Worth Shouting About (Director's Cut)

Every Friday I post to the Scio Journal, Scio Community Church's endevor to read the gospel together and share it in community. 

This is an extended version of that devotional.  To see the version that conforms better to their format, hit the Scio Journal link above.

Bible Reading: Leviticus 8-10

Scripture

Then Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them.  And having sacrificed the sin offering, the burnt offering and the fellowship offering, he stepped down.  Moses and Aaron then went into the tent of meeting.  When they came out, they blessed the people; and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.  Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar.  And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown.  (Leviticus 9:22-24)

Observation

Why do we need sacrifices?

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to getting to this particular part of scripture for my contribution to the Scio Journal.  Mostly because I never really understood the animal sacrifice thing.  So, instead of blasting through the reading of it like I have in the past, I spent more serious attention into figuring out the WHY of it all since the nitty-gritty gory parts made me flinch.  If I actually looked at it full on, let my imagination sink into it and see what they were doing, I got squeamish.  I inevitably would emotionally shut down from going further because of my own personal reaction to what I was reading.  In doing this study, and it being my turn to give you something to think about, I didn’t have this luxury.  So I opened a new document, formatted it and fretted over what in the world I was going to say.

I understood the basics of what it was all about, that Sin has a price to pay.  The currency is blood, and not just a donation – but all of it.  The bible says that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  It’s one thing to see that on an intellectual level and quite another to see that penalty acted out, bloody to the elbows, splattered with it, splashing it on an alter and cutting out sections of the body – splitting it apart for the purpose of making a point. 

Because God told Moses exactly what he and Aaron and the tribe of Levi were to do in exact detail, this means it’s important.  Clearly, it’s a very big deal to God.  It should be a big deal to me too!  But because of the time and culture I live in, I just really didn’t get it.  And it made me uncomfortable to look at. What was once okay to read and accept on faith, even if I didn’t really understand it, isn’t enough anymore, it’s time to dig deeper and find out what it means.

So I hit the books and tried to figure it out.  What follows is what I’ve learned.

First, I’m going to put it into context.  God was temporarily moving out of heaven and living among his people.  To understand on a gut level what this means, you have to be aware of the differences between Holy and Common.  I found a 15 page PDF file online that broke it down nicely for me.  It’s from a book called Journal of Translation and this section is called Translating the Levitical Sacrifices.  Much of what I am going to tell you is my attempt at note-taking and condensing what I have learned from this site.  In fact, the following bullet list is a copy / paste from there.  I want to share with you because it clearly sets up the framework that everything else rests upon.

• Everything that is not holy is common.

• Common things divide into two groups, the clean and the unclean.

• Cleanness is an intermediate state between holiness and uncleanness.

• Cleanness is the usual intermediate state of most persons and things. (This implies that what is holy is set apart as somehow special.)

• Clean things become holy when they are sanctified, but unclean objects cannot be sanctified.

• Clean things can be made unclean by being polluted.

• Holy items may be profaned and become common. They may even be polluted and made unclean.

• The unclean and the holy are states that must never come into contact with each other. If an unclean person eats part of a sacrificial animal, which is holy food, he will be cut off from his people (Lev. 7:20–21).

• Most importantly, sin and impurity cause profanation and pollution, while the offering of sacrifices reverses the process and brings about cleansing and sanctification.

In order for us to be able to be with God, who is Holy, we (who are common and unclean) must first be clean.  So we have three categories that God places us within: Unclean, Clean and Holy.   This categorization of things reflects in everything God does.  The Temple for example, has outer and inner courts, and then an inner chamber called the Holy of Holies, where only sanctified high priests could enter.  It was this division of states that makes it impossible for us to get to Heaven on our own, and the reason God made a way possible and he did it through these 5 types of sacrifices.

Thankfully, we are not stuck in the state that we are born into, but rather, we have the ability to move between these states fluidly.  Things that are unclean can be made clean, and those clean things can also be made holy.  The opposite is true as well, it is possible for holy things and people to be polluted and corrupted, becoming profane. 

So, what is it about a sacrifice that makes us clean?

It’s in the blood.  There is life in the blood.  Leviticus 17:11 explains it by saying that “For the life of an animal is in the blood.  I have provided the blood for you to make atonement for your lives on the Altar; it is the blood, the life, that makes atonement.”  As a side note here, in all of the references in scripture where lifeblood is mentioned, it’s meaning is “life given up in death” so it’s all of the blood, not just a token.

In Genesis Chapter 9 it says “Whoever shed’s man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

Leviticus 1-7 talks about the 5 Major sacrifices and their purpose.  Those being:

Burnt Offerings: The death of the animal is a substitution for the death of the sinner who has laid their hands on the animal and transferred their sin upon it.  It is a ransom paid for penalty of sin.  The whole animal is burnt up and given to God alone.  It is the most holy of sacrifices.  This burnt offering gives a smell that God finds soothing and acceptable.  I can’t explain how a smell can do that for God, I only know that when we are living obediently, and agreeing with Him on what sin is, and choosing to live in a way that pleases Him, it makes Him happy. 

Grain Offerings: This tribute of thanksgiving is recognition that the one whom you are giving it to is superior to yourself.  Grain offerings were bounty from the land, Gods provision, and care for us.  Giving grain offerings to Him were much like we use the tithe for today I think; A recognition that he supplied it, and we return it to him on order for our hearts to always be reminded of who it came from in the first place.

Peace Offerings: This is an offering for feasts and fellowship that included a portion for God, a portion for the priests and the rest for the family.  God himself shared in this offering as a way of joining us at the table; because He desires fellowship with us, but even this, more casual type of offering, was drained of the blood first and it was splashed on the alter.  This was a subtle reminder that this fellowship was a holy thing, something that by doing – you were cleaner and purer for the observance of it. 

Purification Offerings: These sacrifices were for ritualizing the decontaminating process.  The reality is that we live in a corporeal world that has disease, pestilence, and bacteria.  These offerings were Gods way of communicating to us the importance of keeping the holy and common things separate, so that we aren’t polluting the clean things with the unclean things.  The people of that time, didn’t understand germs, ritualizing the washing of things (and adding this sacrifice to ensure it) demonstrated physically what sin does spiritually. 

Guilt Offerings:  There are many different views on what this one means.  The thread that holds all those views together though is this (copy / paste from the link mentioned):

“When an offender feels guilt concerning some desecration and if the offense is known, he is to make full  compensation or reparation to all offended parties, putting them back in the same position as before plus a twenty percent additional penalty.  Besides this compensation, he is to present a reparation offering to Yahweh, the purpose of which is that the priest will make atonement for him and he will be forgiven (Lev.5:16, 18; 6:7)”

In this way, God made it possible for his people to approach Him.  This was only through the office of the priests who stood as the intermediary between God and the people. 

Application

So, what can I take away from this? 

We are no longer living in Old Testament times when we needed sacrifices to be able to approach God.  Today, we can approach God without the office of the priest, because Christ became our High Priest. 

Hebrews 10:19 – 23 says “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”

That is worth shouting about, don't you think?

Prayer

Thank you for your faithfulness to me, I am so grateful that that you didn’t leave me to myself, but had a plan worked out from the very beginning to preserve a way for me to be able to approach you and enter into your presence.  Through time, through the generational sin that’s passed through my family line, you still found a way to reconcile me to your side.  I will never fully understand the sacrifice you made in sending your son to be the atonement for me.  I pray though, Lord, that I never take that sacrifice you made for granted.  I shout for joy and fall face down.

Amen.  

Play on Words: Why I Tell Stories

I have been involved with writing church plays and directing, acting and producing them for a while.  The energy and feedback you get from an audience is not only a thrill -- but as a writer, it serves to help you hone the skills it takes to write to your target audience. 

So as with all productions, it begins with a word.

That word leads to another, stringing together thoughts, motivations, overcoming conflicts, resolving in such a way that our emotions have ridden along and find satisfaction in the telling.

It is such a kick when you get an idea you want to communicate ... then you convince others that your wacky plan will work.  They listen and your enthusiasm ignites their commitment to play along. 

You begin the producing the play: establishing your contacts with people who will provide the costuming,  props, scenery and the stage light rental company (who will charge you an amount you swear you will never ever pay again).

Rehearsals have begun now: You are blocking the action in your head long before the actors show up, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the actors.  Who will need some direction from the side?  How to get this or that or thought communicated through action rather than the words you pained over.

Then it happens: That wonderful intoxicating feeling when the thought you had, and written down on paper has taken root in the actor’s minds.  The thoughts grow and bloom as the characters bring something of their own and somehow the synergy of the two is transformed into being more than just a thought, now it’s witnessed, believed, and acted out, making it better than when it was simply two dimensionally typed on a page, for now it breathes. 

Dress rehearsal: the magic has ripened and the fruit of your imagination hangs in the air. 

Opening night: Will they get it?  Will they laugh in the right spots?  Will you move them to tears?

The lights go down: the butterflies in your belly are air born as you fly from one worry and care to each actor and back again to the audience. 

The first line is spoken: no stumble.  The fruit is plucked one by one as the audience laughs, sighs, smirks and cries... They have received it!

The miracle continues: they take your play to the very first person who asks them... "So, what was the play about?"  Then out of the fertile soil of the theater of their mind, they pull one glittering and shiny seed  and from that, your words live yet again. 

Pollination occurs: as the telling of your idea sparks one of their own.  They take that inspiration and it transmutes in expression throough the individuality of another who is made in Gods image.

That is why I write plays that carry Christian themes.  I have seen someone who would never go to a normal Church service, view God from another light.  I have seen lives changed and relationships healed, because one truth that would not be heard if told straight ...was heard through the ears of a character they related with.

I believe that this why Jesus told stories to us too.  We are built for stories.  They unify us and give us a larger story to tell, to be part of.  Words, hold the framework for ideas.  The truths that are told in story, take root in our own souls and then that same wonderful thing happens in side of us and: The Holy Spirit breathes.

Why would the creator God give us this ability, too?  I believe it was so that we would get it, so that the transformation inside of us would happen and we would understand the power and potential in His words; so that we would recognize Him when He came, after all, he created the world with a word.

Because in the beginning… was The Word.

Dwelling Place

See this post also at the Scio Journal

Bible Reading: Exodus 25-28

Scripture

 The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from each man whose heart prompts him to give. These are the offerings you are to receive from them: gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows; acacia wood; olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breast piece. “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.  (Exodus 25:1-9)

Observation

God told the Israelites to bring all the supplies to create the ark, temple, alter and vestments.  Then he gave them plans to create each article in exact detail, right down to the underwear that the priests were to wear!  All of those items were to be symbols that represented His coming son, His throne, and heaven.  The only other time I immediately recall God giving architectural plans to man was when he instructed Noah to build the other ark, the one for human kind to survive the coming flood.

He said “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.” 

And so they did …and so He did. 

Application

I am reminded of all the times, places in time and history that God has breached the void, and reached down to us.  In the garden, he walked with us.  In the desert, he led us with fire and smoke.  In the passage we are reading this week, he dwelt in a tent, making his home with us there.  Later in scripture, he spoke to us through prophets.  He made a cameo appearance to Ezekiel (in 1:4-5, 26-28) who recorded it.  Then two thousand years ago he sent his son, he became flesh, and through that sacrifice he made it possible for the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts.  (Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 10:16)

All through history, God has been working to find ways to show us who He is, what heaven is like, and reached out to us through our sin.  He left us clues through symbols and rituals, alters and tabernacles, and arks filled with the manna from heaven to point to Jesus who would be the bread of life, so that we would come to know Him, so that we would recognize Him when we saw Him.

Prayer

Lord, you said in those verses in Jeremiah and Hebrews that you would put your laws in our heart and write them in our minds; that our sins and lawless acts you would remember no more. 

The specifications for the construction of this place that you would dwell inside us, you made simple; that we love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Please examine me, Lord.  See if there be any wickedness in me.  Forgive me and clean me, make me a proper dwelling place for you to live.  Give me the courage to look in the dark corners of my heart, I confess my sin and beg the forgiveness that you bring when I repent (1^st John 1:9).

Amen.

Doctor Consultation for Scoliosis Surgery

Taken while ice skating 1/12

Thursday last week we had the office visit with the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Michelle Caird.  We came into the interview armed with a stack of questions that were answered and it helped to settle us a bit.  Bill was amazing.  He ran that part of the interview and was able to keep his head clear and take notes. My ears were ringing from the blood pressure spike and adrenaline in my system - making my head buzz.  It's really going to happen.  It turns out that we have mutual friends, and seeing her react warmly to the mention of it, put me more at ease than the answers to the questions did.  It shouldn't surprise me I guess, but that was an excellent example of how differently Bill and I are wired.  He needed the facts, I needed the relationship in order to feel comfortable with the procedure.  Don't get me wrong.  Knowing what was going to be going on is vital to me too, I just have a hard time thinking and being logical when my heart is racing.

There were some very important questions we had to ask.  Bill had a print-out two pages long about infection rates, if Jess needed to donate blood ahead of time, what kind of metal they were going to use, if there would be interns helping her (it's a teaching hospital) and what role they'd be playing, etc.  Those were the big ones to me, but there were lots more.

During the course of the visit, we told Dr. Caird about the thorasic spasms that she's been having along her shoulders (twitches that pull her arms back in a way that reminds me of a baby's startle reflex).  We'd attributed it to the scoliosis since the apex of her largest curve is there between her shoulders.  But Dr. Caird doesn't think it's related, and is sending us to see a neurologist before we make the date of the surgery in order to track down the cause of that.  They are supposed to call today to set that appointment. 

Before we left she sent us to radiology for xrays where they had Jess bend in many different positions so that they could assess how flexible she is, this being the tool to determine the size rods they'll use, and exactly where they'll place them.  Depending on how steep the lower curve is, they don't always straighten a patient completely, not wanting to put them on a tilt or off balance.

As far as dates for the surgery, we are looking for a "sweet spot" after mid-term tests and before spring break for making the date of the scoliosis surgery.  This way, she'll have at least one week in there that she's not falling behind on school work during recovery.

The best part of it, is that Jess seems more engaged - participating in what's going on and not emotionally running from it like she had in the past.  She only stuck her fingers in her ears once, when we were talking about the nitty-gritty gory part.  It seems to me that her desire for the surgery might stem from wanting the endless PT and chiropractic visits to finally stop.  Even though there will be large amounts of pain.  She keeps telling us that she has a high pain tolerance, and speaking as the one who used to spank her bottom, I'd have to agree.  But this will test and try her on levels she didn't even know existed before, and while I don't want her taken by surprise with it, I also don't want her fear of pain to keep her from doing what will be best for her. 

This leads us into logistics for what to do with arrangements in the house while Jess and I are in the hospital for a week, and then she is in intensive recovery for the next three.  We are thinking of putting her bed down on the main floor until she's recovered.  She won't get the best sleep while everyone is a wake and down here with her (though the drugs she's going to be on might not make that a big deal) but over the course of her recovery she won't be left alone in her room this way either.  Also, it might mean that Kim needs to get her license sooner rather than later, because I won't be able to pick her up while I'm in the hospital and she can't get home on the city bus (doesn't go far enough west to get her home). 

It's good though, thinking about all the logistics involved with getting her home and the long recovery pulls me out of freak out mode and into planning and coordinating mode.  That's good - right?  (At least until the day she's going into surgery, then I'll quietly freak out again in the corner.)

On to other news.  Lyss is now registered as a freshman at EMU and goes in for her orientation on March 20th.  Depending on when the date of the surgery is, I might need to find someone to sit with Jess while I go with Lyss for her orientation, I think she needs a parent with her and this is right in the middle of Busy Season for Bill, making him unavailable (possibly).

This is a pic from the web of what ours looks like.

Oh!  And our washing machine broke.  *blink blink*  You know in the grand scheme of things, when you stack it up next to the bigger problems, a broken washing machine seems like not such a big deal.  La!  The repair guy is supposed to come today to either fix it, or pronounce it dead.  I have a friend from church I'm taking to her doctor visits today so I'm hope full that I will be home when he comes, but it might be delayed.  With all the balls to juggle in the air, it's good to remember that some of them bounce.

So, that's the update.  Some of you have called or written to ask how the consultation went, because you were praying (thank you) and so you already got this replay of events.  For those of you who have been praying and waiting, thank you for engaging with the Holy Spirit on our behalf.

*side note*  The repair man just called while I was writing this post to set the appointment for coming to look at the washing machine today, and it turns out that I will be able to see them in the afternoon, when all the Dr. visits for my friend is over and after I've picked up Kim from school.  Nice.

My Favorite Ballad Play List

Want to join me on an audio journey?  The following is a play list of YouTube videos highlighting some of my favorite artists.  I'm in a kind of mellow mood, so most of these are ballads. 

Susan Ashton, No One Knows My Heart,

Kathy Triccoli, Go Light Your Candle, Stubborn Love

Charlie Peacock, Dear Friend, Almost Threw It All Away

Margaret Becker, You Remain Unchanged, Look Me In The Eye

Rich Mullins, If I stand,

Michael W. Smith, Friends, Secret Ambition

4 Him, For Future Generations, Measure of a Man

Phillips Craig and Dean, Mercy Came Running

Twila Paris, Faithful Friend, Warrior is a Child

Steven Curtis Chapman, Cinderella, Dive

Pep Talk To Myself

Yesterday I made a consultation appointment with an orthopedic surgeon.  Jessica is going to have scoliosis surgery to have rods put in her back.  This consultation is to interview her and ask her questions.  If that goes well and we are comfortable with the answers she provides, then we will likely set the date for the operation. 

I opened the blog to talk about it, but now that I have, I feel pretty numb and the words aren't there.  I can't even explain why this has been so hard for me, and it's not even me who will have the surgery!  I've been so set on doing everything I could to keep her from having to have surgery, a last resort sort of thing, and then now here it is ...and it's scary.

To top it off, I feel selfish - wrong -  that I am the one wigging out.  *sigh*

So, I will give myself permission to wig for now.  I have a few more days to pull it together.  Then I have to be able to put the emotions aside, the ones that paralyze me and keep me from thinking.  Jess is going to take her cues from us.  She needs us to be strong and confident.  I don't think I can fake it though.  I don't think I can be terrified on the inside and pretend on the outside. 

So.   Yeah.

I'll wig out on the inside for a little while, and then?  Then I'll lean really heavy on the Lord.  I'll trust Him to have control of all the things that I don't.  I won't let myself obsess over the complications that can happen.  I won't let those fears stop me from doing the right thing for her.

Okay, talking about it helps.  It helps for the feeling part.  Putting words to it, is sort of like poking a hole in the balloon of it. 

The thing is, even if I feel... wiggy, trust is more about what I do and not about how I feel.  The feelings are good for identifying what's going on inside me, but I can't let them define my actions.  So the pep talk you just heard me give myself has a purpose in reminding me that my faith, my trust in God, is not based in my feelings. This gives me hope in place of the feelings.  Hope that's not dependant on my ability to sustain it, because that hope is in God, not my own strength.

Apparently, I needed the reminder. 

Anyway, pray for us? 

He Does What He Pleases

Our church is corporately going through the bible in a year using this bible reading plan. To enrich the experience, we are opening up the conversation to any who want to join in via the Internet.   This week we've been discussing the life of Job.

Here is a link to my contribution, He Does What He Pleases, at the Scio Journal. 

Month of Letters Challenge

A friend of mine, Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge for all who would like to participate called The Month of Letters Challenge.  The idea?  Send 24 letters in the month of February.  Write everyone back who writes to you.  Anything you send through the mail that isn't business or bill related counts.  You can even send post cards.  Here is a link to her blog post that explains it better.

Does this sound fun to you?  Do you want to get something in the mail besides bills?  Christmas is fun because of the cards you get, but lets be honest, precious few of them are really intended with just you in mind. 

If you would like to participate in the February challenge pass Mary's link on to a friend.  If you would like to participate with me personally, reply as a comment to this post.

Walls



My family is going through a hard time.  Financial stress, scary scoliosis surgeries, business, the daily choice-making that comes with being a grown up.

It's easy to be philosophical about the hardships in life when you aren't going through them.  Or when people are distant enough from you that they can't peek into your life to identify them, then you can go on pretending that you have it all together.

It's easy to give platitudes about how God builds patience in us by letting us go through trials, but when you are the one who is going through the trial it's cold comfort.

When you hit that wall where your philosophy and your intellectual agreements run out of words and you're at the end of your own resources... what do you do?

Most of us really just want to be comfortable again.  We want the hard time to stop, the pain to go away, the tax refund to come, healing from sickness.  We want deliverance from death, deliverance from pain, deliverance from all our discomforts.

It's humanly very hard to reconcile a God who cares about me intimately, loves me passionately and sacrificially with the one who really is seemingly more interested in the state of my spirit than he is with my body or my circumstances.  We fall into the "if He loves me he'll take care of me" mode of thinking that equates good things with His favor.

I want to look at that a moment, I'll get back to my original train of thought, but follow me down this bunny trail a while.  When we want to train a dog we do it with reward and punishment.  When we want to train our children we do the same thing.  It's how we were raised and it's how the world works. 

The thing is, while God uses an element of that, call it a function by design, He then calls us to rise above our worldly training and into something different, something we can't see with our eyes, hold in our hands or prove beyond our own personal experience.  Something that requires a faith in the things that make no worldly sense and force us to rely completely on Him.

And that is the purpose of our trials and discomforts.  To shake us from our worldly training of believing what we see, trusting only in what we can touch or store and having faith in ourselves.  Because we think we can control it that way.

I'm going through the bible in a year.  This week I'm reading about Job.  He didn't earn or deserve the rotten things unleashed on him.  He was the apparent victim of God's approving attention.  God was bragging on him to Satan, and Satan set out to use Job as a failure in order to hurt God.  Job's friends came along and did the very same thing we want for ourselves, someone or something to be responsible for our pain.  Something we can point to in a balance sheet to explain or justify our loss, an explanation to the discomfort.

His friends sat with him for a while saying nothing... just entering into that painful space of empathy, grieving with him.  But they couldn't sustain it.  It had to have gotten them thinking about their own lives, or how they would respond if such devastation had happened to them.  And they each gave advice according to their natures.  

Let's come back to what I was saying before, the trap we all fall into: "If God loves me he will take care of me".  What does it do to our faith, our trust in Him, when the terrible things happen?  What if they continue to happen for a very long time?  What do we do when we come to the end of our own resources and there is nothing left in the bank and we can't keep up with the payments?  When it's time to have that scary surgery? 

Take a break from my words for a moment.  Think on it.  Answer the question for yourself, out loud to God. You have your own situation or circumstance that is represented by your own messy life.  Insert that Tough Thing you can't get over, under around or through.  What then?

The platitudes don't help do they?  They sound distant and make you feel like you are separated from everyone else who is singing the praises of a personal God who cares about them and attributes His love to their well-being as though they are special and God loves them more than he loves you.

That, my friend, is a lonely place to sit.  You wonder what you did wrong, and it erodes the foundation of your faith so that you don't trust your full weight to the God who might let you fall.  After all, He let Jesus be crucified, Paul be stoned, and Job lost everything but his life so that he could be around to endure the agony of it.  We give his wife a hard time for telling him to curse God and die, but she loved Job more than any other and endured the losses along side him.  The Psalms are full of verses lamenting the messiness of life and not wanting to live through the agony of it.  (My personal favorite is Psalm 13.)  She, like us, just wanted the agony to stop.  Where do you think her faith was?  Not so far distant from where mine is most days. 

Is that where you are today?  Have you come to the end of your own resources?  Do you long for the agony to stop?  Do you wonder how long you will have to endure it? 

The platitudes seem so distant, they can't reach inside the pain to where the hurt is.  The anger that we hold, the belief that someone is responsible for what we are going through or worse, the belief that God COULD have saved us from this - and just chose not to, makes us hard inside.  Firms our resolve not to trust anyone else, especially a God who doesn't come through for us.

Did you catch that?  Did you see past the feelings of disappointment and hurt in that statement to the revelation on where trust is seated?  Has He not come through for you?  Do you pray to God to fulfill your own agenda, your will? 

Which one of us is God?

This is why we are not exempt from hard times as a Christian.  Because those hard times reveal where our foundations are, what we really want and what we are really trusting in. 

It's a mistake to think that once we are saved our world view changes over night.  It doesn't.  It's revealed in these hard, and lonely places of our lives where we get stuck.  The changes in our world view happen when we release our own agendas and desires of our heart, and cling instead to the things we can't see or touch.  Read the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7 to understand the differences between the way God sees things working and the way the world does.

Today, I am looking at my own life.  The hard places I sit at, wishing it were different.  Can I endure?  Will I let these hard times, these hard places reveal the fractures in my thinking, the head games I've played with myself to justify my own desires and agendas?

I'm not good at it.  I fail all the time.  I sit long at those walls, crying because I am once again focused on blame, fault, worry and the oft repeated question... "Why?"

Lord please give me the courage to endure.   Help me to cling to you, who you really are and not what I think you will do for me.  Thank you, Lord, for not leaving me there at the wall.

 

Soul Mining

I spent some quality time in the car with my daughter, Jessica, yesterday.  We were talking about poetry, how for both of us we use it to articulate things we feel, not really conforming it to rhyme or structure, but to wrap our heads around a thing that we want to say out loud.  I call that process Soul Mining.

I journal.  It's a prose version of what I use poetry for.  I need to process things that happen, things I think, and sometimes the things I want to say, sort of as a dry run.  I've been journaling since I was 13 years old.  I still have all the old spiral notebooks and once upon a time I would have rushed in after them in a fire.  They contained the record of me, of my journey.

I even tried to convert them into a digital version by retyping them into a log of sorts.  (This way in case of a fire it would all be backed up!)  I got a few journals into this project and stopped.  Why?  Because I wanted to reach back in time and shake myself!  It had the same sort of feeling you might have when you are watching a horror movie, tossing popcorn at the screen telling the girl not to go looking in the dark basement in her skimpy PJ's! 

Yeah... so why would I want to save them from a fire if they were full of all my stupid mistakes?  Because this is where I learned from those mistakes.  It's the before and after snapshot of all the things I learned. 

That's what journals are good for. 

Everyone has their own way of doing it.  For me, it goes like this: the first several pages are full of high emotion.  I'll describe the situation I'm going through, how I feel about it, what other people have said, what I fear, what I hope, my hurts and disappointments... all of it.  Most often it's done with tear stains, scribbled out parts, underlining, doodles while I collect my thoughts, whatever is inside my head gets dumped onto the page.  Sometimes I'll take a break there, give myself time to shake off the last of the strong emotion and I'll grab my bible. 

When I come back to it, I'll reread what I've written.  If I'm lucky I'll recognize where I am just being over the top with the feelings, because I've given myself permission to blow.  Some of them aren't based in fact, but previous things that make me feel now like I did then.  When I pick up the threads of those feelings and trace them back I can see if they really belong to me or not.  (Raise your hand if you've ever carried around guilt for someone else's actions or inaction.)  If not, then I ask the Lord to help me unknot them and let them go, they belong to someone else.  Sometimes those feelings I've traced back from the past are because of harm I've done while hurt or angry, and I need to ask those I've wronged for forgiveness so that I can untie the knots and let them go too.

Sometimes those threads I've identified are tied to current issues, relationships and sins that need to be dealt with now.  The process is the same for now as it is for stuff from the past:  Submitting it to the Lord.

If I can trace those issues to actionable items, I build a plan for dealing with it.  Most often it means I am asking for or granting forgiveness.  Sometimes it means that I am giving other people grace for not living up to my expectations.  But in both cases, it involves the work of the Holy Spirit.  My journal is also a record of prayer, asking God to change me, to help me see the world through His eyes. 

Because I screw it up so bad when left to myself. 

Without His grace and mercy, I get caught up in getting justice and my perceived understanding of fairness.  Without the Holy Spirit's intervention into my journal/prayer-life, my entries look like laundry lists of anger and a record-keeping of wrongs and offenses done to me so that I can justify my own bad behavior.

With the work of the Holy Spirit, then I see those wrongs from a totally different perspective than my own.  When I can let go of the feelings that tie me to the moment, I can look at the big picture or behind the actions to the why of a thing. 

It doesn't always change the circumstances, but it changes me.  Those focused prayers, when I am submitted to the Holy Spirit, enable me to see the truth in a situation and react off of that instead of the feeling that rode me when I entered into the journal/prayer time.

Feelings are good for getting a temperature of what's going on in your heart, but feelings aren't always true.  Journaling is good for examining those emotions.  Journaling helps clear the truth from the feeling.  But the most important thing journaling does for me is that it allows me to talk to God.  He gives me room to pour out the stuff that's circling in my head, and because he's a real person to me I feel heard.  He cares about me and my day.  He wants me to lay down the heavy stuff beside Him so that he can replace it with joy, assurance, compassion, patience... whatever it is that I need.

Sometimes, I get spanked.  Sometimes He reveals to me that I am operating from the sinful side of my nature and if I want the good stuff He has for me, I have to be willing to let go of my righteous anger.  I have to get over myself and give Him time to confront and deal with those other people in His timing and not what suits me.  I have to give them room and time to mature at their own pace and not put up stumbling blocks that make it harder for them to come to God on their own.  It means, I have to pray for them, love them and actively look for ways to do good for them.  Because that's what He's done for me when I didn't deserve it.

Grace and mercy.  It keeps coming back to that doesn't it? 

Soul mining, the act of digging up the dirt, rocks and metals in our life - if we do it right, creates a well for the Holy Spirit to seep into your life.  It's the Living Water that Jesus was talking about to the Samaritan woman in the gospels.  The better you get at digging up the self-protecting and self-serving part of your nature, the deeper your well and the sweeter the water of the Holy Spirit.

It's hard work though.  Especially if you like to be right.  If you like to have it all under control and someone has to take the blame or responsibility for how you feel.  It's humiliating to keep digging up the same stupid rocks over and over again.  After a while you just feel covered in mud and the temptation is to sling it at anyone else.  That's human, sinful nature that is common to us all.

Aren't you glad that He doesn't leave us there?  My daughter Megan has been using the phrase (is it a popular one these days?) to "go die in a hole".  I always cringe at it, but in my mind it makes me think of the scripture in Jeremiah 4:13 where it says

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

Trust me, we all have a back yards full of broken cisterns.  They come in all shapes and sizes, from our for emergency candy stashes for those stress full days to the savings or retirement account, you hear what I'm saying?  Any time we rely on other things instead of God, we fill cisterns with our own resources, and store them for rainy days.  Hoping for the rainy days actually, because that's they only way those cisterns fill, they don't go deep and and when it's gone it's gone.  It makes us careful in who we share those resources with, doesn't it? 

Also, it has a by-product of deceiving us in to thinking that those rainy days of abundance are signs of God's favor, when it may not be true.  Good and bad fall on all of us.  That kind of water shouldn't be confused with the Living Water God talks about in scripture.  It's one of the reasons it's so hard for the rich to enter heaven (no need for God's abundance when they have such deep personal resources) and why money is the root of all kinds of evil.  Not that planning ahead or having resources to draw from are bad, only when you do that INSTEAD of digging the well.  But I digress...

If you have dug deep, and the resources are endless, it makes you want to pitch a tent for shade and invite the neighbors over, doesn't it?

The point is that we all do the digging, it's life.  We are all in the mud and we all have to deal with the sin that so easily ensnares.  The real question is where do you dig, and what are you digging for?

Journaling is my shovel.  What's yours?

What's In a Name?

Once a week I guest write for Scio Journal, this is the community blog we use to discuss this bible reading plan corporately.  I'm posting it here too, but I invite you to join the conversation there. 

Prayer Focus: Africa 

Bible Reading: Genesis 30-33

Scripture

Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.

Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome."

Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."(Genesis 32:27-30)

Observation

Periodically, God steps into history  and has encounters that change the flow of events through single individuals.  Jacob had inherited the intense scrutiny of a God who had plans for redeeming humanity through his family line.  God held his promise to Abraham in a faithfulness that endured in spite of the workings of generational sin.  Of all the ways he could have revealed himself to Jacob, he chose to come in the form of a man he could speak to and wrestle with; a man who then blessed him, and gave him a new name.   

Application

I am grateful that God invites us to wrestle things out with Him.  There is so much there in those few verses that I wish scripture had unpacked for us better.  We will never know their conversation through the evening of grappling.  Did he shift blame to everyone who’d swindled him, and use their actions to justify his own?  Had God confronted him with his own sin?  The bible doesn’t say.  It only says that they wrestled through the night and that he overcame both God and humans. 

Though it’s not in today’s reading, I mention it here in the application portion because this whole business about name changing is for you and me too: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” Revelation 2:17

Prayer

Lord, help me have the courage to bring my sinfulness to you, to wrestle it out into the open where you can shape me, change me and mark me.  I desire to overcome the world, to know my new name, to meet you face to face.  Thank you for not giving up on us a human race, or on me. 

Re Purposing

Sunday I had a family from church over for lunch. It was a first time visit, and was full of the first impression jitters you get when someone new is in your house. You worry that they will notice all the stains in your carpet, for instance.  And you look at your house like you would if you were seeing it for the first time.  You notice all sorts of things you hadn't before - because you'd gotten used to it. (Yeah, I seriously need to take down my curtains and wash them...)

In conversation with Tammy, (the mom in the family I just mentioned) I discovered someone I could relate to. She's a writer, she's a mom and she home scooled. (Okay, I ran a day care and only home schooled one of my kids for a semester, but we travelled much of the same road.) Like me, she's looking at the day when her kids are all grown and don't need her the same way any more. She called it "re purposing her life". She's still figuring out what that means, what it will look like on her, and I guess I am too.

I took my daughter to her college class yesterday and she was thrilled to see a lady she knew when she was in grade school, it was her favorite para pro (teacher's helper assigned to some specific kids in a class room). My daughter is going to school to be a teacher, because her life has been significantly touched by a few ladies who made working with kids more than just their job, of which Mrs. Wing is one of them. Because we were there early, I was able to hear some of Mrs. Wing's reasons for taking classes at the community college. She's going to become a social worker, specifically helping out kids in the foster care program. Working with kids is her calling, and she's squeezing in classes so that when her kids are all in college, she will be ready to move on to the next thing. It made sense that she worked with the schools while her kids were in the public school system so that her schedule could be the same. Now that they are moving on... she is too.

And so, I reflect on my life. What's next for me? I've sent out a few applications for jobs that were hinted at, but not offered in the end. I do so much of the "mom's taxi" stuff right now that getting a job would put more on my husband's plate than it would take off. But I seriously only have a few years of this left before they are going to be driving themselves, and one by one moving out.

I like the word that Tammy used, re purposing. I'm struggling. Partly I struggle with redefining myself, making the decision on what I want to be when I grow up. Much the same as my girls are struggling now with deciding what courses and which college they should go to.

But I need a purpose. I need to know that what I am pouring my life into matters.

I've spent a lifetime pouring into children, my own and others. I was in the child care industry (babysitting, nanny, daycare center and then running my own for a while) and then with my own kids. But that's awfully hard to write on a resume. I've always been a mom, ever since they put my infant brother in my arms at three years old. What will I be in 4 years when my own baby is in college?

I thought for a while I would be a web designer, took a class that I aced, but realized that what I liked was the creativity.  The web was a fun medium, but the coding - and the reality of what that kind of job is, wasn't what I was looking for. So I retain most of that knowledge, but mainstream has caught up to the stuff that I'd taught myself.  Most people are tech savvy and understand the basics of HTML.

I taught myself how to write, and I've gotten some success at writing short stories, I'm even halfway into my second novel. But I don't hold any hopes of becoming a writer that can support her family with it. I don't think I have the competitive spirit that you need to put yourself out there and sell yourself to agents, convincing them that they can make money off of you. Plus, the industry is really changing out there. Anyone can publish, thanks to e-books and e-publishers but not everyone has marketing.

I've been taking pictures. We invested in a good camera and I'm building equipment to make a portable studio. I'm going to explore that next. Can I make this something that I can pour myself into? Will it have purpose, and can I enrich both my life and the life of someone else while I do it? Can I spend the money it will cost to take photography classes, or will that be stealing resources from the girls?

I don't mean to sound like I'm whining. And if you know me personally, you've heard this diatribe before. I'm re purposing myself. I'm doing internal house cleaning and it takes time. And I'm not done yet.

Being a full-time mom, pouring my life into my kids and being intentional with how I parent, what things I teach them (90% of that through example, not words) is a hard act to follow. Is there anything else that full filling out there to do? It might not have been brain surgery, but it was life-building. And it's all I've ever been exceptional at. Without the kids for me to point to, how do I define myself? They are my life's work and my great opus.

I won't tie them to me through enabling, or hobble them through manipulation to continue to meet my needs for identification. I've raised them to be adults, not children. And, I hope that when God looks at the role I've played in preparing them for His service, that He'll be proud of me.

And now it's my turn to be shaped and molded... I am being re purposed.

Taking pictures for families, senior photos or whatever, doesn't seem on the outside to have much of a "pouring-my-life" factor to it, but it will get me out of the house. It will put me in contact with other people. It will give me a place to be and a thing to do. (some pocket money) And if my heart is fully trusting in the Lord, He can work with anything I'm doing.

Writing, web-work, and photography seem to fit together well. Who knows what may come of it. While I might not specialize in any single of those things, some doors open nicely when you put them in concert. And from a distance I can see a kind of plan or structure in learning them one at a time.

Will you pray for me? Pray for wisdom and guidance. Some of you have been praying for some time, I've sort of been complaining about if for a while now as I do self-inventory and try to see around the corners of my future.

For others this is the first time you've heard me say this and it's scary, being vulnerable in a public setting. I also know, that there are other women like me who are going through the same thing, the same internal housekeeping, and maybe if that person is you, you won't feel left out there by yourself.

My deep, deep thanks to ladies like Tammy and Mrs. Wing, who reminded me this week ...that I'm not alone.

Spinning Plates

Stress.  Worry.  Fatigue.  There's a bit of that going around my house these days.  So I struggle with trying to keep it all into prospective.

Sometimes it's simply a confluence of events that merge and overlap, stretching us thinner than we'd like.  Sometimes it's because we can't say no and agree to be responsible for too much.  The trick is knowing where your boundaries are, knowing your limits and not letting the expectations of everyone else, push you into putting their priorities ahead of your own... or Gods. 

It's hard when everyone else is screaming for you to do their thing, and the Lord speaks in a still small voice.  A voice that's only heard when we close everything else out and ask Him to say it again.  It's also hard when we carry our own agendas, agendas that require us to stay focused, on task and keep our eyes on a goal.   Our hands become so full of what we carry, or busy spinning plates, that we aren't able to receive what God would give us.  If you are like some in my family, you are very hard on yourself, with high standards and so very good at keeping all the plates spinning.

I won't go into the details of the particular stresses our family is under.  Some of it isn't my story to tell, and I didn't really bring it up here in this place to vent over the frustrations of the issues.  I bring it up, because how we handle stress is vitally important to God.  How we process it, how we treat the people around us, and how we come to terms with the responsibilities we are entrusted to, are where the rubber meets the road in how we live out our salvation.

The bible says that this process is a refiners fire, that the everyday messiness of our lives causes enough heat and pressure to separate the dross.  It creates a sludge of nastiness that has to be skimmed off the top in order for the metal to be pure.   

But the problem is that the process is uncomfortable.  It hurts.  It makes you want to lash out at people around you.  It makes you want to find someone else to blame.  That is human nature. 

The floating debris of sinful, human behavior when you are under stress is the very thing that God wants you to hand over to him.  Maturing doesn't happen in an instant.  Salvation does, but the rest is the ongoing refining process that gets decided in the little moments of your every day.  In the spaces between falling under stress and what you do with it. 

He knows that life is tough, that we have our priorities wrong and we take so much on that we are afraid to slow down.  Salvation doesn't mean that we suddenly are perfect!  All it means is that we have access to someone who is.  Someone who waits for you to ask for his help in dealing with the dross that's floating around in your vision.

He says, in Matthew 11:30 that his burden is easy and his yoke is light.  It means that we always have a partner to share the load.  It means that we have a place to set the worry, because His perspective changes our stress levels. 

Again, that sounds like a pretty image, but it doesn't help in the practical everyday part of slugging through a tough day, does it?  No.  That's because in order for all that to work, for it to function, it means you have to treat God like a person you can trust, and not an intellectual agreement you've made about your ethics.

Because of our pride and our tendency to blame shift, we cling to that debris I was talking about: our justifications for our behavior, the anger that we think makes us strong, the envy and jealousy that feeds our belief that other things will make us happy. 

To be yoked with Jesus means that you trust Him more than you trust your own abilities.  That's why the burden is light.  Because it's HIM working through you to accomplish things.

Philippians 2:12-13  So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

He is a real person, with his own plan for your life.  Most of us humans just don't like letting someone else have control.  At our core, we don't like someone else to have the ability to screw up our plans, goals and dreams. 

Trust is what it really comes down to then, isn't it?  Do you trust Him?  Is He a real person who is vitally interested in you, desiring to spend time with you, to heal you, to give you Joy and Peace? 

It's all decided in those tiny spaces where we make the choice of trusting in Him or relying on our own resources.  If you have not submitted yourself to the Lord while you are still liquid and malleable, then when the stress (heat) goes away, the metal of your being hardens again, and the scum on the top makes it even more difficult to hear that still small voice.  After a while, you build your own thick wall between God and you.  "That's just the way I am" and we justify our behavior.  All the while it eats at us that we are left with a plastic Christianity that has no power because we no longer have access to the one who can make us pure, make our burdens light. 

But first... we have to come to him.  Stop trying to do it on our own limited resources as though we don't want to bother him with it, and bring our crisis to Him.  Because the power to do the mighty things are decided in those small spaces between cause and effect.

One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

Today was spent working on my novel.  I had a fellow writer friend call me and it got my juices going, so I pulled out the novel and spent some more time working on it today.  As I'd reported earlier, I'd deleted a couple of long scenes and that brought my word count down from 51K to 44K.  More, it put me in editor mode instead of writer mode and that nearly derailed me.  I'm not going to delete anything else going forward until the first draft is done.  *holds up two fingers in scouts honor* I don't want to kill the novel before it's done!

Part of my problem is that I'd ended at a natural breaking point in the story at the end of Nano.  My main character is literally moving from one state to another and a whole new cast of characters need to be invented that she's going to interact with.  I'd started Nano in November with a solid cast out of the gate and in some ways this feels like I'm starting over in telling the second half of the story.

But that can be good (if I can keep the editor in the closet).  So, here's to adding another couple of pages and updating my WIP meter on the side.  (I keep playing with the color of the progress bar...  which is procrastinating, I know!) 

Okay, getting offline so I can plunk a few more words down on the story before I take the clan ice skating.  They have one more week of vacation before school starts again.

I hope you are able to enjoy your after-Christmas break.  No matter if it's getting a project done that you finally have time for, or finding ways to unwind...

Okay, really closing now.

Scio Community Church - New Year with New Things

There are lots of fun things happening at Scio Community Church with the coming of the new year. I'm so excited about them I have to tell you about it.

The first thing is the theme for the year. Pastor Kirk calls it the Radical Experiment. (based on the book he used to preach from in the last few months of 2011)  If you click the link it will take you to the page that explains it better.  But here are the essentials:

The Radical Experiment is a year-long commitment to five specific challenges:

• To pray for the entire world
• To read through the entire Word
• To commit our lives to multiplying community
• To sacrifice our money for a specific purpose
• To give our time in another context

To put those initiatives in play there are lots of things we are doing.

To pray for the entire world, we are using the site Operation World.  It breaks the world down into continents and then sets up a prayer list by the day.  Cool eh?

To read through the entire Word, corporately. You can follow along with us if you like. Here is a link to the pdf file of the reading plan that you can download, and here is a link to the YouVersion - online plan. We are using this bible plan as the structure to talk about the bible in a corporate fashion through a blog, called The Scio Journal.  You don't have to be a member of the church to join the conversation.

To commit our lives to multiplying community, we have small groups in the form of prayer groups, bible studies and opportunities to disciple and be discipled.  I'm excited to tell you about the new trilogy bible study starting this January. Each book, Falling in Love with, Living in Love with, and Forever in Love with Jesus is a 10 week study, with daily devotionals, Scripture memorization, and worship songs. Each series has a companion video with teaching from Kathy Triccoli and Dee Brestin, followed by group discussion.  This is a study that you can participate in person or online or both.  Here's the link to the blog with more information.

To sacrifice our money for a specific purpose.  As a church, we have committed to supporting Hope Clinic, The Water Project and our very own Great Commission Air, lead by Scio members Rob and Jennifer Rice.  These are corporate initiatives, and doesn't touch the times and places where God calls us to give on an individual and case by case scenario.

To give our time in another context.  This translates to 2% (one week) of our year.  Go on a missions trip for a week, spend a few hours a week volunteering somewhere God leads you... whatever.  The idea is to GO.  Not forever, but for a time, out of our comfort zone and for the purpose of serving our world. 

Well...  That's a lot.  A whole lot.  But it's good.  I hope you join us when and where you can.  Read the bible with us?  Join a bible study?  We are on a couple of social networks too, search Scio Community on Facebook and Twitter.  There are so many places you can step into the conversations, consider this your invitation!