I want to thank my friend Tiger McLuen for running this verse through my mind this past weekend.  He was in our church to talk about Youth Ministry and he brought up a little tiny chunk of Acts that might just be the verse I need to be focused on right now.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t get a handle on what is really going on.  I feel perplexed, confused, ill equipped, and sometimes even inadequate to ever really be able to understand the work I do, the situations I find myself in or the mystery of what’s coming in the future.

I hold those feelings up against my desire to trust fully in God and in His will and I feel like I am falling short in the faith department.  If I am truly convinced that God has a fantastic plan (see Jeremiah 29:11) then why does confusion and a feeling as if it is all spinning madly out of control ever enter into my heart?  It must be a crisis of faith right?

But wait… not so fast… Let’s take a look at this verse from the earliest days of the church…

Acts 2:12

Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Amazed and perplexed… Yeah, I feel like that… sometimes several times a day.

The folks in Acts were feeling that way immediately after witnessing the Holy Spirit descend upon the apostles complete with fire and smoke and speaking in tongues.  You know the story.  This act of God must have been amazing in a way that we who were not there can’t even understand.  It is amazing just to read about it.  Imagine seeing it, smelling it, feeling it.

Amazing

— adj
	causing wonder or astonishment: amazing feats

Amazed, and perplexed… They went together in this text just as they go together in our lives.

Perplexed

–verb (used with object)

1.

to cause to be puzzled or bewildered over what is not understood or certain; confuse mentally: Her strange response perplexed me.

2.

to make complicated or confused, as a matter or question.

3.

to hamper with complications, confusion, or uncertainty.

they asked one another, “what does this mean?”

Image by anitacanita via Flickr

It’s that time of year again; the season of looking back at where we’ve been for the past year. Each of us is filled with our own unique mixture of pride, humility, celebration, mourning, success and failures in varying measures

For some of us, it was a very good year and for others, well… here’s hoping this coming year is an improvement.

Once again we look forward. We make resolutions. We plan to fix things that are broken, change things that no longer serve us,reprioritize, revive and reset our lives. We promise to spend more time on the things that are important and to generally be better people than we were last year.  Some of us will succeed at these resolutions, and the rest of us will hang on as long as we can.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”                                            2 Corinthians. 5:17

What if this year, instead of resolutions, we step into a revolution? This verse from Corinthians tells us that we can have a New Year’s Revolution every day of every year because God loves us so much that He sent Jesus Christ to be our model for living. Through Jesus we are brought to a new and living
relationship with our Creator. We are in fact “new creations” every moment of our lives. New… Forgiven… Reconciled… We are no longer bound by our fears, or those things that hold us back. When we choose to stand united with Christ, to follow in Discipleship, we are set free to live into the full blessing and potential promised to us in our creation. We are empowered to
“have life and have it abundantly.”

How do we achieve a New Year’s Revolution this year?

What if we turn our focus toward Jesus and lived out his mission to Love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls and minds and to Love our neighbors as ourselves? What if we prayerfully come to Him for strength and guidance in those two areas and made them our complete and total priority? What if we didn’t worry about what we weighed, what we earned, how we make a living and what we own but only thought about whether or not we placed God and others ahead of everything else?

My prayer for us all is that we may come this year to know the “old is gone, the new has come.” May we become aware of what it feels like to be filled with the Love and Grace of God so that we become empowered to walk away from our fears and into the promise of God’s New Creation.

Grace and Peace to you in your discipleship walk this year.

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No mangers, shepherds, angels or wise-men.  No mention of virgins, leading stars, censuses or full-up inns.  John’s version of the Christmas story is stripped down, scaled back and bare bones.  It reads as if it is not so much about the birth events of Jesus as much as it is about the entry of God into the world.  It seems to scream, in it’s economy of story, of a much larger thing than any one single event can ever be.

How often have I been distracted by the historical time lines and historical facts presented in scripture and been unable to hear the essence of the message?

John has removed the facts and dates and times and even most of the major players.  Here’s a fist full of essence for you to wrestle with today.

John 1:1-18 NRSV

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. ⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

The Word was there “in the beginning”, the Word was life, the life was light, the light shines in the darkness and darkness does not overcome it, the true light was coming into the world, a world which did not know Him.

The essence of the Christmas narrative.  God is light and life, darkness will not overcome it AND He has come into the world to be directly among us!  We struggle to believe that, even the best of us.  We struggle and God sends us Himself, one of us fully, yet still uniquely and ultimately Himself so that we can see it, hear it, live with it.

No matter the details surrounding His entry, God spilled Himself out into our world so that we could see what “life” looks like when it is lived.  The gift of the Christmas story is that we would finally see what the “Light” looks like when held up against the darkness.

Now, for me, here’s the kicker… He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. Verse 11 says the darndest thing.  His own people, that’s us, did not accept Him.  Other translations say did not receive Him. As I read the rest of this text, I can’t imagine not accepting or receiving that Light when it comes.  I can’t imagine it and yet I know I am guilty of it.

I know that, far too often, I reject life.  I hide from the light.  I walk toward darkness.  I do it with gossip and insult.  I do it by ignoring the needs of others.  I do it by making sure that I “get mine” first.  I do it through self pity and playing the martyr.  I do it whenever I defend myself and my personal interest ahead of justice.

But then there is the Truth and the Truth is that the darkness did not overcome the light, ever.

Good thing too.  Apparently, if this text and our own behavior is to be believed (and I see no evidence that it shouldn’t be) that’s what we do.  We reject the Light and the Life but God keeps sending it anyway.  He continues to enter into this world and our lives and walk among us.  There’s the hope for me.

That’s what makes me try harder tomorrow and what keeps me coming back and entering into the invitation to be part of the plan.  That Grace and Truth that come through Christ’s entry into a rejecting world makes me realize the fight is worth it and I am not alone.

My prayer is that I am able to keep this Christmas story simple.  God is light and life, darkness will not overcome it AND He has come into the world to be directly among us!

Happy Christmas. Keep it simple.  Be Life, accept the Light.

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Battle boots and garments rolled in blood…   Shattered yokes and rejoicing while dividing the plunder!  Sometimes the old testament makes me giddy with it’s imagery!  Nothing like a little bit of war and destruction language to introduce the concept of a leadership and authority that is direct from God and overflowing with Peace, Justice and Righteousness.  Compare and contrast indeed…

Isaiah 9:2-7 (New International Version)

² The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.

³ You have enlarged the nation
and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest,
as men rejoice
when dividing the plunder.

⁴ For as in the day of Midian‘s defeat,
you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor.

⁵ Every warrior’s boot used in battle
and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning,
will be fuel for the fire.

⁶ For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,  Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

⁷ Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.

Written at a time when King Ahaz faced attack and possible defeat from many different directions and neighboring countries, he and his people were surrounded by darkness.  They had been turning towards reliance on man and even entering  into alliances with other countries to help with their defense.  This, of course, was not turning out so well.

Enter Isaiah…   Pleading and begging for people to restore their reliance on God, to stand firm once again in their faith and trust in God as provider.

The implication here is that in an act so simple and seemingly insignificant as the birth of a small child could actually release folks from the bondage, darkness and oppression they had been living in.  Once released, the boots and blood stained clothes of battle could be destroyed since they would no longer be needed.  OK, that was then but this is now…

• Where do we stand in this text?
• Where are we, each of us, individually, uniquely, living in darkness?
• Where do we feel the yokes that burden us and the rods that oppress us?
• Where is it, in our lives, that we are doing battle and plotting and scheming against darkness?
• Addictions?
• Broken Relationships?
• Guilt?
• Fear?
• Anger?
• Loneliness?
• Grief?

What would it like for each of us who have been walking in and with this darkness to “see a great light”?

Whether or not this text is a direct prophecy of the birth of Jesus and His Messiahness can be debated and argued.  What I can not argue about anymore is the fact that reliance and trust in God and His plan will bring me relief and deliverance more surely than any plan I can come up with on my own. My suffering and slavery to darkness is caused more by my reaction to what happens rather than the thing itself.

Allowing God to have authority over those places of darkness in my life and stepping aside frees me from the fear of outcome.  Believing that something as small and insignificant as the birth of a small child could actually be the vehicle that God uses to illuminate the darkness allows me to imagine what life in the “light” would look like.

• Sit still right now and name that place in your life where darkness is the norm.
• Stop fighting with it and drop your illusion of control over it.
• Imagine what it would look like for you to leave it behind and to live in the light.
• Now step into that vision.  It has been promised to you.  Believe it.

May we all find the peace and bravery to burn our blood stained battle garments.

For those of you my age and a little older maybe you remember the song Mary, Mary by the Monkees.  It was later redone by Run-DMC as Mary, Mary, Why You Buggin‘?

“Mary, Mary, where you going to?

Mary, Mary, can I go too?”

That is the question that is raised in me as I sit with the Gospel lesson for this week.

Luke 1:39-55 (The Message)

^39-45Mary didn’t waste a minute. She got up and traveled to a town in Judah in the hill country, straight to Zachariah’s house, and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby in her womb leaped. She was filled with the Holy Spirit, and sang out exuberantly,

You’re so blessed among women,
and the babe in your womb, also blessed!
And why am I so blessed that
the mother of my Lord visits me?
The moment the sound of your
greeting entered my ears,
The babe in my womb
skipped like a lamb for sheer joy.
Blessed woman, who believed what God said,
believed every word would come true!

^46-55And Mary said,

I’m bursting with God-news;
I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.
God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!
What God has done for me will never be forgotten,
the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
His mercy flows in wave after wave
on those who are in awe before him.
He bared his arm and showed his strength,
scattered the bluffing braggarts.
He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.
He embraced his chosen child, Israel;
he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.
It’s exactly what he promised,
beginning with Abraham and right up now.

Mary, Mary, can I go too?  Look at this beautiful line attributed to Elizabeth in vs. 45; “Blessed woman, who believed what God said, believed every word would come true!” That line is what amazes me about Mary.  She believed what God said, she believed every word would come true!

Can I go there?  Can you?  How often are any of us capable of believing, to our very core, that everything God said will come true?  What would happen if we did?  What blocks us from saying yes to God, like Mary did?

So, Mary has a dream and in that dream she hears a message from God that she will become pregnant.  Unmarried, poor, female and pregnant.  None of this is good news.  In fact, this is such bad news that potentially it could result in Mary being punished with death.  Her Response; YES!  Yes, God I will do what you ask, I will carry this child and I will accept all of the trouble and pain and suffering this could cause.  I will do it God because I believe that your promises will come true and that I am part of that plan! Not only that, but she declares herself “the most fortunate woman on earth”.

The desire to say yes to God no matter the cost…

Yes to Love, even if it means surrender of personal goals.

Yes to Truth, even if it means loss of personal power.

Yes to Service, even if it means personal sacrifice.

Yes to Justice, even if it means loss of personal privilege.

Yes to Kindness, even if it means having to forgive personal grievances.

God, deliver us that level of faithfulness to Your promise.  Allow us the strength and willingness to say yes!  Mary, Mary, I want to go too.

Rejoice With Thanksgiving! Image by TW Collins via Flickr

Ah, Philippians…  I adore this book.  Hope against hope, joy despite trial, the strength of community and the excitement of a living and growing Gospel movement.  I long for the outlook of Paul in this book.  The strength of his faith and the focus of his true mission makes even imprisonment and the threat of execution seem like a really good time to be thankful. WHAT!?!

Philippians 4: 4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Surpasses all understanding… that’s the phrase that rings true to me.  When Paul writes these words of rejoicing and thanksgiving in the midst of what is probably a frightening and lonely situation, that surpasses all understanding to me.

I want to live in a way where I allow my heart and mind to be guarded in the faith that God will provide, Jesus will accompany and all things will work to the Glory of god.

I was reminded today that sometimes when I work toward living a faithful life I come into conflict with a world that wants to push back for power and control.  I rub against systems that have been built on hierarchy and the rationing of opportunities, recognition and reward.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am in no way saying that I live a perfectly faithful life, I fall far short on most days.  I do try though, to seek Justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.  In that seeking I do find that there is much resistance from our culture and systems that seem to get wobbly in the face of any understanding of Truth that differs from theirs.

I tend to get angry when this happens.  I feel threatened and challenged and diminished and discounted and fearful.  I get intimidated.  I sometimes get frozen and stop in my tracks.

Paul was imprisoned because he was a threat to the system.  His way of thinking was one that made the status-quo wobbly at best and most often protective and reactive.  They tried to stop him by throwing him in jail and he responded by rejoicing anyway!  He took their reaction as a sign that he was on the right track, he was having an impact, he knew he was making a difference.  His faith had given him a peace which surpassed all understanding.  His imprisonment served to strengthen him and his rejoicing turned others’ hearts towards God.

My prayer is that I learn to Rejoice anyway, that we all learn to “let our requests be known to God” with Thanksgiving.

Rejoice, Rejoice, and Rejoice again, the Lord is near!

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The Prophet Zephaniah. Image via Wikipedia

Reading anything from Zephaniah is always a challenge for me.  Sometimes I feel like the Old Testament is filled with judgment, rules and forecasts of hell fire raining down, all in the interest of lifting us out of despair and moving toward hope. Not the best way to butter that biscuit I would say!

One of Zephaniah’s claims to fame is the prediction of a coming “Day of the Lord”.  Many scholars attribute a good deal of our understanding of a final “Judgment Day” to the writing in Zephaniah.

In the midst of the fear, uncertainty and impending doom of this ultimate judgment comes this verse, a glimpse of the healing and blessings that are delivered to the long suffering.  Indeed, the judgment passes over them and they are liberated into joy.

Zephaniah 3:14-20 NIV

¹⁴ Sing, O Daughter of Zion;
shout aloud, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
O Daughter of Jerusalem!

¹⁵ The LORD has taken away your punishment,
he has turned back your enemy.
The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you;
never again will you fear any harm.

¹⁶ On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
“Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.

¹⁷ The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.”

¹⁸ “The sorrows for the appointed feasts
I will remove from you;
they are a burden and a reproach to you.

¹⁹ At that time I will deal
with all who oppressed you;
I will rescue the lame
and gather those who have been scattered.
I will give them praise and honor
in every land where they were put to shame.

²⁰ At that time I will gather you;
at that time I will bring you home.
I will give you honor and praise
among all the peoples of the earth
when I restore your fortunes
before your very eyes,”
says the LORD.

During Advent, this period of waiting and longing for God to be born into this world and walk alongside of me, I hear the opening of this passage and want to cry out “YES!  Yes, I want to sing and shout and rejoice with all of my heart!”

There are more times than I care to admit when I am burdened with sorrows, when the gift of life and hope and Love are buried under so much of my own fear and inadequacies that they are in danger of being lost forever.

This verse reminds me that the Lord God is with me and He is mighty to save.  These promises are part of my Advent prayer to be sure but at the same time, they have already come true.  I can think back to those glimpses in my life where I have felt God carry me through some difficulty or heal someone from their emptiness.  I know that these promises are indeed fact.  This post-judgment that Zephaniah writes about and celebrates is a world we already live in.

What if we all took time this Advent to prepare for a world where, as Zephaniah puts it, “The LORD has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm.” ?  What if we prepared for and accepted it fully through Advent and into Christmas?  What would the world look like if we lived out the entire year as if this were true?

Prepare yourself this Advent. Welcome the promise this Christmas.  It is true, live into it.

I could read this passage over and over again.  It is so fluid to me.  Each time I read it and spend time wrestling with it, it grows more and more.  I guess I might say that it’s meaning and sacredness are beginning to overflow in me!

Phillipians 1: 3-11

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Ahhhhhhh, A prayer of thanksgiving offered up by a man imprisoned and chained!  Thanksgiving!  Yup, thankfulness for this community that had and continued to accompany Paul along his Gospel journey.  Thanks for who they are, thanks for the Joy they fill his heart with, thanks for their support of his ministry, thanks for their shared experience of Grace, thanks for his certainty that God has started a great work within and through this community and that God would also surely complete it no matter what earthly challenges they faced together or individually.  Not one word of “Get me outta’ here” or “Man I hate this whole prison thing”.  Thankfulness…  Baffling to try to imagine.

This thankfulness, this awareness of God’s presence and the knowledge that His Grace is made manifest and witnessed by a larger community, releases Paul from the prison that he finds himself in.  Not physically, certainly but emotionally and spiritually, Paul is free to live into God’s call to tell others the Good News, even his captors.

Paul knows deep in his heart even into his bowels (original greek  translated here as “Compassion” of Christ Jesus. Isn’t that a great visceral image?), the seat of his emotions and depth of his being, how very much he is in love with this community and connected to them through Jesus.  Paul’s absolute certainty of this connection and his unshakable belief that God is up to something bigger is all he needs to be free.

My prayer today echoes Paul’s… That all of our love overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight… That we come to know in our bowels the assurance that God is up to something bigger than we can imagine.  We are part of it.  We don’t walk through it alone but in community with all of the witnesses to Grace.  This great work is unstoppable and it will be seen through to completion.  May we be released from our prisons of emotional or physical suffering and anguish so that we too can sing songs of thankfulness within earshot of our captors.

Grace and peace to you………..

Malachi 3: 1-4 NIV

¹ “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

² But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. ³ He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, ⁴ and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.

The judgment language, or my perception of it, often baffles me.  I struggle to balance my belief in a loving, benevolent, grace filled creator against the image of a God who demands purification or pain or refinement to find any of us acceptable.

But what I also hear in this verse is an acknowledgment that without making room in my heart and in my conscious thought for God, I will continue to have a hard time seeing Her.  I am told that I should “prepare a way”, make room in my heart, and after doing that, then “suddenly” the God I have been aching for will appear in his Temple.  Perhaps God has been there all along but I could not see Her.  Perhaps God does not so much take up residence in my heart as much as I clean out the mess so that She and I can be in relationship.

As I enter into Advent this year, I pray that I can be honest about those places in my life where refinement and purification are needed.  I pray for courage to examine myself and my thoughts and to make a clear path for God to enter fully into my life.  As much as the process of clearing out my mental and emotional closets is painful, I have found that it is the only way to get anywhere near the Kingdom that already exists in and around me.

Have a pleasant walk through the fire.  See you on the other side.