Change we can believe in...

The quote was taken from the preface of a play by John Patrick Shanley that was also made into a movie currently in theaters.  I like how the writer acknowledges that it can often be a frustrating, scary, and painful experience for us to truly change, but we have to do it anyway.  

"It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things.  When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on the verge of growth.  The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you've gone the wrong way and you're lost.  But this is just emotion longing for the familiar.  Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind.  Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present."

- John Patrick Shanley

Doubt: a parable

"Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides.  You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.  So don't try to get out of anything prematurely.  Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way."

- James 1: 2-4 (The Message)

Selah.

- S.  

Left holding the bag...

I find the following quote particularly insightful as more of us wake up to the toxic consequences of political and religious divisions that are based more on convincing others we are right than actually BEING and DOING right in our own lives.

"It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty with no trace of meaning left in it.  And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic.

Gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people.  The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real.  In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."

- Thomas Merton

"Just then a relgious scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus.  "Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?"  

He answered, "What's written in God's Law?  How do you interpret it?"

He said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence - and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

"Good answer!" said Jesus.  "Do it and you'll live."

- Luke 10: 25 - 28 (The Message)

Selah.

- S.

Apocalypse Now and Later...

The following passage from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis is particularly insightful in light of current events and the days of reckoning that lie ahead for the people of the United States.  

"... I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does.  When that happens, it is the end of the world.  When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.  God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else -- something it never entered your head to conceive -- comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?  For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side.  There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not.  Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.  God is holding back to give us that chance.  It will not last for ever.  We must take it or leave it."  

 "If you decide that it's a bad thing to worship God, then choose a god you'd rather serve—and do it today. Choose one of the gods your ancestors worshiped from the country beyond The River, or one of the gods of the Amorites, on whose land you're now living. As for me and my family, we'll worship God."  

- Joshua 24:14  (The Message)

- S.

A house of cards on a bed of sand...

“The dollar isn’t secured by anything,” Igor Panarin said in an interview transcribed by Russian newspaper Izvestia today. “The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche; this is a pyramid, which has to collapse.” 

Igor Panarin

Professor at the diplomatic academy of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

"These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

"But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.  These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock."  

Jesus of Nazareth 

Matthew 7: 21 -25 [The Message] (paraphrase) 

God help me deny the impulse to allow the fluctuations in my culture's affluence to determine whether or not I can be thankful.  Blessings to you over the holiday weekend.

- S.

Waste Not, Want Not...

"You are move evil than you have ever feared, and more loved than you have ever hoped." 

- Mark Driscoll 

Death By Love

My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

(Romans 7: 20-25) The Message

Selah.

I'm amazed by Paul's honesty in this passage.  The man responsible for writing a large portion of the New Testament confesses to facing a crippling spiritual weakness he can't seem to overcome no matter how hard he tries.   Paul pulls back the curtain on his own frailty, revealing the universal battle between the light of God and the darkness of sin that exists within every follower of Jesus (myself included).   

Paul reminds us that our failures will not have the final word.  With love from the Father, grace from the Son, and strength from the Spirit, another outcome is possible.  God is the ultimate conservationist, taking the parts of our lives that look like garbage and recycling them into opportunities to distribute his grace and display his glory.  Through this miracle of transformation, we can fulfill life's highest calling: to receive mercy for our sins and to share mercy with others.  We can finally be free from the same tired old methods of being "Christian".

No more spiritually corrosive distractions used to numb the pain of our unconverted failures.  No more vague and formulaic prayers mumbled toward the ceiling that leave us feeling empty and alone.  No more force feeding ourselves endless strings of sermons in the hopes of achieving morality by osmosis.  No more... no more... no more... 

May God help us trust in His power to transform our absolute worst into something great.  May God lead us to receive the redemption found in Jesus Christ.  May be God be proven true, and every man a liar.

- S.  

The Unanswered "Why?"...

While reading through this week's prayer reflections [A Guide To Prayer For All God's People by Rueben P. Job & Norman Shawchuck] I ran across the words to a hymn that reminded me of a couple of things: 

1.) everyone will sufffer. 

2.) pain produces questions about life and God for which we will find no easy answers.   

I appreciate the author's honesty as he grapples with this reality.

When Our Confidence Is Shaken - Fred Pratt Green

When our confidence is shaken

In beliefs we thought secure,

When the spirit in its sickness

Seeks but cannot find a cure,

God is active in the tensions

Of a faith not yet mature.

Solar systems, void of meaning,

Freeze the spirit into stone;

Always our researchers lead us

To the ultimate unknown.

Faith must die, or come full circle

To its source in God alone.

In the discipline of praying,

When it's hardest to believe;

In the drudgery of caring,

When it's not enough to grieve;

Faith, maturing, learns acceptance

Of the insights we receive.

God is love, and thus redeems us

In the Christ we crucify; 

This is God's eternal answer

To the world's eternal "Why?"

May we in this faith maturing

Be content to live and die!

- S.

Prayers like butterflies...

Today's session of chaplain residency training included an interesting discussion about the purpose of prayer that raised a few questions in my mind. 

Are prayers like the proverbial flutters of a butterfly's wings, small movements that can produce a chain reaction resulting in some massive event?  

Is it possible that prayer is not God's primary instrument of intervention to enact changes in the natural order?  

Could it be that prayer is a tool of personal and corporate spiritual formation that causes a ripple effect: beginning within the people praying or receiving prayer, then moving outward into their actions, and ultimately producing significant changes that would not have happened "naturally"?  

Could it be that the real changes occur within human beings, the only agents of consciousness and free will who can act with intention in response to the circumstances of the material world?

If I pray for something that does not happen, is the prayer worthless?

- S.

 

Good morning...

I've been working up at the hospital a lot lately and reading this made me especially grateful that in just a few days I will finally get an uninterrupted weekend with my three monkey children...   

[Daddy and Son are watching cartoons on a Saturday morning.]

"Daddy, can we make some 'awfulls?"

"Yes, Son.  We can make some waffles."

[Later that morning.]

"Ok buddy, watch the light on the waffle maker.  When the light goes out, call to Daddy and I'll get your waffle started."

"Okay, Daddy."

[A couple of minutes later.]

 "Da light went off!  Daddy, da light went OFF!"

"Okay buddy, let's start your waffle."

[Daddy pours the mixture in the waffle maker and closes the lid.]

"Allright, let's give it a few minutes to finish cooking."

[Daddy moves to leave the kitchen.]

"Daddy!  Stay wif me!  Don't leave.  Stay wif me."

[Daddy moves back to the counter and the little boy leans his head against Daddy's chest while singing a song about trains who are happy and sad.  Daddy thanks God for mornings like this one.]

(Scene.)

I found this on my computer today and I am really glad I took the time to write it down as soon as it happened.  This is the kind of moment that can fade from my memory if I don't get it down on paper.  I really need to do a better job making a record of experiences like this one...  

- S. 

The Monster At The End Of This Book...

So here is my newly minted, free-standing blog, created as a copycat version of what everyone else has already been doing for a long time.  For my first entry, I offer the following article, published in "Connections," the statewide newsletter for the Baptist Hospital network in Arkansas.    

When I was a little boy, I remember my dad reading me a story featuring a character from the children's television show "Sesame Street."  It was called "The Monster at the End of This Book."  My dad now tells me that he lost count of the number of times he read to me from those pages, but it would be safe to guess it was somewhere in the hundreds.  The story is woven into my memories of childhood and it is with great delight that I can now read this storybook to my five year old son, Noah.  

This charming children's story centers on a shaggy blue haired creature named Grover as he slowly experiences a nervous breakdown caused by the title telling him that there is a monster coming at the end of the book.  Because of his fear, he goes to great lengths trying to stop the reader every time they try to turn a page.  

As the reader keeps turning pages Grover proceeds to become more and more frightened of what will happen at the end.  The big reveal comes at the story's conclusion when the final page is turned and the only one there is Grover.  What a surprise to discover that he was the only "monster" at the end of the book all along.

No matter how many times my dad read me this book, he always succeeded in making me feel anxious as we neared the end.  I would lose confidence in my knowledge of the ending and begin to suspect that maybe THIS would be the time when there really would be some terrible monster waiting on the last page of the book.  The suspense would build, we would near the conclusion, and I would become afraid, begging along with Grover for my dad not to turn the page.  

But eventually, after some reassurance and a bit of laughter, I would let go and we would read the final page together.  Without fail, I would see yet again that the only thing waiting there was the same as before: it was just Grover, the monster who had been there all along. 

At some point in our lives, all of us are faced with the monsters of sickness, evil, fear, and death .  With every day that passes, we go forward into circumstances and choices that can feel overwhelming and dangerous.  It can be difficult to exist day to day with the anxiety of the future bearing down upon us.  

And yet, the Bible tells us that through Jesus we can walk into tomorrow without fear of the monsters.  In 1 John 4:17-18 the apostle reminds us that, "By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

Because of the God's love, we do not have to fear the future.  As the last page in our life is turned and we stand before God's throne of judgment, the only monster that will remain will be the one we see in the mirror.  The beauty of the gospel is that we will not stand alone or be judged guilty.  Instead, we will discover that Jesus stands with us, offering us forgiveness and loving us into unending life with the Father.  Jesus faced all of life's monsters on the cross.  The monsters were defeated.  He was resurrected.  We do not have to be afraid.  Through Jesus the Savior, our stories can have a happy ending.

- S.