Bringing Faith to Life
Posts tagged Christian
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?
Getting it Straight from the Source
0We live in a world where new and improved is always better than old and decrepit. Of course. New has the benefit of advanced methods, complete research, and dedicated study applied liberally over all that has come before it. Old, well that was just a starting point. Those were the blocks we stood in to give us leverage when the race began.
One of the things that new has ushered in is statistical…accuracy. We can fact check, provide proof, cite our sources, justify our positions. We can qualify, and oh boy, can we quantify! We know exactly how many people would vote thus and so, believe this and that, trust him or her. We know. We are new and improved people. We are reasonable.
So, it’s a bit alarming to read in the morning paper that “Recent polls show that 29 percent of Americans and nearly 45 percent of Republicans say he (President Obama) is a Muslim.”
How do we say this? We tell a pollster who reports it, I guess. Do we know this when we say it? Have we asked Mr. Obama about his faith? Have we read deeply concerning his opinions, positions, actions and responses? This would seem reasonable before we say anything.
What we report in the media is, perhaps, what we believe to be true. Given what we think we know, this is what we conclude. Perhaps those numbers reflect what people believe about President Obama, but that doesn’t make it so. (The article actually goes on to debunk this belief.) Just because we think it, doesn’t make it so. Any more than thinking I am President makes that so.
If we think we can do make something true, right, happen, reasonable, or real, just because we think it, we are mistaken. That isn’t ours; that’s God’s. God thinking something actually does make it so. When we think something, we move in its direction, but we’d do well not to presume that our thinking it actuates it. That would presume we are God, which has very grave consequences, indeed.
Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal preacher that a friend has me reading, writes concerning what she calls the battle of the billboards. “Upon entering the Lincoln Tunnel you stare at a billboard showing a Nativity scene and the words ‘You know it’s a myth.’ When you come out of the tunnel you see a billboard with a Nativity scene and the words ‘You know it’s real.'”
She goes on, “The atheist billboard says, “This season, celebrate reason.” I revere reason as much as the atheists do—up to a point. But what faith knows is that although reason is a gift, it is not a god. Reason cannot explain everything. Certainly it cannot explain the purposes and promises of God.”
Our believing, remembering, repeating or tallying does not make something so. But setting our minds on the things of God may bring them nearer.
“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Phil 4:8)
When God remembers His mercy, He is not calling it again to mind. He is taking action on our behalf. As Rutledge puts it, “God’s mercy is not static. It goes forth from God as a promise already becoming a reality.”
We can pray to be like-minded. That’s as old and original as it gets.
Who’s Stealing Your Good Day?
09 years
“We must be prepared to have certain things done to us.”
Well, you don’t have to tell me that twice. Have you seen the way people drive around here? Cutting you off, swerving in and out of your lane, passing you on the right… And don’t get me started on the pushing and shoving at the mall. Christmas is coming, you know?
Oh, but the worst is that person who comes after you in the self check-out line and sends his purchases along the conveyor belt before you have packed your things up. And his stuff starts bump, bumping into your stuff. And you look up at said person, incredulous that he doesn’t notice what he’s doing, and he’s happily scanning away.
‘Put your bananas on the belt’…and so he does. Really? Can anyone be more annoying? But, it’s to be expected, right?
And for just such an occasion, Peter advises, “Do not return evil for evil or reviling for reviling; but, on the contrary, bless, for to this you have been called, that you may obtain (inherit) a blessing.” (I Peter 3:9)
Be prepared … so that what I do next does not disqualify me from the family inheritance. It’s not that I don’t have a right to be annoyed by self-checker, or drive-and-texter, or Humbug-hurrier, it’s that Love must look different from the rest of the world. On all these occasions.
Honestly, most Christians I know are generous. They volunteer their time, donate their money, serve the needy, feed the poor and hungry. Some even travel to far away places where poverty is great and resources are few to build churches and schools. These people are amazing.
But, I also know people who would not call themselves Christians but are exceedingly generous just the same. They donate their money. They volunteer time and resources. They give to the less fortunate and they may even travel long distances to do it. I am amazed by these people, perhaps even more amazed than I am by the Christians, because Christians have marching orders; these folks are just doing what’s right.
So what’s the difference, if good is getting done? Perhaps it is this very self checkout thing. Christ calls us to act differently from the world, especially when we are wronged. When we have something done to us, an injury or ailment befalls us, or we are the victim of unfairness or prejudice, we are prepared. We don’t return evil for evil.
But wait. No one in their right mind would just let that guy’s groceries barrel into hers without giving him a piece of her mind! I mean, he needs to know better so that he doesn’t do it to someone else. Or maybe I’ll teach him a lesson and put his granola bars into MY bag. Or casually smash the incoming eggs with my hefty orange juice. Ah, this could get ugly.
And that’s the thing. When we are unprepared, ugly wins. And I don’t mean his ugly: I mean my ugly. I can defeat that foe only when I recognize it before it’s unleashed and send it away. If I want to have a good day, I need to be prepared, for people and occasions like this.
Not just grin and bear it so it has a happy ending. Not just grit my teeth so I can “earn” that blessing I “deserve” because I showed amazing restraint. No, I can adopt a frame of mind that will address the problem calmly and satisfactorily, solely because I haven’t let ugly take it from me.
Hey – did you know that there is a plastic bar folded to the side of the conveyor belt that you can extend in order to separate your order from that guy’s behind you? Me neither, until, after grinning and gritting, I got so irritated I went to complain to the manager.
It’s not my job to teach that guy a lesson, but I don’t need to let him steal my good day today. Tomorrow, of course, is another day.
The Life of a Book
29 years
My paternal grandfather didn’t set out to be a writer. In fact, I’m told he wanted to be an opera singer. These aspirations took him traveling across Germany where he learned to speak the language fluently and, as it turns out, fell in love with the life and writings of Martin Luther. So much so that he translated many from the original German because he felt existing translations had missed the mark.
In his diligence and with study and devotion, John W. Rilling eventually became a Lutheran minister, pastor, and preacher. He also, as it turns out, became a writer. Today, I am privileged to have possession of a “first edition,” hard back copy entitled, “Have a Good Day”… Sermons by John W. Rilling. Inscribed on the inside cover:
“To John, my son,
Tolle Lege! Tolle lege!
Dum vivimus, vivamus!!
Dad
11/20/58″
I, not knowing the Latin which would have been the language of the Learned and the Church in Dr. Rilling’s day, happily used my modern day technology to attempt translation:
“To John, my son,” …. not, to my son John, which would have sounded trite and diminishing, but to John, my son, which echos a voice from heaven which speaks, this is my Son, whom I love, my only son. As my father was to his father.
“Tolle Lege! Tolle lege!”… Take up and read! Apparently from the account of Augustine’s conversion to Christ in his spiritual autobiography ‘Confessions’. My grandfather read widely. His home office and study was filled floor to ceiling with books of the great thinkers of the day and of history. These were his plea to his son, who did not take much to books but rather to fixing and tinkering, to go himself to Word and words and find the truth for himself.
“Dum vivimus, vivamus!!” … While we live, let us live. Don’t wait. Don’t waste a moment. Do it now!! Grandfather’s hand has corrected the spelling of the first “vivimus” which he originally wrote “vivamus, vivamus.” He edited himself, in pen, in inscription, because the proper tense was essential for understanding.
It is amazing what meaning travels down across generations. I am not sure my father, John F. Rilling, ever read this book, though it kept its place on a bookshelf spanning many moves, many jobs, many travels. It came to him 5 months after the birth of his first child, a son. And remained through life’s changes, including the last. My father died a year ago and his beloved wife saved the book for me.
Today, as I read it, sermon by sermon, it shows me who my grandfather was. I had an inkling but must confess I did not know him. The book literally speaks across generations. The phrasing and the storytelling, the meaning so subtle and profound, the message as true today as it was in the 1950’s when it was spoken to a dear congregation. It begs me to read it out loud. So powerful are its thoughts, I have to take a day or two between readings to digest what he’s written. Who knew the old could be made so new again?
Such is the power of words, carefully culled and selected, so they might be collected in a book to be published and shared. And signed. What a treasure. What a trust. What a miracle.
If today we communicate wirelessly by an internet we can’t see, is it so impossible that words may speak across generations and even, perhaps, across the veil?
My grandfather could not have known when he wrote them that I would ever read his words. They were published before I was born. Yet, they have landed on me and touched me deeply. Gone straight to the heart of another one who didn’t set out to be a writer, rather a thinker and a doer. But something in me kept nagging…you’ve got to write that book so others can know and do for themselves…you can write that book.
“While we live, let us live!
Scaring Away the Dark with my Glow in the Dark-ness
0
Not looking for monsters under my bed
or skeletons in my closet.
I’m looking around.
Trying to make my deposit.
Bring the light over here.
There’s darkness all around,
Being loud, Being bold,
Shouting down, I can’t be told.
No need to raise my voice,
The darkness nearest me
Is within whispering distance,
It can hear me,
It can see me.
Because I glow in the dark.
Not a flashlight,
Not a cell phone,
Not a glow stick,
Or a ghost.
I’m a natural phenomenon.
No need to flip my switch.
Not an app,
or a fossil fuel,
My power’s clean,
got a renewable source.
Tech can’t touch me,
Dark can’t quench me,
Solar powered,
I’m on course.
I can radiate
into any darkness,
any pain.
I’m not afraid.
Don’t want to clench it,
Don’t want to hold it,
Can’t outrun it,
It’s closing in.
I just wanna bring my glow,
into depths and canyons,
places dim
and dark
and cold.
With the sunrise, I’ll
fuel up again,
warmth and welcome
making me
bold.
I’ve got a Son-powered fuel source,
free for the asking,
the Man who deals it,
He’s my best friend.
It’s no secret,
No need to hide it,
I blend nicely
in the light of day.
Only when dusk comes,
and darkness moves on in,
When the monsters creep,
I come out, too,
Can’t quite believe it,
But hey, look and see!
My fingertips, they’re alight!
Not only that,
but so is the
rest of me!
Darkness hides its eyes,
Monsters shrink away,
Quivering, quaking,
fear overtaking.
Run away,
coward,
go.
Guardrails for the Christian Life
110 years
Early on, the life of faith looks beautiful in the distance, but very confining up close. So many rules. So many prohibitions. So many boundaries. But the guardrails prevent us from experiencing the consequences of the natural laws during our early learning.
But our persistence pays off. Maturity is unconcerned with guardrails, only the beauty in the distance. We have one who guards before and behind, to the right and to the left.
“I have come, not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” ~ Matthew 5:17
My Secret Identity is the Source of Your Power
0- Mild-mannered Clark Kent
- Newsboy Peter Parker
- Recluse Tony Stark
- Millionaire Bruce Wayne
- Scrawny recruit Steve Rogers
- Scientist David Banner
- Gentle Ben Grimm
We know them all, but we wouldn’t know any if it weren’t for their alter-ego. The Superhero they turn into when they put on the suit and strap on the mask (or take off the glasses, or burst the seams on their shirts; thank goodness not their pants). All of them are mild-mannered and unassuming in real life, but when they put on the mask…Super!
Funny that Marvel comics has us rooting for these masked heroes. I wonder if we would if we didn’t know they were real people like us. Mild, timid, reclusive, shy, scrawny, nerdy, temperamental. We are tempted to put on many masks in life, attempting to be who we aren’t, hiding from things we don’t want to see, pretending so other people won’t know the real us under there. What if we used our masks to put on our “hidden” identity instead?
People may mistake me for mild-mannered Soccer mom, but really I am Fit2Finish!! (cue music for takeoff) Crusader for stronger, faster, safer athletes! I am even getting a suit made (aka putting my logo on sportswear) so I have it for training. When I put it on I will know I am a Superhero, clothed by God in shades of blue and green. No one needs to know I am Soccer Mom, Wendy LeBolt, except me.
Let’s keep it a secret. Because no one believes in a Superhero unless they have a secret identity. Unmask him! is what their nemesis always wants. Because once their identity is known, the gig is up. Their power seeps out from the suit; in street clothes, they are nothing. It’s the duality – the Super together with the human underneath – that is powerful.
Whoa! How did she know that? Wow! How did she do that? Geez! Where did that come from?
I don’t have Superpowers, just Fit2Finish knowledge and experience. But if they believe in what I am doing they discover the power in themselves. That’s the secret.
The power is not really in the mask. Don’t tell.
Vocation, not vacation
0I’ve noticed that the world doesn’t take this week off. I mean, if you don’t pick up and travel to some location far away, life finds you. And it finds you doing what you do the other 51 weeks of the year. I’m not sure we know how to do rest anymore.
I was so looking forward to it – a week of Sundays with no demands. None of the regularly scheduled items. No deadlines. No meetings. No classes. No obligatory anything. All was left open. But that’s not enough. Because things wander in, and before you know it you’re more full with things to be done than you were when your appointment book reigned supreme. Unless we “take our rest,” we are restless, and the world’s ways have a very quick solution to that problem.
This week, known as Holy Week to those in the Christian faith, is the holiest week of the year. We are meant to set it aside, the culmination of a season of Lent which has prepared us for just this time. The week following Palm Sunday: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. What a package deal: 3 for the price of One, all on sale this week at a church near you!
That sounds just plain exhausting. Better to go on vacation to take our mind off it all. But this year, we haven’t. I’m here and I must decide what this week will be for me. For my faith. For my Lord. For my family, friends, community and world. Because that is why I am here.
What do I suffer so that someone else might be healed? It’s a simple question, with no simple answer. We all have to answer it for ourselves. The key for me is trusting that there is an answer. There is an intention behind what I’m meant to do, and it’s bigger – so much bigger – than me.
A friend just posted this on Facebook: 
A week of palindromes. The dates this week will be the same read backwards and forwards. Were you to list these numbers, there would be no way of telling whether your started at the beginning or the end. The last would be first and the first would be last, and we couldn’t tell which was which. Cool, huh?
Funny that this is true of Holy week. The week where the greatest reversal of all time is celebrated. The week that death itself was defeated and life eternal took its place. Impossible to grasp, really. Yet, what I keep finding (and hearing from others when they find) is that when God’s solution in a circumstance or a question or a hardship or a decision is made plain, it makes perfect sense. “Of course. I should have seen that all along!” It’s so simple.
So, I sit with my week that isn’t quite what I had planned, and the things set before me. Kids who are hurt, injured, recovering and the parents and coaches who long for them to be well. I see the hardship that desperately needs healing, and I am in awe that He would entrust these to me. But God, this week? It was supposed to be our quiet week, our Sabbath time, our rest. We were going to get to those old projects, really wrap up the manuscript, tidy up those articles I have been meaning to submit, and clean out those closets. It’s spring after all!!
Wait. There’s no quiet there. The spring break holiday is no respecter of pain and suffering; they get no vacation, no break, no respite until healing comes. Health care workers are on the job, even on holidays, even on weekends, even on Easter. Perhaps this week, above all weeks, is meant to be dedicated to making all things well.
Jesus didn’t take a week off. Especially not this one. How simple.
March Madness: only one team gets the trophy
411 years
by wlebolt
in Body, culture, current events, faith, In Action, Life, relationship, Sermon Response, Spirit, Sports
The orange team scores and the crowd explodes. The blue team answers back with a 3-point bucket and their fans jump to their feet. There is stomping and shouting, hugging and clapping. Frenzy in the fieldhouse! It’s madness; march madness. This is single elimination folks. Win, you move on. Lose, you go home. The NCAA championship trophy is on the line.
Next year, let’s change it up, why don’t we? Let’s just play a round robin? Go ahead and wear your uniforms so we know who’s who, but we’ll have the guy running the clock signal when it’s time for the next group to take the court, so everyone is sure to get equal playing time. At the buzzer we’ll shake hands and board the bus for another game in another city. Doesn’t matter who or where. At the end, let’s all just get together at the banquet and hand out the participation trophies. We’re all champions, after all.
Which one sounds like more fun to you?
I am ever amazed at the ability of sports to show us to ourselves. When nothing is on the line, it doesn’t matter. When something is on the line we discover the very best in ourselves. The key isn’t the winning; it’s the discovering. Which requires that there be only one prize. If we give one to everyone, it not only encourages some to coast without contributing, it devalues the prize.
The Christian life is exactly this: to play in such a way that you might win the prize. If we live as if everyone upon exit from this life is gonna be handed the Jesus trophy just for participating, we miss the point. We’re meant to live as if we mean it, as if everything is on the line.
Participation trophies are our response when ‘what if we don’t win?’ rings in our ears. But that’s fear speaking; not faith. Faith says, there is one prize and room enough for everyone to hold it high.
“Teamwork makes the dream work” … they say.