The Witness Between Us

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Why are Christians always arguing among themselves?
It's almost never necessary.
Really.
But we are so sure we are right and our brothers are wrong. 
Bah.

We should have learned long ago that we don't always see things clearly.
Way back when the Israelites first divided up the promised land, and settled on both sides of the Jordan river, they did  the same thing. The people of Reuben, Gad, and half of the people of Manasseh lived separated from the others, so they built an altar there, a copy of the tabernacle where the rest of their people worshiped, so that they would not forget God's faithfulness even though they lived separately.

And what did their brothers in faith say? Did they slap them on the back and say "Good job. So happy for your faithfulness!"  No, of course they didn't.
They said:
How could you break faith with the God of Israel? How could you turn away from the Lord and build yourselves and altar against Him now?--Joshua 22:16

They didn't get it at all.
So the Reubenites and Gadites set them straight:
The Mighty One! God! The Lord! He knows! ...It is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow that we will worship the Lord...--Joshua 22: 22,27

A witness between us and you.
To unite, not separate them.

More often than not, the God we worship is the same God.
Our sects and denominations are not supposed to separate us. They are incidents of upbringing and location. They are different flavors of the same Living Bread.

Some people like statues and stained glass, some a bare cross.
Some prefer loud music, some stately, some none at all.
Some dunk, some sprinkle.
It doesn't have to matter.

Though separated by differences that sometimes seem as wide as the Jordan, we need not destroy one another.
I don't always agree with my husband, but we almost always present a united front to the world.
Why can't Christians do the same?
Stop nit-picking your brother and put your arms around him.
There is one body and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all--Ephesians 4:4-5

Do you see it differently?
Do our denominational differences really matter all that much?

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.

Deciding to Let Go

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The time has come. You have to decide whether or not you are EVER going to let go.
You have held onto them all of your life.
Mother. Father.
Husband. Wife.
Son. Daughter.
Best friend.
You have loved them and they have tried to love you back as well as they can.
But they are not enough.
There is a longing in your heart that even the ones you love best can't fill.
Are you going to continue to ask them to try?
Or are you going to give up, finally and forever and just.... let... go?

John did:
He must increase...I must decrease.--John 3:30
Peter did:
We have left everything to follow you! --Matthew 19:27
And there is no other way for us, either.

That doesn't mean we get a divorce or that we abandon our families for a cloister, but it does mean that we completely shift our priorities.
We do have to absolutely know once and for all that God comes first.
In every circumstance, every frame of mind, every plan, every dream.
He becomes our primary motivation for everything. All the people we held, and continue to hold, most dear must take a back seat to His supremacy.
We have to tear them away from the first place they have held in our heart for so long and yield that place to God, to whom it has always belonged.

And then what?
Peter wanted to know, too:
What will there  be for us?--Matthew 19:27

And God had an answer for him, and has the same answer for us.
We will not have less, but more.
I tell you the truth, Jesus said to them, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal life.--Luke 19:29-30

The only way to find this out, though, is to do it.

Can You Feel It?

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Expect miracles.
That sounds good, like something worth doing, but what, exactly, does a miracle look like?
It's easy, really.
A miracle is the place where God injects Himself into our world. 
It's the place where He touches us, where He lets us get a glimpse, where He is, well, Himself in a world that is so not like Him.
And we should expect Him. He's here, all around, just waiting.

Lord, I have heard of your fame, I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our time. Make them known.--Habakkuk 3:2

This is not only a plea. It's an expectation of wonder, of revelation.
"Make yourself known," we say.
"With pleasure," He says, and then He reaches down.

We are God's people, and God is great. Why not expect great works from Him?
He loves us. Why not expect His touch?

The world will not change much. It will continue to disappoint and to fall into decay. We know that.
But God did not create us to drop us on our heads.
He has something wonderful for us in Himself. 
Anticipate Him.
Can you feel it?

The Baby Will Come

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In 1972, pregnant with my first child, I asked my mother, "How much will it hurt?"
"Don't worry," she told me. "You forget about it after the baby comes."

She was wrong about that.
I didn't forget--not then, and not through my second delivery. I still remember.
I remember the urgency.
I remember the  intensity.
I remember the whole, round, bigger-than-me desire to have the whole thing over with.
I remember how much, partway through, I wanted to give up the whole job.
But, once begun, I was stuck.
Once conceived, once carried, and so long anticipated, the baby would come.

The earth does the same thing.
God implanted in it the perfection of Himself, the pregnancy of His promise, and that child will, with or without our permission, be born.
And we groan in the waiting for it.
Every day, we feel how things ought to be and long for them.

Why do we know so much evil when God is so merciful? we ask.
Birth pangs.
Why do poverty, and sickness, and injustice continually plague us? we ask.
Birth pangs.
Why can't men and women just get along? we ask.
Birth pangs.
Every day, the earth swells with expectation of God's return, it leans into its own pangs of wanting, it opens the way and says, between cries, 
"Come, Lord Jesus!"

Creation was subject to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one Who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as if in the pangs of childbirth right up to the present time.--Romans 8:20-22


Do you remember your own pangs of childbirth?
Do they give you any insight about the world's imperfections and what joy might still be in store?

New Temple, New Fire, New Freedom

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The Holy of Holies.
The place where God dwelt among His people.
The place where men could not enter for fear of death because of God's monumental glory.

This the measure of the magnitude of what Christ has done:
The same glory that dwelt in the Holy of Holies now dwells in us.
God promised.
The nations shall know that I, the Lord, make Israel holy by putting my sanctuary among them forever.--Ezekiel 37:28

Forever. He dwells with His people forever. Even after His brick-and-mortar sanctuary has long lain in ruins.
Christ not only rent the temple curtain.
He sent His Spirit, the same Spirit that dwelt in that sacred place, and made it resident in you and me.

Christ freed us in this and, in a way, also freed Himself.
No longer is He confined to a place, but He is broadcast like seed among a walking, talking people.
No longer does humanity come to the temple--or to church--to see God.
Humanity looks at us.

God has completed His covenant, not by re-building a new temple, but by building up His people.
In what ways do you know that you are the construct of God?

Taking the 'Crazy' out of Busy

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I couldn't say it better than Francis de Sales:

Flies harass us more by their numbers than by their sting. Similarly, great matters disturb us less than a multitude of small affairs. Accept the duties which are entrusted to you quietly, and try to fulfill them methodically, one after another. If you attempt to do everything at once, or with confusion, you will not only burden yourself with your own exertions, and by entangling your mind, you will probably be overwhelmed and accomplish nothing.

In all your affairs, rely on God's Providence, through which alone your plans can succeed. Meanwhile, on your part, work on in quiet cooperation with God, and then rest satisfied that, if you have entrusted your work entirely to God, you will always obtain that measure of success which is best for you, whether it seems so or not in your own judgement.

...When your own work or business is not particularly engrossing, let your heart be fixed more on God than on it; and if the work be such as to require your undivided attention, then pause from time to time and look to God, even as navigators do who set their course for the harbor by looking up at the heavens rather than down at the deeps on which they sail. Doing this, you will see that God will work with you, and for you, and your work will be blessed.

What one task can you begin to intentionally share with God? Mine is dishwashing.
Thanks, Francis.

St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life