I Do Not Occupy Myself With Great Matters?

O Lord, I am not proud;I have no haughty looks.
I do not occupy myself with great matters,or with things that are too hard for me.
But I still my soul and make it quiet,like a child upon its mothers breast;     my soul is quieted within me.

-- Psalm 131:1-3 

 For those of us that pay special attention to geopolitical events and economic affairs, this prayer to God leaves an uneasy feeling.

I often am prideful.
I often occupy myself with matters beyond my understanding.

Is that the cause of inner anxiety? Does that explain why I don't like to stand still? I don't know.

The last verse in this Psalm says: ...wait upon the Lord, from this time forth for evermore. I might not be able to give up my research or my interest in lofty topics, but I can spend time right now waiting in silence to hear direction from God. To listen for that quietness of soul that often seems so far out of reach.

Turning in the Right Direction

In July 2007,  I sent an email to the parish priest at an Episcopalian church in Nashville, introducing myself and asking for help. I had visited the church three times and sensed that the people there could help me resolve some of the issues in my faith.

I found the email as I was organizing tonight. Within it, I said the following:

Although God has brought me so far, it is only now that I am beginning to realize how little I have worked to develop the true character of Christ, in humility and devotion. People who love me very much have let me know that they have seen me become cynical and critical in the last few years, and I feel in my own soul a turning towards hopelessness. 

I don't know where to begin, how to unlearn this apathy, how to unlearn the culture of American Christianity, and how to learn to walkin such a way the would honor God and transform my community. I want to build a solid foundation that will last my entire life. I don't know, even after ten years, that I have built the right kind of life, and that uncertainty frightens me.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to be precisely, exactly honest about how you feel and what you are afraid of. Once you can be honest about that, you are ready to let people in.

Looking back over the last six years, I can barely remember that woman who wrote this email. I remember she was worried about the direction her life had taken. But now those worries have been replaced with confidence and joy.

I'm grateful for the light that God shines into our lives. The light that guides us to a safe harbor. The light the reveals that something is missing. The light that shows us our motivations and behaviors for what they really are.

And the light that shows us how far we've come.

Home Away From Home

The idea that consistently comes back to me these days is:  the kingdom of God is like that treasure hidden in a field, and when the guy finds it, he sells all he has to buy the field.

We spend so many hours focused on the concerns of daily living, including the mundane tasks of human life, that we can't just sit and think about how small these concerns are.

But then we are allowed a small break, and we can pause and wait for the spirit of God to minister to us. In that small break, we remember the field in our heart that we have purchased and we remember the treasure hidden within it. And we rejoice.

I was sinking into the mud and felt so heavy.
Then I remembered my treasure.
And I felt so relieved.

That field is my only home now.

Be Free, Be Good

In today's lectionary, we read about the time Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well while his disciples were out getting stuff in the city. When they came back, they told him to get something to eat. He responds, "I have food you don't know of. My food is to do the will of my Father."

Man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from God.

Why do you work for things that are not food?

Whoever drinks of the water I give them will never thirst again.

The scriptures give us this picture of what it feels like to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our strength. It feels like we're satisfied.

This treasure we have: satisfaction. What are we satisfied with? We are satisfied with only having the freedom and goodness that comes from loving God. And we only get it when we love God more than other things, more than other people, and more than other opportunities. If we love anything else more than God, we lose our freedom and we lose our goodness. Even if we begin to excessively love the success and comfort that comes from our freedom and our goodness, we go astray.

Let us go through out day with a cheerful voice, thankful for the chance to live free and good. To be free and to be good, after all, is extremely satisfying.

Satisfaction

Have you ever had a feeling so entrenched within you that the overwhelming neediness of the feeling distracts you from your daily responsibilities, even from your self-care? This sort of thing emerges within us from time to time. If this feeling was a bad man on a black horse, he would probably be named Unsatisfied. Unsatisfaction (not a word, I know) is like losing your name at the bottom of a dream and not being willing to wake up until your remember it. It's tiring and frustrating.

Dissatisfaction, on the other hand, is something that emerges when we realize our thoughts, words or actions are falling short of whatever dignity God has apportioned to our particular lives. Dissatisfaction brings clarity & energy.

Dissatisfaction motivates. It's like ice on hot appetites, and like a hot soup warming away cold bitterness. It brings us back to the way we are meant to live. It is truly a gift: the gift of not wanting.

This first week of Lent, I started off fasting from activities and foods that I truly enjoy so that I could spend more time learning about God. Unsatisfied rode in shortly after, making me question whether or not I had the wherewithal to really observe a Holy Lent. Suddenly,  I wanted. Wanted what, you might ask? Nothing in particular, and everything in general. I just wanted with all the want I had in me. It was painful and distracting.

As I gave the empty room a sneer, I said, "God, let me dissatisfied with whatever it is that I think I need to be happy today. I don't want to be so dependent on things that only make me feel emptier after having them."  Lent makes me question what I see, eat, experience, learn, and also makes me question how I rest, think and hope. It's like searching my soul for power outages.

Are We There Yet?

How does it feel to be close to getting something you've only dreamed about? I mean the "big" somethings. Most of us are always on our way to something bigger and better, after all. It's good to stop for a second and ask, "Are we there yet?" What happens when we answer yes?

Arriving at your destination is scary, after all.

You'll have to get out of the car. You'll have to put away your driver's license and pull out your suitcase.

The question is, do you know how to live?

Where you've gotten to, just as you are right now: what percent of each hour do you spend living the way you've always wanted to live your life?

"Are we there yet?"

Seeing God in Our Lives

"So I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar and will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. Then I will dwell among the Israelits and be their God. They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them."  --Exodus 29:44-46

We know we have faith when we can see God at work in our past, present and future.

Sometimes, we think our successes and failures were solely our own, and sometimes we think our joys and hurts were caused by other people or our environments.

But when the spirit of God brings light into our darkness,  we know something beyond these thoughts.

We know that God is with us.
We know that God is the Lord, and that he is our God.
We know that the things that have happened to us and in us have something to do with God bringing us out of one type of slavery or another.

That knowledge makes this moment right now full of hope. If that's what God has done, what could he be doing right this minute?

That knowledge makes the future full of hope. If God is bringing us out of some sort of slavery right now, tomorrow will not be like today. Tomorrow, we will be newer. All things are possible.

We need God to be active in our lives, so that we will see him. We need the spirit of God to bring light into the darkness of our hearts and to enliven and inspire our faith.

Being a Better Friend

What do you do when one of your own spins out of control? When someone in your own circle makes choices that scare you?

The I guess I didn't know you as well as I thought response:

A way of easing the discomfort of loss. It excuses you from getting into a conversation in which you come across as self-righteous or judgmental (as if those are the only ways to bring up a topic). And since you've already decided that this person doesn't share your values anymore (if they ever did) and doesn't care whether or not they spiral out of control, there's no point in taking up the matter and making the both of you uncomfortable.

In other words, there's no point in risking the peace you've found in the silence of someone slipping away from your life.

Part of the problem is that you've already assumed the worst about them, and another part is that you don't care enough to ask any questions when they start doing stuff that you know they wouldn't have done a year ago.

By far the ugliest part of this situation is that you can't imagine a world in which you and your friend are equals, deserving of respect and honesty. That you can't talk to them because they aren't on your level of transparency and maturity. That's an ugly feeling that renders friendship impotent.

Sometimes it's hard for us to talk to our friends because we think we have higher values than they do or better judgment, and so we don't have a common ground to stand on. But God calls us to link arms with everyone, weak and strong, poor and rich, short and tall. By figuring out how to understand the people in our lives and how to hear them and pray for them, we're doing the hard work of becoming good human being. It's not about confronting people with some weird judgment. It's about building bridges with the cities around us so that we can all travel and trade back and forth.

But also...

What if your friend has a war going on inside of her, and what if there is not one person on earth she can talk to about it honestly? What if she feels like her friends would be so disappointed if they knew the truth of how scared and helpless she feels? What if she doesn't bring it up because it scares her so much?

What would you say to her?

Would you tell her that she can tell you anything? Would you call her or text her today and let her know you're just thinking about her, hoping she feels like she has all the support she needs going into the new year? Would you tell her that you know that you're not always the easiest person to talk to about personal stuff, but that you want to get better at listening in 2013?

So go ahead and tell her. It'll kill two birds with one stone. She'll actually have a good friend for once, and you'll actually become one.

Reaching Back a Few Years

I've been cleaning out my electronic closets this week.

I was thinking of deleting my old Grey Albatross blog, but I used it during the hardest transition of my life in 2009, when I went back to school and lost my dad. I read through the first two pages of posts and was really impressed and amused that the same themes emerge every January.

This post was particularly good, and so I thought I'd link to it:
I Made a Lot of Mistakes, In My Mind, In My Mind

Being (Not) Of the World

"I have learnt how to live.
How to be in the world and of the world.
And not just to stand aside and watch.
And I will never, never again run away from life."
--Sabrina Fairchild, Sabrina (1954)

Sabrina is a fantastic old love story.  Foolish chauffer's daughter goes away to Paris to get over her crush on the younger son of her father's boss. Then she comes back two years later, glamorous and sophisticated enough to capture the attention of both sons.

The quote above is what she writes her father as she prepares to return to America. 

She's learnt how to live. 

She's learnt how to really be in the world and of the world. 

She's not helpless anymore, because she has agency; she can make her dreams come true for herself.

What does Sabrina's experience have to do with discipleship? In the 19th chapter of Exodus, God has Moses tell the Israelites this:

"if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

Moving to Paris or New York  to grow up, we can understand. But becoming a priest? Is that the type of growing up you want? It doesn't sound charming or sophisticated to our modern ears, does it? 

Most of us are like Sabrina, watching a party from a tree above, longing for the day we can make a big entrance and capture the hearts of the partygoers for ourselves.

Even Christians fall prey to this trend, either permanently hanging out in the trees along the edges of the group, or just waiting for something external to happen to them before they'll feel big enough to join the party.

You also may have had the longing to get away from where you live, to go to a place where you can figure out how to live in the world and be of the world. But to really get at those deep longings for membership and confidence, you don't need to journey to Italy. You need to step deeper into God's kingdom.

Rethink the connection between living as part of God's holy nation and fulfilling those deep longings.

First, being "called into a kingdom of priests" or "living a holy calling" doesn't mean you watch human society from a tree along the side of the party.

Second, it doesn't mean that you hold out on growing up until you get to somewhere else.

Just as the fashion, money and art of Paris can make one feel as if they've finally come to see the world clearly, so walking with God in the city where you live can give you new eyes to see yourselves and your world.

In John 17, we see Jesus praying to the Father, saying:

"I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth."

Maybe today you might pray that God would sanctify you from the world you know (set you apart) in order to bring you down from your tree. Pray that he would open your eyes to see Him and to see your world more clearly.

You might also pray that God would give you eyes to see the people in the trees, so that you can invite them into the party, just as they are. By accepting them as they are, you are allowing them to grow up where they are.