Monthly Archives: January 2011

The end of January.

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Are you ready for 2012?

I am.

I mean, I had great ideas for 2011. I started the year with 99 goals for the year. Some of them were just a “to-do” list. Some of them were in the “remember to be nice” kind of category. A couple of them were huge.

Now January is done. I look at the list and wonder why some of the things mattered and why it feels like I haven’t made much progress.

You know what I mean?

Sure you do. You had great goals and you got sick. Then the kids got sick. Then you and the kids got sick. And then you got snowed in. And then you said yes to a project that you shouldn’t have. And then Egypt blew up and you have friends there. And then, well, you can fill in what happened next.

We could, I suppose, fast forward to 2012. But it will be just as odd. Because there will still be colds and snow then.

Or we could spend the rest of January reading Psalm 123.

I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit enthroned in heaven.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy.

Have mercy on us, LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt.
We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant,
of contempt from the proud.

We sometimes think that all Bible stories end happy. We think that all Bible poems end with a smile. But sometimes they end where months end, looking. And waiting.

But the direction we are looking is what is important.

—

A video of Psalm 123

Safe terror.

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When I was working on my goals for the year, my 99 goals, here’s one thing I wrote: Make 300 words a primary resource for people wanting to learn safely about the terrors of following Jesus.

When I look at that goal now, I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it. I have no idea why I phrased it the way I did. I’m not sure where “terror” came from. But I like it. A lot.

Because following Jesus is terrifying.

  • Sometimes in an exhilarating way, kind of like Peter might have felt when he climbed out of the boat and started walking across to Jesus.*
  • Sometimes in a gut-wrenching way, kind of like when we hear Jesus saying that people will hate us the way they hated him, and we know what they did to him.
  • Sometimes in ego-shattering ways, when we realize that we have to quit trying to run everything. Everything. And we realize that we don’t know Jesus well enough to know whether we can trust him to run everything.

So a lot of what I write here is to help us explore some of those terrifying things. Not so much to remove the terror, but to eliminate the misunderstandings we have because we never were able to look at the words of Jesus with breath in them. Because our only pictures of the disciples are caricatures. Because we fell asleep when someone was preaching. Because someone taught one thing and slept with someone else.

I’ve got a long way to go to reach my goal. But I wanted to let you know where I was going. So you can help. Because, after all, what makes a place safe is the community.

We need to know what terrifies you. And why you follow anyway.

——-

*Here’s a video version of the Peter story.

Moved with compassion.

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Where was I?

Oh,  right. I was telling you how I write and think about you. Sometimes anyway.  I ended by suggesting that God thinks about you and what might help you.

If you are like me, you read that and thought, “Sure. A nice idea. But I bet God’s usually pretty annoyed with me.” Right?

So I thought of a story that we both might need.

Jesus is traveling around Galilee, way up north of Jerusalem. He went to Nain, a little town less than three miles from Nazareth.

Nazareth was where Jesus grew up. For most of his life, he had been in this neighborhood. And now he goes to Nain. And so do his disciples. And so does a large crowd.

When Jesus and his large crowd get to the town gate, they run into a large crowd coming out. That large crowd is led by a dead guy. A young man. A son.

He’s the only son of a widow, the last hope of support she had. And now he’s dead.

I picture the collision of these crowds. It’s easier these days, having watched college teams after bowl games. One team is thrilled, the other devastated. They mingle, sometimes touching, sometimes leaving space for the grieving.

As the funeral procession comes out of the gate, one person from the Jesus procession steps forward. It’s Jesus. He looks at the body, at the woman, at the crowd. He is moved with compassion.

“Don’t cry,” he says.

What an odd thing to say to this woman who may have been a friend of his mother. What was she supposed to do?

He had one more thing to say. “Get up.” That to the son. And the son does.

So back to you and me. Maybe he still cares?

—

This blog is now available on the Kindle.

You.

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I write these essays five nights a week. You read them occasionally.

Sometimes I’m not thinking about you as I write. I’m thinking about me. I’m looking into a mirror and describing what I see. The mirror is glass, sometimes, or the Bible. But I’m not even thinking about you.

But often, I am thinking about you.

I know. That’s scary, especially from a preacher.

We picture slipping into a crowded church room, trying to squeeze into the back row. We can’t. We end up having to walk all the way to the front, to an empty seat. And suddenly, the preacher points at us. “You!” the room echoes. “Sinner!” The spit hits us in the face. We resolve that if we ever get out of here, we will never come back.

So you are sitting there thinking maybe I look through the list of subscribers to  this blog, the ones who get it by email or the ones in RSS or the ones who show up other ways (See? I do know how to find out who you are) and decide to pick on someone in particular.

I don’t. I don’t know how to do that. I get heavy-handed when I try that.

Instead, I ask, “what is it that maybe no one ever explained to you about God?” I wonder, “What can I illustrate that no one has shown you.” I think about conversations that you and I have had. I decide to take the conversation one step further.

Because I have talked with many of you face-to-face or comment-to-comment or tweet-to-tweet. And I listened.

By the way, sometimes I’m not the one thinking about you. Not to be spiritual or anything, but sometimes God’s thinking about you and what could help you.

Yes, even you. Especially you.

——-

This blog is now available on the Kindle.

 

Being a model.

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Am I living a life I’d want someone to copy?

Why not?

Those two sentences found their way into my journal over the weekend, as I was thinking about a presentation I’ve got coming up. I’m going to talk about being and making disciples. (That subject has shown up as my one word and in my list of 8 ways to get better at following.)

As I thought about the idea of making disciples, of developing followers, I realized that part of making a disciple is being willing to be a model.

I hate that. So do you. The last thing we want is for someone to use our life as a pattern. We know all of the ways that we fail. We know all the strategies that don’t work. We know how we don’t measure up. We know how we hurt someone we love.  We are, we think, models for spiritual failure.

But I think I’m wrong.

Paul consistently said, “Here are my failures. Here’s what I don’t do well. Here’s what God does wonderfully, sometimes in spite of me, sometimes through me.” He said this especially to Timothy, his most mentioned disciple.

(A working definition of a disciple is a person who chooses to allow the life and teaching of someone to shape his/her own life.)

Helping people learn how to follow Jesus doesn’t mean being perfect.

It means being translucent, keeping the details hidden but allowing the outline of your humanity to show. It means acknowledging the failures and the forgiveness. It means showing when you let your mouth get ahead of your brain, here is how you ask forgiveness. When you don’t know how to talk to God, here’s where you start.

When you feel like you aren’t measuring up, here’s how you stop trying so hard.

——-

This blog is now available on the Kindle.