Layer Upon Layer And A New Way Around It

 

When my husband and I were first married, we moved into an 88-year-old house that radiated with charm, dutifully disguising a mile-long list of unending projects.  We never even made it past the crisis items --such as the 1933 toilet that stopped functioning the week we brought our first baby home from the hospital. And then, a hole in the roof caused a cascade of water in the front room every time it rained. Oh, and an enormous tree that fell in a thunder storm. You get the picture.

As our excitement of renovating this old house began to wane, we also realized that the kitchen windows were painted shut.  When my husband removed the frames to strip the paint, he discovered ten layers of paint in a variety of colors, one layer upon another that did not peel off easily, nor scrape off with sheer determination, elbow grease, and a heat gun. 

We made slow progress into this miry bog of frustration. Layers of paint adhered fiercely to the layers beneath them.  The sight of the frame-less windows cheerfully greeted us every morning, “Still here!” as if mocking and reminding us “You're doing nothing at all.”  No difference was apparent except for the obvious mess.

In the past couple weeks "giving up" fear and anxiety for Lent, I found they had taken up residency in my heart, built up in layers over time, not so easily evicted.  Worry, stress, despair and panic come in a variety of colors, textures and finishes, some slathering on more than one coat of paint, each falsely promising to cover up a mess but only getting thicker.

I have found not just solace in the Psalms, but God's strength in the words of David.  When he was writing down these words, did David realize that thousands of years and in a world he could not possibly comprehend, God would use his writings to comfort and cheer us on? 

The "foes and enemies" mentioned in the Psalms are whatever we fear, both real and imagined. 

David was not just talking himself out of being afraid.  He was running for his life in very real ways. But through many a danger, toil and snare, David learned the secret of meeting his fears head on. He did not just lay down and let fear steamroll over him.   

The word praise appears 211 times in the book of Psalms.  We need not just cower before these foes, fears, or beastly situations.  God does not show up. God shows us the way through.  I am learning, ever so slowly, to not pray out of fear but from a platform of trusting God.  And that starts with praise and thanksgiving. 

Praise is not limited to situations when life goes nicely.  It is not plastering a smiley face on our hard stuff, or mustering up "happy thoughts," or putting on a one-size-fits-all disguise to cover up our despair.  Praise is not acquiring a new attitude, but a strength from God Himself to find a new way to approach it and a new way to pray about it.  

There is a lot more at stake than waking in the night just to tremble.  Push back the darkness. We have options. Worrying or praying?  Listening to fear or reciting scripture?  God gives us His Word on that.

I rise before dawn and cry for help. I hope in Your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on Your promise.  Psalm 119. 148

When I pray that way, praising God and thanking Him, gratitude allows me to both think and pray differently about what is in front of me.  Praying is not an attempt to manipulate God, or point out that He has forgotten something, or try to force a particular favored answer. That is not praying to God.  There is always so much more that God can do than we can imagine. Because God is God, and we are not.

Practicing His Presence allows us to realize the Almighty is already here, already at work, and waiting for us to realize He is sitting right here next to us.

In praising and thanking God for this situation, for that person, for His redeeming, God releases us not only into His embrace but opens our eyes and hearts to a thousand galaxies bursting into view.  We've been missing a lot.

My mouth will praise You with joyful lips, when I remember You upon my bed, and meditate on You in the watches of the night, for You have been my help; and in the shadow of Your wings I will sing for joy.  My soul clings to You, Your right hand upholds me.   Psalm 63. 5-8

God dissolves our fears, layer upon layer, as we come to trust Him more.  What He reveals is Himself.

Help us, Lord, to live differently these days of Lent, that we may live differently far beyond these 40 days. Turn our fears, worries and anxiety into something glorifying to You instead. 

How's Lent Been Going For You?

It's been over a week since Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and the start of my fasting from fear and anxiety.  While it sounds like a great and unnecessary thing to unload -- I mean, who wants those distractions multiplying in our heads and hearts? --there has been some heavy lifting going on.  

A whole lot harder than giving up chocolate.

Fear and anxiety seemed to multiply the faster I tried to banish them this past week.  But every morning without fail in my Bible reading, God gave me Costco-size servings of scripture until my cart (and heart) overfloweth with Do not be afraid.  Two days after committing to this fast, God placed this verse point blank in front of me, 

And they woke Him

and said to Him,

"Teacher, do you not care

  that we are perishing?"

And He awoke and

rebuked the wind

and said to the sea,

"Peace!  Be still!"

And the wind ceased,

and there was great calm.

He said to them,

"Why are you so afraid?

Have you still no faith?"     Mark 4. 38-40

The disciples asked Jesus the most ridiculous question: "Don't you even care?"  And Jesus did not reply with "Give Me a list of what you are afraid of," but responded with a simple question,  "Why are you so afraid?"  He's right here in the boat with us.

 

Those words Why are you so afraid? stopped me in my tracks.  

 

I felt like Jesus was asking me, "Did you think I would not take care of you? Trust Me in this."

When God says, Do not be afraid, He doesn't mean it's going to be easy, won't hurt, be awkward, nor scary.  But it does mean:  I am with you in this.  

 

And through these many days and experiences, I am beginning to realize do not fear is not the point after all.  The whole idea of giving something up for Lent is not an achievement to earn a chocolate bunny at the finish line, nor to be successful in accomplishing one's goal, nor even to become a "better" person, but to be drawing closer to Jesus.  The whole point is grasping the reality of I am with you. 

 

 And to know Him more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

40 Days of WHAT?

When our third daughter was in kindergarten, her friends often would get off the bus with her at noon and have lunch at our house.  One spring day when our five-year-old neighbor Grant joined her for his favorite peanut butter sandwich, the two of them asked me to read them a story.  The Beginner’s Bible was sitting on the couch, so I began to read them the Easter story. 

At one point, Grant jumped up and exclaimed, “I had NO idea Jesus had anything to do with Easter!”

Lent precedes Easter as advent precedes the Nativity, a time of getting ready for what is coming, not just to decorate with bunnies and chocolate eggs, but preparing our hearts.  Lent is the fast before the feast. And empowers us to show up differently to the Easter celebration.  Not going through religious motions, but moving spiritually toward a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and what He has done. 

The question perhaps is not what are you giving up for Lent?  But what is God forming in me through this?

Lent is commonly known as a season of abstaining, when indeed it is the opposite. It enriches.

“Christians have always looked to suffering not only as a place of pain, but as a place of meeting God.  Suffering does not merely happen to us.  It works in us,” states Tish Harrison Warren in her book Prayer In The Night.

What if for Lent we fast or give up, not something we like or dislike, but something that has a strong hold on us?  What if for 40 days we gave up anxiety and fear?  What if we obeyed God’s most repeated commandment, Fear not. I am with you. Be anxious for nothing. What if I fast from those things?

Oh, I can come up with a long list of excuses not to.  But I need to realize that anxiety and fear are not my friends.  They are not welcome here.  And they keep me from trusting God.

Ann Voskamp writes in her book The Broken Way,  “I don’t know how to smooth out angst or stress or worry, but I know you either leave your worries with God … or your worries will make you leave God.”

But if I decide to refrain/give up/relinquish anxiety and fear for Lent, what do I replace it with?  That dynamic duo is firmly lodged in my practices and won’t easily let go.

I know, because Ash Wednesday night – the beginning of Lent --, I didn’t sleep well at all.  I woke up in the middle of the night and whoa! Name the fear or anxiety as they opened the door for a wild party and invited the whole gang. It was a raucous family reunion.

But if anxiety and fear are surgically removed with great intention on our part, the vacuum it creates, the gaping space as it leaves, just invites in more of their cousins.  If we do not choose to trust God in our circumstances, other little-g gods gladly rush in to take God’s rightful place.

Lent is the perfect opportunity to change our defaults.  God enters in. And helps us to not just think with another perspective, but be changed by it.

Is it anxiety – or just urgency to pray? If I didn’t worry, would I pray as much? Or would I pray differently?

What have we attached ourselves to instead of trusting God?  He whispers to us another way through our difficulties and concerns, “Try this instead.”

And as the fog gradually lifts, we can discern perhaps the first vestiges of healing and the 2 x 4’s of restoration beginning to be revealed.

If we ignore the season of Lent, does Easter just become another weekend or an excuse to get together for a meal with friends and family and eat chocolate?  Worship is often just a side dish, if time for it at all.

In the church liturgical calendar, Lent lies outside “ordinary time.”  We come before Him at Lent not that God would remember us, see us, listen to us, or that we would somehow pay for or make up for our sin, but that we would remember Him, see Him in the ordinary and extraordinary, respond to Him, and believe in Him beyond a reasonable doubt.  In our pain, we cry out, “O God, do something supernatural.” And God replies, “I am!”

In Lent, we are not giving up anything, but giving and receiving.   It is a kind of worship that changes us. We are not paying for our sin in preparation for Easter.  Jesus already did that. But we remember His sacrifice for us.  Because without Good Friday, there is no Easter.

We drag our sins to the altar, and realize Jesus is already there.  That is why He came. Lent helps us remember that, like climbing a steep hill and discovering that we can see into eternity as a result. The hardship we did not expect turns into a surprising blessing we would never turn away.

What does Lent make possible?  If we don’t try, we will never know.

Where Resolutions Go To Die

Two years ago, I made no resolutions.  I had no intention of adding to an already endless catalog of what I needed to do in the next twelve months. But instead I sought to focus on being, how to go forth, not encumbered by a well-meaning, check-it-off to-do list, but how I wanted to be.  Not making it to the third week of January where resolutions go to die, but being changed in increments all the way through the year.

What is God forming in me through this?

Instead of resolutions, I wrote down ten directives to focus my eyes and my heart.  I attached a scripture verse to each one just to keep me in the right lane and bring the name of Jesus in how to live, breathe, and have my being. Acts 17. 28   Degree by degree, it began changing how I responded, my thoughts, prayers, pursuits, and my entire year – and then spilled over into the next.  And made me a little bit different than the year before, and sometimes even the day before. I have a long way to go. 

In all of us, gradually and surprisingly, God weaves His transformation into the very fabric of our being and radically alters those things we do.  We are able to approach, respond and navigate the swamps and boulder fields differently because we have focused on Him.  Being precedes the doing, not the other way around.

Doing something may emerge out of all of this.  But there is a distinct difference by focusing on who we are becoming and how we are growing.  May we be at the end of this year – or even the mere closing of this day -- more like Jesus.  And that exceeds everything else.

Because transformation doesn’t just land on our doorstep like a two-hour Amazon order, even a singular act of obedience leads us ever deeper into the slow work of God on our souls.

He opened a door previously unimaginable, wrote Jean Fleming in her book Pursue The Intentional Life.  Following God will do that to us, seeing portals and paths and opportunities we have never realized before. And meeting Him there.

These on-going reminders are taped to a cabinet in my closet – in plain view.  Because I’m still working on them.  And God is still working on me.  He’s not done with me yet. 

 

·       Pay attention.  …to have the mind of Christ.  1 Corinthians 2. 16

·       Write something, read something, run something every day.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.  Ecclesiastes 9. 10

·       Weave kindness in my words.  …that I may show the kindness of God to him. 2 Samuel 9.3

·       Don’t interrupt.  …slow to speak. James 1. 19

·       Do small things well.  Do not despise the day of small things. Zechariah 4. 10

·       Listen.  Really listen to others and to God.  ….listen to Me.  Blessed are those who keep My ways.  Proverbs 8. 32

·       Be present.  Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.  1 Thessalonians 5. 11

·       Reinvent.  Reinvest.  Recreate.  Redeem.  Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.  Proverbs 3. 27

·       Ask questions.  Lots of questions. …Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think?”  Matthew 17. 25

·       Be gentle.  Let your gentleness be evident to all.  Philippians 4. 5  A soft answer turns away wrath.  Proverbs 15. 1

 

My list will not resemble yours.

But our dissimilar intentions are rooted in the same Love that draws, a Voice that calls, as T. S. Eliot penned in his poem Four Quartets.

It is not about being a “better person” by the end of the year, but being a radically different one, living out what we really believe and welcoming the Holy Spirit to rearrange the furniture and build something new in us.

Throughout time, people have wondered and even been obsessed by, “What should I do?”

What if we instead asked who do I want to be?  Not recognized by what we do, but known by Him and known as His, seeking to live a faithful life, every sacred step on this holy ground of our lives.

What We Cannot Know

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He had no idea what he did.

This afternoon, Robert Wolgemuth is being laid to rest, having died rather suddenly of pneumonia that just wouldn't let go.  I haven't seen or talked to him in decades.  The obituary of this faithful man stated his recognizable and notable achievements of which there were many, but those tributes never tell the whole story.

When we met, Bob, as he was known then, had just graduated from college.  He was starting a chapter of Campus Life youth ministry at my high school.  In the course of his career, that ministry appeared to be just a short-lived blip -- but those are the moments that do not just prepare us for what is to come, but even how God uses us in what is now.  Faithfulness to God goes way back.

One evening when the youth meeting was over, Bob had no idea that the words he said to me were going to be so sticky. I didn't realize it at the time either. We rarely do.  But well-placed words and sacred encounters don't just come to the surface of our thoughts every now and then, but follow us around for a long time.  Those words are sometimes what we need to carry with us.  Sometimes we don't even know that we need them.  Or need them right now.

I was the shy girl on the edge of the crowd.  Most of the time I held a small notebook that I brought to the meetings, in case I wanted to write something down.  He noticed.  And one week asked if he could read some of my writings.  Reluctantly, I let him borrow my notebook.  The next week when he handed it back to me, I expected him to repeat what others had said in condescending tones, "Oh, that was really good," as if I was a kindergartner who drew a picture of purple and orange stick figures.  

But he didn't.  He said, "I hope you didn't mind that I copied down some of your poems." 

His words stuck.  They encouraged that timid 14-year-old to keep on writing.  They still do.

Who are the people who have influenced us most?  Not the ones who thought they did, but those without the slightest notion of their impact, those who radiated the unconscious loveliness of the Lord's touch.      ---Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest 

God places each of us daily in divine appointments to encourage others and love them to Him.  God's faithfulness changes the course of lives every day.  One unforgettable word at a time.

It's our turn. 

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.  Proverbs 25. 11