Haters

That word makes me cringe.  How can it in anyway send a message of grace?  I care, you matter, there is such a thing as good and evil.  Pain isn't always bad.  The lack of it isn't always good.  Sometimes I care and you matter so I choose for you... pain.  I have to get a tooth pulled this next week.  If I don't, well eventually the bone around that tooth will erode away.  Eventually, the infection would poison my body.  It's gonna hurt.  But it is the path to healing.

I don't feel any pain right now.  Why would I choose pain?  Because pain is the route to healing.  It is often so.  I'm thinking of Jesus and pain... and how much we selfishly avoid it... and how He selflessly didn't

Lives matter!

Is it a question of black or blue?  Or is it a question of humanity?  Life matters!  Your life matters!  Each and every precious breath on this earth is fraught with purpose.  We are created with great purpose! Every life... every breath... every fragile, frail, angry, hurting, bruised and broken soul... MATTERS!

We are here to build. ("Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." [Ephesians 4:29]) We are here to care about another's needs and do something about it.  It matters that you are hurting.  The millions that are hungry, orphaned, without a country, without a home.  We all matter.

But the secret to winning the war against contempt is not contempt.  It is love, service and grace.  "Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”" (Romans 12:20) 

If you want to change the worlds response to you, your people or your cause, give grace to your enemy.  Be a people of kindness, goodness and grace.  Create a movement that builds up and calls out that all lives matter... I'm in... you?

I was reading Ecclesiastes yesterday and this passage jumped out at me; "Also do not lake to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you.  For many times, also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others."  Ecclesiastes 7:21-22  What a hard concept to actually put into practice.  I have been the victim of tons of contempt.  I have figured out that people harbor ill thoughts and beliefs and then wait until you are on your back to pounce and dump.  It's frightening but only if I take to heart everything people say.  Funny how much resilient people seem to be able to ignore.  As for me, I have a deep, deep fear of another's contempt.  It has way too much power in my life even now.

What would it be like if I didn't take to heart everything people say?  What if it didn't matter... not in the sense that I don't care but in the sense that it just isn't where my equilibrium lies?  This is a place in my life God has worked on for years.

I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis's book "The Great Divorce"  In it his picture of hell is just a tiny crack in the ground of heaven.  We have made it this huge gaping void but perhaps I need to give it much less significance?

For me today, this passage is a picture of grace.  I have known such grace from people who let me restate myself until I feel understood.  It is so amazing to have someone say, "I heard X but I know you well enough to know you meant something else.  Try again!"  Or just to be given the gift of patience.  What a gift for someone to see only the good in you in spite of your flaws and crooked features.  I am the type that sees the splotch of ink, rather than the rest of the white paper.  God forgive me... heal me!

God I want to offer that gift to others.  I want to be resilient and patient and kind.  (Listening)  It is true that I have focused on people's faults... perhaps as a protection/defense?  If I see another's faults maybe mine are more palatable?  Such the opposite of grace.

Grace is such a powerful thing.  Perhaps the one weapon we have to win against evil eh?

It's confusing, isn't it?  how did we get here?  It happened so fast didn't it?  Has America lost it's identity?  Who are we now... and what do we stand for?  Equality?  I beg to differ.  Justice? Not that I've seen.  Hope?  So sad.. so little hope.  It feels like we as a country have lost our way.  Doesn't it?

But then, why are we surprised?  What is the end result of teaching people that there is no God?  That we just happened and we are simply descendants of apes?  What if there was no intelligent design?  What does that make us then? What now is the point of living?  If we are not created, we are of no more value than dogs, or maybe even less, since we can make more informed choices eh?  Look at the consequences of our decisions.  it is much bigger than we might think.  We no longer have a reason to be reasonable.

Think about money.  Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."  Is he implying that there are only two masters out there?  We will serve Him or money?  I wonder... We have definitely made the switch in this country.  And money is a cruel master isn't it?

I keep wondering how to navigate a world that serves a different master than I do.  We keep missing each other on every pass because I really don't want to serve money and our laws are written with the expectation that I do.  I am lost as to how to respond.  

But I believe we were created and for a deep, deep purpose.  Perhaps in these times that purpose is more important than ever eh?  light is most needed the darker the night isn't it? So how do I become light?  What can I do in this world now?  (listening)...  I simply hear "be kind".  I have seen that, the more we are focused on money the less we notice the people who have none.  Where I am today, homeless people are huddled in huge cardboard villages.  How can I learn to see?  Learn to watch? and learn to be kind?

Focus?

It's raining, the birds are singing playfully outside and there is a very slight puff of wind teasing soggy branches of trees.  But there is also the harsh sounds of a sea plane coming down for a landing and the swish of a car, the blare of a truck's air brakes and the tick, ticking of a clock.

Isn't it funny how the continuous roar of the sea is soothing but the continuous running of a toilet can drive you crazy?

I wonder at how much noise we produce just by being busy.  We drive rather than walk because we don't have the time?  Or is it that we just don't want to walk anymore?  So much of what we have invented was invented to save time and effort.  The washing machine, dryer, dishwasher.  What about the power drill, lawn mower and car?  I use them all.  But if they save me time I don't know what happened to it.

I saw a clip where Bernie Sanders was saying that he played ball in Brooklyn growing up and a part of the positive for him was not having parental supervision all the time.  He said kids learned how to interact by interacting on their own.  It's a very good point!

Why are we busy?  What do we do?  We work, so that we can have money so that we can eat to have strength to go to work?  Kids go to school to get homework so that they can study at home and go to school and get more homework?  

Is there another way? What does it mean to be still?

This verse is written in the command form:

"Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still". Psalm 4:4

So is this one:

"Be still, and know that I am God;" Psalm 46:10

The birds are still singing outside.  I think I will go outside to listen.

What if we cared?

What if we cared?  Would it change anything?  I am in the middle of a movie about Mother Theresa and how the home for the dying began.  It began because of a calling... a voice from God.  It also began because of compassion.  Mother Theresa could not see the pain or the poor outside her window and do nothing.

Can we?  I have talked before of a time when a few of my friends and I went to do "street ministry" by performing on the streets of Santa Monica.  You  have to get a permit to play there and there are regulations (this is California after all).  You must be a certain amount of feet from another street performer of which there were many.  We had no idea of the competition for a good place to play.  Our ignorance left us scrambling for one of the last, not so perfect spots that were left.  

In the process, I was watching from the back of our little parade when I saw one of our company literally step over a homeless man on her race to a spot that was open.  I was sickened by the total lack of acknowledgment of the human being she had traversed.  But on we trudged until we found our spot and started singing.  People gathered around but quickly dispersed when they realized we had a "religious" message.  

I wanted to leave with them, to slink out of the limelight and disappear. I wanted to scream, "You go guys! I am with you!"  "I would leave too if I were you!"  

Who are we really?  Can we shutter our windows forever or will we someday be on the outside of the fence.  

Mother Theresa felt called to live among the poor.  It was dangerous, it was unaccepted by her peers. It was radical.  But in the end, the whole world wept the loss when she died.

I can almost see Jesus and he stands with her and says, "Go and do likewise!"

Withholding good things...

I know a woman who is very afraid of running out of money.  She is old.  She is facing medical issues... she has over three million dollars.  Will she run out of money before her life is over?  Who knows... we seem to create what we fear, so my guess is, she will die penniless.  Perhaps it would be the best thing for her.  The thing is, while she clings to what she has in fear of her future woes, her children muddle through their own very current woes unaided... sad.

Matthew 7:11 says, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!" 

Hmmm, do we know how to give good gifts to our children?  In context Matthew 7:7-11 says this:

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!"

The assumption there is that we know how to give good gifts to our children.  If my child asked me for bread.  I would buy bread.  It's true!  I would not buy a stone instead.  But in our society where we live only one generation at a time, we are more likely to miss the point.  If we do in this generation what has been done in the last three will there be any bread for our children?

I think it is important to know what a good gift is.  It might be a loaf of bread but perhaps it is land that is clean, rich and fertile that is ready for a strong crop of wheat to grow so that our children have something to bake into bread.

Maybe it's a clean ocean, one that has been fished with our children in mind.  Leaving all we can behind so that there will be fish for many generations to come.  

Perhaps this isn't the point.  Jesus is begging us to ask Him.  For what exactly?  Is this a carte blanche to ask and receive anything I want? Hmmm, I'm thinking of James 4:3 where it says,

"You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures."

Which pleasures?  Isn't eating bread also a pleasure? When are we withholding bad things and when are we withholding good things from our children? Does God withhold good things? Or... hmmm If God never withholds good things from His children... what are those good things?  Food?  Clothing?  or is it peace, hope, and rest?  

Why does He ask us to ask? to knock? to seek?I wonder if He is egging us on to ask for today's things... bread and fish.  Like the Lord's prayer, give us this day our daily bread.  I wonder... 

I know many who say, "ask for the big things"... great things like houses, wealth and prosperity.  But sometimes I feel more like a tiny bird... waiting for just the next morsel, perhaps He asking for something more intimate and personal.  Like the next bite... the next breath.  Maybe...