Monthly Archives: December 2011

ending a year.

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Hope and Nancy and I are on a road trip. Just a short trip to the Chicago area to see my sisters and my mom and Andrew and Allie.

We’ve been talking about a lot on the road and sitting around tables. Food, family history (old and new), sleep, plans, vacations. And we’ve been talking about God. Exploring, explaining, two and three generations joining in. We all start, simply, with our acceptance that God is. But then we go. Sharing experiences, sermons, stories. God may not always be the topic, but he’s always involved.

All of us lost an anchor this year. A husband, a dad, a grandfather. All of us, one time or another, have cried during the past month, missing him. But we all, I think, have been aware of a peace that makes no sense during this time. My mom in particular talks about this peace she’s had. This year she lost her partner of 55 years, her home of fourteen, and the edges of 80 years of memory. But she talks about the peace she has. To the people around her, to her kids, to her grandkids, to her self.

In his teaching about the law, Moses tells the people of Israel that

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

We often think this looks like Sunday school. But I think it looks less like that and more like talking around a table at Panera, in a small assisted-living living room, in a suburban dining room, in a car on US 30 somewhere in Indiana, at McDonalds now, and wherever you are sitting reading.

***

See you next year. Thanks for the last three.

It’s not about guilt. It’s about compassion.

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I’ve written before about child trafficking. (There’s a list at the bottom of this post). But apparently, it hasn’t gone away. Human beings are still buying and selling other human beings. During the last month, when you and I were buying gifts for other people, traffickers were buying girls for other people.

My friend Diana hates that. She’s committed her life to stopping the problem by teaching the kids and their parents how to not get trapped. She’s committed enough that she spends a chunk of time not getting paid.

During the last part of this year, she wrote a kids ebook about her story, about following dreams to help others. And then she did a blog series about how to create an ebook.

The ebook is called Born to Fly: the tale of a dream that would not die. It’s about Blossom, a caterpillar who ends up taking risks and being deceived and trying again and learning. What’s remarkable to me as I read it is that it resonates on several levels. It’s about having hope even when you have given up parts of your soul to people deceiving you. It’s about doing everything you can to help someone close to you. It’s about God working in interesting ways. And none of those things are stated in obvious ways.

I’ll be honest. I started reading because Diana’s a friend and I wanted to be supportive. Halfway through, I was captivated by her skill at adding richness to a story about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.  

It’s a true story, I think, about Diana, and her desire to help. It’s a True story, I think, about many of us. If you choose to buy it, proceeds go to help kids avoid trafficking. But if you choose to buy it, read it. Really.

—

10 bucks on 10.10.10 is a safe bet

5 questions with Diana Scimone

Not my daughter

A disciple, simply

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Okay. Can we talk for a bit? I’m out of practice with writing, so it will take me awhile to find my flow again. But I’m working on a sermon for Sunday and I’m sifting through my heart and brain (and all the tons of debris that live there), gathering fragments for a simple, useful, helpful, clear, not churchy, memorable, practical, both point AND process oriented, untricky, replicable definition of “disciple”.

We’ve talked about the idea of a disciple here for the last three years. There are several books on my Kindle and my shelves and my desk about disciples and discipleship and disciple-making. It is not for lack of material that I am wrestling this week. But perhaps the struggle that I have and that these many authors and organizations and ordinary people have is that there are so many words for a very simple thing.

I mean, for the first three years, a disciple of Jesus was someone who followed Jesus around, listened to what he said, argued with it, misunderstood it, and asked him for clarification about it. There was no political expectation, no perfection expectation. There was a huge learning expectation, a huge engagement expectation. There was uncertainty, skepticism, fear. There was failure.

As I thought about these first disciples this morning, I realized that they were always asking Jesus questions about what he meant. He was often pointing out what they didn’t understand and then explaining. I realized that I hardly ever hear people ask him what he means. I hear people asking for things, like healings and miracles, but the disciples didn’t so much. They were wanting to understand what he meant.

I wander what he’d say if we did that more?

I mean, maybe I should ask Jesus what he meant by “disciple.”

living between ‘I will’ and ‘I have’

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We struggle with goals. We read that telling people your goals is dangerous. It can give you the buzz of affirmation without having to do the hard work. Having goals is fine. But keep them to yourself.

But this isn’t a story about goals. This is about a walk captured in the Bible, but never described.

Jairus had a dying daughter. He went to Jesus. Jesus started coming to his house. Jesus was distracted by a different miracle. And then someone says, “never mind, she’s dead. Leave him alone.”

Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid; just believe and she will be healed.” The next thing we read is that Jesus arrives at the house.

Between those sentences, between “she will be healed” and Jesus arriving was a very long walk for Jairus. We aren’t told the distance of the walk. It probably wasn’t more than a few hundred steps. But any of us in the middle of emotional devastation know that the distance in our hearts has little connection to the distance for our feet. Throughout that walk, his daughter was dead.

“Just believe” was all that Jesus told Jarius to do. We often turn that into some kind of measure, and we think that if we believe enough amazing things will happen. If they don’t happen, it’s our fault, because we didn’t believe enough. In this case, believing was simple. It just meant walking with Jesus all the way home.

We don’t know what they talked about, or if they talked. Was Jesus silent? Did he ask Jairus about his daughter’s favorite foods? Did he talk about the 1969 Mets?

No idea. Apparently, it doesn’t matter for us. But Jairus walked home with Jesus, ignoring the apparent certainty of her death.

Not every child is raised. But every promise is kept.

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If you got a Kindle and need some books, here are some suggestions: 2011 books. And you can get 300words automatically to your Kindle: Kindle edition.

Reflecting toward a new year.

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I understand the desire to have more followers. But I think a better desire is to have more that is worth following. Or perhaps it can be a commitment than more than a desire. A commitment to deepen. A commitment to learn. A commitment to do what has been learned. A shift from “I don’t know how to do that” to “I want to learn.”