Tag Archives: Prayer

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Pray. Act.

I was all set to write about Peterson’s book today, yet as things often happen I was struck by something else and need to think it through.

I have participated in a friend’s blog for about 7 years. This blog has been a place of debate, argument, discussion, deep prayer, friendship, controversy. His comments tend to number in the hundreds. People have engaged there…and we’ve formed a bit of community. The blog has focused on those who have been abused in the church. That is a hurting and sometimes volatile audience. There is reason for those feelings.  We’ve had one person who has been through tremendous suffering and has now tried to bring to light an abusive leader…and has been frustrated by the lack of support. He is a strong personality and a passionate person, and we’ve been frustrated often that he has taken over the dialog. There were some pretty harsh words shared in a thread yesterday…a thread with over 300 comments. I read through them all last night and this morning…and kept wanting to have the words to interject that would ease the tension and bring some peace.

I didn’t have the words.

Through this journey the person has been frustrated by Christians and has found allies in those who do not believe. He has been frustrated with God.

There are a lot of people who have felt that way, a lot of people who have been frustrated by God. A lot of people who have wondered why God has not stepped in to a given situation and changed things. Why can’t He make a miraculous release and why can’t the king be eaten by worms? Immediately.

I can understand that thinking. Why didn’t God stop Gosnell? 40 years of that horror. I think often of the children being abused. Right now. Why doesn’t God step in?

I do not have an answer that satisfies.

I am not surprised that this person on the blog is persistent to the point of obnoxious. He lived in a survival mode for a long time, I would guess…and I can imagine the need to have others pay attention. I think, from interactions with those who have faced abuse or neglect that there is almost an insatiable need for affirmation. The need to know that they are no longer that abused one or that neglected one…that they matter and that their cause matters.  I get that.

Those are often the people who will get things done because they are tenacious and they are focused and passionate.

The flip side is that sometimes they can turn others off because they demand so much.

I remember when I spent a summer in Chicago with Jesus People, USA. I expected when I arrived that we would help every homeless person we encountered. I expected them to be Mother Teresa-ish. When we walked to the shelter my first day, I was shocked that they literally ignored people. Yes, literally. They would just keep on walking as homeless people asked for their help. When I asked about this, they explained that if they stopped and helped each person on the way they would never make it to the shelter. The shelter where they watched children of homeless women so the women could get jobs, and then get apartments…and get off the streets and find a new life. The shelter where they ministered to physical and spiritual and emotional needs.

None of that would happen if they stopped at each need.

They had to stay focused on where they were called and able to impact deeply a few people’s lives. This did not make them callous. It did not make the people they had to walk by unimportant or unnecessary. This made them wise.
The fact is we simply cannot help every single need we are faced with. We cannot.

We can pray. We can be compassionate and we can be kind (they never spoke a harsh word).

Maybe…maybe…if we are able to encounter those in our path with compassion and with grace we can ease some of the insatiable needs.

Maybe our gifting and our calling is to listen and to pray. That is not weak or unnecessary.

Maybe God is working in ways we simply cannot see. Maybe He is doing something that couldn’t be affected by eating the king with worms.  That doesn’t mean we don’t still wish for immediate justice…except when we are the sinner.

There is another side, and this is the balance.

There are those who see a need and find a creative solution and do so with humility and grace that expands to joy and healing. Beating people into helping just makes people reluctant recruits. Doing something creative and healing…people long to be part of that. They long to see God work, and I think this is where we often find Him.

A friend posted this this morning and it fed my soul:

Maybe it is because I am often moved by music. Maybe it is because God so often moves through music. He unleashes our emotions in ways that does not happen through words alone.

More than that though. This one person that leads the music therapy at the hospital paid attention. She gave these children not only a voice, but also a means to express themselves.

She listened. And then God expanded.

I cannot help this person on the blog in the way he would hope. I do not have the finances to contribute, and I do not live where I can be a vocal and physical presence. I cannot go knock on the door of the abuser and say that he is wrong.

I can, however, listen and I can pray. Sometimes challenge needs to be spoken when those in need become more bully than advocate. Maybe if someone had listened and acted years ago that wouldn’t have happened, I don’t know.

I know…I’m rambling.

Here’s the thing, though. I do believe that God continues to work in miraculous ways in our midst. Often they are not the ways I would like. I wish that every child who was facing abuse would have a warring angel that would enter their home in that moment and defend them. I would rejoice in that.
God would rejoice in the abuser and the victim being healed.

Oh…there is so much here, and it is hard to be concise.

Today, though….we are faced with those who need to know they are not forgotten or unworthy or unnecessary. Today, in our midst, in our reach and in the path of our calling are those we can impact. We can listen…and we can act in some way. It starts with paying attention. Hearing the songs that could be sung. Acting in a way that inspires those around us to become involved when their talents match the needs.

The result is healing, hope and joy. Rejoicing as God works in the midst…in a quiet and mundane way, possibly, but working.

I’m not sure how this fleshes out for you, or even for me all the time. I know I fail at being aware so often.

Praying is not vanity, though. We begin by seeking God…pressing in and listening to His voice. Allowing Him to open our eyes to our gifting and our calling and the needs around us. Then acting with Spirit empowered actions. There is more that needs to be said….but sometimes it comes down to simplicity.

We will not be able to help every need. We will, however, be able to impact some…and God will expand our efforts.

Pray. Act.

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A morning walk of thoughts and … squirrel!

I love mornings that start well. Sets the tone for the whole day…and maybe it is also that extra spring in the step of a Friday.

I was up early, the sun is shining (again…after a day of storms). Yes, the birds are chirping. I was able to get my mile walk in this morning before the kids were up (I walk around our cul-de-sac so they can find me if they need me. Don’t call social services).

As I was walking I was struck by something, as usually happens. This is my time to pray, and I realized that in the space of one lap, 1/3 of a mile, I went through the following topics:

Thanking God for the gorgeous morning.

My health…good.

My kids…which led to thoughts and prayers and out their spiritual life and about homeschool. Which led to thoughts and prayers about curriculum and tutorial choices for next year.
Those thoughts were interrupted by thoughts about the one boy yesterday who just.could.not.finish.his.work.

Refocus, and prayers for my dad and mom as they continue in the journey and tedium of dementia.

Which led to thoughts about family. Trip this summer.

That led to thoughts about finances. Which was interrupted by thoughts about things I’d like to do.

That was interrupted by the fact that I was out of breath for the moment…financial thoughts always make me walk faster.

Then I thought about friends I would like to connect with soon…and prayers for them.

All…in the span of 1/3 of a mile.

My thoughts jump. They interrupt themselves and distract my focus.
Squirrel!

We’ve all been there. It was still a good morning and time of prayer…but I had to fight for that focus. Back to the boy who couldn’t finish his work yesterday. He was distracted, he was fidgety and he just couldn’t get it done. Mostly his reading.  We are such a fragmented people, and so inundated with competing demands for our attention.

We have just one more month of school and we will have completed our first year. There have been some great things and some areas where I know we need work, but there is one area that keeps coming back to me….

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still.

Focus.

Taking every thought captive to obedience in Christ

This is not something that simply happens to us. Without discipline, my thoughts are all over the place. Without discipline the school work does not get done. Without discipline…it is difficult (impossible?) to contemplate and meditate and focus on God. To be still and know that He is.

That is the area that underlies everything for me in the homeschool venture. To provide the space and the atmosphere and the encouragement…and the requirement…that my kids learn to be still, to silence the distractions, to take their thoughts captive. Maybe only for five minutes, maybe for an hour…but to learn this discipline. They need it to progress in their studies, but they need it vitally in their spiritual life.

I remember reading Thomas Merton responding to a letter where someone said it must be easier to be quiet and spend time in contemplation when you are a hermit. They were desiring that space for solitude and contemplation, and Merton responded that if we cannot find silence and solitude in the room with the television and the distractions we will go crazy in the cabin in the woods. Our thoughts will weigh down on us and distract us and frustrate us. We have to learn the discipline of being still right here…in the midst of all the noise.

I have to admit it took a lap or two before I settled in to prayers that were focused and not jumbled. Thoughts that were held longer than a fleeting moment. Now as we sit down to start school…the reminder is there. Learn to focus. Hold this thought in your mind…don’t be distracted.

Discipline.

Capture your thoughts and do not let them capture you.

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Practicing Resurrection…Chapter One

Resurrection Life.  Living with an understanding and transformation caused by the reality that our God not only came as a human, died…but rose from the dead. All of that is staggering. I know that I do not know this deeply enough in my soul. I’m not sure if any of us ever will completely…but we catch glimpses, don’t we.

We have those moments when the reality of eternity sneaks up on us, or grabs our attention…those moments when the reality of following Jesus overwhelms our inadequate minds and souls and we become enlivened in ways we can never manufacture ourselves.

Continuing in Chapter One from Eugene Peterson’s Practice Resurrection.  I need to make sure to highlight the subtitle:

Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ.

This is not just some formula to set ourselves up to encounter the Resurrection. This is about a life that encounters God and is transformed…into maturity. And for Peterson, this happens only in one way…in the midst of Church.

Ugh.

Seriously, I know there are so many who are immediately thinking either that this is going to be boring, or that there is no way this will translate to our actual congregational situation. Some have been bored by the church, some have been annoyed, some have been frustrate, some have been abused.

But this, argues, Peterson, is right where we encounter Resurrection Life. Not because of accident…this is God’s design.

Maybe the church as we have it provides the very conditions and proper company congenial for growing up in Christ, for becoming mature, for arriving at the measure of the stature of Christ. Maybe God knows what he is doing, giving us church, this church.

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 180-182). Kindle Edition.

This Church. Named people in a specific place, in specific congregations. This Church.

Peterson challenges us to look at the similarity between the coming of our Savior (Luke 1-2) and the coming of our salvation community (Acts 1-2). There are great similarities.

In the same way that God could have chosen to come in glory, to come doing miracles that drew enormous crowds and swayed the nations to follow him…he could also have chosen to establish a Church where there was success and where there was power and where the world would want to come.

He didn’t.

We talk a lot about Christ killed on a cross as a scandal, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). I want to talk about church, this actual congregation that I attend, as stumbling block, as scandal, as absurd. The Holy Spirit could have formed congregations out of an elite group of talented men and women who hungered for the “beauty of holiness,” congregations as stunning as the curvaceous Tirzah and as terrifying to the forces of evil as the army with banners. Why didn’t he? Because that is not the way the Holy Spirit works. We know that is not the way the Savior was brought into our lives. Why would the Spirit change strategies in bringing the salvation community, the church, the congregation, into our lives?

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 327-331). Kindle Edition.

So, this church with all its inadequacies and all of, well, us. This is the place we are to grow into maturity and to know what it is to walk in Resurrection life.

That is, possibly, a little disappointing. I have been involved in fellowships where there just seemed to be a lot of people there because they felt obligated. Or a lot of people who were pretty messed up. Like me. This is the place? Really?

Yes, really. Because it is not all about us.  Our salvation was not about what we could do or work or accomplish. Our growing up in Christ, being the Church…is not about our abilities. The power of the Church comes from God.

but the essence that is behind the appearances: God’s will, Christ’s presence, the Holy Spirit’s work. This, not what we do or do not do in belief and doubt, in faithfulness or betrayal, in obedience or disobedience, is what we simply must get through our heads if we are going to understand and participate rightly in any church that we are part of.

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 191-193). Kindle Edition.

Resurrection life is to be found in the local congregation. With all our insufficiencies and all our problems…even there….and Peterson uses the letter to the Ephesian church to help us “get” this. He explains that this was the congregation Paul was with for 3 years, and this is the only letter to a church that is not addressing a problem. Not that there weren’t problems there…but this letter is more about the true identity of the church, and in it we find a vocabulary we need:

But the dominant concern in this Ephesian letter is not to deal with the human problems that inevitably develop in church – no church is exempt – but to explore God’s glory that gives the church its unique identity. The letter also gives us an adequate vocabulary and large enough imagination for living in the fullness of God’s glory, living to “the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:14).

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 206-208). Kindle Edition.

We are a little handicapped, though…we have actual faces looking at us, and voices talking to us…and people who annoy us or who delight us. People who form our understanding of Church, and it is sometimes hard to separate our marred congregation from the intention of God to use this place to establish His kingdom.

When we who follow Jesus enter a church and participate in its life, our understanding of the place and company we are in is strongly conditioned by what we observe and experience in this congregation and its local history, these people with their personal and collective virtues and faults. That means that none of us ever sees the church whole and complete. We have access only to something partial, sometimes distorted, always incomplete.

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 213-216). Kindle Edition.

Some, as I have come to know through my friend Michael’s blog, have been deeply wounded by their church. Wounding, abuse, disillusionment…these stack up against our seeing the church as something where God is establishing His glory. Sometimes it is hard to think with imagination and wonder when we pull into the parking lot.

We have the Ephesian letter before us so that even though we are surrounded with immature and deficient and incomplete churches, we can acquire a feel for what maturity is, what growing up in Christ consists of. By means of Ephesians we get an accurate account of what God is doing and the way the Spirit is working at the heart of every congregation.

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 217-219). Kindle Edition.

Resurrection life. In the Body. In the Church…in my congregation. Growing up to maturity in Christ…right there, with my rear in a seat and the person next to me bumping into me and the other person hugging me and the other person singing behind me. Those actual people.

We are in this together. We are the Body….and we cannot fathom Resurrection life or maturity in Christ apart from these other travelers.

I have to admit…I was hoping for something more. I was hoping Peterson was going to wow me with some truth that would suddenly bring me to a new understanding of the Resurrection…something that would fix this longing I have.

He doesn’t. He points us to what God is doing in our midst…and just like the surprise and mystery of the Crucifixion and Resurrection redeeming us….there is mystery in how the Church will be the place we will encounter God and be transformed.

It doesn’t usually happen in a flash and in some spectacular way. God works in subtle ways and with patience.

Still…the Spirit is stirring something within me. I love my fellowship…I love worshipping together and I love interacting. Still, I do not know that I have fully grasped the reality that this is the place…this is the structure…for my maturity to establish. How about you? Does this spark your imagination for Church, or does it just irritate you because the expectation is too high? Does it ring true that God would work in a Church in the same way He came in the Incarnation…surprisingly humble and not in great power and show?

What does this mean for us when we gather together next? How do we internalize these truths in a way that impacts our approach to being part of the Church?

 

 

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Resurrection Life starts…with the Church?!!

I have to admit I was a little frustrated that the first chapter in Eugene Peterson’s Practice Resurrection was on….the church.

I have been involved in conversations around the Church for years. I have friends from all spectrums when it comes to dealing with the Body of Christ…some who have had a lifetime of good experiences, some who have been disillusioned, some who have been frustrated, some who have left it, some who have been (legitimately) abused within the Body of Christ.  Sometimes I feel like I have exhausted the conversation.

Myself, I have had overall good experiences, with some that give me a reality check on the sinful humanity that we are who make up the Body of Christ. Still…I love the fellowship we are part of right now. I love the community and conversations and the worship, I love the missions we support and are involved with, I love the influence on my kids. I look forward to being with this group of people, and I am challenged by the teaching and the call to follow Jesus.  So, as I was reading Peterson’s book, with the hope of understanding better what it means to walk in the reality of the Resurrection…I thought, “ho, hum…we’ll get the church discussion out of the way.”

Nothing new.

Then I read this:

Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilization, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end. Death by war, death by murder, death by accident, death by starvation. Death by electric chair, lethal injection, and hanging. The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life. This practice is not a vague wish upwards but comprises a number of discrete but interlocking acts that maintain a credible and faithful way of life, Real Life, in a world preoccupied with death and the devil.

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 154-158). Kindle Edition.

Man that rang truth to me…in a world where death gets the biggest headlines. In the midst of this is a named people….Sarah, Steve, Noelle, Michael, Anita, Kim, Stephanie, Jill, Bryan, Kevin, Jim, Ryan, Andrew, Alyson, Bill….practicing a life of resurrection. It is not hap-hazard. It does not happen to us in a vague way; something that happens without our notice. Our coming together in worship and in the participation of resurrection life is an intentional, deliberate decision.  Life.

Ahhh….the product of ‘a number of discrete but interlocking acts that maintain a credible and faithful way of life, Real Life, in a world preoccupied with death and the devil.’

Discrete but interlocking.

Going to worship with the community of believers. Intentionally joining with others and declaring that God IS. That He hears our worship and is worthy. Intentionally turning our attention toward Him and recognizing Who He is and giving testimony to what He has done.

Intentional. Life over death.

The Lord’s Table…taking in the bread and the wine as recognition and embrace of the sacrifice and the redemption and the saving and the eternity altering act of God.

The Word. Intentionally turning our attention to the Word of God…believing that it is the Word of God and that it has bearing on our lives. Intentionally turning our attention to the testimony of the Spirit that this is Truth.

All these seemingly simple acts….added to the conversations and the involving in others’ lives…are part of Resurrection Life.

More, though….the resurrection plays out in our lives in ‘improvisation’….

The practice of resurrection encourages improvisation on the basic resurrection story as given in our Scriptures and revealed in Jesus. Thousands of derivative unanticipated resurrection details proliferate across the landscape. The company of people who practice resurrection replicates the way of Jesus on the highways and byways named and numbered on all the maps of the world.

This is the church.

The practice of resurrection is not an attack on the world of death; it is a nonviolent embrace of life in the country of death. It is an open invitation to live eternity in time.

Eugene H. Peterson. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Kindle Locations 162-165). Kindle Edition.

I love this. This is what I needed to hear….especially the last line:  it is not an attack on the world of death, but an embrace of life in the country of death.

Worship, church, reading the Word, prayer…living life in relationship with other believers and hearing the testimony of God’s acts of resurrection in their lives…this is an invitation to live eternity in time.

We are not consumed with death. We are consumed with life.

Real life.

Life that is founded in the Resurrection of God. Life that is informed by the Spirit and is altered from the death we once knew.

There is more to this chapter, but I wanted to post just this for today. There is much here to think on, to pray on and to talk about. I so hope even just these brief quotations breath life to you as it has done to me this morning!!  But beyond that swell of hope…what does it mean. How does it affect how we view church.

Have you ever thought of Church as being part of the Resurrection life….a key element, however ordinary, in establishing the power and the reality of the Resurrection in your life?

Those who have been damaged by the church…how do we overcome that fear or hostility or anger or disappointment and come to a place where the Church again breathes life into our souls?

This weekend as we prepare to “go to” Church…how can we go with a different mindset? A mindset that intentionally approaches the community worship as an act of embracing life in a country of death?