Bringing Faith to Life
Archive for June, 2013
Am I gorging on grace?
1
A beautiful mosaic of blue descends on my bird feeder and begins gorging himself on the suet. Pulling great mouthfuls, he swallows, scattering whatever doesn’t fit in his beak all over the ground. Wasteful, ugly, unappreciative bird. Go away! Let someone else have a turn!
I sit and watch through my kitchen window. We have put out food aplenty. Free for the taking by any who come. Our offering, so they might be fed.
I wonder if God thinks of me as I do of this Blue Jay.
Be-longings, not belongings
0
I have a new belonging; I am the happy owner of a brand new Ford Escape in “deep impact blue.” It’s beautiful. Rides like a dream compared to the “moves like a tank” that I was driving. And that is what matters to me. How it rides and whether it will get me where I need to go with enough room for my stuff. The stuff usually is training gear, soccer balls, extra cleats and sneakers.
I don’t need as much room anymore because the occasion is rare when I’m driving my three beautiful daughters and their friends. They drive themselves.
The seasons, they are a -changing at the LeBolt household. I am paring down, selecting out. I have a new birth of freedom into time that is my own. And it is shining a bright light – lets call it glaring – on what I might make of this life.
Through shielded eyes I see this has very little to do with my “belongings” and everything to do with my “be-longings.” Perhaps I misunderstood God’s inflection the numerous times He has tried to tell me this.
What do I long to be?
In my being, what do I truly long for?
To Be… Deep impact in a sea of need.
Blue?
the color of tears and swimming
and rain and reflection off of raindrops.
the color of casts and clouds
and skies and depths.
the color of eyes and lashes
and of heavens imagined.
blueberries and bluebells and bluebonnets;
bruises and brokenness
and banished rays of shimmer
at rainbow’s center
reaching
floating
lifting
Glorious Blue
Spirit of the Living God, an exercise
012 years
I wonder if the people who drive by my house think I am crazy. I am out on the front porch with my exercise band, stretching it, lifting it, pulling, twisting, raising, lowering. Sometimes I sing “Spirit of the living God” out loud; sometimes I just hum it to myself. It probably just looks like exercising on the front porch to them. They have no idea its prayer. That would be even crazier, right?
So, today I am trying to imagine what they see when they see me, the exercise-er. And it gets me thinking about the me they don’t see…the pray-er.
One of the reasons I love the exercise bands, especially using them with one body part holding and the other body part pulling, is the continuous loop they make. When I hold it in both hands, the “line of pull” is hand to hand but the shape of the motion – to me – is a loop. A continuous communication. First, from brain to hand about the force to be used and the rate of speed of the pull and the exact muscles and in what order they are to be recruited. Then, the hand responds with where it is in space and how fast it is moving. This is happening nearly instantaneously. And so important, so the brain knows where the body will be when it sends its next instruction. So the relay connection is uninterrupted.
It’s like the quarterback and the wide receiver. The QB calls the play and the receiver runs the route, but the QB doesn’t throw the ball to where the receiver is. If he did, by the time it got to him, he would be long gone. No, the QB must gauge how fast the receiver is running and on what trajectory and then throw the ball to where the receiver will be.
And when they connect, it’s a thing of beauty. When they do it again and again, QB and WR seem to have a second sense with each other. But this is the stuff of many, many practices and many, many plays. It requires incredible accuracy and athleticism for execution. And trust. (This has me wondering how many lead passes I am missing while I am waiting for God to hand it off to me so I can run with it. But that is the fodder for another blog post!)
So the relay of movement, your body does this perfectly, constantly. We move with flow and grace. Not jerkily like a robot but smoothly, without interruption. This give and take. This send and receive. This speak and respond. Even the greatest of athletes cannot reproduce this with a teammate, but inside us, this plays out.
And so, as I move my exercise band, I imagine this looping. In fact, my mind draws continuous loops, circles of movement. Okay – I just saw the Star Trek movie yesterday, coils of transporter beam – coils around my movement as I move through the prayer. (visual artists, a good drawing would be welcome here…)
A column of coils, wraps me upward.
A crown of round flips onto and over my head.
A coil behind my shoulders is pulled, pulled outward to a plank, whose endpoints are hand holds in the palm of each hand.
Wings of coil move from out to in to over my head, removing my crown, tipping it forward and down.
A waterfall wave bends and falls before my eyes and down to my waist.
Resting the band down at my thighs, I pull it taut and backwards, engaging the backs of my arms and my shoulders.
A coil like a sash criss-crosses me, hands to waist to shoulders and scapulae.
The circle of motion encloses me.
Somehow, what began as exercise has become prayer. Christian prayer.
Here is the video again. If you try it, please share your experience.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/Mse98SpD1v4]
Holy Hydration
1“Do you think you pray enough?” That was the question posed by a blogger on our church blog. I was stopped dead in my tracks.
- Enough prayer?? – what is enough?
- Think?? – I’m supposed to decide with my mind if my praying is sufficient?
- You?? – I am supposed to judge my “enough”?
How in the world can you quantify prayer?! Measure it in minutes? Prayer is a living thing. It has no boundaries. Certainly none that humans can lay down. It’s beginnings and endings are unknown to us. Where would we start our stopwatch? How long would we listen until we could no longer hear the ticking of its echo? More, much more than this, is the measure of prayer.
No, prayer for me is fluid. It connects me to a stream of living water that meanders in and out as the shoreline varies, here among the tall reeds, there among the grasses and marsh. Over the pebbles and around the boulders. It seeps into all the spaces. Constant. Ever-flowing. Its beginning we cannot see; its ending we cannot fathom.
Does it diminish? Exposing some of the shore grasses to the heat of the direct sun? Does it pull away from its banks, the swiftly flowing stream become a meandering brook then barely a trickle leaving dry, broken and cracked ground? Is prayer like that?
Prayer to me is wading into the ever-flowing stream of grace. A stepping in. Feeling the rush of water against my feet, my legs, my body. The further in I go the deeper I get. There I feel the current of grace and its direction. I have the sense of its initiation and its destination. I am part of it. Time has no meaning here. Gratitude takes its place.
What a great over-flowing of its banks there will be as all of God’s people wade in! I saw that this week as we all gathered around the family who lost their son. I felt the water level rising as we gathered in the river and it spilled over its banks and beyond its lapping shores. Flowing more and more, nourishing and greening up all that had been standing by. All who were on the shores watching and wondering. Tickling toes and refreshing souls, that they might feel its welcome coolness and calm and comfort. That they might know what grace feels like.
Do we think we pray enough?
Do we come to the stream and drink?
Do we wade in?
Oh, Holy hydration.
What if my whole life were lived as prayer. Continually in the stream. It’s currents, its rapids, and its gently flowing gradient moving me along from source to destination, the pouring by a Great Hand into an ocean beyond my imagining.
Where life gets real, there is always hope
312 years
We lost a young man in our church last Tuesday afternoon. He died as the result of a tragic accident. Suddenly. On the day he graduated from 8th grade. He was a good kid but not perfect – an adventurous boy, a reliable friend, a brother you could count on, a loving son. He regularly humbled his father at one-on-one basketball and whispered “I love you” in his mother’s ear. So said the preacher who solemnly remembered him to a packed sanctuary yesterday.
Bennett Rill was 14 years old.
He had just been confirmed in the church. That means that he had completed a 4-month study program, been mentored by an adult in our church and been interviewed by one of our pastors about his readiness to answer the question, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”
He answered yes. That “yes” didn’t prevent the accident which ended his life. That’s a tough one. Lots of questions hover – the why’s, the what if’s, the where were you’s. I suspended those questions as I sat in the sanctuary and listened to the story of Bennett. The kid who lived life all out. The kid who wasn’t afraid to love and to say so. The kid who competed for the complete joy it gave him, not to impress but to give his best when his best was needed.
They called him the “real deal.” That is, not just the kid who says the right words but the one who does the right thing. That lives his life and his faith just the same. The one you have no doubt about – he’s telling the truth. You can see it. Not just in church. Not just in school. Not just at home. But on the field of play. And for a 14 year old boy, that’s where life gets real.
A cousin (and pastor) said of him, “He was stoked for joy.” I love that. Stoked. Prepared. Ready to go. Looking for the action. His coach said, “Bennett was ready in season and out. There was no off season.” He was ready. We weren’t ready for this.
Still, as Christians we are meant to be ready. Ready to give the reason for the hope that we have. And so I sit with this tragedy and the reading that comes close to hand. Madeleine L’Engle has written, “mediate is part of the word immediate, the place of now, where past and future come together.”
The Great Mediator reaches back into our now. Back from the future that he has already defined but where He has promised not to intervene and, I expect through great tears, He sews and mends and heals. Time and space are not linear to Him. They don’t happen in our order. This is what makes the impossible, possible. In that mediate space, chronos (our time) and Kairos (God’s time) converge.
I conclude this because I have seen it before. Some years ago when my brother died suddenly and without warning I asked in my grief, “Where were you, Lord? If you had been there my brother wouldn’t have died.” And He showed me my journal of a few days before where I had written those very words from John 11:21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” I had concluded that we were foolish to suppose He wasn’t there for Martha or for us. Three days before I knew I would need these words, God had provided them.
But now Bennett…and I walk into my neighborhood Starbucks, searching for words to share with this family. Suddenly, coincidentally, God-incidentally, I see three young men standing near a beautiful arrangement of pink flowers. “They are for our friends, the Rills,” they tell me.
I ask about their friend Bennett and they tell me the story of the roof and the friend who fell and the voltage. “We were with him,” they say. “See, look at the marks on my hands.” Sure enough, there are burn marks across the fingers of one of the boys. The Truth is standing before me.
But they echo in my mind in a different voice. They are the words Jesus spoke to his doubting disciple Thomas.
“Put your finger here; see my hands… Stop doubting and believe.”
John 20:27
And there Hope was, standing before me, in a rising 9th grader, speaking words thousands of years old that he may never have heard or read.
Even in tragic death there is hope. The decision is less to cling to life than to cling to the Lord of life, who has conquered death and written a much greater story. CS Lewis writes it so beautifully at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia:
“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
What a glorious image. May it settle upon this family and this community and lead us forward.
Hidden Writing
0Displaced from my usual writing spot at my desk and even my special springtime spot on the front porch, I settled (grudgingly) onto a picnic table on the back porch. The writing surface is a bit grimy and uneven so I brought out some lovely place mats to smooth over my discomfort. No go.
When I write, I want my pen to flow completely unhindered over its surface. This is easy to do on the pages of my journal – college ruled composition book, the current one, yellow in color. But today’s writing was simply the recording of scripture verses as I looked them up. No original thoughts, ideas or insights. Heavens, these words were thousands of years old. I had read and transcribed them many times, but still, they deserved smooth.
So I placed my single printed page on top of my yellow journal, #35 of its kind by my count, and began again to write.
“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” I copied from my Bible onto this page. “A cheerful heart is good medicine,” I penned. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” I wrote.
Then…”The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” I shaped these words in purple fine point pen on the page and then stopped. Suddenly I became aware that each word I wrote on the single sheet was being transferred onto the face of the yellow journal underneath. Invisible to the eye, it was simply indentation. Words written on top and around and over, tangled, with no concern for alignment or periods or capital letters. Invisible, unless a great blank sheet were overlayed and the side of a pencil gently rubbed over. Then, all these words would be revealed.
Perhaps this is how the Word of God is written on us. Etched in divine penmanship. Then, when a new, pure white sheet it overlayed, the hand of life smoothly strokes us up and down. The Great Revealing Pencil uncovers what’s been hidden to all eyes but His. What He has spoken into existence is revealed.
“We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do,” I wrote, shaping the words onto this page, now aware they were being transferred invisibly to the one underneath.
If a child, perhaps my child, brought her paper and shading pen today and colored on my life, what would be revealed?
Stretch to Strengthen
412 years
No one really wants to be stretched. Especially, not when it goes beyond what feels comfortable. There’s a certain out of control feeling when someone is pulling me and I don’t have any say-so in the how-far-they-go-until-they-stop. If you have ever suffered an injury or undergone surgery and then rehabbed in physical therapy, you know what I’m describing. Pain of a healing sort.
But once you get your range of motion back, you get to start on the strengthening. There are lots of ways to do this. Machines. Dumbbells. Steps. But when you’ve served your sentence you get sent home, often with a lovely parting gift. A resistance band. This band is meant to be your home exercise companion. And it comes with a wonderful secret:
When you stretch it, it strengthens you. A kind of reverse mentality. A give and take sort of relationship, gentle, safe and responsive. It pulls back on you with the force you apply.
Recently, I have been engaged by the folks at Upper Room ministries to address the relationship between body and soul, a connection I find inseparable. I’m a bit unusual in this realm. Religious folk tend to start with the soul and add the body. I tend to start with body and somehow the soul always speaks up for me. I thought the resistance band would be an easy way to make this connection.
So, I designed a simple prayer routine using the band and the words to the praise song, Spirit of the Living God. My daughter Stephanie’s lovely voice accompanies me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mse98SpD1v4]
My movement is prayer. The words are prayer. The music is prayer. But it gets better. At the end of this prayer/exercise routine, as the music ended and I rested the band down, I discovered the most amazing thing. I could feel the muscles that had moved the band. The effort, the stretch, the exertion of prayer was still with me. I literally could feel the prayer.
Of course, I had to try it again. Now I was aware of the energy, the symbiosis, the connection of stretch and strengthen, relax and feel stronger. It became fluid, flowing, moving. One motion into the next. Body and soul, together. Who in the world would think of something so simple? I think I know.
My thanks to the folks at the Upper Room for honoring my idea (and unusual approach) and inviting me to join them at SOULfeast 2013.
Let me love You like she loved me
1One doesn’t just “get over” a love like Rosy. And I don’t mean the love I have for her. I mean the love she had for me. The way she looked at me, comforted me, wagged in greeting for me. Even when someone else was petting her, she would look around the room to see if I was there. I was hers and she was mine. She and I had an everlasting connection.
So, on the front porch this morning, God and I had a chat:
Me: I want to love You like Rosy loved me. With big eyes, filled completely with adoration. As if there was no one else in the room.
God: That’s the way I love you.
Me: Now I know how sad you feel, how much you grieve, when I leave your side and lose my way.
God: No, Wendy. Remember how you walked with Rosy in her maturity? She, wandering the wrong way to the wrong door or up the wrong drive? You didn’t scold her; you just turned her aright. There was never any doubt of the bond of love. You were privileged to be patient as she ambled along and resisted, confused on her way home. But you prodded and guided her. Just as I prod and guide you. You weren’t angry, just resolute. And amused.
In your maturity, Wendy, I guide you like that. I have given you Rosy-colored glasses to see the world through your golden love. Like you loved her, I love you.
You didn’t expect her to recover and bolt out to change the world. Just look up and come when you called her. And when she grew lame and hard of hearing, maybe just to wag when she saw you. And never take her eyes off you.
Wendy, look up when I call. When you see me, wag. Not your tongue, but your pen.
***
Me: Lord, give me a heart like Rosy’s.
Dear Rosy, I give you back to the Love from which you came
6Everybody does it. Taking a break is part of life. Perhaps part of the human condition.
- Baseball takes the all star break
- Football takes, um, halftime
- Basketball coaches take time outs
- Hockey, well, I think there is time off after the Stanley Cup
- Kids and their teachers take the summers off
- Employees get weekends
- Families take vacations
Time away is rest, relief, recovery. But getting started again, now that’s the hard part. Because time off changes you. Especially when the break is final.
On June 11th I said goodbye to Rosy, my sweet golden companion of 14 years. Exactly 14 years. June 11th was her birthday. We worked day and night to get her to that day. Tried everything we knew to keep her going. Then, on June 11th, 2013, she was perfect. All she came to earth for was completed. Now she is new, but she is not here.
Every now and then someone comes into your life that changes you. It may be a dog. Rosy was that dog. The question is, How do I begin again?
I’ve read an expression that helps.
Don’t be sorry they’re gone. Be thankful they lived.
Today, I begin again in light of that thanks. Rosy, you impossible, wonderful, miraculous soul, you were one of God’s best ideas and my dear, dear friend. The “clearance puppy” we didn’t return. The one with the spunk, unfazed by Ranger, the gigantic husky who was your adopted brother, and tolerant of Silver, the new brother who would become your constant companion. You never knew you were “handicapped” because we never told you. You just adapted your way through life, literally taking it all in stride, wagging and wobbling on the way.
Thank you for all you were to us. I am glad to picture you now, running happily in heavenly fields. Perhaps chasing (and retrieving) the ball that on earth you could never chase. An eternal game of catch. Playing with all the other heavenly souls. If I had any doubt about where I would find you, your brother Silver is making me believe. He is here on his bed, running and wagging and dog-mumbling (perhaps speaking in heavenly tongues?) in his sleep. He is obviously very glad to see someone. I bet it is you. Because it would be just like you, knowing he misses you, to come to him. Comforting others is how you lived and how you loved. A love like that never ends.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. ~ 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8
[youtube=http://youtu.be/YOwgvHM7jiA]
Farewell, dear Rosy. You lived well. You loved perfectly. And now I give you back to Love.