When You Get Over Yourself, Repent of Hypocrisy, and Give God Room

May 22, 2013 by 10 Comments

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When almost six thousand people from 88 different countries, representing a myriad of faith backgrounds gather in one place to worship the same Jesus you know and love, you can’t help but be changed by it. And realize that your perspective is quite small.

I stood on the concrete floor of the Royal Albert Hall, five rows from the stage, turning slowly like the ballerina on a child’s jewelry box taking it all in. Next to a folded seat draped with my damp trench coat, I watched people file into four stories of seats from the crowded city streets of London. Willing my mind to record it like a video camera of remembrance.

God’s presence was palpable.

Back home, I’d been so absorbed in finding time to write, connecting with people online and worrying about my children’s future, that I missed seeing Jesus’ perspective on the world. He was giving me a binocular view of unity and the way he loves mankind from the diversity of the Body of Christ.

But more than that, I realized I was avoiding the uncomfortable truth that sin has left an ugly indelible mark on the world. Not intentional avoidance, but one slow drive around my well-manicured neighborhood, one click on the garage door of my comfort zone at a time.

He’s longing for us to be carriers of Hope to a world living with the absence of hope. And there isn’t just one way to do that.

I stood up during a break and asked the woman seated in front of me if she needed prayer. She nodded to the affirmative, so I prayed for what she requested: more of the Holy Spirit’s power in her life. The sky didn’t crack open and she didn’t leap over seats, but we felt the presence of God as we bowed our heads to humbly ask.

The next day I stepped away from my seat, walked around a galley of people to the row behind me and prayed for a woman who stood in response to the need for healing in her neck. The muscles so tight she couldn’t move her head around while driving to see if the road was clear to pass. A young woman and I prayed over her together and after a few moments, she could move her neck without pain.

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Last weekend, I sat in a different kind of theater with my family, waiting for the new Star Trek movie to appear on the screen. As the lights dimmed, the putrid smell of alcohol and cigarettes permeated the air around us. H leaned over and remarked that the person behind us was so inebriated that the smell was leaking from his pores.

I thought about moving to another seat.

I thought about how I don’t like going to the theater anymore. I prefer watching movies on my couch with a blanket draped over me; eating popcorn from my own bowl, instead of a cardboard box.

I thought about how uncomfortable the seats are, how I have to swing my legs over to the left or right because the person in front of me leans too far back in their swanky theater seat, invading my personal space.

I thought about how loud the plastic wrapping sounds on the candy people were opening behind me, how when you are drunk you aren’t considering other people.

And then suddenly, I thought about how I sat crumpled up in the Royal Albert Hall just a few days ago, seated around people I didn’t know, listening to Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury say, “The key moment for Christians is when we realize what Christ did for us, not what we do for Him.”

So I repented of my hypocrisy and prayed for the person behind me as I watched Klingons threaten someone’s life from the Enterprise.  He didn’t stand up and ask for prayer but I boldly asked the Lord to heal him. Deliver him of his addiction and let him know he is loved in a tangible way.

We are carriers of hope. There is more than one way to deliver it.  More than one way that He’ll remind us of why we are here. God isn’t limited by venue, language barriers, cultural differences, faith backgrounds or our sin when it comes to showing His endless love and transforming power to mankind.

It is not what we do for God, but what He does for us that changes everything.

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Linking with Jennifer for Tell His Story.

 

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Listen to What They Aren’t Saying

May 20, 2013 by 34 Comments

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“How are you,” I ask.  She looks up from wiping the sink, into the mirror to get a look at me. Then she leans her whole body sideways, finishes swiping the white enamel canoe shaped sink until the bowl is spotless.  She smiles and says she is fine. I linger because I sense something more.

Her round cheeks permanently flush, like someone wiped their finger stained with lipstick across them. Her skin is so pale it nearly matches the color of the thin white blouse she wears, making her blue eyes noticeable.

“It’s almost time to go home,” she says.

I turn around with dripping hands looking for the towels and empathize, “You must be counting the minutes then.”

She pulls herself up, moves over to the next sink in the trio and tells me she will be going to the hospital to visit her granddaughter when she gets off.

I hesitate, look in the mirror on the opposite wall and realize we’re the only ones in the bathroom at the Delta Club now. Just outside the door the room is full of travelers speaking different languages. Sitting with their luggage at white plastic tables, eating plates of carrots and salmon sandwiches shaped like rectangles. Somehow, it feels like I’ve entered a sacred portal.

I ask Jesus what He has in mind for these moments that I’m alone in the restroom with an airport employee.

“Oh, she must be quite sick,” I respond.

In less than a minute, I learn that her granddaughter is sixteen, her name is Courtney, and the doctors think she suffers from appendicitis. Except that there are signs of internal bleeding too. She can’t even hold water down.

I tell her I have a seventeen year old daughter and can imagine she must be worried sick. “That sounds serious,” I say.

She makes eye contact with me.

“I’ll pray for your Courtney,” I tell her. She looks down, fiddles with the wet paper towel she is using to clean and mumbles something quietly, then starts wiping the third sink, the one I just used.

“Thank you for praying,” she says sheepishly.

It only takes a minute to be vulnerable and lead someone to the presence of God.  I think about how many times I’ve asked someone that question, “How are you?”, and didn’t wait long enough to hear the answer. Or God speaking.

We’re all longing for someone to listen. Because very few of us are just fine.

So, how are you?

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Linking with Michelle, Laura, Jen and Heather.

 

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Surrendering to Sabbath – Week 7

February 22, 2013 by 25 Comments

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Time is a strong current pulling me downstream in turbulent wind. When I arrive on the shore of the weekend, I can’t remember how I got there. I was singularly focused on keeping my head above water.

On Saturday, I stand in morning drizzle; shake the world off like a wet dog ready for supper. Circle the landscape to find my way back home. At sundown, my wet thoughts drip on the clothes line of drenched distraction, puddle in a hollow of loamy soil beneath.

Sunday, I awaken to slanted light, cerulean sky and sprouts poking through the hollow place. I can’t identify the flora or name it. But their lime green spindles widen my eyes to wonder.

By sundown, my favorite flowers stand sturdy beneath the empty clothesline of pins spinning wildly in the breeze. A sweet fragrance wafts from their vibrant budded stocks and lingers like fog in London through the rooms of my house.

On Monday, I stand on the sunny shore of calm water and empty boats. Holding an oar in one hand, a bouquet of hope tied with white satin ribbon in the other, I straddle the new week. It looks like fair weather. But then again, time is fickle, like a strong current pulling me downstream.

And Sabbath, it helps me to remember where I’m going when I lose my way. It’s an unexpected gift blooming in the hollow places.

But God, dear Lord, I only have eyes for you. Since I’ve run for dear life to you, take good care of me. Psalm 141:8

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For your weekend reading:

Art for the Common Good: Scott Erickson by Laura Boggess – “Our truest songs—there are two of them,” he says. “And Jesus reveals both of them to us.”

Kingdom Come: On the Mind, the Wait, and the Delight by Amber Haines at (in)courage

The Scars We All Wear by Duane Scott – Warning: you may need tissues nearby.

When It’s Okay Not to Have Joy by Kelli Woodford at Imperfect Prose

Dear Poet, Writer, Author, Friend by Elizabeth Marshall

Wisdom and Sabbath Rest by Tim Keller – I like what he says about approaching Sabbath as an introvert or an extrovert in this one.

And finally if you want to know more about joining the Surrendering to Sabbath Society, learn more here. Join the community of Redemptions Beauty and subscribe by email here for new posts every week.

Welcome to the weekend friends!

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Begging for Mercy

December 16, 2012 by 10 Comments

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On this third Sunday of Advent I echo Mary’s exclamation, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord,” but my heart beats heavy and I proclaim it through tears. I watch the news, witness innocence slain in the presence of evil and I don’t have to sit across from a mother at her kitchen table to understand her sorrow.

And I don’t want to be one more voice adding to the crowds giving opinion but I will join the collective cry at heaven’s gate, begging for mercy and waiting for His return.  Because we need a Saviour, more than anything else this Christmas. We need a Saviour who bore our sin so that we can live free.

Will you join me in bending our hearts to prayer for the families of the twenty- eight who died on Friday in Newtown, CT? May we rejoice in knowing He is good, even in tragedy.

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On Fractured Friendship and Shouldering Hope

December 5, 2012 by 41 Comments

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I got her text a few days after the voting that devastated me. A vote that split our church family wide open. We voted differently. She asked me to lunch.

She and I, we’ve sat among peers in the same prayer circle for three years now, peeking inside our hearts when the Word tore open our ugly, offering consolation and the spoon of friendship stirring up faith. But we didn’t talk about the church vote.

No one asked me how it felt to have your church turn their back on what you’ve poured your heart into for twelve years. The church planting movement my husband helps to lead, the one I’d written hundreds of stories about, uprooted my family to move across the country for.

I said no to lunch. I couldn’t sweep all that pain under the rug and smile over salad. I’ve never been good at pretending. I’m the girl whose mother knew I hadn’t eaten well in college by the tone of my voice over the phone.

A few days later, sitting in my van trembling after midnight, thinking about who I could call for help to navigate the wreck my daughter had with a semi, I scrolled through all those church people in my mind. The families I wrote down on those forms for my children, you know, the people the school should call in case you aren’t available in an emergency.

I hadn’t talked to those people in months.

But I received her text.

So I called her.

She didn’t answer.

It was 1:30 in the morning.

I was relieved I didn’t wake her up.

She called me back, after two hours of sleep in my clothes. Said she saw my update on Facebook and my missed call on her phone and she was in a puddle, and so relieved to know Murielle was okay. And all that church stuff, it felt like chaff in the wind blowing tumbleweed down the street of my soul.

Sometimes perspective plummets like an elevator shaft unhooked from what you’ve always taken for granted.

She came to my door with foil covered containers filled with food, the salt from our tears and the presence of the holy. We sat on my couch shouldering hope under the cacophony of teens consoling my daughter, talking about everything and nothing. And I learned what it means to bare one another’s burdens.

I named the ache of my pain, opened the gift of receiving and I’m looking forward to going to lunch soon.

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In her book, Enuma Okoro says, “A believing community shoulders hope when circumstances seem hopeless. A believing community speaks boldly into despair and longing and suggests that things do not have to remain as they are in the presence of a holy, imaginative God.”

As we enter the season of Advent may we each find a sojourner to share the longings of our soul, one to receive the whispers of our pain in the wait. Not friends for fixing but for shouldering hope and shifting the weight.

Many of you come here with burdens like mountains you can’t see your way through and I just wanted you to know what a privilege it is to intercede on your behalf. Let’s bare one another’s burdens, shall we?

Linking with Jennifer and Emily.

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Sneaky Self-Sufficiency

October 16, 2012 by 32 Comments

We didn’t even have to discuss it. We wanted to find out the gender of each of our babies after the stick turned pink. I like to know what I’m in for, be ready for all the contingencies before they happen.

But this projecting into the future, it goes beyond having the nursery ready. I rehearse what I will say or do when planning mission trips, preparing for family getaways, my children’s activities, when thinking about my daughter going away to college. I find myself doing it often in this new writing life.

I want to know the outcome of my investment before I make it.

And this self-sufficiency, trying to be adequate in my own skin, it’s like sneaky Leviathan resting there just under the surface of the deep. I don’t notice the ugliness of it all until he cranes his neck, emerging steely eyed, dripping grins about drifting into his territory when I was napping on the stern of self-reliance.(Psalm 104:26)

Do I call on Jesus when I feel competent? Or just in my inadequacy?

Because I’m comfortable resting in my row boat, pushing the oars when I’m ready, using the meager map of my experience to get to the place of imagined destiny. And Jesus, he wants to sit there with me too, not just when I need a new map and help pushing oars through molasses on a cold day.

I’ll keep an open seat on sunny days when the channel is clear as well as the rainy midnight of the soul when I’ve forgotten my umbrella.  Who wants to wade in adequate when miraculous is just over the horizon?

Have you ever thought of letting go of self-sufficiency? I admit, this is a hard one for me.

 Linking with Jen and Eileen.

This is #16 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments here on Friday. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

 

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Letting Go of Trying to Figure It Out

October 14, 2012 by 16 Comments

Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own. ~Jeremiah 33:3, The Message

Praying you hear Him today as you worship our Lord and Saviour. Jesus has much to tell you. He’s waiting for you to call His name. Listen.

Happy Sunday Friends!

This is #14 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments here on Friday. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

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