Rejoice: death is life

Death. It’s something we don’t really talk about. It’s something we avoid. I think it’s because it scares us. I feel I have had more than my share of experiences with death in my relatively short life.

I realized this past week that I had come to associate death with tragedy. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. My experiences were death were by and large tragic- my high school friend dying at a slumber party, my mentor committing suicide, a young mother dying of breast cancer, my college friend being killed in a farming accident, and a dear friend/mentor killed in a car accident. In all of these cases the death was a very real loss. Instead of celebrating life lived, we were mourning the life that would not get to be lived.

On Sunday I got a call from my parents telling me my grandpa was at the end of his life. They didn’t know how long, but it could be a matter of hours or days. I was sad, but it wasn’t painful really. When he died on Monday it wasn’t a hard loss. I didn’t feel that sense of tragedy I had somehow unconciously been expecting. And I kept waiting for that tragic grief to hit me. And it never did. Now I think I know why.

Death is not tragic. Death is beautiful and wonderful- at least in the earthly sense. Because death is the beginning of life- life living in the presence of God, life without suffering, life without pain, without struggle. Life in the truest most honest sense. And this makes it a wonderful and amazing thing. Yes, there is still loss, but as Christians we see that loss as what it is- our loss, and at the end of a life well lived our loss doesn’t seem so great.

I don’t know what your situation is. I know I’m not the only one who has had to say good bye to someone I love this week.  I pray that you can remember that the earth is just a temporary place. True life, full life, can only be found after death. I rejoice that God has shown me this in such a real and tangible way this week.

A New Thanksgiving

When I was a little girl my grandparents would take me and my cousin out every year to a play at the college. We always looked forward to going to the play because we got to go out to dinner before the play someplace downtown, usually the 8th Street Grill. As we got a little older we would joke about how we needed to make sure we planned to go to dinner at least 3 hours before the play because it would take that long to eat and get to the play because so many people would stop and want to talk to my grandparents. When they introduced us as their grandchildren the inevitable response would be “you girls are so lucky to have these two wonderful people as grandparents” or something along those lines.

He was an excellent coach- the kind of person who cared about his players as people, and often looked for “non-traditional” types to fill his teams. I think the reason he made such a great coach was because he was a wonderful teacher. He was patient and he would explain and teach until you figured it out. One summer I spent one morning a week with my cousing learning how to play basketball. The next year I played on the 7th grade basketball team, and the year after that I tried out and didn’t make the team. I’m pretty sure it’s because I didn’t go to practice with my grandpa.

It was my grandpa who taught me how to play tennis, my grandpa who taught me to canoe, my grandpa who showed me the importance of family, my grandpa who showed me what it means to serve others. Some of these lessons have stuck with me better than others.

My cousin and I are completely different people. The only thing that connects us is our familial bond. My grandparents recognized this, but also encouraged us to spend time together. They took us to their summer cottage for a weekend every year, they’d take us to plays at the college each year, they flew us down to AZ to spend our spring break with them, they gave us a lot of opportunities to spend time with one another, and although we have nothing in common really, we have these shared memories. We have a bond that was formed only because of them. And although we are not close today, we are only connected in any way because of what they did before.

I have so many wonderful memories, memories that revolve around spending time with grandpa doing so many different things. We never sat around bored when he was there. And now he’s gone. And Thanksgiving looks totally different.

As a family we are not really all that close. We get together twice a year- Thanksgiving and Christmas. When kids were younger we’d get together on the 4th of July as well, but not anymore. It’s amazing what loss does to a family. Suddenly we are not a family that sees each other once a year basically. Suddenly we are a family. We are laughing together, we are crying together, we are finding that we are connected because of this extraordinary man.

There hasn’t been a lot of sadness yet. Right now we are all so glad he is in a better place now because he wasn’t able to be himself anymore. But tomorrow we are gathering to celebrate a day of Thanksgiving, a day when grandpa cuts the turkey with his electric knife and sets out place cards with job assignments stuck into gummy orange slices. A day when grandpa offers his wise knowledge about what the Lions should be doing to win the game. A day we have never had without him.

It will be a good day, it will be a day filled with laughter and memories and tears. But it will be different. Today I am thankful for the legacy grandpa has left behind- a legacy that reaches around the world, but most of all the takes this jumbled bunch of people and brings us together. I am thankful for the man who taught my father what it means to be a strong Christian father, thankful for the man who taught me that family means finding the things that bind us together instead of letting our differences separate us. And I am thankful that God decided it was time to take grandpa home. Because as sad as it is for all of us, knowing that he can play tennis, lawn bowling, basketball, and all those other things he loved to do and couldn’t anymore is better than having him sitting in the room with us.

What are you thankful for this year?

Joy Cont.

As I wrote about before, joy keeps popping up all around me. In books I’m reading, in conversations with my pastor, as I’m looking at different situations I’m thinking about joy- what it is, what it looks like, how we can be more joyful. This morning the sermon was on joy. It wasn’t a bad sermon, it was about why we should be joyful. But I felt like there was one flaw in the overall point- while the pastor kept going back to being joyful because of Grace or because of what God did/does for us, I feel like that is not entirely true.

Joy isn’t found in what God gives us, joy isn’t found in what we have or gain or get or receive. I would go so far as to say that joy isn’t found in the amazing gift of grace even. Joy is possible because of grace, but it is not our receiving of grace that makes us joyful.

We have a serious flaw in our thinking- a major blockage in our relationship with God. We look at everything as what we get from it, what benefit it has for us. This is not what it’s about. It’s not about my being able to go to heaven, me having my sins forgiven, me being able to be joyful. It’s all about God. We won’t find true joy until we stop looking at what we receive. Our entire purpose in life needs to be bringing joy to God, not the other way around. Until we forget about ourselves, until we can stop trying to find what makes US happy and joyful we are not living as we should.

Our joy will only be found when our entire orientation changes from a “me” focus to a God focus. Yeah, this will be an ongoing process, but we need to start today. We need to stop wondering how WE can become more joyful and start focusing on what makes God joyful. It’s hard because it means truly dying to ourselves, and I’m finding that even when I’m willing I still cling to my life with all I have, but I am trying. I am trying to learn to focus on what pleases God, and I am finding when I do that my life suddenly ends, and yet at the same time I am more alive than any other time.

Let’s stop worrying about our joy and start thinking about God’s joy.

Religious Leaders

There’s this one group in the Bible that we tend to judge quite harshly, and rightly so really. Jesus rebuked them all the time, he pointed out their flaws and challenged them to fix things. This group were the Jewish religious leaders. And they were messed up. They were acting all righteous and pious, but that’s all it really was, an act. Often I find myself looking at these guys as the epitome of what we should not be as Christians, as the epitome of what the church needs to avoid being. But I think I’m starting to understand them more.

I think our church leadership today is not really much different from the Pharisees and Sadducees. It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to live up to expectations. It’s easy to put on a face of religiousness and feel a need to act like we are better Christians than we really are. It’s easy to get caught up in following the rules in order to appear a good person and forget about the reason for the rules in the first place. Because when you are in a leadership position the entire church is watching what you do and how you act. If you skip a week of church, they notice (well, if you don’t have two different services at least). If you don’t pray before digging in to your lunch, they notice. Whatever you do outside the privacy of your home is open to scrutiny and judgment. So you start following the rules to the letter. Not leaving any room for messing up and risking criticism. And soon that consumes your life.

But really, are church leaders any different than any other Christian? No, not really. Maybe they have a bit more knowledge about theology. It’s possible they can read some Greek and Hebrew. They may know the proper way to craft a sermon. But otherwise, there really is no difference. But we think there is. Both as church leaders and as the people in the church. We seem to make this line, unintentional though it may be. While it’s okay if I forget to pray before lunch, if the pastor or other leader forgets it’s horrible. If I choose to have a second glass of wine that’s okay, but if the church leadership has more than one it’s questionable. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I don’t know. But truly we have come to think that as church leaders we need to be better at following the rules than others.

But Jesus scolds the religious leaders for focusing on the show of it, and that is what our view has become. If we want to be truly great Christian leaders we need to be real and honest. We need to stop hiding behind the rules, and start admitting our flaws and faults. We need to help change the perception that to be a church leader you need to be better at being a Christian. Otherwise we’re going to end up just like the Pharisees and Sadducees- left out of the amazing work Jesus is doing in the world.

Joyful Living

Joy. It keeps coming up; in conversations, in Bible studies, at church. I keep hearing people say we aren’t joyful enough. And having no real reason to disagree I nod my head in agreement. But I wonder if we can really judge how joyful a person is or is not.

I’m not an emotional person. The majority of the time you will not see how excited I am about something, you probably won’t be able to tell how upset something makes me, and most likely you won’t be able to judge whether or not I am joyful based on my emotional response to a situation. But as everyone says, joy is not an emotion, so none of this should matter.

I’m a glass half full kind of person. I’d rather see the positive than the negatives. I would rather spin something bad into being something good. I don’t necessarily even realize I’m doing this all the time, but rarely will I look at something and only see bad. I have heard joy defined as viewing things from the glass half full perspective. But I don’t think that’s what joy is either.

Today in church the sermon was on peace. It was a national theme following Veteran’s day. I have heard joy defined as peace. But I don’t really think that’s it either.

I’m content 99% of the time. I’m happy with my life. I’m happy period. I look for the good things not the bad. So far in life I have been able to roll with the punches so to speak, not getting down because of hard times, even if I am saddened by them. I feel like I am joyful. But would someone looking at me see me as a joyful person? Would you be able to tell that I am at peace and content and happy and whatever? I don’t know. I don’t complain much, but I don’t go around bubbly and excited either.

During a staff meeting this past week my pastor asked if we thought our church was joyful. I don’t know if we can see that on a grand scale. I feel the only way to know if someone is joyful is to know them, and fairly well. The people I know well enough to judge lead me to believe we are pretty joyful, but I don’t really know. Then he suggested we should start modeling joyful living to the church. And I think that’s important. I fully agree with the idea. I just don’t know how to “model” it, because I don’t know if it is something we can show. I think it is visible at certain times, but I don’t think that day to day, moment to moment, you can say that someone is living joyfully based on how they act.

What about you? How do you think we show joy? I’m not saying I can’t live more joyfully, I just wonder what I can do to make it apparent to others that I am joyful.

Limiting Prayers

I think every time I am part of a group praying for requests I am struck by the way we pray. “Lord, be with__________ as they are going through…” I am as guilty of this as anyone, but I always find this to be a bad request to make. It comes easily, I’m not sure why, perhaps because we here it so often, or perhaps because it’s easier than praying for things that we aren’t sure he’ll answer. I mean, God is ALWAYS with us. We don’t have to ask him to be with us during difficult times. We need to step up and ask God for the things that are hard to ask for. “God, please take away the pain of ________ as they recover from ________”, “Lord, please let ____________ feel your overwhelming love for him during his time of loss”, etc.

I find it’s especially easy to pray “Lord be with…” when I don’t really know the person I’m praying for, but we still should be able to ask for something more specific. I wonder if we miss out seeing the amazing ways God answers prayer because we don’t go out on a limb and ask for something big and impossible. I wonder if we have “limited” God by asking him for something that doesn’t need to be asked for. I realize we often don’t feel God with us, we often overlook his presence in our lives, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t there. If we are really going to go to a “default setting” when praying we should at least change it so that we’re saying “Lord, allow _______ to feel your presence” or something like that.

As long as we are simply asking God to “be with” someone we are going to miss God’s answer to our prayers. This week my goal is to never simply pray, “Lord be with…” but instead take the time to figure out specifically what I am asking God to do for that person.

Justice or Mercy?

Last night we got a group of mainly high school kids, but also upper elementary kids and adults, to sleep outside in order to raise awareness of homelessness and also as a fundraiser for an organization providing housing for families. This was our first year participating, and I decided to keep things low key, we watched a video and did a couple activities to try and better understand what things can lead to a person being homeless as well as what it is actually like to be homeless. Of course, the biggest part of the experience was sleeping outside in the cold and on the hard ground and gaining a better understanding of what it is like to have to do that night after night, day after day. I also was nice and left a part of the building open so people could use a real bathroom if they needed it.

We had about 20 people participate for some or all of it. 4 people only stayed for part of the time, the rest spent the night. While the majority of the people did what you were supposed to do- sleep outside- 4 kids decided to sit inside the building and not sleep. They waited until everyone had gone to bed before moving inside, and at 4:30 when I got up and saw them I was too out of it to argue. So 4 kids spent the night warm and awake. Not really the point of the exercise, but hopefully they got something from it anyway.

In the morning we had breakfast and talked a bit about the experience. I asked everyone if spending the night like that had changed how they would treat homeless people they encountered. One of the boys said “no, they made the choice to be homeless they can help themselves”. I was shocked, first of all, why would you choose to spend the night outside like that if you didn’t think homeless people deserve assistance? But more than that, I couldn’t believe that after the stories we had heard to start the night and the activities we did throughout he honestly believed this. In response I tried to remind him of some of the stories we had heard- a woman and her husband with only high school diplomas ended up homeless two months after her husband lost his job and couldn’t find another one, they had two kids and didn’t do anything wrong really. We also saw how non-skilled labor jobs don’t pay enough to afford a home, or else you can barely afford someplace to live, but if you get sick you’re going to have to choose between a doctor or your home. He didn’t budge and I didn’t want it to turn into an argument, so I let it go. But then I got to thinking about how I should have responded.

Regardless of why a person is homeless or struggling, we are called to help them. This might not mean giving them money, but it does mean that as Christians we are expected to reach out to them. I should happily give my extra coat, or buy a sandwich for the guy on the corner, or provide a ride for someone who needs it, regardless of what their choices have been that brought them to their place of need. We aren’t told to serve people because they deserve it, we are told to serve people to show them Christ’s love. And Christ’s love is above everything else an act of totally undeserved mercy and love. Why a person is living on the street or traveling from shelter to shelter doesn’t matter. The fact that they need something I can provide does. What can I do this week to help someone in need? What can you do?

Blinded

Sunday was World Hunger Sunday, and like I would imagine many churches did our sermon focused on that very subject. Before the service I was talking with our pastor’s wife and she was sharing with me a struggle she had from the day before. They had gone downtown and had noticed that on every corner and every place they went there were people begging. She said at first she was overwhelmed by the amount of need, but by the end of the day she wasn’t even noticing them anymore.  Our pastor shared about seeing all the need and being overwhelmed by it as well, although from the pulpit he didn’t share having gotten to the point of no longer noticing the beggers, so I don’t know if his experience was the same as hers.

This all happened during the day when I was sitting by a table with a tent set up trying to get donations, pledges actually, for our youth and other church members to spend Saturday night sleeping outside, getting a taste of what it means to be homeless, and hopefully raising some money and awareness at the same time. So Sunday morning I sat with a couple kids trying to raise awareness of what we’re doing, and hopefully get some people who didn’t want to sleep out with us to give us money. A lot of people stopped and talked with me about what we are doing and they seemed genuinely interested and thought it was a great idea. 12:45 P.M. Sunday I’m packing up the tent and looking at a list of pledges with exactly 0 names. After all our promotion, after all the conversations I had had we didn’t get a single person pledging financial support. And this after these people sat in church listening to a sermon about giving.

In preperation for our Saturday sleeping out I have been doing a lot of studying and researching about homelessness. I’m trying to make it personal. A little while ago someone commented that I should read “Under the Overpass” and so I picked up a copy of the book. It’s very easy to read, as it seems to be written for an audience as young as junior high possibly? Two guys volunarily experience homelessness in several different U.S. cities over the course of about 5 months. Some of the book didn’t resonate with me, but two things in particular did. First is what seems a pretty obvious thing, the journey they describe puts a human face to homelessness. It allows someone who has never experienced what it’s like to be homeless to better understand what it means to be homeless. I think I got a glimpse of this during mission trips I’ve been on too. I’m always amazed at what seems to make the biggest impact on people. The second thing that struck me was reading how various churches and/or so called Christians responded to these “homeless” guys. It was a slap in the face to read about how some of these churches and people treated homeless people, because I more often than not have responded similarly. It’s easy to ignore need and think to yourself that if you gave them money they’d just go buy drugs or alcohol (which may be true, but there are other things we can do instead that are at least as meaningful).

I can sit in church and write all the blogs I want about being the hands and feet of Christ, but if I don’t step out and start acting like it it’s all meaningless. I’m not sure what I think about our planned event to raise awareness. I think it’s great to become more aware of what homeless families and individuals are dealing with, but I think it’s far more important to go and show those people Christ’s love, even though we cannot possibly understand what they endure every day. And I don’t think this necessarily means giving them money. I think we can start simply by acknowledging that they are human beings. And hopefully from there I can become more willing and able to show them the love of God in a true and helpful way.

Identity

One of the things I am continually trying to get youth to do is not just give the “right” answer. I find especially since I work with kids who have grown up in the church they always know the answer that is “right” and more often than not will give that answer even when I try to trick them into thinking differently. I’ve been frustrated by this because I really want them to be thinking about what it is they believe and not just regurgetating what the church says.

And then I realized that I do the exact same thing they are doing only in a different area. When I’m studying the Bible or trying to answer questions in the study I’m working on I will stop and think and then answer the way I have been tought to answer. And this is just me on my own with God. No one I need to impress, no one looking for a “right” answer. But these ideas that I have spent so much time with are so ingrained in my thinking that I don’t even stop to think if it’s really what I believe and think.

“Do you believe that God knew you before you even had a name?” Of course, the Bible says that, the church has been saying that forever, of course God knew me before I had a name, he created me, he created the world. Duh, that’s too easy. But then I stopped and really thought about it, and I do believe he knew me before anyone else knew me. But I realized at the same time that there has been this disconnect between my mind and my soul. I think that having these answers from the church that are supported by the Bible ingrained in my mind are wonderful things. The “right” answers aren’t wrong. But I need to make sure that my answers aren’t just my automatic response of things I have learned in my head. My answers need to be based on what I believe in my heart and soul.

I think we have done a really good job in the church of teaching the right answers. I believe that a child growing up in the church is going to graduate from high school with everything they need to make it in the world. But I think the problem is that we are teaching the head and not the soul. Even when I know the right answer or the right thing to do, and even if I agree with it, if it hasn’t moved from my intellectual data base to my become a part of who I am then when I am put on the spot I may vascilate. I may waiver, because I realize that while I know the correct response it is not part of who I am.

Yes, the church needs to do a better job integrating youth and adults. We need to do a better job keeping young adults involved in the church. We need to do a better job serving our community and evangelizing. But maybe part of the solution to all of this lies in doing a better job of connecting the head with the soul. Maybe if we figured out how to help members integrate everything they have been taught and believe into becoming their identity some of these other things would fall into place.

Honesty

A little over a week ago I was sitting on my couch reading my Bible trying to keep my mind from wandering all over the place when I decided to just quit. Instead I opened up my journal and wrote our a prayer to God pouring out my true feelings at that moment. Being completely honest for the first time in months with both myself and God. It was amazing what followed. For days after that I was talking to God, I was listening for God, and actually hearing him speak. Things were clicking like they hadn’t for a long time and it was wonderful.

I love what God is doing in my life right now. I love that he has taken my honesty and pushed me. I love that I am feeling exhilerated and terrified at the same time. That first day has lead to others, and on Saturday I started the day being blindsided by a realization of what I believe has been standing in the way of my relationship with God. And the rest of the day I spent time on and off working through this, taking this to God and wrestling with it. It was exhausting. But it was so refreshing. Sunday I woke up excited for the day and ready to see what God had in store for me.

Monday night I had small group. I’m not a big fan of my small group, but I was excited because we are currently studying “Walking with God” which is about listening to God, and that’s what I felt my entire week had been about. So I was looking forward to being able to share this amazing experience with the group. And then I didn’t.

Before leaving I had spent time asking God for courage, asking God to allow me to share what he had been doing in my life without sugar coating it, without putting on the cloak of the “good Christian”, and in a way that would honestly reflect what I had been experiencing. I was genuinely ready to go in there and while I wasn’t going to share all the details, I had no intention of hiding the reality of things either. But it didn’t happen.

Yes, I was scared, but it was more than that. I didn’t feel I had the opportunity. I didn’t feel that this group of people were the right people to share it with, and most of all I chickened out. I think. I’m not sure that’s really true. I think God was protecting me a little, because I’m not sure we as a group are in that place yet and if I had shared honestly it might have come back to bite me. And if I had left too much out it would have diminished the point of the entire week.

For now I’m waiting. I’m waiting to share this story of how wonderfully God is working in my life right now. I would love to share it today. I would love to sit down and tell you all about it. But I think I’m not ready yet. I think God is saying, “hold on, wait a minute, don’t go watering down what I’m doing, don’t go making this a lovey dovey story, wait until you can tell it all and tell it truthfully”. So for now I am waiting, because I know that I cannot tell it all yet. Right now I cannot be totally honest about what it is that God has done for me because I cannot be totally honest about why those things needed to be done.

You might be wondering why I even share this all with you if it is only to say, “I have something to say but I’m not going to say it”. To be honest, the reason is simple. It’s because I need the reminder. I need this to be here to remind me why I am not sharing about the things God is doing right now, becuase it would be so easy to tell you about how amazing God is and not be honest about how fallen I am. I am working on becoming the person who can be honest- with God, with myself, with those around me. And I think the first step to being honest is to admit that I am not being honest.

I hope soon I can share the amazingness of what God is doing in my life with people. Until then I want to be honest by saying I am not ready to be honest about it all yet. And this is a really long post to say that.