What Matters

I've been thinking a lot about distractions lately. It's hard to stay focused in a world determined to overwhelm you with minutiae and panic. How do we filter? How do we prioritize? How do we dig out from the avalanche of paper (junk mail, school papers, and virtual paper in the form of emails, spam, pop-ups)? How do we notice what is important amidst so much that is ridiculous, frivolous, banal, or downright harmful to our well-being? How do we hear the voice of God in the cacophony of modern life?

A few years ago, a family in our church dealt with just about the worst crisis imaginable: a baby with aggressive cancer. Little Lincoln fought for over a year. His family gratefully accepted help from our church family during most of that time, but occasionally, his mother would tell me, "We're circling the wagons."

That was code for "Back off. We need to focus on Lincoln now, on fighting to keep him alive. No distractions."

After a few weeks, Lincoln's mother would call, ready to accept our help again. I so admired her ability to ask for what she needed...whether it was privacy or help. She blessed our whole congregation by welcoming us into her family's need, and she protected her family by keeping us out when they needed to circle those wagons and let God do what only He could do for them.

Amazing grace is all that functions well in the midst of deeply troubled waters, and life-or-death crises have a way of focusing our attention rather dramatically on God.

For many of us, thankfully, the waters are not so troubled, yet somehow that makes it harder to figure out what really matters. We allow minor issues to blow into major squalls, but we fail to see that by tacking slightly to starboard or port, we have clear sailing. A minor adjustment of attitude is all it takes, a quiet prayer, a moment to listen and reflect and focus on what really matters.

Why do we find even small adjustments so difficult? How can we find guidance to make those adjustments that bless our lives with peace, purpose, and love...even in the midst of suffering?

Read scripture. Worship in community. Pray. Serve God in the world and allow others to serve you in His name.

Jesus taught us these things. If we do them, attentively and carefully, we can stay focused on what God wants us to do, how He wants us to serve. Of course we will slip and fail, but God's love and forgiveness are there to catch us each and every time. We just need to keep reaching for Him until it becomes our habit, until we consistently see what matters.

It takes a lifetime, but it's worth it.

Living Stones

We'll see if this works! I've never loaded a video to my blog before.

Our church is doing an Easter sermon series called Living Stones, and they asked me to participate in a video on what I want my children to learn, so I told a story of Jack's early education and how we learned that he was, indeed, learning the love, despite all the work that became a part of his life far too young.

I still can't believe that I made it through without crying.

Did you have a moment as a parent that helped you feel more confident that you were on the right track teaching your children? Please share!

A Brief Encounter (in Print) with Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

When thumbing through the May 2014 issue of Christianity Today, I encountered a paragraph that drew me in like the very best fisherman pulling in a fish. Ten minutes later, I knew I needed to read Marilyn Chandler McEntyre's book What's in a Phrase? Pausing Where Scripture Gives You Pause.

Let me share that paragraph from the interview with McEntyre:

Stories are not mere propositions. They invite ongoing interpretation. So much of the gospel is story material that you can keep revisiting and opening up in new ways. Instead of providing the closure of a rulebook, it invites you into a process and into a way, and you need to keep coming back and looking again. To ask, "What is this saying now? How am I being spoken to?"

I love this. Love. This.

McEntyre's approach certainly resonates with that wonder-filled call to a deep, personal relationship with Scripture as part of our much larger, ongoing relationship with God. We all know people (and may be those people on occasion) who tote out a Bible verse as an absolute rule intended to end discussion, to shut down thought, to close an issue. McEntyre's interview in CT offers up a rich alternative discourse, one that is, in her words, "faithful to the way the Spirit works."

I found myself nodding as I read the entire article in CT, and I've ordered What's in a Phrase? I'll review it when I'm finished, but in the meantime, I invite those of you who have read her work to share your reflections on McEntyre's writing and her approach to Scripture. She's the author of a number of books and an English professor at Westmont College. Please share what you think of the paragraph above, specifically, and of her writing in general. I'd love to hear what you have to say!



Personal Reflection: Do you read Scripture like a rulebook or for a relationship?

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Easter Reflections

Last Sunday, we celebrated Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, palm leaves waving and children shouting hosanna. Yesterday, we celebrated Maundy Thursday, which honors the Last Supper and Jesus' new commandment to love one another as He has loved us.

Today, we stand at the foot of the cross as Jesus dies, and we call it Good Friday.

For non-Christians and a lot of Christians, too, this is one of the hardest ideas to wrap our brains around. God limited Himself to human form and allowed Himself to die horribly on the cross to excuse our sins? Really?

Sounds a little masochistic of God, don't you think?

But let's look at it another way. Holy Week teaches us the story of God's sacrificial love for us. For millennia, people believed that gods wanted their followers to offer sacrifices...firstborn children, firstborn livestock, whatever. Blood was almost always involved, so our God worked with that and began leading us to His Kingdom ways. Our God gave Abraham a ram to sacrifice instead of his son and made utterly clear through the prophets that human sacrifice was displeasing to Him.

Then, our God offered Himself made flesh as sacrifice, showing us that nothing we can do, nothing we can kill, nothing we can give, is ever sufficient. Only He is sufficient...and He loves us, wants us to participate in His Kingdom, wants us to be with Him eternally, wants to forgive us our weaknesses, wants to reward us all with feasts and the best cloak...as the prodigal son was rewarded. As Jesus dies on the cross, God tears the temple curtain and opens up the holiest of holies for all who choose to come. He ends the need for altar sacrifice, and instead He invites us to learn from Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, at the foot of that cross.

Jesus came to teach us how to live and love and die in the world to bring God's Kingdom into being here and now. Not just after death, although we certainly hope to be with God then. Easter teaches us that God wants us to do as Jesus did: to spread His love in a broken world, to let our lamp shine right now to show His glory even in the darkest moments of life, in the darkest places of injustice and horror.

The forces of darkness do not like the light of love and mercy and hope. That sight of Jesus on the cross, dying in pain, reminds us that God came down to be one of us, that God understands our suffering and our pain in real and direct ways, and that He is always with us, always turning even the most awful torture to His final, Kingdom good.

It is our task to be the Marys and Johns and Peters and Thomases and Pauls who continue to spread that light of love and mercy in the world even when darkness threatens to overwhelm us.

Our hope is in the cross. Our hope is in Jesus. Because no matter how awful and terrible the darkness is right now, after death, He arose. He won. And He invites us to be part of His victory now and forever.

Thanks be to God!

Reflections on Proverbs: I Am Too Stupid

Today's verses come from Chapter 30 of Proverbs, which taken as a whole focuses on the need for humility.

Surely I am too stupid to be a man.
  I have not the understanding of a man.
I have not learned wisdom,
  nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Prov. 30:2-3

I often wonder about the certainty with which believers assert their beliefs in terms of faith practice and judgment. Some people, for instance, fervently believe that homosexuality is a sin so despised by God that they will lash out in hate to inflict pain on innocent bystanders to make their point. Others believe that it's perfectly Godly to call in bomb threats to the mosque being built in their community. These people quote Scripture to justify their actions. They think God is on their side, that they are on God's side.

When is hate ever an act of wisdom? "Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do."

Over and over again, Proverbs teaches that wisdom comes from trusting God, from walking humbly in His ways, from being honest, faithful, and good, from sowing seeds of peace and harmony among family, friends, and neighbors. Think of the lesson of Ruth, who humbly trusted God by maintaining bonds of family, and came through hard times to a place of honor in the lineage of Jesus.

But we fail often, don't we? We think we know the mind of God and act out in certainty with anger or hate when we should be humble, leave justice and judgment to God, and share His love for us with the world boldly and faithfully. We are like the speaker in Chapter 30...we have not learned wisdom...or knowledge of the Holy One.

May God open our hearts with His eternal and unchanging love so that we are filled with that love to overflowing, and wisely share that love abundantly with the world.


How do you fail to be humble and wise? Do you give vent to hate or anger and seek to justify those feelings by invoking God? How can you move from stupidity to wisdom, and embrace being a beloved child of an infinitely loving Father?

That Long Groove

As soon as I saw this on Pinterest, I nodded and thought, "Yeah. That's me." How about you?

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