The shortest of days, the longest of nights

Today is the winter's solstice, that annual day when we experience the shortest of days in the year and the longest of nights.  The afternoons end in darkness, and in the morning, the dawn sleeps in. 

The darkest of days, indeed.

Surrounded by holiday cheer and glitter, so many of us are overwhelmed by utter darkness in our own lives or those around us.  You may be one of them. 


But we are not stuck forever in the dark, as in Narnia where for a long while, it was "always winter and never Christmas."  But that was not the end of the story.   Nor ours.

The nights only get shorter from here.

Solstice marks when the darkness begins to be pushed back, the beginning of redemption -- or rather, as we can only see someday in the rearview mirror --the continuation of God's redeeming. 

God is at work. 
     His faithfulness never fails.
Even in the mysteries.
Even in what I cannot understand.
Even in the darkness.

I can be paralyzed by the dark. 
             Or walk with Him through it.

...even the darkness is not dark to You;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with You.

                                Psalm 139. 12

God does not have a night light;
          He has night vision.
 He sees clearly through
     what is unknown and scary to us.
The unknown and dark and difficult
        are not impossible to Him.

"Walk with Me,
          rest easy in dark rooms
               -- and long nights --
and do not be afraid."

What song is this?

My four-year-old granddaughter and I hung out yesterday afternoon.  In my eyes, no spectacular activities were scheduled, but in her world, even drawing with chalk on the driveway, is a special event.

As she was playing with our daughters' old dolls, dressing them up for the day and trying to manage hair that was twenty years an unmanageable mess, I heard her humming little Christmas songs that she had learned in pre-school. 

Awhile later, we dashed over to the public library to return a book that was due.  The public library is a golden magical place to her.  She can play in the children's corner, and like me as a child, she is mesmerized by the number of books surrounding her, all calling out her name.  And she can take any one of them home -- for a few days. 

Yesterday, as I was looking through some books and she was playing with Legos in the children's section, I could hear her -- not a hum, but full fledged singing -- in her sweet pure voice,  "Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born."  She knew the words.  She knew the melody.  It was not even an intentional performance, but bubbling up right from her heart.  No audience necessary.

And as she continued to sing, people went about their library business.  Listening.  And no one even thought about telling her "no singing in the library."  Or even, "you can't sing 'religious' songs in a public place."  But we all enjoyed the music on a cold winter afternoon in a normally silent place.

She was just being herself.

And even in this secular culture with its strict adherence of rules of "you can't do that here," lives of faithfulness and unexpected grace and the good news about Jesus, reverberate from within those who do not just believe in God, but know something different.

For there our captors required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
    "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How shall we sing the LORD's song
               in a foreign land?

                       Psalm 137. 3-4

Continuously,
       every which way we can.
God has strategically placed us
       in time and location
to do exactly that.
Sometimes grace has words to it,
       but always a melody
       that gets stuck in our hearts.

You never know who is listening.
You never know how God is using you.

Really

I am surrounded by so many friends and family right now who are deeply struggling in this season which is supposed to look like a Hallmark commercial.  And rarely does.

It is not that we need to lower the bar of expectations for what God can do, or turn the definition of God's steadfast hope --on which we can stake our lives-- into a glimmery facade of wishful thinking.

Really, O God?  This too?

The coming of our Savior did not appear either as most expected, no gilded ribbons, glowing candles, the appropriate entry of royalty.  Not as a mighty king who would conquer the Romans, but coming as a tiny baby born in a cold stable in backwater Bethlehem.  Not a king who called for personal power, but a king who called for personal repentance.  Not a religion, but a relationship.

And except for a few shepherds and three wise men who lived some distance away, most missed the great light show that announced His arrival, the unveiling of the gospel, the manifestation of God's faithfulness.

The words have not lost their luster.  The awe is still there.  Even now.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them,
and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
                       and they were filled with fear.
And the angel said to them,
"Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy
             that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David
                      a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be a sign for you:
you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths
                               and lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest,
   and on earth peace, good will among men."

                                          Luke 2. 8-14

And in that lowly stable among farm animals,
Mary went from  "Really, O God?"
        to "O God, really!"

As it is repeated some 62 times in the book of Ezekiel,
just in case that we miss it,
             "... that you may know that I am the LORD."

And that would be us.

It is not that things are out of control,
    but out of my control,
                  and fully in His.

Things may not look exactly as we want them,
                   or on our schedule,
        but God is at work 
                        even in this,
more profoundly
         that we can ever know.

"Trust Me in this."

...so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till He has mercy upon us.
                                Psalm 123. 2

Perhaps until we see His mercy
         already surrounding us
in dimensions deeper
                    than our myopic vision.

And God says,  "Really."

There is something different here

The first winter that I knew my friend Claire, we went weekly to the grocery together.  I had a car available as my husband took the train to work. She lived within reasonably walking distance of the store, but bitter cold descended early that year, the Chicago kind of cold that literally sucks the oxygen out of your lungs.  God had strategically placed someone on my path with a specific need. And so, I became the designated driver on our weekly jaunt to get groceries.

As in community with other believers, we all in some way bring something to the table, so to speak.  Each week, we squished three carseats door to door for her two kids and my baby girl in the backseat of my little Subaru.  It helped her to have a ride.  But she blessed me so much more.  She showed me what life looks like, covered lavishly by the gospel.

I absorbed a lot of wisdom that winter, probably unbeknownst to her, things that I still remember about what spiritual life looks like and how it is radically played out in our lives.  Most likely, she remembers none of our conversations.  But I do. You never know what will stick in a person's heart.

In December of that year, in the midst of Advent, I came with my daughter to pick her up for our weekly grocery outing.  There was something very different in what I found.

A table stood front and center just inside the front door of her apartment.  Her nativity set was displayed on it, the first thing I saw as I entered her home, so prominent that I had to skirt around it to come into the apartment.

She saw my perplexed look.  Why would she put the nativity there?

"I want it to be the very first thing someone notices when they come into our home," she said. "There is something different here.  We celebrate Christmas, but the nativity is not a decoration.  It is the very core of Christmas.  I want it to be the first thing people see."

And so, through the years hence, our little nativity is the first thing we set up and in a place where it is first seen.  We celebrate Christmas in all of its glory, but it is not about the decorations and brightly wrapped packages, not about Santa appearing, but Jesus coming.

I noticed this year that the gospel had invaded even unlikely places.  I had placed little nativity sets that we had accumulated like little reminders in unexpected moments of my day, little figurines in glass and wood and plastic, that don't just tell a familiar story, but remind me what all this is about.

In the dining room:

In the kitchen:

And right in front of me on my desk:

As if Jesus is saying, "Don't make it hard for others to find Me."

And she gave birth
    to her firstborn son
and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths
and laid Him in a manger,
because there was no place for them
                  in the inn.

                   Luke 2. 7

A Christ-follower should have the brightest house on the block,
in more ways
               than a string of lights.

Joy to the world
           The Lord has come.

There is something very different here.
    And that would be Jesus.

Let every heart prepare Him room.

#GivingTuesday

My email inbox was flooded this morning with requests from every non-profit organization that has my digital address.  I was overwhelmed as by so many preschoolers crying in loud voices "ME!"  Some even promised "Change lives forever!" and even "Double your gift!"  So many opportunities popped up to benefit others, right on the tail of Black Friday and Cyber Monday when I even saw an advertisement proclaiming in big letters, "Gift yourself."

As I just finished reading Jesus Among Secular Gods by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, it was intriguing to me that in our secular culture of survival of the fittest there is still honor in providing for those less fortunate.  And even among those who deny God, benevolence is still highly regarded.

And where does that inexplicable sense of compassion and highest regard for self-sacrifice come from?  Not from evolutionary philosophy.

The Biblical worldview is seamlessly woven with giving and generosity and the dignity of every person, evident from cover to cover in the Scriptures, evident from transformed life to transformed life.  Giving is not a designated day, but a daily response.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;  it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way;  it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  (1 Corinthians 13. 4-7)

God calls us to be generous, but not just financially, not just to give in the form of a check to an organization, but how to live.  A very different worldview emerges, not based on performance but on grace itself.

There are those who seek to increase gratitude by looking everyday for the gifts that we have been granted.  Indeed, we are surrounded.  But what if we also sought out daily opportunities to bless others, how to love our neighbors -- those all around us -- as we have been loved.  Those little divine appointments with those on our path are not so insignificant at all. 

...remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20. 35)   That is not just an action, but a heart condition.  Our way of seeing the world is attached to our hearts.

God is love.  We are able to love because He first loved us. (1 John 4. 19)

It is the way God intended this world to operate.

...blessed is he
        who is generous to the poor.

                       Proverbs 14. 21

On a lot of different levels.

A daily practice, a daily Presence

Sometimes a swell of thankfulness rises up for the good we see and hear and feel all around us. But in the tough times, the hard circumstances, the tears, it is the patterns of daily gratefulness that emerge from within that hold us fast even when, even when. 

Thanksgiving is not an event, but a daily abiding in the LORD, impervious to how, in our own eyes, we judge what is good and what is not.

Because as we sing in church: 

God is good all the time,

All the time God is good.

Even beyond recognition or understanding or before the redeeming comes into focus.

Learning to be thankful FOR the daily blessings of God enables us to be grateful IN, when we see no explanation and cannot possibly understand.

Gratefulness is a pattern of seeing life differently, a pattern of seeing God in all things and trusting Him in it.  

Even in the hard stuff.

I have rested this year in the mercies of God, in times His strength beyond what I have ever known.

O give thanks to the LORD,

       for He is good;

for His steadfast love

        endures forever.

                Psalm 113. 1

Happy Thanksgiving, my friend.

Just on the other side

In 2011, at just 28 years old, Jennifer Pharr Davis attempted both the absurd and ridiculous.  She set out that summer to establish the fastest record time for men and women hiking the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine.

As noble as that sounded, shortly into her epic hike, incredibly averaging about 47 miles a day, reality set in.  She was exhausted, cold, wet, and suffered painful shin splints.  She crept along until the next road crossing where her husband Brew met her with supplies.  "I'm done," she said.

"That's fine," he said.  "Just not right now.  If you still want to quit by the next road crossing tomorrow, I'll take you home.  But you can't quit now."

So she kept on hiking, knowing that in the matter of several hours, the pain would be over, and she could go home.

But something happened in those succeeding hours.  She felt just a little teeny bit better.  Just enough to keep going another day.  And then another.

Her story was not over yet.  She completed the entire trail in 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes, a record unsurpassed for the next four years.

One step and then another.

Last weekend, I ran a familiar trail in the woods that starts with a five mile ascent that always seems to go on f.o.r.e.v.e.r.  It was fiercely cold.  It was all uphill.  And yes, it was hard, each gravel crunching step, each winding turn in the road followed yet by another.  "Just get to the other side of this bend," I convinced myself.

Even though I didn't quite know where I was, I knew it was not a random journey.  As in any responding to the Lord, I was not just going somewhere, but God is going somewhere with this.  Even the really hard stuff does not lay beyond His redeeming.  There is another side to this.

We've all been there on one road or another.

Despair will get you nowhere fast.
       Or I can choose to trust Him.
                                  Even in this.
And pretty much throughout the entire Bible,
cover to cover,
God tells His people,
                      "Don't quit now."

O LORD,
show me Your path,
Your way through.

God is
going somewhere with this.

And as I came around what I was hoping the final bend in that steep rutted road, dusty and dreary, suddenly spectacular beauty surrounded me, the sunlight streaming through the woods like the glory of God, and golden leaves were intricately imprinted on a sacred sky of deepest blue.

If I had quit and turned around, I would have missed the awe.


For Your steadfast love is great above the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
                                   Psalm 108. 4


It took that momentary affliction of running uphill for me
to not just acknowledge God,
or even believe,
         but to know Him more.

Somehow,
    the hard stuff always leads to that.
God redeems the impossible
     in ways we never expect.

The view is not just at the top,
      not just on the good days
when the breeze is warm and favorable,
          but when I want to quit.

...let us run with endurance
       the race that is set before us,
       looking to Jesus....

                         Hebrews 12. 1-2

Even on the uphills,
following God
    even in what

    may make no sense at all,

                    to us,

God is going someplace

                     with this.

Even in this mess,

even in this seeming failure,

even in the bleakest wilderness,

                 God is.

Your story is not over yet.

Bleak? Look again.

Recently, my husband and I were traveling back home from a family wedding through the utter flatness of southern Illinois.  The landscape is truly a manifestation of "on a clear day, you can see forever."

Pretty bleak, I thought.

And then, I realized, that through another's eyes, this flat seemingly empty barren expanse was anything than bleak.  A farmer sees the opportunity for growth, for his livelihood, fields just waiting to be planted and in his vision, a field ripe unto harvest.

And other seeds fell into good soil
and produced grain,
growing up
and increasing
and yielding thirtyfold
and sixtyfold
and a hundredfold.

                   Mark 4. 8

It is not just how you look at it,
but what you do with it,
and how you
 let God work through you.
He strategically positions us
in impossible places
                    for His purposes
                    and for His glory.

What I need
is not a change of circumstances,
a change of location,
        but a change of heart toward Him.
And then,
and then,
and then,
           God changes my vision
           for where He has placed me.
I see something different,
something deeper,
not just about the place,
            but about trusting Him.

We have moved a lot in my lifetime,
sometimes to places where I wondered
"Why in the world
would He have brought us here?"
But oh, through the years,
God reveals His faithfulness.
And I have been
         amazed by what He has done
and how blind I had been.

Bleak?  Look again.

Dig in.
Sow the Word.
Bring the love of Jesus there.

Why in the world would he do such a thing?

It is a rare day now that we do not hear of yet more violence, somewhere in the world.  O LORD, have mercy.   And as I read the accounts about those intentionally injuring and attempting to kill as many people as possible, I struggle with the question: “Why in the world would he do such a thing?”

Often, the police unveil the strategic plans of a cell group, plotting destruction, despair, and the loss of precious lives.  The aim of these groups is to wreak havoc on a global scale.

In these news reports, the term “cell groups” catches my attention.  Just about every church I know has a network of small cell groups to minister to the needs of the congregation, to disciple, teach, pray and build community, particularly in multi-site congregations and churches with multiple services.  In my own experience, it is where I have learned to connect and be engaged in the local church. 

Of course, it was Jesus who initiated the whole concept of cell groups when He said: 

“Where two or three are gathered in My name, 

  there I am in the midst of them.   

                                Matthew 18. 20

And so why has the concept of small groups been hijacked to spread evil?

What if….what if….cell groups of Christian believers strategically thought about, engaged, and put into action the spreading of kindness, goodness and mercy?  What about cell groups designed for intentional good, instead of perverted for evil?

We each have personal responsibility to practice the love of Jesus wherever God places us, --even in dark places and especially in impossible situations.  But another incredible dimension opens when there is more than one person involved. What happens when two or three work together, or when a church does?   As a leader in our congregation has often said, “There is a profound reason for organized religion.  Together, we can do so much more.”

The adversary knows that too.

What if the headlines revealed goodness being spread like an infectious wildfire, what if kindness grabbed the nightly news?  What if our culture recognized:  What kind of people do things like that?   The work of selflessness.  The impact of personal sacrifice.  A tsunami wave not of evil but of great goodness without borders for strangers, the marginalized, the undeserving, which all of us are.   Incredible grace and love for the common welfare of all people.

Love God and love people are the cornerstones of God’s commandments.  But Jesus takes it even further.  Love those who persecute you.  Love your enemies.  And yes, even love the annoying brethren. 

If you love those who love you, 

               what credit is that to you?  

 Even sinners love those who love them. 

                                             Luke 6. 32

Who sees anything different in you? 

 

“This courage to be distinctively Christian and therefore to live differently must be restored to the heart of the Christian faith,” says Os Guiness in his book Impossible People.  

Do not be overcome by evil

      but overcome evil with good.

                              Romans 12. 21

Push back the darkness

Don’t run from it.

Strike love on a global scale,

       one act of kindness at a time,

and there is

   never anything insignificant in that.

That is how the early Church took root

        and changed the world.

That's how the Church today takes root,

            bears fruit,

                 and still changes the world. 

Not by random acts of niceness,

    but through intentional grace.

The lion under my bed

One of my childhood memories is cowering in my little twin-size bed at night, terrified that there was indeed a lion crouched underneath, ready to pounce if I so much as put a single foot on that cold bare wood floor.

To qualm my fears, my grandmother would leave on the closet light.  But fear is the most creative of all the emotions.  Even that tiny line of light and shadow often grew into something equally scary.

I lost a lot of sleep that way.

And I think of the ridiculous things that still wake me in the night.

Am I still fearful about imaginary monsters under my proverbial bed, ready to pounce through the shadows?  An awkward social situation, words I should have said -- or left unsaid, things I should have done -- and left undone, my feet unable to run, still bound by barbed wire that doesn't even exist?

"Fear not.  Be not afraid."  God repeats that phrase over and over.  Because when Eve ate that apple, sin alone did not enter the world.  Fear did.  

In His Word, the LORD reminds me that He has already overcome anything that I can possibly fear.  It is not that I am a super hero, but He is the supernatural One, my strength and deliverance.  There is a reason why He is called Savior, not just to save us from our sins which are many, but to save us from the enslavement of fear.  God does not just release us;  He breaks out the teeth that grip us, turning that lion into a big kitten, turning my fear into turning me toward Him.

Worry never works things out

                        or gives me strength.

Worry always robs me blind

        and leaves me destitute on the side of the road.

Worry shuts out the light

             on the deeper work God is doing.

The LORD is the One

   Who gives power and strength.

And He says to me,

"What if you trusted Me in this,

                and how would you do it,

      if there was nothing to fear?"

Rebuke the beasts

   that dwell among the reeds.

                     Psalm 68. 30

The ink of many pens

I began working my way through the miry bog of papers on my desk this afternoon, looking for something in particular, but inevitably finding something else.

Ironically, I found the "something else" in a folder printed with the inscription "I dreamed my whole desk was clean," given to me years ago by a friend as a joke.   How little did she realize that ten years later, it would be filled with notes on the back of envelopes, clipped articles, and deep ponderings written on the margins of unrelated things -- thoughts which still profoundly touch me, even as I read them now.

One piece of paper in that mess was left over from a Bible study I attended at least a half dozen years ago, maybe more, entitled "A Record of Prayer Requests and God's Answers."  There were dates, names of people I vaguely remember, and requests scribbled in the ink of many pens.

Why would I have saved this? I wondered out loud.

I glanced down the list of things we had prayed about --the usual things like praise for a repaired furnace, prayer for a husband's job, surgery for someone's mom.

And then I saw the deeper stuff we prayed for:  praying for a daughter to have the courage to walk away from a troubled relationship, a friend losing her baby, and a son's parole hearing after almost a decade in prison.  I can't remember a whole lot about what we studied that semester, but I remember the intensity of praying deep vulnerable stuff for each other.  And sometimes being led to a remarkable answer even while we were praying.

A bitterly cold morning, one of the women in the group slid into the room uncharacteristically late.  At the end of prayer requests, she said, "I didn't want to come today.  And I don't even want to ask this request because of its ridiculous nature."  She hesitated a moment.  "I have a refugee friend who will lose his job if he doesn't pass the employment test next month.  He needs a tutor, not just a tutor, but a tutor who is fluent in Turkish, and because the man is Muslim, the tutor must be male and be able to meet during the day."

I raised my hand.  "Another request?" the leader asked me.

"No," I almost gasped.  "The answer." 

The husband of a friend of mine had worked in Turkey for some 20 years. He now lived about two miles away and worked a flexible schedule.

This sheet I found was not just a random list of needs, but a chronicle of lives intertwined by prayer.  We rarely saw answers as immediate as that.  But we saw answers even more unexpectedly, spelled out in ways we did not recognize as the hand of God.  The answers came in a lot of different size packages....and as far as I know, are still in process.  Because God never works in singular dimensions, nor so neatly tied up with a bow.

Sometimes His purposes are revealed,
sometimes they are too deep to comprehend,
the depths of the ocean,
the enormity of the universe,
         His intricate design undergirding it all.

I thought about that prayer sheet this afternoon in a now distant season of my life in a different state, and about the group I am in now, praying for each other with a box of kleenex in the center of the table.

Some things we see,
but even more that we do not.
But oh,
  the difference praying makes,
that which is revealed
       even in the rear-view mirror,
the faithfulness of God.

Then you shall call,
and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help,
and He will say,
                "Here I am."
The LORD will guide you
                 continually.

                Isaiah 58. 9, 11

An Ordinary Tuesday Morning

I am lingering in the waiting room at the car dealer this morning with a tepid cup of coffee, getting the oil changed in my car.  With 121,000 miles on this faithful vehicle, I am hoping that nothing else will be added to the tab. 

It is an ordinary Tuesday morning, doing ordinary things. 

And it is not lost on me, another ordinary Tuesday morning not so long ago, when I packed lunches, found missing shoes, and hustled the girls off to school. As soon as they left, I went for a six mile run with a fabulously blue sky soaring above.  I could have run forever that morning.  The beauty of the day astonished me.

Before I even changed out of my sweaty clothes, before I jumped into the work for the day, the phone rang – you know, the kind of phone still attached to the wall, the kind of phone where you actually had to be home to answer it – and it was my mom. 

Her frantic words stumbled over each other, so rapidly, I could not understand.  “Slow down, Mom.  What’s going on?”

“Turn on your tv,” she said as she hung up the phone.

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning, doing ordinary things.  And then, it changed forever by the images on a screen.

Someone once told me that at the news of any catastrophic event, one’s senses surge into high alert.  I remember such vivid details. I was wearing an old cotton t-shirt and royal blue running shorts, sitting with my feet up, my running shoes still on, the shrill of the phone startling me, the immense red of September ripe tomatoes lining the counter, waiting to be canned, their deep earthy aroma penetrating the air.

The very first image on the television screen was a newscaster running into the controlled pristine newsroom.  The other journalists were obviously both shocked and shaken.  A really deep abyss faced them, much deeper than could be condensed and captured in headline news, the dark unknown gaping in front of these seasoned professionals, who were speechless in the face of a vast evil, beyond the easily explainable or reportable, with no commercial breaks.

Seventeen years later, there are still no ordinary days.  There never were.  Peace and strength and God’s faithfulness are not dependent on blue skies and favorable circumstances, but manifest even in the hard stuff, the really really hard stuff.

God never promised us that life would be easy,

but “I am with you.”

Churches that Sunday were packed to overflowing, as if suddenly, quite suddenly, people realized that God is real.

Even though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet

I will rejoice in the LORD,

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

GOD, the Lord, is my strength;

He makes my feet like the deer’s;

He makes me tread on my high places.

                                Habakkuk 3. 17-19

On that particular September 11, I read Oswald Chambers’ devotional that morning, words that had been transcribed by his wife in the early 1900s and published in the 1920s, words that took my breath away, words calling for faithfulness in the ordinary:

“We have to go the “second mile” with God.  Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say –‘I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis.’  If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.”

God does not compel us to be fearful of the future,

    but to be faithful on the most ordinary days.

Even today.

Even in this.