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Archive for the ‘Ordinary Time’ Category

Prayer Without Doubt

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Here’s the little truth that came to me through this verse about doubt: no one forces us to pray, there is no mandate, we pray by choice. And if that is so, why pray if we don’t believe God hears, receives, responds?

James 1:6-7
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

We are living today, the result of our prayers of faith. Whoa! you say, but honestly, could it be any other way? Did you pray? Didn’t I? Or, am I living the life of a doubtful prayer?

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to question things we hear or read; it’s reasonable to challenge ideas that don’t line up with our understanding. Without questions, we cannot learn and grow. Without examination, we become dull and follow blindly, sometimes to our own detriment.

But prayer is different because it’s personal. If I choose to pray, to engage with the Holy Spirit, to enter into the realm outside of time and space, then I should do this with the force of conviction that prayer is real, meaningful, and effective.

I think I have been expecting the Christ to cherry-pick through my requests: this one is valid, this one makes sense, this one isn’t a good idea, this one is beyond reason and so forth.

The important factor here is giving up my interpretation of the results as well as my time table. This is essential reasoning behind the classic phrase, “give thanks for all things” [I Thessalonians 5:18] because whatever is happening in the now is part of the answer of a prayer. I’m speaking in broad strokes now. I understand how devastating that would be in the face of a horrible illness, loss of life, or unexpected tragedy. How could these things be part of an answered prayer? I don’t know. It simply could be that one thing had to happen before something else could.

But let me go back to the start of this idea, the moment of prayer and the decision to ask. I saw it so clearly in my quiet time. (And yet I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of the meaning.) Yesterday, I had an epiphany about wisdom being part of a daily dose, through prayer. This is a given. I ask, God gives: wisdom for the day. As a result, I can choose better, understand better, and answer better.

But wisdom is not alone in this package, as a brother articulated, much of these requests lie within a prayer we say all the time: the Lord’s prayer. We have simply lost its depth of power and meaning through familiarity.

And what about those people we have held up in the light of prayer? Isn’t God moving and working there? Is God waiting for a finite number of prayers before moving? I don’t think so. We just can’t see the results so we doubt. It’s a human soul with free will. God will not run hilter skilter over that person’s own choices and desires. As my pastor said in services, “God is working both ends of every situation.” And I would add, God is working the middle too.

For me, the point of this discovery is to pray with care, with consciousness, with confidence [Hebrews 10:19-23], with intention. If I doubt God’s ability to move in a situation, then I should save those prayers for another day.

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Generous with Wisdom

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2011| 4 Comments »

Photo by P Dorowski

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m pretty clear that my wisdom quotient (WQ) is way below my IQ. Doesn’t everyone need more wisdom? Is there such a thing as too wise? Don’t think so.

James 1:5
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

So, why don’t I ask for wisdom every day? There are so many things I put before my God: guidance, help, protection, transformation, and so on. But I don’t specifically ask for wisdom. Wouldn’t that particular answered prayer help with all the other ones? Doh!

Based on James, God doesn’t find fault or hold back wisdom in the face of our mistakes. God doesn’t say, “No wisdom for you today, you’ve made too many mistakes.” There’s a lot of grace, then, in the gift of wisdom. It’s a helper, just like Eve was intended to be in the first story about men and women.

I’ve often wondered if Solomon was disappointed with his gift of wisdom and simply stopped using it? I mean, how else does a person go from doing everything right to accumulating so many women (700 wives & 300 concubines) and so much stuff that he finally tears the kingdom in two by the time of his death. Clearly, his WQ hit rock bottom by then.

I’m wondering today, is wisdom a like Manna? Does it have to be refreshed each day, given each day anew, or it becomes corrupt if someone tries to hold on to it beyond the time, the moment, the day?

I could really use some wisdom just to get through this night. And tomorrow, I think I’ll check in on the wisdom handout again. Thank you God.

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Sacrifice of Sharing

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 14, 2011| 2 Comments »

I understand; I get it. Sharing is a sacrifice but I don’t like it. I think about the times I told my kids to share and I remember the look of incredulity. After all, sharing meant giving away what the one had in his hand.

Hebrews 13:16
And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

Oh sure, there are times that sharing might mean cutting something in half (or less), but more often than not, it’s giving it over, supposedly for a season, a short time, a shared time. But it never seems to work out that way from a kid’s perspective. And honestly, probably not from an adult perspective either when it comes to my lifestyle, my bank account, my comfort.

I’m afraid of it. OK. It also makes me mad sometimes.

I grew up with a strong work ethic and quite honestly, I can get somewhat scornful of people who don’t meet their obligations or hold up their end of the stick or break agreements or walk away from responsibilities. I can throw attitude with the best of them at deadbeat dads, plagiarizing students, and philandering husbands. I can get quite puffed up and think, “how dare they?”

After all, if I do my work, why shouldn’t they? If I hang in there, why shouldn’t she? If I earned the money, why must I share it with you? I suffered, so should you. I gave up what I wanted to do to make this life, so should you. After all, I walked to school twenty miles, in the snow, up hill: why shouldn’t my kids? They don’t appreciate hard work. They’re just spoiled.

On and on and on the mind drones. And why? Because God has asked me to share what I have with those who don’t. God even calls it a sacrifice (an offering, the surrender of something valuable for a higher cause). And there’s the point: the sacrifice is not about the worthiness of the other person — capable or not, low born or high, lazy or energetic — it’s about God.

“But, but, but . . . ,” my little self says inside, “they’ll take advantage of me!!!!”

God smiles (in that enigmatic spirit way) and seems to say, “That may be, that may very well be. But the laws of paradox and generosity, selflessness and love, pay back in ways untold. Trust me.”

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Outside the Camp

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

All executions were performed outside the city walls. Anything that was unclean or tainted was destroyed or thrown away there. Jesus broke up a lot of traditions, but the greatest one was starting something holy in an unholy place.

Hebrews 13:12-13
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.

Two thousand years ago, the followers of Christ were considered unclean, much like lepers. They were law breakers and rule breakers. They were teaching others that the temple traditions were no longer necessary. They were breaking down societal structures. They all deserved to be cast away and thrown out from the protection of the city gates. This was the mindset of Paul of Tarsus and the crusade of his companions to obliterate the Christ-ians.

Now, some two thousand years, the tables have turned, and the very same believers in that former renegade, Jesus of Nazareth, are the ones who inhabit the “city” and have created their own order and culture of “righteousness.” It seems that anyone who might question or disagree with the current regime is cast outside the camp.

They are a new set of Pharisees who are putting people under microscopes before they are allowed inside.

But I believe Jesus is still outside the city. Jesus is still rubbing shoulders with the prostitutes and homeless, the poor and the outcasts, the disenfranchised and the orphans, the persecuted and the different, the prisoners and the ex-prisoners. The way of Jesus will always be the way of paradox. When we become to comfortable, we may have strayed onto the wide road [Matthew 7:13-14].

I am equally challenged here. I may go outside the “camp” for a visit, but every night I still run home to my comfortable bed and my air conditioning, my habits and my rituals.

I am yet afraid outside my “personal city” walls. I am afraid that I will be lost, that I will be hurt, that I will be shut out.

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Entertain Strangers

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I wonder if I would be a nicer person if I honestly considered that the person driving that car that just cut me off or the person who insisted on paying with coins in the checkout line or the huge person who just sat in front of me at the movies was an angel?

Hebrews 13:2
Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

All right, I know that’s far-fetched, but isn’t it unfortunate in our current age that strangers equal danger? All children are told to avoid them; women fear them in parking lots while men suspect nefariousness or come-ons. Most strangers are wearing black hats.

And of course, I understand that “stranger danger” is very real, but have we overdone it? Have we extended this assumption to regular people who might be visiting from out of town or drop by our church one Sunday or just want to help with directions–have we demonized them all?

I don’t know the answer.

We have a family friend who is very quick to speak to strangers. He usually feels led of God and because of that, he has no fear. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and something terrible to happen, bu nothing has endangered him in the last ten or twenty years (both in the U.S. and abroad). On his way to visit us (driving up from Georgia with another friend), they picked up a hitchhiker (as is his custom). They talked at length and as he got closer to our home, he telephoned ahead and said we would have an extra guest.

When I found out it was a young man, generally high on something and recently out of jail, my heart skipped a beat. All I could envision was a complete takeover at knife point. My fears were over the top, but for safety’s sake, I did insist that they all crash in our basement guest room.

The boy was not an angel but he was in need and in the end, the two friends took him all the way to New York and got him connected with Dave Wilkerson’s ministry.

I am embarrassed that I was so afraid. I will never be like my global traveling missionary, but I do think I could be generous with my eyes, my voice, and my mind. I could be more interested in the stranger. I could be kind. I could be willing to help.

Something to think about.

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Unshakeable Kingdom

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Kingdom Within by Raymond Andrews

Jesus speaks innumerable times about the kingdom of God, what it’s like, where it is, and what it means to His followers. But it is in Hebrews where we are reminded that this is an unshakeable (indestructible) kingdom: eternal and purified by fire (and blood).

Hebrews 12:28-29
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

Over the past few years, as I have methodically read through the New Testament and looked for personal applications, I have become more and more secure in my belief that this kingdom of God is not of the 3-D world we can see and touch but it is in that “other” reality – that place within, that place outside our senses, that place of Holy Spirit, that place that defies logic and that place which was opened to humankind through the mediation of the Christ/Messiah whose act of sacrifice tore the veil asunder [Matthew 27:51].

I try to imagine the power and glory that was on Mount Sinai, where the Israelites fled from Egypt and stood to hear from their God, what they should do next. And from there, they wandered the desert, carrying the “glory of God” with them in the Ark of the Covenant. And finally, with King David and his son, Solomon, the great temple was built in Jerusalem and the ark was given a final resting place in the Holy of Holies [II Chronicles 7:1], where only the high priest could enter once a year. This is all symbolic and intentional.

Now, the Messiah comes, the veil is torn, the ark is opened and all of this glory is placed within the kingdom and we are invited to participate in it through the Christ.

Is this not worthy of awe and reverence?

Despite all the horrendous things the Church may have done throughout the centuries, the cathedrals they built to immortalize our King make sense. I know they were not built in a righteous way, the poor were taxed and unholy deals were made with the rich, but there is a breath of God that remains in these places even today.

Whenever I visit a city that has a cathedral, I want to go. I want to walk through and sit and be silent there. I am awed in these places.

Of course, there are nature locations that give the same feeling: water falls, canyons, hot springs, lakes, oceans, forests, mountains… just to name a few.

As much as I enjoy contemporary Christian worship, there is a part of me that misses the wonder, the intense quiet, and the Holy Presence that permeates high church worship.

If I could describe that kingdom within me (which is impossible) but perhaps, just a color, a shape, a smell, a sound: what would it be? I don’t know. I just don’t really know.

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Holy Seeing

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

I have already written about seeing the invisible as well as the Invisible God. Hebrews 12 prescribes another piece of the process: Holiness.

Hebrews 12:14
Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

I think it’s a little like being color blind. The closer I come to holiness, the more expansive my color wheel, my prism. When my eyes are clouded by 3-D things, problem mentality, and “what about me?” syndrome, I’m putting myself into a black and white world.

The movie Pleasantville, or even the Wizard of Oz, dramatically captured this difference. Colors look more vivid when they are juxtaposed against shades of gray. Don’t get me wrong, artistically, I love black and white, whether its movies or photographs, but I am talking about a different kind of non-color here. I’m referring to a non-holy world that is flat with unrelenting sameness.

To see God through the lens of holiness, we are promised the universe and that is hinted at through the glory. In American Sign Language, the gesture for holiness is a large arch over the head with the fingers fluttering.

But of course, the real challenge is entering the holy place. I’d say there is a type of nakedness this is a prerequisite for entry, not just the shedding of our outer layer of clothing, but also the skin of expectations and labels and the outer muscles of self-determination. We started walking away from the holy place the first time we said, “No, I want to do it myself.”

I cannot touch the holy because it’s not here in this world.

Holiness is wholeness (completeness, synchronization, transparency); it’s the paradox of loving those who should not be loved, living from inside out, choosing peace over violence, forgiving the unforgivable, mirroring Jesus, and echoing the Holy Spirit.

Wholeness is also brokenness. What is broken? the hard heart, the frozen spirit, the rigid memory, the fear of death.

Holy seeing is not for the faint-hearted. It takes courage and imagination to see what we do not recognize, to see and not identify, to see and embrace.

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