Your Labor Is Not in Vain

A new and wonderful and used-to-be familiar thing is happening in our neighborhood – there are kids on the playground at Mulick Park Elementary School. Last week Tuesday morning Emma noticed some signs put up by the school: ‘We’re so glad you’re back! Your friends at Evergreen Elementary.’ (Evergreen is the Christian school across the street from Mulick Park Elementary School, and it was beautiful to see them reaching out this way.) The traffic has increased. More school buses are driving through the early morning darkness. And you can see kids swinging on the swings and playing!

And all of last week and this week, the song Your Labor Is Not in Vain by the Porter’s Gate has been running through my mind, especially these last few verses:

Your labor is not in vain
The vineyards you plant will bear fruit
The fields will sing out and rejoice with the truth
For all that is old will at last be made new
The vineyards you plant will bear fruit
I am with you, I am with you
I am with you, I am with you
For I have called you, called you by name

Your labor is not in vain
The houses you labored to build
Will finally with laughter and joy be filled
The serpent that hurts and destroys will be killed
And all that is broken be healed
I am with you, I am with you
I am with you, I am with you
For I have called you, called you by name
Your labor is not in vain

Playgrounds full of the sound of children again, after months of waiting and praying and hoping and wearing masks, and limiting our interactions and gatherings, and being cautious. My heart is full of gratitude. Gratitude for answered prayers, for the sight of children being children and doing something normal – going to school. And I am so thankful that Bri, and hopefully other children in our congregation, is getting to be in person again.

I am grateful and singing this song about vineyards bearing fruit and brokenness being healed, and at the same time I’ve been surprised by the grief that has come hand in hand with the gratitude. Grief for what’s been lost – so many losses – so many things we’d anticipated that couldn’t happen as we’d hoped, and so many people gone too. And grief that things are still so far from right or good or normal. It seems so long.

I feel like the pandemic, and particularly this stage of it, is deepening my experiences of both gratitude and grief. Maybe there’s something about having the vaccine, and more of a possibility of an end in sight that creates the space to feel both so strongly. I’m weary too, I think we’re all weary. And in the weariness, it’s good to do both - to give thanks and to grieve. To keep noticing what we’ve been given. To keep thanking the people who bless and sustain us. And to name and mourn the losses. We need to do both, so that we don’t ‘lose heart,’ as the author of Hebrews writes.

One of the books I’m reading these days is Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal by Rachel Naomi Remen. I read yesterday, ‘...we have in us both sides of everything.... Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity.’

The refrain of the song repeats God’s promise: ‘I am with you, I am with you.’ We are not alone in our weariness, or in our gratitude or in our grief, or in whatever we are experiencing. God promises, ‘I am with you, I am with you’ and one day all that is broken will be healed.

Sacred Space

On Sunday morning I found myself asking my kids to move their boots from where they were piled on a towel near the heating vent in our living room, and saying with some exasperation, “On Sundays, this is our sanctuary, and we wouldn’t have a pile of boots in the sanctuary at church.” I cringe a little, typing it out. It was part of my never-ending quest to have things tidy, but also part of my desire to have our space feel different, some how set apart, for worship on Sundays.

I miss worshipping with you all in person – I miss seeing you terribly. And I miss the space itself – the brightness and openness and simplicity of the sanctuary. And the sense of being in a space where God’s people have prayed together for a long time. As I sit to write this, I’m thinking of your faces and of so many of the times when I felt like I saw glimpses of God’s glory with you in that space: the delight and love on your faces during baptisms, the tears we’ve cried. The time Tammy spoke all of our longing during our prayer time when she raised her hand and said, ‘I just want God to make everything all right in the world.’ The times when little ones have danced and wandered up the aisles. Brendan spotting Marilou across the sanctuary and yelling her name and running to her in delight. Mil Gritter announcing loudly during foot washing that she’d forgotten and was wearing her pantyhose and couldn’t come forward and Jay bringing the bowl from the baptismal font to her and washing her hands instead. I miss the space and I miss you all. The Spirit is surely present when we zoom together, but it’s different and sometimes a lot harder for me to sense God’s glory, God’s presence.

Our sense of our living room being our worship space, our sanctuary, is evolving. At first our Sunday morning set up was mostly focused on the technology – a ring light so we could be clearly seen, a microphone to be heard. Figuring out the best folding table (or tables) at the best height for the computer, making sure we could reach the pitcher and water and elements for communion while sitting in front the computer, etc. There are the relational details too – making sure everyone has what they need to be engaged (or at least quiet) doing the service, the arguments about who would sit where. Sometime early on we started covering the folding table with a cloth the color of the liturgical season. Then we added a wooden cross made by one of the kids to the trunk that sits in front of our window. Soon fresh flowers and a seasonal cloth were added there too, along with my efforts to tidy the room.

I wish I could say that there’s a growing sense that the room is a place where God’s people pray, but I’m not sure about that. So many other things happen there during the week that it’s hard to keep that awareness.

Jay, overhearing my comment to the kids about the boots, said, ‘but isn’t the point that God is with us in the mess?’ I won’t include my reply, but I’ve been thinking about what he said all week, along with that story of Jacob at Bethel, saying, ‘surely God was in this place and I didn’t know it.’ I’ve been asking myself, do I really believe God is with us in the mess? I want to. Do I really believe God is with us in our living room? Of course. Is our home as much the ‘house of God’ (which is what Bethel means) as our church building? Yes. And if I really believe all these things, how do I open myself up to be aware of God’s presence, with us when we worship in the living room and when we pile our boots there?

The Weight of Worry

I happened to see a photobook on our bookshelves this morning. It was a collection of photos from a backpacking trip my dad and I took ten years ago to Isle Royale National Park. There were pages dedicated to the road trip up to the Upper Peninsula, the boat ride over to the island, the views from the various campsites we had during our week-long adventure, the sunsets we experienced, the fish we caught, the flowers we enjoyed, the wildlife we encountered, and the injuries we sustained.

It was this last page that caught my attention in particular. The photos started with the rather charming bright orange twine that my dad had tied around the toes of his boots to hold them together. The twine soon had to be upgraded to metal wire. Then there were the scrapes and bruises—at one point my dad had fallen off one of the plank bridges. Then there was the gash across his wrist. We had taken a filet knife along to filet the northern pike we had hoped to catch—it was properly sheathed when we started, but it was so sharp that the back-and-forth wobble of the backpack had caused it to cut through its sheath. When my dad reached into his pack on the third day, it sliced his wrist. He didn’t even realize it until I asked him why he was covered in blood while trying to start the campfire. Thankfully we were at one of the two campgrounds on the 40-mile-long island that were near a ranger station. When two rangers happened to stop by about ten minutes later and asked how everything was going, it was pretty hard to pretend everything was okay as my dad held a bloody rag to his wrist and seemed a bit pale (believe me, we tried…). They brought us to the station, cleaned everything out, put some heavy-duty bandages on the wound and sent us on our way.

But the picture that really struck me was the picture of my ankles. There were multiple large gouges in the back of each one. As bad as my dad’s wrist was, this photo was the culmination photo on our page of injuries. These gouges were the result of blisters gone bad—shoes rubbing in the wrong places, each step slowly slicing away more and more of my skin. And while I remember that trip fondly and had an absolutely fabulous time, by the third day, every step was a pain. 

And to be honest, I should have known better. This wasn’t the first time my ankles had been gouged. Indeed, about ten years earlier, the summer after seminary, just before accepting the call to Boston Square, I hiked 300 miles along the Appalachian Trail through Virginia. I had planned everything out carefully—not well, but carefully. I had even made sure to splurge a little and get the high-quality hiking boots. I had the proper boots, but unfortunately I didn’t bother to break them in sufficiently (there were the finals to get through at seminary, after all…). So I still remember hiking those first seven miles the very first day with seventy pounds on my back (way more than I should have carried) and taking my shoes off that first night to find bloody socks and blisters already formed on my feet. The thing with blisters and backpacking is that once you have blisters, it’s almost impossible to get them to heal unless you stop hiking. I tried everything—bandages, moleskin, extra padding, even just covering them with duct tape—but each day they just got worse. 300 miles later, my ankles were a mess. I still have scars on them from that summer.

So I should have known and been extra careful about making sure I had good hiking shoes that were properly broken in for this hike. At least this time I didn’t wear a brand-new pair of boots. But here’s another thing with backpacking—it’s one thing for a pair of shoes not to rub when you’re just walking around your neighborhood. It’s a whole ‘nother thing for them not to rub when you’re carrying thirty, forty, or fifty pounds on your back going down backcountry trails.

This past summer I took our kids on their first backpacking adventure—two nights along the Manistee River Trail. Five miles in with packs, ten miles exploring the next day without packs, and five miles out the last day. I wore boots that I’ve had for a long time. I’ve intentionally worn them back and forth to church through the winter precisely so there would be no question that they were broken in and formed to my feet and would be ready to go in case I ever dusted off the old backpack again. And yet, after just ten miles with a pack, I felt the hot spots forming on my feet and were glad to take the boots off again at the end of our trip without any blood on my socks.

I bought a new pair of hiking boots this fall when there was a sale. I’m in what seems like an endless search for a pair that won’t cause blisters on my ankles. I wore them this morning in the snow as I walked the dog. They were great—soft and comfortable. Provided solid support across the icy spots. But I have this nagging feeling that things will be different when I’m carrying thirty or forty pounds on my back and every step is unforgiving.

That’s not all that unlike life. It strikes me that it’s that much harder to get through life, to make it from day to day, to not be wounded, when we’re carrying heavy burdens on our shoulders. Whether that’s worry or anxiety or anger or fear—the weight makes every step harder. Sometimes it’s guilt or shame or simply holding grudges against others that slowly over time eat away at our soul. “Do not be anxious about anything,” Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6, “but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

I admit, these days in particular, this is hard to do. Especially with all the unrest in the nation’s capital—the United States seemingly more divided than it’s been in generations and more prone to turning to violence. And then there’s the pandemic and all the uncertainty that still lingers and the hospitals in various parts of the country overwhelmed with patients in the ICU. And right in our neighborhood there are seemingly nightly gunshots that ring out—a massive change compared to not knowingly hearing a single one for the first sixteen years we lived in this house. And that’s just stuff beyond our family…. It’s hard not to worry…but when we do, especially when worry weighs down upon us, it can be incredibly destructive in our lives.

Paul’s not telling us not to be concerned, not to be involved or not to do what we can to help. He’s not telling us to pretend things aren’t bad. Rather, he’s telling us how to respond when things do get bad. He’s telling us to trust God. To turn to God. To place our lives in God’s hands. We don’t know how things will turn out in the short term—sometimes it might well be not the way we might like. But we do know how things will turn out in the long term—we know that they will be good.

As I walked around in my comfy new boots this morning, I wondered how they would do once I took them out on an actual backpacking trip. How would they hold up with that extra weight on my back? How would my perpetually tender ankles respond to this new pair? There’s only one way to find out—and I look forward to one day heading out on that next adventure with a backpack on my back. When it comes to life in general, however, I’d rather walk around without that weight on my shoulders.

Singing Ice

Today is Epiphany, the day we traditionally celebrate the coming of the Magi to present their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Jesus and to worship him. I read the story from Matthew 2 this morning, and I kept picturing Marji Gunnoe happily heading home ‘by another way’ from this year’s Christmas pageant. I’ve also been doing a bit of reading about the season of Epiphany, in Seeking God’s Face, the Worship Sourcebook and in a reflection from Ruth Haley Barton, and a couple of things caught my attention. Ruth Haley Barton begins her reflection with a quote from Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets. The quote is this:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

 

Phil Reinders, the editor of Seeking God’s Face, begins his introduction to the season of Epiphany with these words: Epiphany. We know the word: a moment of piercing awareness, the jolt of understanding. Imagine, then, that moment stretched out over a period of time. This is the season of Epiphany . . .

 

I am not always the best at paying attention, being present in the moment. I tend to spend a lot of time in my head, replaying past events or anxiously trying to prepare for what’s ahead. But there have been a couple of moments in the last few weeks where God has used the beauty of nature to call me to attention. Last week, when we were on vacation, we spent several days at my parents’ cottage on the shore of Spring Lake, and over those days we got to watch the lake freeze – first parts by the shore and then a few days later, the whole way across. There’s something magical about the sounds of ice forming on a lake – cracking and snapping first, and then singing. Singing! On Friday morning we awoke to find the lake frozen all the way across, with ice about an inch thick. And when we tossed snowballs and smaller pieces of ice out onto it, the sounds were amazing – almost like a synthesizer – you could hear ringing vibrations across the ice. The ice was singing. At one point, having tired of tossing ice, I was standing at the end of the dock, thinking. Actually stewing a bit over unkind words spoken at breakfast. One of the kids came up to me and asked, ‘Mom, are you wondering how the ice formed those patterns?’ Assuming I was paying attention to the beauty in front of me, inviting me back to awareness. Attention.

A few days later it happened again – I was outside, early in the morning before light, waiting to walk one of the kids to school, fretting about how the day might go, worrying about a conversation from the night before, when suddenly a rabbit appeared in our yard, right behind the ‘Christ will hold us together’ yard sign. Another invitation to be present, to pay attention to the world around me, to the wonder of this small, silent creature with me in the dawning light.

 

What would it be like, to receive the moments of my days with the same attention and wonder as the singing ice, or the quiet rabbit? To be present to the familiar rhythms of my days and to experience them and the familiar stories of Jesus this season with attention and astonishment?

 

O God,

By the leading of a star you manifested

Your only Son to the peoples of the earth:

Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence,

Where we may see your glory face to face,

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns

With you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.

(from the Worship Sourcebook)