilot. I am the bomber. I am the shooter.
While none of us alive today heard Jesus speak when He walked the earth, His death and risen life made way for the Spirit of Christ to open our ears to the divine command, “This is my Son whom I have chosen. Listen to Him!”
Lord, quiet the clamor which shouts you down and the internal chatter which drowns you out. Help me to listen closely and only to You. Amen.
Does Everything Really Happen for a Reason?
0“Everything happens for a reason.” I hear that a lot these days, usually after someone hasn’t done enough to prevent or keep something from happening. It helps us feel better about ourselves and more confident in the “forces of the universe” to think that somehow, they have got this. They ordained this. Nothing I could have done. Might as well just step back and let things take their course. They will, with or without me.
Never do you hear “everything happens for a reason” from someone who has done all that is humanly possible to prevent it from happening. The loss of a child, death of a spouse, mauling, murder, abuse, trafficking. How can anyone look at any of these things and think “everything happens for a reason.”
‘God is in control’ is not meant to absolve us from our responsibility to do everything we can. In fact, that’s a cop out and an excuse for not doing. No, we’re meant to do all we can so that even if we fall short of people’s expectations including our own, we are becoming people who don’t need excuses. Even though we still have questions.
Everything may happen for a reason, but I may be the reason and, if I am, then God will surely be the difference.
The One Question God will always answer
0“If you could ask God one question, what would it be?”
That was the bumper sticker on the car next to me. Oh my God. There are so many things that need answers. Why do you allow suffering? Why, death? Why, child abuse? Why, domestic violence and kidnapping and racial strife and executions? Why, pain and cancer and illness? Why, loneliness and despair and hopelessness? Why, oh God, why?
But all those questions came with follow-on questions. If I knew the answer to that, then I would need to know this…. The offer was one; I had to edit all my angst down to one measly question.
“Why do you love me?”
You know me completely. All my faults, failures, misgivings and mistakes. You know all I’ve done and all I’ve failed to do. You know my intentions, my obligations and my shortcomings. In spite of it all, you love me. Why?
And in that moment, there were no more questions. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God did love me. And if God could love me, God could love the rest of these. Every last one. There were no more “why’s,” only, perhaps, how’s.
Such is the nature of Love. This I know.
What’s hiding behind our platitudes?
1I really despise platitudes. They’re good for nothing.
Really, they’re dismissals. Things “we can all agree on” so we can take our attention away from where we don’t agree. I see their usefulness. I just don’t like them.
Don’t get me wrong. Most platitudes are nice expressions. Good things. In fact, they’re good by nature.
- God is with you.
- Let’s be generous.
- Let’s just get along.
- It’s all about ….relationships, love, etc.
- Let’s just agree to disagree.
My most recent disfavorite is “it’s all good.” That is code for, ‘It’s not, but I’m just not gonna let that bother me,’ or ‘I’m not gonna deal with it.’ Can we please just say what we mean? “I’m choosing to set this aside for now.”
Even the famed Serenity Prayer seems complicit in this:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.”
It proposes that my choices are only these: to accept things as they are or to change things to the way I think they should be. Understood, but not spoken in this is, if I can’t change it, I should just accept it and God, grant me peace.
But most of life is not either/or. Platitudes encourage us to live it both/and. But most of life, indeed the courage of life, is to live in the 90% or more that requires navigating in the middle.
- deciding what needs changing.
- asking, what can I do to bring about or move things toward the change?
- asking, what new approach is not being considered?
- considering, how can I relate to this discourse in a healthy way?
- reflecting on, is there something in me that unbalances me in the consideration?
- asking myself, have I looked fully, listened intently and prayed consistently about what God is showing me here?
Sometimes we are guilty of looking at structures and supposing they are fixed, or approaches and considering them exclusive, or patterns and imagining they are carved in stone. So, seeing no alternative, we punt. With platitudes. Instead of working toward a middling or as yet unseen, solution. That may take a very long time. Longer than we have. Perhaps longer than we live.
That’s the risk we take when we refuse to white-wash, but also when we are people who fast and pray. Like Esther did when the destruction of her people seemed imminent and she, an innocent member of the king’s court, lacked the courage which would risk her life. In this impossible circumstance she heard,
“For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” ~ Esther 4:14
Esther didn’t say ‘it’s all good.’ Which she could have said, for herself. She entertained the idea that God might be doing a new thing and she might have been cast in the lead role. The lines she was to deliver would take inhuman courage and the actions, resolute attention. She would need to walk on the tightrope of God’s will and not look down.
She could have stayed on the sidelines and let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, and just gotten over it. But platitudes ring hollow when life and death is at stake.
Times such as ours require people willing to navigate the middle, with all its dangers, while holding steadily to the One who promises,
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. ~ Isaiah 43: 19