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.