God with Us

I have a friend who wrote about a month ago: Christmas cannot be canceled because Christmas is God with Us in every circumstance, even a global pandemic. With that simple statement, he cut through all the consumerism and materialism of the weeks leading up to Christmas and focused my heart and attention directly on why it is that we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

This is a strange year to celebrate Christmas. I’ve heard many people express something along these lines: “This is not the Christmas we had hoped for” or “This is not the Christmas we had planned.” These words are often accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, an expression of “whatchya gonna do?” and a resignation to make the most of what has been for some time now a very difficult year.

It’s certainly not the Christmas most of us had envisioned at the start of 2020, but perhaps it’s the Christmas that will help us see anew the wonder of God with Us. For Elizabeth and me, Christmas has been a difficult season for a number of years now. It was just before Christmas about a dozen years ago that Elizabeth’s grandmother died. That was the Christmas service where I led the liturgy, preached, directed the choir and played trumpet in the brass ensemble (we decided later that was just a slight bit of over-functioning…) And it was about ten years ago on Christmas Eve that we suffered a miscarriage and spent pretty much the whole night in the hospital. Remember these losses each year as everything around us tells us that we’re supposed to be joyful and merry is particularly challenging, and I know others have similar experiences around Christmas each year.

That year we spent Christmas Eve in the hospital, I still came home, showered, and preached the next morning. I preached because the sermon was already ready to go and I felt a need to fulfill people’s expectations for a Christmas service—but that was a mistake. I was not emotionally fit to lead worship at that point. Frankly I was a mess. It was all a bit of a blur. But one thing I remember saying that morning was that in some ways, this is what Christmas is all about—God. Becoming Human. Not ignoring our suffering but entering into it. Carrying our sorrow. Redeeming our broken and hurting world.

This Christmas in the midst of a pandemic is not the Christmas we had expected or hoped for. But it’s still Christmas. Maybe it is especially Christmas. It is still God with Us.

Sharing Our Monkey Bread

We’ve been using Elizabeth’s book Teach Us to Pray for our family devotions after some of our meals. If you’ve used the book at all, you know that part of the process is using some sort of practice or activity at the beginning of the devotions as a way of engaging the whole body and creating a sense of ritual. Ordinary time included such activities as bringing in something from nature as a reminder of God’s good creation, starting the prayers on your knees if you were able, or tasting just a touch of honey as a reminder that the laws of God are sweet for our souls.

The opening activity for Advent is setting an extra place at the table during meals as an expression of our desire for Jesus to come join us. This is rooted in the Jewish Passover tradition of setting an extra place at the table for Elijah in anticipation of Elijah one day coming to prepare the way for the Messiah. 

This has led to some interesting conversation in our house. The question “Do we have to make room for Jesus?” has been heard a surprisingly high number of times. “Does Jesus need silverware?” is also a favorite. And when I sat down at the table and there wasn’t a glass of water at my place, but there was at Jesus’, I reached over and took Jesus’ water. My children caught me: “Did you just take Jesus’ water?” they asked, and I sheepishly put it back and got up to get my own glass of water. And I have to admit—Jesus’ spot at the table ends up being next to mine, and with my long arms and long legs, I don’t particularly enjoy having an extra spot next me. This has led me to reflect on whether I’m really trying to make room for Jesus in my life or not.

One of the classic moments, however, that will go down in Blankespoor-Vander Haagen family lore, came last week when we were enjoying some delicious split pea soup. Now, when I was growing up, split pea soup was not high on my siblings’ list of favorite meals, so my mom would make monkey bread to go along with it to bribe us kids to eat the split pea soup without complaining. We didn’t get monkey bread until after our soup was eaten.

For the uninitiated, monkey bread is made by taking biscuit rolls that come in tube, cutting them into pieces, placing them in a bundt pan and then drowning them in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon before baking. Delicious—if not exactly healthy for you. But anyway, as a nod to family tradition, we made monkey bread to go along with the pea soup.

When it came time to divvy up the monkey bread (after all the soup had been eaten, of course), we made sure to distribute even amounts so there was no complaining. The conversation then went something like this: “Don’t forget to save some for Jesus,” pointed out one of the kind-hearted from our midst. “Jesus doesn’t need monkey bread,” was the quick response.

I decided to seize the moment and make it into a lesson on faith. “Wait a minute—you’re telling me that if the Savior of the World showed up—if the one who set aside being God and came to earth to be born as a little tiny baby and suffered on the cross and died for your sins showed up, you wouldn’t give him your monkey bread?” Perhaps I went a little over the top. “Would you give him your monkey bread?” came the penetrating reply. I was feeling particularly pious at the moment, so I quickly stated, “Yes. Yes, I would. Jesus could have my monkey bread.” But even as I said it, I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure it was true. I really like monkey bread. Maybe Jesus and I could split it…

And in that moment, I realized two things. First—how little I really expect Jesus to show up at any given moment. I don’t really need to worry about Jesus eating my monkey bread, I thought to myself. He’s not really going to show up while we’re eating monkey bread… And second—how little gratitude I truly have toward Jesus. I like Jesus. I’m grateful for all Jesus has done for me. But can Jesus have my monkey bread? I’m not so sure… It’d be really hard to sit there with no monkey bread while Jesus ate my share. And that was startling to me—I have to second guess whether Jesus would get my monkey bread?!?

This has made me reconsider how I approach a lot of life. Jesus tells us in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46 that whatever we have done for the least of these brothers and sisters of his, we have done for him. And whatever we have not done for one of the least of these, we have not done for him. The truth is, we encounter Jesus everyday of our lives in the people all around us. Are we truly grateful for what Jesus has done for us? If we are—well, then we should probably share our monkey bread. We shouldn’t just give out of our excess, what doesn’t really cost us anything—we should share the things we treasure as well.

After my attempt at being pious with my family, stating that I would give Jesus my monkey bread, I turned to my children and asked them, “Well, what about you? Would you give the one who died for you monkey bread?” The answer came back unanimous. “Yes. We would give Jesus your monkey bread too.”

Fierce Love

God holds this world
with fierce love.
Keeping his promise,
he sends Jesus into the world,
pours out the Holy Spirit,
and announces the good news:
sinners who repent and believe in Jesus
live anew as members of the family of God –
the firstfruits of a new creation.

-        Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony, paragraph 5

I’ve had this part of Our World Belongs to God on my mind for a few weeks now, especially the first sentence: ‘God holds this world with fierce love.’ I think it came to mind when I was preaching from Ezekiel 34 and reading about shepherds, and how they are both tender and fierce.

A few weeks ago Peter came home from school with this picture.

He and his class were learning about Jesus’ baptism, and this is how he illustrated it, depicting Father, Son and Spirit. It’s hanging on our refrigerator and every time I see it, I smile. When I asked Peter about sharing it, he nodded yes and then said “It’s like the song Mom - you know - He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands!” Look at how God is holding the whole world, close to God’s heart.

And look at the joy on God’s face! God holds this world with fierce love and God delights in us – somehow, mysteriously, even as the pandemic reveals and magnifies our worst selves and our deepest divisions. We are held in love, and we make God smile. As Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic, wrote: “God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall.” God is smitten with us, and God’s love for us does not change, no matter what’s happened to us, no matter what we’ve done. God holds us in fierce and joyful love.

The last part of the paragraph from Our World Belongs to God got me thinking this week – the part about being ‘the first fruits of a new creation.’ I tend to think of the new creation as something we are still waiting and longing for, not something we’re a part of. But we are, it’s beginning and already begun in us.

One of the lectionary readings for next Sunday is from Isaiah 61, with the promise: ‘They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.’ Not only does God hold us in love and delight in us, God reveals God’s splendor in us. We are the first fruits of the new creation. Acorns that will be transformed into oaks of righteousness. The new thing that God is doing in the world, the new life that the Spirit brings, the restoration of all things, is beginning in us. And the place of transformation is of course, exactly where we are – at home, at work, in all of the details of our day to day lives and interactions with others. In our acts of love and faithfulness, in our daily repentance and trust in God, the new creation begins.

Finding the Lost

The other day I suffered one of the ultimate teenage humiliations. I was digging through the trash looking for my lost retainer. 

I’ve worn a retainer since I had my braces removed back in June as part of my dental repair work after my bike accident in 2019. I’m usually pretty good about putting my retainer in its case each time I take it out—I don’t like the thought of it being unprotected where it might pick up germs or come in contact with who knows what, and, oddly, the rest of the family are generally grossed out by finding it just sitting around the house (yes, this was discovered by trial and error). But there are times when there’s some food sitting out that I just want to snitch quickly and I still find myself pulling out my retainer “just for a moment.”

This particular time, I was up early making pancakes for the family. I decided to add chocolate chips, and, of course, I needed to make sure the chocolate chips were still good. I pulled out the retainer to try a few, and then must have set the retainer down as the pancakes needed immediate attention. I got caught up in the pancake production process and didn’t think to find my retainer again until mid-afternoon. By that time I had no idea where I had put it, though I had a vague sense that when I had put it down, I had thought to myself, “Now remember where you’re putting this…”

I searched through the whole house no less than three times. I checked all the pockets on my clothes—twice. I even went through all the papers on my desk in the basement—just in case—even though this is a monumental undertaking and I was pretty sure there wasn’t any way it might be there. I knew it was in the house because I could remember having it in when I woke up in the morning. But I couldn’t for the life of me find it. That’s when I decided I better sort through the trash.

I took the trash from the kitchen and poured it out in the driveway. This wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been freezing at the time or I had bothered to put a coat on. Or I hadn’t emptied the vacuum cleaner into the trash earlier that day. But I sorted through all of the trash to no avail—still no retainer. I went back inside and worried that the dog must have found it somehow and chewed it to smithereens. I began preparing myself for the embarrassing call to the orthodontist that I had lost my retainer.

It wasn’t until the next morning that our daughter Emma found it. She picked up some papers from the counter in the kitchen (papers from the stack that we keep telling our kids not to look through) and there it was—right underneath them. The pile must have been bumped soon after I set down my retainer and the top pieces slid over top of the retainer blocking it from view. This was, actually, the first place I had looked for it. I had checked this place no less than four times. I had moved the papers around in my search and checked under the edges of them. But I had never picked them all the way up. I didn’t know whether to be extraordinary glad that the retainer had been found or extremely perturbed that all along it had been in the first place I had looked and I should have found it right away.

But I did feel extreme relief. Relief that my search was over. Relief that I wouldn’t need to be calling the orthodontist that day. Relief that I wouldn’t need to be sitting for another mold of my mouth to be taken and I wouldn’t be paying for a replacement when I knew that my retainer had to be around here somewhere. And I felt euphoria. I was so excited when the retainer was found. I swooped over and picked Emma up in a big bear hug. I went flying around the house jumping up and down, whooping and hollering. I picked up our dog and did a crazy jig.

I’ve lost things before. I’ve had a hard time finding them and done a whole house search for them before. But this was different. This was something that would have been hard to replace—something I couldn’t just order a replacement for online. This was something that was a part of me somehow. And my relief and joy in finding it—while admittedly, solely for my retainer—were unlike much else I had experienced in searching for something that was lost.

I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve read the parable of the woman and the lost coin in Luke 15. I don’t know how many times I’ve read about her losing one coin out of ten, searching all through the house trying to find it. And I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about the celebration she had once she found the lost coin. I do know, though, that I’ve thought to myself that it was just a lost coin—and while coins certainly would have been treasured in Jesus’ day, how excited can one get about finding one?

Now, after my own celebration in finding my retainer, I read that parable differently. I have a greater appreciation for the lengths God will go to find the lost sinner. For the sense of desperation that’s involved in the search. For the pure joy and euphoria that is involved when what is lost is suddenly found. I have a greater sense of the depth of God’s love for each one of us—whether we’re the first coin or the tenth. Whether we’re the sheep that always is right where it’s supposed to be or the sheep that is seemingly always wandering off and getting into trouble.

If I got this excited about a lost retainer that was found, how much more excited would God get over a lost human being who was found? I’ve thankfully never had a serious incident of one of my loved ones being lost. I lost Emma briefly at JC Penney once when she was three years old…and there was a sudden sense of panic…my stomach dropped and instantly I was desperate. I had been looking at some clothes, she had been right beside me, but then I looked up and she was nowhere to be seen. I looked down all of the aisles, and didn’t see her wandering around. I went one direction, then the other; I started yelling her name—softly at first and then louder and louder and more and more frantically. Turns out she was in the middle of a circular rack of coats, about ten feet from me. Relief swept over me, but I didn’t celebrate the way I really wanted to because I didn’t want anyone to know I had lost my daughter in the Menswear department of JCPenney. But I can only imagine the joy and celebration God experiences when someone God loves so deeply that God is willing to die for him or her is suddenly found. I hope I can learn to love others this same way. I hope I can experience this same joy.

I wish I could say I’ve taken perfect care of my retainer since that fateful day I lost it. But alas, less than two hours after I found it I had lost it again. I grumbled against God—telling God thanks, but I’d already learned that lesson and I didn’t need to learn it again. This time I even knew I had carefully placed it in my retainer case and set it in its spot by the cabinets. I checked the case three times by picking it up and shaking it—it makes a distinctive rattle if the retainer is inside. And each time it was silent when I shook it. I was distraught—until Peter actually opened the case and discovered that the retainer was indeed inside. It had simply been caught in the edge of the case so it did not rattle when shook. I was again grateful it was found—just as, I suppose, God is grateful each time we are found when we wander off.

Now if I could just find that missing flashdrive…

Thanksgiving Preaching

Elizabeth won’t let me preach Thanksgiving. At least not anymore. Apparently, I’m too dark with my words.

There’s a skill to preaching Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving meditation should be a simple, short message. Uplifting. Just tell people to give thanks. That gratefulness is an important characteristic of our lives as Christians. This is not one of my gifts as a preacher.

I still remember the first Thanksgiving I preached. The text was Matthew 6:25-33. The part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where he tells us not to worry. Not to be anxious about anything. It wasn’t a bad sermon overall—it was just a terrible sermon for Thanksgiving. Somehow I got into all of the things that we have to worry about in life—hitting the grief and the job loss and the health concerns—and then made the point that God doesn’t promise that life will be easy for us—just that God will provide what we need. And that’s cause for Thanksgiving, no matter how dark your life might be right now. Expressions on people’s faces were all a bit shocked as they filed out that morning. Not quite what they had prepared themselves for as they headed off to church that morning. My notes for the sermon that day read simply, “Thanksgiving—a bit heavy.”

Another year I preached the story of the crossing of the Red Sea from the book of Exodus and the song of deliverance Miriam sang after the Israelites were safely on the other side. I emphasized how our deliverance should be a deep source of thanksgiving in our hearts—and then spent most of the sermon emphasizing all the dark and evil things we had been delivered from.

Then there was the Thanksgiving sermon on the ten lepers Jesus heals in the book of Luke where only one of them came back to thank Jesus. Somehow the sermon ended up being a stern warning not to be like the nine who didn’t bother to give thanks.

And who could forget the infamous Thanksgiving sermon from the book of Job? (Okay—I made that one up).

But the point is, Elizabeth won’t let me preach Thanksgiving. Because I tend to be too dark. And regardless of what passage I pick, my message usually ends up being something along the lines of: no matter how dark and gloomy your life might be, it’s still possible to give thanks. Most years, that doesn’t work so well for a Thanksgiving meditation. It’s perfectly true—but it’s not the simple, uplifting message people need to hear most Thanksgivings.

But this year isn’t like most Thanksgivings. This year, we’re in the midst of a pandemic. And we’ve already lost so much—we’ve given up holidays, vacations, time with family and friends. Some of us have lost jobs and others of us loved ones. It seems like everyday there’s a new sense of grief as a new loss takes hold in our lives. This year, perhaps more than any other, we need to hear that Thanksgiving message that no matter how dark our lives might become, we are still children of God. We are still redeemed by God. We are still deeply loved by God. We are still held by God. And that—that—is indeed reason to give thanks, no matter what else is going on in our lives.

Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to preach a simple, uplifting Thanksgiving meditation. Maybe one of these years, Elizabeth will let me give it another try. But until then, I was born to preach Thanksgiving 2020.

The Rituals of Our Lives

A few weeks ago I completed an annual fall ritual—I put up the plastic film covering the skylights in our bedroom. The skylights are high-quality, double-paned windows, but they are right above where we sleep. Without the added plastic film in the winter, there’s just enough of a cold draft to make it hard for me to sleep.

I always resist putting up the plastic as long as possible. It’s an admission that the warmth and sunshine of summer are gone and all that lies ahead until spring is cold and gloom. The plastic covers the whole cutout for the window, so once the plastic goes up, we can no longer reach the window to raise or lower the blinds. So most years we lower the blinds before putting the plastic up—this makes it darker at night when we’re trying to sleep, but it also means our bedroom is that much darker all day long as well. And those precious few days in the winter when the sun does manage to break through the clouds, our bedroom stays a dark and gloomy place.

The skylights are built into the slanted roof of our house. Because they’re on a slant, the plastic has a particularly difficult time staying put. This means that inevitably, the first night I put the plastic up, the double-sided tape they give you to put on the frame of the window starts to give way and we wake up in the middle of the night with plastic falling down on top of us. This usually results in me trying to add a layer or two of packing tape around the outside edge of the plastic the next morning.

All this to say that by springtime, when the first warm breeze arrives and the voice of the turtle is again heard in the land, and I rip off the plastic like I’m a kid opening a Christmas gift and crank open the skylights to let that breeze into the stale air of the upstairs, the walls around the skylights are in rough shape. Indeed, as I pull the plastic off, I inevitably pull a layer or two of paint off with it. I’ve learned to keep a generous supply of touch up paint that color in the house.

Sometimes I even take some of the drywall mud off with the paint, and there’s a bit of a gouge in the wall above our bed where the plastic had been hanging. Just as putting up the plastic is a fall ritual, so repairing the wall when I take the plastic down is a spring ritual. Only, I don’t always get to it in the spring. I typically tear down the plastic on a whim, deciding that spring is finally here—or at least right around the corner—and we won’t need this plastic any longer and the lure of the fresh breeze overcomes my fear of the nightly draft. I can tear down the plastic in about three minutes, but it can take a couple of hours over the course of a couple of days to repair and repaint the walls—especially if it takes more than one coat.

And so I don’t always get to it right away. And as the weather turns nice in the spring, there are so many other things I’d rather be doing outside than repairing the walls inside our bedroom. And so, I’m afraid to say, more years than not, the walls stay gouged all summer long—with me thinking that I’ll get to that one of these days… And then fall comes. And it’s time to put the plastic back up—only the walls aren’t fixed yet, so I figure I better do that first. So many years, it’s not until I need to put the plastic back up that I finally get around to repairing the walls from when I tore the plastic down in the spring.

Elizabeth is gracious about the whole cycle, and mostly just shakes her head as she sees me head up to the bedroom with a can of paint at the end of October. It is an odd, somewhat humorous, somewhat frustrating ritual that we go through each year. And in a strange way, it marks the passing of the seasons, the passing of time, perhaps as well as anything else in our lives—especially this year as the usual birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving and Christmas will all look dramatically different because of the coronavirus.

This summer Elizabeth and I had the pleasure of conducting the wedding of Joshua Hiemstra and Meredith Fennema. It was a small wedding, outdoors in Meredith’s parents’ backyard. One of the texts Josh and Meredith selected was 1 Samuel 7:13-17. It’s a bit of an obscure text—it details the later years of Samuel’s life as prophet in Israel, and it describes him as traveling from town to town to town in a large circuit and repeating this year after year after year. Living out his life in faithful service.

We pointed out to them that this was not a typical wedding text, but they wanted to use it anyway—they liked the idea of the routine being holy. Of our everyday actions being service to God. Of the rituals of our lives—whether they are the daily rituals or the monthly rituals or the yearly rituals—being a sign of our faithfulness and love.

Indeed, the rituals of our lives mark off our lives—but they are so much more than mere timekeepers. Regardless of whether they are the daily rituals or the yearly rituals, they can be a mark of our faithfulness. A sign of our love. A way we orient our lives to God and to others. It doesn’t matter whether we are married or single, our faith is primarily lived out in our everyday, day-to-day and year-to-year actions.

Next spring, when the plastic comes down again and the paint comes off the walls with it, I’m going to look at the ritual of wall repair in a whole new light. And hopefully, when October rolls around, I won’t be heading upstairs with a can of paint in my hands.

Comfort from Job and Skywoman

The reading this morning in Teach Us to Pray was from Job 23:1-3, 8-10 (and it’s in the NIV Readers translation):

Even today my problems are more than I can handle.

In spite of my groans, God’s hand is heavy on me.

I wish I knew where I could find him!

I wish I could go to the place where he lives!

 

But if I go to the east, God isn’t there.

If I go to the west, I don’t find him.

When he’s working in the north, I don’t see him there.

When he turns to the south, I don’t see him there either.

 

But he knows every step I take.

When he has tested me,

I’ll come out as pure gold.

 

This resonated with me. Even today, in my warm comfortable home, with two of my children still in school in person, with plans to meet a dear friend for a walk, with work and people I love, with so much to be thankful for – ‘my problems are more than I can handle.’ Mark, a friend of our family whom I’ve known since childhood died yesterday. Harvey DeWent died last week and Jay and I weren’t allowed to be there. I’m afraid for a friend who has COVID, dreading that schools might close again, worried Bri won’t ever get to go in person this year, concerned for many of you and wondering when we’ll see each other in person again. My list could go on and on with problems and griefs (anticipated and real) that are or feel like they are more than I can handle.

 

One of the books I’ve been reading these days is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In it she tells the story of Skywoman, a creation story told by the indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes area. It’s a story of a woman falling from the sky world, who lands on a giant turtle and is kept alive by various creatures, from whom she receives gifts and with whom she shares gifts. And then Kimmerer writes this:

 

Perhaps the Skywoman story endures because we too are always falling. Our lives, both personal and collective share her trajectory. Whether we jump or are pushed, or the edge of the known world just crumbles under our feet, we fall, spinning into someplace new and unexpected. Despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us. (p 8,9)

 

The sense that our problems are more than we can handle, the sense of falling, is part of being human, of knowing and accepting our limits, our creatureliness. It’s good to tell the truth about this – we are not in control. We can’t solve all our problems or keep ourselves from falling. And sometimes God’s presence can feel really elusive – like Job says, ‘I don’t find him . . . I can’t see him.’

 

And yet. As Kimmerer puts it, ‘the gifts of the world stand by to catch us.’ I keep returning to Jesus’ words about the birds and the flowers and how God takes care of them, and God can be trusted to take care of us too – day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Even when we can’t see God, we can see God’s gifts: breath, food, life.

 

Job promises and testifies: ‘God knows every step I take.’ I found such comfort in this passage when we did a series on Job several years ago, and again today. The reminder that God knows us inside and out, God is paying attention, watching us with a loving gaze. And pointing toward Jesus: who knows what it is to be human, to be limited, to grieve, to live in difficult times when many things are out of our control. Jesus goes before us and he goes with us and he knows what is happening to us – the burdens we bear, the choices we face, the joys and sorrows and gifts of each day.

Life Renovations

We’re thinking about renovating our kitchen. Any suggestions or helpful hints are welcome. 

To be honest, we’ve been thinking about renovating our kitchen since we bought the house seventeen years ago. To the point where the spot where my dad spilled some glue on our linoleum floor when trying to repair the countertop the first year we moved in is still there—we just always figured it would get cleaned up when we renovated the kitchen. And we have three different colors of main appliances—the stove and microwave are bisque since they matched the refrigerator that was there when we moved in, the dishwasher is black since appliances no longer came in bisque when we bought the dishwasher, and the refrigerator is now stainless steel since when our refrigerator needed to be replaced we figured we’d move toward stainless steel for all of them when we finally did the renovation at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future. Oh—and there’s a large section of linoleum that’s been missing in our dining room for the past two years since our dog Luna chewed it up when she was a puppy. At the time, we figured we’d wait until the renovation (that was supposed to be right around the corner…) to fix it when we put in new flooring.

We have friends who redid their kitchen a few years ago, and when we ask them what they like about it or what advice they have for us, the thing they keep saying is, “We love it. Don’t know why we didn’t do it long ago.” And to be honest, as we begin envisioning what our kitchen might one day be, the thought that keeps coming back to me is—we should have done this a long time ago.

Seventeen years ago, we could have had matching appliances. Seventeen years ago, we could have had drawers with gliders on them so we’re not constantly working on controlling our tongue when they inevitably bind up and get jammed. Seventeen years ago we could have had walls that aren’t all marked up from the previous owner’s chairs scraping against the wall. We should have done this long ago.

There’s a lot in the Christian life that we should have done long ago. If Jesus Christ is your Lord, Paul admonishes the church in his letter to the Colossians, live your lives in him. Be rooted and built up in him. Strengthened in the faith you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness (2:6-7). He encourages us to put to death anything that belongs to our earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed (3:5). And he goes on and adds anger and rage and malice and slander and filthy language. Do not lie to each other, he says—this is all part of your old self.

And then he says something remarkable: you are a new self. You are a new person in Christ. You’re being renewed. You’re being renovated—in the knowledge and image of your Creator (3:10). And as part of this renovation, as part of this renewal, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. And over all these virtues put on love, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts (3:12-15).

I like to think I’m fairly far along in this renovation process. I’m a pastor, after all. But if I’m truly honest with myself, I have a lot of work yet to do. There are a lot of corners of my life that aren’t what they should be. Mostly little things that I’ve never bothered to address. That I’ve ignored or said to myself, “I’ll deal with that later.” Or “That’s not really such a big deal.” But then I think about what my life might look like if I cleaned all that up—if I truly clothed myself with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience. If I was better able to bear with others and forgive easily. If I put love over all things, and if I let the peace of Christ rule in my heart—and I think to myself: I should have done this long ago.

The truth is…unless we’re intentional, unless we make it a priority, it’s surprisingly easy to wake up seventeen years later and realize we haven’t made much progress in this renovation project. 

The good news, thankfully, is that we’re not ultimately responsible for producing this change. God is at work in us. Paul tells us we are being renewed. But renovations go a whole lot smoother and a whole lot faster when they have willing participants. And workers that don’t keep putting off the work that needs to be done.

I’m grateful that I’m farther along in the renovation of my life than Elizabeth and I are in the renovation of our kitchen. And yet this current election cycle has reminded me of how far I have yet to go until that renovation is complete. I look at all with which Paul tells us to clothe ourselves—compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, love, and peace—and I set them beside all I’ve felt and experienced in the last eight months, what I’ve thought and felt about some people, and I almost begin to cry. There seems to be a lot more “old self” than “new self.” And the one that’s really getting me right now is that, especially the last few days, that peace of Christ, for which my soul longs, has been terribly elusive. 

Paul helps me see what my life might be if I clothed myself fully with Christ. I long for the day when all those things are just who I am, all the time. For the day when it is almost always “new self” rather than far too often “old self.” I wish I had started on it long ago.

Altars of Attention

 

Last week I read this poem by James Crews in the Plough Quarterly magazine.

Altars of Attention

Someone has stacked rock cairns

on top of stumps and stone walls

all along the washed-out road

I walk this morning. Each slab

is balanced by the other like one

right action holding space for the next.

But what is the message of these

small towers shored against

the mossy ruins of a country road?

Are they evidence of an effort

solid enough to withstand wind,

lashing rain and the shrapnel

of beer cans tossed from trucks?

I want to kneel and touch each one,

feel how the tip of one stone

fits into the divot of another,

but I don’t. Let them be altars

of attention that testify: someone

paused here and cared enough

to build these things for no reason

other than the pleasure of making them.

 

It was accompanied by a painting of stone cairn that reminded me of making similar stone towers with our kids on various rocky beaches: in Nova Scotia several summers ago, on the Oregon coast, up on Beaver Island. The title of the poem caught my imagination too – altars of attention. I hear in it a call to be present, to savor, to be open with my senses and my heart.

 

And then on Sunday, Jay and Peter and I went to hike around Sessions Lake in Ionia. It was a bit of a drive and so we listened to a chapter of Dave Barry’s book, Lessons from Lucy. (Lucy is his dog.) And the chapter we happened to listen to was about mindfulness – about being present with and attentive to the people you love, rather than stewing over the past or fretting about the future, or being distracted by your phone . . . He observed that for dogs, there is only the present and his dog delights in simply being with him, much like our dog Luna with Jay.

 

As we were hiking, maybe 2/3rds of the way around the lake, at just the point where I was beginning to be ready to be done and to be slightly anxious about the darkening sky, we came over a hill, and the trail led through a clearing in the trees that was full of stones of all shapes and colors; all over the ground and many of them stacked carefully into cairns. Honestly, it seemed magical. Such a vivid reminder to stay present, to be mindful, to cherish the moment. So we stopped and spent time making a cairn of our own 5 stones high, with just the right stones, balanced at just the right angles.

 All this week, I keep picturing that place in the woods, and thinking about the idea of stones as altars to attention, and also about stones in the Bible. Jesus, in Luke 19 telling the Pharisees that if his disciples didn’t praise him, the very stones would cry out. The story in Joshua 4, when the people have crossed through the Jordan into the promised land and God tells them to take 12 stones and set them up as a memorial to God parting the waters and bringing them through. (I have a vague memory of Jay and I borrowing stones from a friend of a friend’s yard and putting them on the platform at church long ago for a sermon on that story. . .)

 

Jacob in Genesis 28 with a stone for a pillow, dreaming of angels and naming the place Bethel, ‘for surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it.’ And the story in 1 Samuel 7, of God defeating the Philistines and Samuel setting up a stone and naming it Ebenezer, saying ‘Thus far the LORD has helped us.’ The hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing has a line based on that story: Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’ve come, and I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.

 

These stones in the Bible aren’t so much ‘altars to attention’ or calls to be present, but rather signs and reminders of God’s presence with us – in the past, in the present, and in whatever is to come.

 

It is so easy for me to be caught up in my head these days, fretting and afraid. But Jesus invites me to trust him in this moment, to be faithful in following him in this day, in this hour, in this minute. To leave the past and the future in his hands, and live confidently in the present knowing that ‘thus far, the LORD has helped us,’ and God will bring us safely home.

Sowing Seeds

When we bought our house 17 years ago, the city required the previous homeowners to repair the sidewalk before the sale could be completed. The city conveniently provided a contractor to do the work, and promptly charged the previous homeowners $600.

The concrete work was done marvelously. We’re still today enjoying those fresh sections of sidewalk. The lawn repair work, however, is another story. The contractor replaced the good topsoil that had been in the parkway between the sidewalk and the road with some sandy and rocky mess that it would be generous to call dirt. They then threw down a bit of grass seed and left.

The grass they planted barely came up, and what did come up was half weeds. And so began what is now lovingly referred to in our house as “Dad’s semiannual attempt to grow grass.”

Every spring and every fall since we bought the house in 2003, I’ve planted grass in the parkway between the sidewalk and the driveway. Some years I try amending the soil with some peat moss or Moo Poo compost. Others I add some straw as a mulch or some seed-starter fertilizer pellets. I’ve tried starting in early-September some years and mid-October other years. Sometimes in the spring as soon as the snow is gone and other times not until I’ve mowed the lawn a few times. And then I water—every day, 2-3 times a day, I stand out there with a hose and I water the new grass, willing it to grow.

Each year it’s the same story. It starts out strong. I can see a hint of green even before I see any actually blades of grass starting to grow. My heart is full of hope—maybe this is the year the grass actually grows. It seems to be doing well…and then July hits. And the full sun beats down on our yard. And perhaps we go on vacation or I lose motivation and forget to water for a day or two. And the new grass shrivels up in the heat because it isn’t established enough yet to withstand drought, and before I know it, there’s a bare patch in our front yard once again and the crabgrass moves in and takes over.

This past year I thought I finally had it. My 34^th attempt, if I’m counting correctly. The pandemic meant we were home more. I could give it more attention. The grass was even growing to the point where I actually mowed it once or twice…and then DTE came to replace our gas pipeline. And dug up our front yard. And threw down some crummy replacement dirt. And tossed some grass seed where the lawn used to be…and I was back to square 1.

This fall, as I’ve been out there with my hose in hand, trying to repair the damage DTE did when they replaced the gas pipeline, I’ve been thinking about how planting the grass in our front yard is a bit like justice work. As Christians, we strive to bring shalom to our world. To restore broken relationships, to fix the effects of sin as best we can, to bring a glimpse of what life in the Kingdom of God can and one day will be.

It can be hard and thankless work. And it can feel like we’re never making any progress. And sometimes when it feels like we’ve had a breakthrough, we turn around for a moment and suddenly things are worse than they’ve ever been before. Or there’s more resistance than we’d experienced before. Or we realize what we’ve been trying all this time is actually making things worse rather than better. Or some entirely new injustice comes along, and we don’t have time to catch our breaths but must redouble our efforts to stand alongside those who are oppressed and stand up for change.

It can be disheartening. We might be tempted to give up. To focus solely on our own lives and our own relationship with Jesus.

But we’re never called to finish the work that’s before us. We’re not expected to make the world a perfect place. That’s something God will do at the end of time when Jesus returns and makes all things new. Until that day, we’re called to not grow weary or lose heart. We’re called to scatter the seed of the gospel promiscuously. We’re called to love extravagantly.

Part of that is justice work. And at times it may feel like we’re out there doing the same things over and over again and never making much progress—especially this summer as protests continued for months in cities across the United States and racial issues we had hoped had been solved long, long ago arose again to remind us that much work remains to be done. But justice work is important work. Work that orients ourselves toward God’s kingdom, and work that shows the world how things might one day be.

Sometimes my children ask me why I bother. Why do I stand out there every spring and every fall, watering the ground, trying to get grass to grow? The answer is simple. In my mind I have a vision—a vision of lush, green grass and what one day might be. And I’ll keep trying to get there—no matter how difficult or frustrating it is along the way. 

The same is true of justice work and the vision of a world made new.

Unintended Consequences

 

There’s a patch of dead grass in our backyard. I wish I could say it was a result of the long, hot, dry spell we had this summer. Or perhaps that our dog fell back into her digging obsession that we thought she had left behind. But I brought this on myself.

We’ve had a nutsedge problem back there for a while. Nutsedge is a weed that looks a bit like grass, but grows taller and faster, is a little bit thicker, and is terribly hard to get rid of. I’ve been pulling it out by hand for the last several years, but I never seemed to make any progress. I’d think I’d gotten it all, only to come back two weeks later and discover more than I had before. It’s one of those weeds that if you don’t get all the roots, they come back stronger and mightier than before. And the roots can go a foot and a half down into the ground, so just pulling them out from the surface is hard to do.

They were in both our flowerbed and our lawn, and while I finally dug up the flowerbed, pulled out all the nutsedge and replanted the flowers, I couldn’t very easily do that on the lawn. Most lawn weedkillers don’t work very well with nutsedge, so I came up with what I thought was a great idea. A targeted approach.

I would use RoundUp—it kills everything (more or less). And while I’m hesitant to use it these days after its links to cancer, I was desperate (okay, okay…maybe desperate is a bit of a stretch). But I had a plan. I wouldn’t use it indiscriminately—after all, I wanted to save my lawn. I thought I’d take a targeted approach.

So I put on rubber gloves, I poured a small cup of RoundUp, and I sat in our backyard, painting RoundUp onto each nutsedge plant while carefully avoiding any good grass. When I was done, I cleaned up and waited to watch the nutsedge die. I was pretty sure it would work—I was just hoping it would get the roots and all so the nutsedge wouldn’t come back.

It wasn’t long before I began to see results. The next day, the nutsedge turned brown. It withered up and died. I was ecstatic…until I noticed that the grass was starting to turn brown as well. And the grass next to that grass. Soon I had a very noticeable death zone in our backyard—the targeted approach was a complete failure. To make it all worse, the only things that survived in the RoundUp death zone were two small nutsedge sprouts I still needed to dig out by hand.

What I thought was a targeted approach ended up withering everything in its path. Sometimes the same thing happens with the words I use. I say something carelessly, and suddenly I’ve caused hurt I hadn’t intended. Or sometimes, I’m not proud to admit, I actually want to cause hurt with my words—and I think I can control how much hurt I cause, only to discover what I thought would be a mild irritation to my targeted opponent actually lands more like a nuclear explosion. It’s especially true during this tense political climate where very few people are extending grace to one another or giving them the benefit of the doubt.

James 3:3-12 tells us that not one of us can tame the tongue. It is “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” With one word it can cause destruction—like a small spark starting a devastating wildfire. We might think we can control it, but like the RoundUp in my backyard, it usually causes more pain than we ever intended.

James notes that it’s the same tongue that we use to praise our Lord that also hurts our neighbor. This should not be, James says—what we use to honor God should honor God even when we are not consciously, intentionally honoring God. The honor and praise we give God is empty if at the next moment, our tongue turns around and lashes out at our neighbor.

This has really been challenging me as we approach the election in November. There are so many times I’ve wanted to shout, “What are you thinking!?!” or “How can you possibly believe that?!?” Or “How can you be such a ……!?!” But how I treat my neighbor—even (or possibly especially) my neighbor that disagrees with me—is a direct reflection of how much God’s love has taken root in my life. These days it’s a daily challenge to die to self and love my neighbor as myself. Sometimes I’m fairly successful, but others I can almost see the circle of destruction spread as my words get out of hand.

I’ve planted some new grass in the backyard, and I’m happy to say it’s starting to grow back. I’m hopeful the destruction I’ve wrought is not permanent and all will heal in time. I’ve since read online that sugar actually works to control nutsedge. Maybe I’ll try that next time. Seems a bit fitting when it comes to my words, as well.

The Grandeur of God

The last few weeks I’ve been thinking about the poem God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a priest and poet who lived in England and Ireland and wrote during the late 1800s.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And, for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights of the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

The first line of the poem ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God’ reminds me of the opening of Psalm 19 ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ These days, it feels like the trees are declaring God’s glory, charged with God’s grandeur in their bright and vivid colors.

 

The part about gathering ‘to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed’ reminds me of some of the ancient olive oil presses we saw in Israel last spring, and also of the lines from Isaiah 53 quoted in the Messiah, ‘he was bruised for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.’ God’s glory displayed in beauty and also in the suffering love of Jesus.

‘Reck’ is short for recognize, and the poet asks, ‘why do people not recognize God’s kingdom (rod)?’ And laments the way humanity has both harmed and disconnected from the created world.

 

The poem next shifts to celebrating the ways God’s love sustains the world. The line about ‘the dearest freshest deep down things’ – makes me think of the carrots Jay and Peter planted at church this summer that we’ve been harvesting these days, pulling and digging them out from the dirt.

 

But it’s actually the final image has been on my mind the most - of dawn and the Holy Spirit as a dove, brooding over the bent world. The promise of morning coming. The Spirit still hovering over the chaos, tenderly caring for our broken world.

Fighting Fires

This past week a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook of a Samoan wildland firefighting crew singing together as they fought the wildfires blazing in California. (See: Samoan Firefighters) Their energy, their sound, their cohesion—even after ten hours of fighting fires in the rugged terrain of the mountains—was inspiring.

With closer inspection, I realized the video was originally posted in 2017—but that doesn’t take away from the beauty or the energy of those who were fighting these fires. And I’m sure similar sounds are arising from the mountains of California, Oregon, and Washington today.

Hearing these sounds, and seeing the firefighters’ characteristic yellow shirts and green pants, brought me back to my days as an AmeriCorps volunteer over twenty years ago. As part of our work, the team I was a part of was trained in wildland firefighting. We even received our redcards—the official document that gives you the clearance to go out and fight wildfires.

We took part in two prescribed burns—one in Shenandoah National Park and another in Prince William National Forest Park, just south of Washington, DC. Both of these kind of fizzled and neither amounted to as much excitement as they sound like they might be. And I left the team before they were called out to help with real wildfires in Florida that year—so my brief career as a wildland firefighter never really amounted to much.

Can you figure out which one is me?

But here’s the thing about wildland firefighting: it’s one of the best examples of teamwork you will find anywhere. Wildland firefighting is not about going out into the woods and directly battling the blaze—you’re rarely face to face with the flames, and you’re not doing it alone. Rather, wildland firefighting is about getting out ahead of the flames and hopefully creating a “deadzone” or barrier line that is completely devoid of any flammable material, so that when the fire reaches the line you’ve created, there’s nothing there for the fire to burn and the fire dies out. You just pray that when the fire gets there, it isn’t strong enough or hot enough to jump over the line you created and keep going. That’s why they talk about containment—firefighters are trying to create a barrier line that surrounds the fire that the fire cannot jump.

These barrier lines, however, are not created by individuals. They’re created by teams—teams of 12-20 individuals together. And once you’re on a team, you stick with that team. And each time your team goes out to “slam” line, you pick a tool. It might be a saw or an axe or a shovel or a rake—but each tool has a different purpose and a different role and a different place in the row of workers. And the row of workers doesn’t sit in one place, each person working on their little area until the group decides it’s good enough to move on, but rather the row of workers is constantly moving. The workers in front have the saws and the axes, maybe there’s a rake or two. Their job is to clear everything above ground. Then come the shovels and some more rakes to clear out the roots and anything just under the surface.

Each person takes one or two swipes with their tool and then takes a step forward and does it again. Nobody works one area more than those one or two swipes. Just as the workers ahead of you in the line are counting on you, you need to trust that the workers coming after you will do the job they’re assigned to do. It doesn’t look like you yourself accomplish that much, but by the time twenty people have passed through, each with a specialized tool doing something critical that contributes to the whole, suddenly you have a makeshift road through the forest—a barren path with absolutely no flammable material that is several feet wide. It’s both difficult and beautiful work at the same time.

Oddly, every time I think about both the beauty and difficulty of wildland firefighting, I think of the church. Each of us has different gifts, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, but together we make up one body. “The hand cannot say to the eye, ‘I don’t need you!’ and the head cannot say to the foot, ‘I don’t need you!’” That is, we need each other. And we need to work together.

In my own experience as a wildland firefighter, using an axe always seemed more glorious than using a shovel. And yet both were indispensable. If the whole team only used axes, the barrier line we were trying to create would end up a complete failure. Everybody had a role, and everybody was needed to do their part. It was difficult to need one another, difficult to trust one another, difficult to rely on one another—but in the end, it was beautiful. The same is true of the church.