Mary and Elizabeth: the Heart of Friendship

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Hey, girlfriend!
A hug, sometimes a kiss, and smiles all around. We love our friends and love being with them. It doesn't get any better than this...or does it? We laugh, have fun, and enjoy each other, but  is there more? Are we missing the best of what our friendships can bring? 

Fun and affection sometimes relegate God to a back seat and our friendships are no exception. The sheer enjoyment we find in one another's company can leave us forgetting that these encounters, so often full of pleasure, have a higher purpose, too. We can get more than pleasure out of our friendships. We can dedicate them to God.

And we have an example.
At that time, Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed, "Blessed are you among women..."--Luke 1: 39-42

Wouldn't it be wonderful if our friendships brought not only a feeling of contentment and well being, but an encounter with the holy? I'm convinced that they can, and more. They should.

We come together, after all, from different places, different lives. We meet to share out stories, our songs. We come to laugh together, and to cry. God has afforded us a privilege unique to women. He has made us want strong bonds with close friends, but we don't often honor them as such. Like all of our life's encounters, our friends are intentional parts of our lives. God sent them to us for a purpose--the same purpose as He sends every other circumstance and person--to draw us nearer to Him.

So what does a godly friendship encounter look like? It looks like Mary and Elizabeth's. 

First, we enter one another's homes. We visit each other in the places we live our lives. These are our intimate places, the ones we breathe and eat and love in. They expose us just by the looking. But we share them with our friends.

Then we greet one another. Not just a Hi, or even an embrace, but a greeting heartfelt enough to make a baby leap in the womb. A greeting that acknowledges that we are special to one another. Not "Wassup, girlfriend" but more like a sincere "How wonderful to see you."

Then we share. We listen to one another. Casual friends are not very good at this. Casual acquaintances talk mostly about themselves. Have you listened to your conversations? Most relationships have a giver and a taker, an alpha and a beta. True friendships share equally. Friends listen to one another as often as they tell.

Then we bless one another. We hardly ever do this. I have one relationship in which a friend prays for me every time before we part. Every time. I can't tell you what this adds to my life. I feel blessed every time. Truly blessed. What more can we do for a friend than to bless them?*

Mary and Elizabeth's love for each other wasn't substantially different from the love I feel for my own friends. As women, we are given a heart to love with--husbands, children, and friends. We spend so much time learning to love husbands and children properly, but don't think nearly often enough about what a truly godly friendship can bring.

If I really care about my friends, I will do these things for them, and with them because, each in our own way, we are all truly
blessed among women.

*Sister Fran Ferder, Enter the Story, Give Us This Day, May 31, 2014

His Back is Enough

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Moses wanted to see God.
He did. Or thought he did.
He'd been up on the mountain with God's presence and with Him in his tent in the Israelite camp.
The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.--Exodus 33:11

It didn't really happen that way, though. Not literally. I know this because God also said to him:
I cannot show you my face, because no one may see Me and live.--Exodus 33:20

We're not talking about the skin and bone face--the one our eyes and nose inhabit. We're talking about a metaphorical face, an entity that exhibits our emotions and helps us communicate. And we have more than one face like that. There's an old saying that a man has three faces: one he shows to the world, one he shows to those closest to him, and one no one but himself ever sees at all. So God must have faces, too. Like the one He shows without showing it--the one Moses saw on the mountain, the one that friends see. But it's not God's literal face. No man gets to see that and live.

So when Moses wanted more of God, he declared,
Now show me your glory.--Exodus 33:18
And he got it. God said,
You will see my back, but my face must not be seen.--Exodus 33:23
His back. God turned His back on Moses.

Now, as I think about that, I wonder whether that isn't the part of God I see most often, too? His back. God going away. God after He's finished doing whatever it is that He wants to do in my life. God stepping back, saying, "See--I made this."
See! I am doing a new thing!--Isaiah 43:18

It isn't easy to see what God is doing while He's doing it, you know. While God is doing something, I'm usually looking for Him somewhere else. When I'm looking for Him to heal my friend, He's increasing her faith instead. When I'm looking for Him to open the way for a new job, He's arranging a raise for my husband so I can volunteer instead. When I'm looking for Him to save my son's marriage, He's planning for a daughter-in-law who loves Him. I never see it coming. Never. 

And why does this surprise me?
Eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him.--1Corinthians 2:9

What God has planned is better than what I have planned. Period.
So, if all I get to see is His back, well, that's OK. After all, how bad can it be? So what if I don't see it until it's all over? So what if He leaves me scratching my head, saying, "So THAT'S what You were doing."

So what if all we get to see is God's back? His fingerprints, His trailing, glorious echo. I'm good with that. His back is enough.

Who Do You Love?

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I really find it helpful when God boils things down into simple principles I can easily remember. Like His principles for loving:
Love your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.--Matthew 22: 37-39

Love God. Love my neighbor. I get that.
Of course, there's the little matter of who is my neighbor.
Now, I've read the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) and pretty much get it. Love everybody, even people you don't like.
But have you ever thought about how easy it is to love people and how hard it is to love just one person--particularly if it's that one CERTAIN person? Did you ever notice that Jesus never said to love people, like bunches of them? He said to love them one at a time. One at a time.

I think about how easy it is to love a group--
Like old folks, as long as the one I'm with for a whole afternoon doesn't want me to listen to the same story for the 46th time.
Like addicts or alcoholics, as long as the one I'm with doesn't throw up on me or lie to me again and again.
Like babies, as long as the one I'm with doesn't cry all night for a week.
Like the homeless, as long as one of them doesn't move in with me.
Like the hungry, as long as their need doesn't interfere with my Monday morning latte or my Saturday night prime rib.
Like prostitutes, as long as the one I tried to help doesn't just give up and go back to the life after all.

This is why groups are easier--unfortunate and disenfranchised groups keep their distance. We don't get our hands too dirty with their lives and business or, if we do, it doesn't last too long. We can wash up afterward. We can go home and hug our clean kids. We can still enjoy warmth and security.
I don't think that's was Jesus intended.
He didn't say to love a group. He said to love a person.

A teenager who says she hates me.
A husband who is habitually inconsiderate.
A friend who betrayed me.
A cousin who thinks I'm a religious nut.
A neighbor whose dog poops on my lawn.
A parent who beat me.
The people we're stuck with. The people God, with intention, gave us to love. One at a time.

We aren't to get too proud of ourselves, I think, for the good deeds we do. The church work. The soup kitchens. The counseling. The donating.
In the end, those are all pretty easy and we get to go home from them.
Jesus said to love people one at a time, wherever we are, whomever He gives us to love. And we don't have to go looking for these, as a rule. That hard-to-like person is already in our life, maybe even in our house. They are the one--not the ones--we are to love.

And in one short phrase, Jesus gave us both the way and the reason to do it:
Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.--Matthew 25:40

What is the Gospel?

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Our faith tells us that we are taught to preach the Gospel, but I have often wondered exactly what that Gospel is. Its direct translation from Greek put simply means the Good News. OK, but what good news?

From a personal standpoint, I know well the good news Christ brought to my own life--the renewal, the hope, the transformation, and the strength. But how did He do this? Well, through His suffering, death, resurrection, you say. That's right. He has done all this through His Holy Redemption.

But that's not quite it. I think there's more.

I know what Christ did--born of a virgin; lived and taught the New Covenant principles of love, humility, and sacrifice; performed miracles; died an undeserved and public death, then rose first from it and then from the earth itself. But the key to all this isn't His activity, it's Him.  

Everything Christ did only mattered because He did it. Other people performed miracles. Other people have died, then come alive again. Other people have died sacrificially for someone else. Other people live exemplary lives. But they do not carry the same weight.  Christ does not call us to preach what He did, but the One who did it--the Son of God, Son of Man, Creator-Redeemer, Jesus Christ. The Gospel, the Good News, is not what Christ did because, had anyone else done it, it would be no news at all.

Christ didn't enact the Gospel. He is the Gospel.

So, this is how I preach--deferring attention from the act to Him, lifting Him up. I know we all love to tell our stories of redemption, and we should. Believe me, I do too, but my story doesn't begin to come close to explaining the miracle and wonder of God. Nobody's does. My story, I think, is mostly for me--to remind me who God is--how intimate and mighty and, well, involved.  It helps me stay on the road toward Him.

So how do I preach? Well, if the Gospel is not what He did, then it's not what I do either. If the Gospel is who He is, then as I am called to follow Him and resemble Him, the Gospel is me. Myself. My very person. If you are saying, 'Whoa, there--we are not like God,' well then, I say that if we are not like God, if people can't see God in us, we are not equipped to preach. If people cannot see God in us, then we have no real knowledge of the Gospel at all. 

My very presence should say, 'Here He is, friend--Jesus Christ--Savior, Redeemer, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God. He's in me and in you, too.' My life should make people long for God. I have to live the new life Christ has put in me, living primarily before the Lord, but all the while in the company of everyone He has put in my path. I can live so that when people see me, they see Christ. I can do this because God says I can.

Is this hard? Of course it is. At least until it becomes very, very easy. In the end, I don't have the responsibility for anyone else's salvation. I just have to look out for Christ as He shows the way. And that is very Good News, indeed.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified--1Corinthians 2:2
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, Christ in you, the hope of glory.--Colossians 1:27

Looking for the Holy Church

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For the past few years, we've been trying to find the church. Not a church, but the church. 

It's easy to find a church--a community of believers who gather once a week to worship God, connect with one another, and work together to further His kingdom. There are lots of buildings that house communities like this and every Sunday, we are in one of them. But often, I come away unsatisfied, like I have missed something important. We have sung, we have prayed, we have listened to a good lesson, we have hugged and shook hands with friends, but something is missing and now I think I'm beginning to understand what it is.

I expect something else from God's church, something important. I expect the church, more than anything else, to be holy. Holy--as in completely dedicated to God. I expect the people who gather in that building to cling unreservedly to Him. To worship Him, to kneel humbly before Him because we know corporately as well as singly who He is. He is God and we are not.

The church I yearn for does not put on a pretty face. The church I yearn for falls down in thanksgiving, not just raises its hands in praise. The church I yearn for does not just look for one another in their accustomed places. It looks for God. God first, second, and third--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything--everything--else comes after.
A feeling of togetherness comes after.
Personal development comes after.
Good sermons come after.
Jobs and committees come after.
Witnessing comes after.
Activities come after.
Ministries come after.
Good works come after.

I want holiness. I want from my church complete dedication to God's very person, all the parts of Him--incarnated Man and supernatural Spirit.

I am entirely convinced that the church is not primarily the place to work with and learn from and celebrate with one another, but to learn together to be like God. He has commanded us to perfection in Him and given us the church as the place where we strive to attain that together. Our church, like the tabernacle of Israel, needs to be a Holy of Holies, a place we must approach on our knees in reverent fear, not a place where we only sing for joy, clap, and wave our hands. The church I yearn for concentrates not primarily on our friendship with God, but on what still separates us--not on what we have, or on what God as done, but on what He has asked us to be.

I want a church that holds up God's seemingly-impossible standard of holiness and urges me forward toward it, reminding me to have courage and strain for what is still beyond my grasp. Don't tell me about your wonderful pastor or friendly congregation or uplifting programs or helpful ministries. Tell me that, together, you unswervingly desire and work to be more like God.

Be ye holy as I am holy.--Leviticus 20:7, 1Peter 1:16

Please, please give me a church who looks at her bridegroom with the same singlemindedness as a bride on her wedding day, all but blind to everything and everyone else, but promising the fruit of that devotion in everything else she does.

...prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.--Revelation 21:2

Learning from an Atheist

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"I don't need an outside source to tell me to be a good person. Seriously? How difficult is it not to be a jerk?"

Everybody should have an atheist in their life. I mean it. We take way too much for granted. Most of us have absolutely no idea how atheists think. We need to know more than how to answer them. We need to understand and respect them.

I love the atheist in my family. She pokes me. She argues with me. She challenges me. She makes me think.
"How difficult is it not to be a jerk?" she asked the other day.
It's a good question. She knows right from wrong for the most part--probably as much as most Christians I know. She knows she was born with this knowledge, a knowledge she didn't summon up for herself. She doesn't much care why she knows--she just does--and tries to live by it. She sincerely wants to be a good person and seriously can't imagine why that shouldn't be enough.

I try to imagine sometimes how God sees her. I know He loves her--that goes without saying. But how does He look on her sincerely good intentions? Are they enough? That's a harder one. Paul, in writing to the Romans, considered the same thing:

It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.--Romans 2: 13-16

Atheists have no faith in Christ, but they often have an active conscience--the law is written on their hearts. They, then, can be doers of the law without knowing from Whom the law comes. They are a "law unto themselves", but that law often conforms to God's. If God justifies the doers of the law, will my atheist then also be justified?

She might. God is, after all, in charge of His own heaven. He measures each one of us by something humans can neither see nor know--our hearts.
However, Jesus also said that:
No one comes to the Father except by me.--John 14:6
and:
By faith you are saved.--Ephesians 2:8
My atheist has neither Jesus nor faith. In fact, she has summarily rejected them both but, in her defense, I know far too many professing Christians who think less than an atheist about right and wrong. We might do well to consider them more often.  

Right and wrong are not always instinctively easy to come by. I used to think, for instance, that some certain lies ("No you don't look fat in that dress" or "I don't have to report that income--they paid me cash") were OK to tell. I don't anymore. My notions of right and wrong have shifted with changing age and circumstances.

It's the same for everybody. That's why a country has laws. None of us decides for ourselves what is legal. We don't individually decide our own speed limits and, as a result, we can all share the same roads without constantly crashing into each other. It's the same for life, isn't it? We don't decide right and wrong for ourselves so that we don't destroy one another. I may think it's OK to arm myself to the teeth and use my guns to defend myself and you don't. I may believe it's OK to spank my kids and you don't. I may think I have a right to share in someone else's wealth and you don't. We both sincerely believe we are right.

I don't know about my atheist, but when it comes to deciding right from wrong, I need a place to look it up, something I didn't write--the constitution for the laws of the land and the Bible for everything else. And I take comfort that, as long as I still live, God is working in both of us--me and my atheist. And, as long as she is willing to listen to me, really listen, I am happy to try to return the favor.

In the meantime, recognizing that I don't have all the answers, I cry on both of our behalfs, "Lord, have mercy."

Wearing Two Faces

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Oh, God--you and your contradictions...
You tell me that life will be hard, but I will be glad.
You take away my sin, but not before you show me its full squalor.
You make me rich, but in the process, humble me down to the ground.

Because of you, I wear two faces--
One that knows your joy, and the other that knows myself and this world.

Who are you, anyway, that you must do this?

Father, Teacher, Brother, Friend, Lord, Christ, Redeemer...
Everything.

Somewhere, somehow, you must be enough.
You do not breathe your own Spirit into a handful of dust, then blow it apart, consigning it to random winds.
You, who ignite the spark of life and carefully lay out the order of the worlds, do not abandon your work to sad entropy.

I cannot make myself happy by leaning into days that flash by, swirling into time's tempest.
There is only You.
Satisfy me with your unfailing love that I may sing for joy and be glad all my days.--Psalm 90:14

What BFF Really Means

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I always thought that the epitome of human relationships was love.
God tells me to love and most of the time, I like doing it.
I love my husband and my children and my friends in His name.
But He also tells me to love my neighbor, who I don't always like.
Even worse, He tells me to love my enemy, who I absolutely don't like.
Now that I think about it, sometimes I want to love and sometimes I don't.
But I have to. Whether I like it or not.
And God has to love us. Loving is who He is. He can't not do it.

But that is not true of friendship.
We get to choose our friends.
And so does God.
I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father, I made known to you.--John 15:15.

Friendship is a privilege, not a command.
As we believe in and worship God, He calls us friends.
 This is not a slap-on-the-back buddy relationship, but a deep heart caring that shares and laughs and cries together. It is a relationship born of basic likenesses, deeper even than love. 

Friendship is more exclusive, reserved only for the closest of those God must love.
Love comes from God to all, but friendship, well....that is a finer thing.
BFF. Yes, I'll take that.
Thank you, Lord.

Walking on Broken Glass

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It's been a tough week--husband in the hospital, and my spiritual mother taking her last sweet breaths...
And this morning, I walked barefoot onto a kitchen floor covered with broken glass.
Really.

During the night, one of our cats knocked over a wine glass I left on the counter, unwashed, from the night before and it broke into the kind of million scary pieces that only thin, fragile glass can. It fell right near the kitchen door and scattered everywhere.  
When I walked in, though, I didn't get cut by it. 

As I stepped into the room, my toe kicked the first piece, pushing it out of the way. Then I took another step. And another. And then (finally) I looked down. Broken glass surrounded the spot where I stood.

I couldn't NOT have gotten cut.
But I didn't.

And that was the point.
It wasn't only my kitchen that was full of broken glass. My life was full of it, too.
Potential hurt and danger on two of life's fronts that mean the most to me. Potential fodder for fear. Definitely.

But God was carrying me.
He held me safe on all fronts, watched me so that I would not come to harm.
And, as I stood unharmed, surrounded by broken glass, I knew why He'd made for me a little miracle.
I knew what He was trying to say:

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go...I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.--Genesis 28:15
Indeed, the very hairs of your head are numbered.  Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.--Luke 12:7

Spitting Images Sometimes Still Spit

Two peas in a pod...
Frick and frack...
It's reassuring to be like someone. 
More than likely, your best friends are like you in many ways. It's how we get along.

But it's not how we grow.
God did not make a church of identical twins. Instead, He made complementary parts.
Just as each one of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.--Romans 12:4

But we don't like that.  We want people just like us. We want the minister to preach in a way that reaches us. We want the kind of music that moves us. We want a liturgy that is meaningful to us.
And we expect it to reach, and move, and be meaningful to everybody else, too.

Well, that is not God's plan.
We are different.  And we are stuck with each other.
We do not get to change other people to be like us.
And we do not get to divide ourselves from them because they are different.

The church is meant to be more like a family, complete with weird Uncle Ralph and crazy Grandma Mabel.  Or maybe a husband who just doesn't understand us. Or a child who has broken our heart. They are an intentional gift from God. We are supposed to learn to love them exactly as they are.

Spitting images get along pretty effortlessly, but we rarely have the opportunity to find out. More often, we share our lives with people very different from ourselves and have to figure out how to share in peace. It is good. God would have us make the effort.

How to Find a Real Friend, Part 2

I had a tearful conversation this week with someone who'd been lied to by a friend. She just couldn't comprehend how someone she'd trusted for years would betray her so readily.

I felt sad for her, but remained a bit amazed that she was so surprised. She did not understand that no one is trustworthy. No one on this earth. The hurts and betrayals sometimes come intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, but they will come. Our friends will hurt us. Guaranteed.

Understanding man's basic failure to be faithful does not grow from pessimism; it simply allows God to take His proper place. It does not mean that our friends and family do not care--in fact, they provide islands of love, but even these come with storms. If you want a friend that never fails, you have only one choice.

God is not a man that He should lie, nor son of man, that He should change His mind--Numbers 23:19

God never lies, never exaggerates, never forgets, never deceives. He is mighty not only to save, but to remain steadfast for all time and in all circumstances.

The world is a dark place sometimes. Friends fail, but when the darkness closes in, reach for the light.

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.--John 1:5

When we stand in the light, we can finally understand.

How to Find a Real Friend, Part 1

The world is confusing. We are always trying to figure out how we fit, how to relate to the people around us. We feel sometimes like Diogenes, wandering around with a lamp trying to find an honest man, someone we can trust. "Who am I?", we wonder. "Who are you?"

Diogenes, as far as anyone knows, never found his honest man and, consequently, found himself very much alone. We, too, want trustworthy companions but, like Diogenes, find our fellow humans wanting.

Diogenes failed to consider God. When we reach for God, we find everything men lack. Savior, Brother, Friend, Almighty. He is all these and more. But then, we encounter another puzzle.

God made us. He laid down our world and the laws that govern both it and us. We exist only at His pleasure. How can I possibly achieve friendship with the One who rules?

You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I have learned from my Father I have made known to you.--John 15:14-15

Only God offers faithful friendship and, in order to enjoy it, He says that I must first obey Him. This does not sound like friendship to me. Friends share, not obey, but I can only share so much with a holy God. On a small scale, it's like trying to maintain a friendship with Alexander the Great. The gulf between us is just too wide.

Obedience to God, however, puts the relationship between us into proper perspective. While nothing can level the playing field, obedience opens the door to Him. When I obey eagerly out of love, He can treat me like a daughter and He can share not only knowledge, but His created heavens and earth as an inheritance. When I serve and consider myself bound to Him, I am tied to Him not by ownership, but by affection. Thus is His friendship not the precursor, but the byproduct of His commanded obedience. I cannot earn His friendship, but I can obey my way to it.

First, I believe. Then I obey. Later, I trust. I obey when it is hard because God has shared His truth. I trust when everything else fails because God has showed His vision. I serve when rewards fail because service to God's truth sanctifies. I persevere when men fail because friendship forged with God lasts forever.

Diogenes looked in the wrong place.