The cardboard sign slumped in her hands as rain like tears fell from the grey sky. "Anything Helps" the sign read. Yet, car after car drove past without a hesitation. Anything helps, but no help was coming so far today. With each passing car the woman with wrinkled face and hands mumbled under her lips angrily to no one. Her umbrella stood in her right hand like a twisted old tree in an abandoned parking lot. The skeleton of the umbrella that held up the tent that was meant to keep her dry had long since failed as if a metaphor for her life. Anything helps, but no real help was coming. Rain like tears continued to fall.
From inside the coffee shop I could see her when the rain would settle to a slow drizzle. Wondering what her life must be like I considered buying her a coffee. As I stood to walk to the counter I noticed movement in the direction of the sign lady. Turning to see what was happening from my perch I was surprised to see two more people with signs. Another woman with wrinkled face and hands struggled in her wheelchair to make her way towards the umbrella holding woman. With only one working leg the woman in the wheelchair shouted as tears like rain fell from her face. The bearded man stood silently across the street, his sullen eyes shouting what the sign read.
A knot in my stomach formed as wondered what I could do to help. The woman in the wheelchair, clearly distraught, turned and wheeled away as the bearded man seemed to console her. Down the hill they walked as the rain fell heavy on their heads and shoulders. I turned to go to the counter to buy the cup of coffee and the woman moved out of my view. As I opened the door of the coffee shop the cold wet air hit my face and took my breath away. Immediately I lowered my head and pulled my hoodie up to keep me dry. I charged in the direction of the woman with wrinkled face and hands determined to bring anything to help. As I made it past the first row of cars my head lifted to find the woman while the rain like tears fell without relent. The umbrella woman was nowhere to be seen.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, October 3, 2011
Care About What Matters
I was just about to sit down to do something that I really need to do, homework. But, part of the homework/writing process for me is procrastination. Today as I was driving from coffee shop to coffee shop looking for an open table to work at I turned on the radio and began to listen to some good old fashioned talk radio. I listened to NPR for a few minutes than shifted to Rush Limbaugh, then to Sean Hannity. Typically I listen until I get bored with what is being said or until I think what the people are saying is stupid. More often than not it is that I get bored. I am not a politically minded person so if you are and you happen to be one of my four followers and are offended please don't be. I just personally don't care that much about politics.
What bugs me the most is that we (we is a generalization based on radio personalities who are talking to a lot of people) seem to care about stuff that doesn't really matter. To be honest I don't care about some senator who owns a ranch that had a rock on it that had the "N" word painted on it in 1983. Its not that I want to be dismissive of politics or people who care about them, its just that almost every time I began to listen to commentators either liberal or conservative I get frustrated because I rarely hear them talking about things that matter. Instead we argue about rocks and really stupid things people did in the middle of nowhere two years after I was born.
How weird that we can spend an incredible amount of money, emotional effort, and energy in all kinds of directions and completely miss the heart of life. How different would our world be if we began to actually care about things that matter. I would like to stop arguing about rocks so that I can feel better about myself and I would like to start to talking about the condition of peoples hearts.
This was the most difficult thing for me as a teacher. I was being paid to give students an education in the area of history, which really does matter. However, what I noticed while working with students who had been kicked out of many other schools was that while history was important it was not as important as what was happening in their hearts. Who they were becoming was of higher importance than the history assignment I was supposed to be giving. A popular quote among teachers goes like this:
"Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
People can argue about rocks all day. I want to talk about our hearts.
What bugs me the most is that we (we is a generalization based on radio personalities who are talking to a lot of people) seem to care about stuff that doesn't really matter. To be honest I don't care about some senator who owns a ranch that had a rock on it that had the "N" word painted on it in 1983. Its not that I want to be dismissive of politics or people who care about them, its just that almost every time I began to listen to commentators either liberal or conservative I get frustrated because I rarely hear them talking about things that matter. Instead we argue about rocks and really stupid things people did in the middle of nowhere two years after I was born.
How weird that we can spend an incredible amount of money, emotional effort, and energy in all kinds of directions and completely miss the heart of life. How different would our world be if we began to actually care about things that matter. I would like to stop arguing about rocks so that I can feel better about myself and I would like to start to talking about the condition of peoples hearts.
This was the most difficult thing for me as a teacher. I was being paid to give students an education in the area of history, which really does matter. However, what I noticed while working with students who had been kicked out of many other schools was that while history was important it was not as important as what was happening in their hearts. Who they were becoming was of higher importance than the history assignment I was supposed to be giving. A popular quote among teachers goes like this:
"Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
People can argue about rocks all day. I want to talk about our hearts.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
You Smell Like a Hypocrite: Book idea pt.2
People will risk change when the environment that they are in becomes safe for them to fail. When environments become safe to screw up and then pick yourself up and start fresh again people will improve and change for the better.
In other areas we recognize this to be true and don't bat an eye about the truth of the previous statement because we inherently know that in order to get better we must push ourselves past where we are, causing us to fail, but in failing also learn.
Sports are a great example of this concept. If you are going to excel in a sport you practice by being pushed to failure. Each day your failure happens at a further point than the day before, and this is what we call progress. At first you make baby steps and what should look like a graceful athletic event looks strangely chaotic and awkard. Nothing like what you see the professionals doing on T.V. But over time as you stick with it and push yourself towards failure, each day challenging yourself to do one more repetition or take one more step, you progress.
What is weird is that what is so clear to us as progress in sports, we define as unacceptable in areas of personal and spiritual growth and maturity. Instead of recognizing that failure is an integral part of maturing and becoming more graceful and effortless in areas of personal and spiritual growth we have made it taboo. Beyond taboo, we have made it highly improbable that any one in their right mind would come to the church or for that matter most adults to share their personal moral failure. They sense our unspoken expectation that failure is not an option and that it will carry with it guilt, shame, and punitive action. Our inability to see these failures as an opportunity to shape our young men and women disables us from being a coach, guide, or mentor before they ever cross our doorstep.
It seems clear to me that if you are reading this, you care. You want to help, or maybe you want to get help. Either way what we can clearly see is that in order for people to risk change they must have others who they are moving towards that stand on the other side of chasm that they are trying to cross. People want to move towards others they can identify with, others who not only know theoretically what to do, but who also have been there themselves and have lived to tell the tell. When we as pastors, parents, or friends position ourselves as morally or spirtually above the mess we disarm ourselves from having a voice in the conversation that will define the direction of an individual.
Essentially the truth is this, that if we cannot recognize our own failures and brokeness we will not have a voice with the ones we seek to help. If we seek to impose punitive damage first and deal with this issue as a behaviour only we will miss the heart of the individual and lose our voice.
People can smell a hypocrite from a mile away. A hypocrite is not someone who makes mistakes. What makes us hypocrites is that we won't admit our own mistakes and in our own brokeness invite the Holy Spirit to come and deal with our own hearts. In our lack of humilty we forget to ask the Holy Spirit to begin to turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh and we begin to lean into our own understanding. We seek to fix and in fixing forget that we also are in need of healing. Perhaps our area of brokeness has not come in the form of a pornographic addiction, however, wheather or not the issue is pornagraphy or pride every sin leads back to a spiritual condition of the heart. These are the places which we must go in order for their to be healing and lasting change and we cannot effectively go there without the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the Greek, the word for the Holy Spirit is the word "Paraclete" and is defined as "the one who hears our cries." If we are to really help people who are dealing with pornography we must recognize that this battle is beyond physical habits and behaviour. It is cleary as much a spiritual battle as it is a physical or habitual cycle we must break. This is ultimately why, if we truly seek to help people in this area, we must leave the safe towers where we have been living. We must risk stepping out of the places where our own stuggles and past have been hidden, neatly tucked away in the grout of our towers and begin to ourselves cry out to God and ask him to fill our lives, and change our own hearts first. It is then and only then that we will be ready to lead someone out.
If this is interesting to you will you please give me some feed back so that I can get better as a writer or so that I can answer any questions you have...I plan on posting sections of what I am writing as I go, so feedback is welcome. Grammatical errors are to be expected so feedback on content is preferred.
In other areas we recognize this to be true and don't bat an eye about the truth of the previous statement because we inherently know that in order to get better we must push ourselves past where we are, causing us to fail, but in failing also learn.
Sports are a great example of this concept. If you are going to excel in a sport you practice by being pushed to failure. Each day your failure happens at a further point than the day before, and this is what we call progress. At first you make baby steps and what should look like a graceful athletic event looks strangely chaotic and awkard. Nothing like what you see the professionals doing on T.V. But over time as you stick with it and push yourself towards failure, each day challenging yourself to do one more repetition or take one more step, you progress.
What is weird is that what is so clear to us as progress in sports, we define as unacceptable in areas of personal and spiritual growth and maturity. Instead of recognizing that failure is an integral part of maturing and becoming more graceful and effortless in areas of personal and spiritual growth we have made it taboo. Beyond taboo, we have made it highly improbable that any one in their right mind would come to the church or for that matter most adults to share their personal moral failure. They sense our unspoken expectation that failure is not an option and that it will carry with it guilt, shame, and punitive action. Our inability to see these failures as an opportunity to shape our young men and women disables us from being a coach, guide, or mentor before they ever cross our doorstep.
It seems clear to me that if you are reading this, you care. You want to help, or maybe you want to get help. Either way what we can clearly see is that in order for people to risk change they must have others who they are moving towards that stand on the other side of chasm that they are trying to cross. People want to move towards others they can identify with, others who not only know theoretically what to do, but who also have been there themselves and have lived to tell the tell. When we as pastors, parents, or friends position ourselves as morally or spirtually above the mess we disarm ourselves from having a voice in the conversation that will define the direction of an individual.
Essentially the truth is this, that if we cannot recognize our own failures and brokeness we will not have a voice with the ones we seek to help. If we seek to impose punitive damage first and deal with this issue as a behaviour only we will miss the heart of the individual and lose our voice.
People can smell a hypocrite from a mile away. A hypocrite is not someone who makes mistakes. What makes us hypocrites is that we won't admit our own mistakes and in our own brokeness invite the Holy Spirit to come and deal with our own hearts. In our lack of humilty we forget to ask the Holy Spirit to begin to turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh and we begin to lean into our own understanding. We seek to fix and in fixing forget that we also are in need of healing. Perhaps our area of brokeness has not come in the form of a pornographic addiction, however, wheather or not the issue is pornagraphy or pride every sin leads back to a spiritual condition of the heart. These are the places which we must go in order for their to be healing and lasting change and we cannot effectively go there without the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the Greek, the word for the Holy Spirit is the word "Paraclete" and is defined as "the one who hears our cries." If we are to really help people who are dealing with pornography we must recognize that this battle is beyond physical habits and behaviour. It is cleary as much a spiritual battle as it is a physical or habitual cycle we must break. This is ultimately why, if we truly seek to help people in this area, we must leave the safe towers where we have been living. We must risk stepping out of the places where our own stuggles and past have been hidden, neatly tucked away in the grout of our towers and begin to ourselves cry out to God and ask him to fill our lives, and change our own hearts first. It is then and only then that we will be ready to lead someone out.
If this is interesting to you will you please give me some feed back so that I can get better as a writer or so that I can answer any questions you have...I plan on posting sections of what I am writing as I go, so feedback is welcome. Grammatical errors are to be expected so feedback on content is preferred.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
PORN - now you will read this because you are curious
I've been thinking quite a bit lately about writing a book. If feels presumptuous at this point in my life to think that I have something of meaning to say to others, but then again, I know that God has been using my story to help others along the way and there seems to be some clarity of direction for what I would like to write.
A huge part of my coming to God story has been directly tied my struggle with pornography. I would not be a pastor or at the church that I am at today if this area of my life had not spun wildly out of control at a point in my life when I had no where to turn but to the church which was the last place I wanted to go because of my wounds from the church in the past. (I am sure that was a run on but give me a break...I'm new to this whole writing process thing.) This was the first time I met my pastor and good friend Nathan Edwardson on a personal basis. When we met I came in feeling like the elephant in the room wasn't in the corner of the room, it was sitting on my chest, and the wind was knocked out of me. The feelings of guilt, shame, and anger were nearly overwhelming. I had dreading coming to this meeting and anticipated that this man was going to harpoon me for my sin. That was all I had known from the church. You didn't talk about your struggles becasue it was not safe. Plain and simple. If you talked about your struggles, your hurts and hang ups you were put onto the "prayer chain" where everyone then knew about your crap and then kept the women and children away from you because you were dirty or now untrustworthy.
What I found in this man sitting across the table from me caught me off guard and set me on the path back towards God. It is unclear now, years later if this was a conscious effort by Nathan to be really understanding and loving or if God was just totally speaking to me through him at the moment. Probably both. Either way, for the first time in my young life I felt I had actually exposed an area of my life that was out of control to a man who was a few years older than I and I experienced embrace instead of judgement. This changed my life. Maybe this had happened before this point in my life but if it did happen I can't remember when. I am pretty sure I did not have a complete thought until I was like 27 so it very well could have happened before that, but I just wasn't aware of it. The point is that it happened and that I was aware of it.
If I ever actually complete this book, which I intend to do. My desire is to see men become who they are called to be. The topic of pornography and lust is an area that has been taboo to talk about for most christians and has been kept on the periphery of acceptable talk for as long as I can remember. It has been like the "don't ask, don't tell" issue of the church. We all know the problem is epidemic but it seems that most of us are completely unprepared and unable to talk about it. I think this is because as Parents, Pastors, and Youth Workers we have never had this conversation modeled for us. Where do we even start when a young person or even a man come to us to risk sharing that they are addicted to pornography. We have no idea. We have never actually had this taboo conversation ourselves and so we do what everyone does when we don't know what to do....we allow fear and reactive behavior to take over. In our fear of this evil sin we drop into the punitive mindset that we will ground this behaviour out of you. Meanwhile we miss the heart.
I have more but this is a bit of an intro. If this is interesting to you will you please give me some feed back so that I can get better as a writer or so that I can answer any questions you have...I plan on posting sections of what I am writing as I go, so feedback is welcome.
A huge part of my coming to God story has been directly tied my struggle with pornography. I would not be a pastor or at the church that I am at today if this area of my life had not spun wildly out of control at a point in my life when I had no where to turn but to the church which was the last place I wanted to go because of my wounds from the church in the past. (I am sure that was a run on but give me a break...I'm new to this whole writing process thing.) This was the first time I met my pastor and good friend Nathan Edwardson on a personal basis. When we met I came in feeling like the elephant in the room wasn't in the corner of the room, it was sitting on my chest, and the wind was knocked out of me. The feelings of guilt, shame, and anger were nearly overwhelming. I had dreading coming to this meeting and anticipated that this man was going to harpoon me for my sin. That was all I had known from the church. You didn't talk about your struggles becasue it was not safe. Plain and simple. If you talked about your struggles, your hurts and hang ups you were put onto the "prayer chain" where everyone then knew about your crap and then kept the women and children away from you because you were dirty or now untrustworthy.
What I found in this man sitting across the table from me caught me off guard and set me on the path back towards God. It is unclear now, years later if this was a conscious effort by Nathan to be really understanding and loving or if God was just totally speaking to me through him at the moment. Probably both. Either way, for the first time in my young life I felt I had actually exposed an area of my life that was out of control to a man who was a few years older than I and I experienced embrace instead of judgement. This changed my life. Maybe this had happened before this point in my life but if it did happen I can't remember when. I am pretty sure I did not have a complete thought until I was like 27 so it very well could have happened before that, but I just wasn't aware of it. The point is that it happened and that I was aware of it.
If I ever actually complete this book, which I intend to do. My desire is to see men become who they are called to be. The topic of pornography and lust is an area that has been taboo to talk about for most christians and has been kept on the periphery of acceptable talk for as long as I can remember. It has been like the "don't ask, don't tell" issue of the church. We all know the problem is epidemic but it seems that most of us are completely unprepared and unable to talk about it. I think this is because as Parents, Pastors, and Youth Workers we have never had this conversation modeled for us. Where do we even start when a young person or even a man come to us to risk sharing that they are addicted to pornography. We have no idea. We have never actually had this taboo conversation ourselves and so we do what everyone does when we don't know what to do....we allow fear and reactive behavior to take over. In our fear of this evil sin we drop into the punitive mindset that we will ground this behaviour out of you. Meanwhile we miss the heart.
I have more but this is a bit of an intro. If this is interesting to you will you please give me some feed back so that I can get better as a writer or so that I can answer any questions you have...I plan on posting sections of what I am writing as I go, so feedback is welcome.
Friday, September 16, 2011
30 Mins Left to Blog Before You Die
I have 30 minutes left to blog before I die. Well not actually...I have 30 minutes left until I have to go shopping which is equal to death in many ways for me.
So the question is...If you only had 30 minutes left to blog or leave a message to the world what would you say to others. It is a personal challenge to myself and whoever is reading this. Sit down and set a timer for 30 minutes and when it stops, you stop, mid sentence, mid word. Then post it here in a comment or email me or show no one. I'm just curious to see what you might have to say.
Here I go....
Life is not about climbing ladders or subjugation of others. There is an internal posture in life you can take in which you can have conflict and love, peace and poverty, joy and sorrow all at the same time.
I am sure there are other things but the point is that our lives are lived in tension where we have to choice to fill in what is exposed by the traffic of life with embrace encouragement and seeing the best in others or we can fill in what is exposed by the traffic of life with judgement, contempt, bitterness, and anger. The choice is before us every day. What will you fill in the gap with?
Start your day in quiet contemplation. Don't rush to the first thing of the day. There must be some sacred time that no one else can impede on between you and God. Watch how he changes your perspective, attitude, and emotions when you start your day with Him. Watch as he will open your eyes to what he is doing around you and the opportunities he is giving you to create and speak truth and beauty into people and the world.
Seek the Holy Spirit. The HS is the one who hears our cries. It is out of our brokenness that we experience the love and grace of God. But you must cry out to him to be filled with him. This reminds me of my friend Eric who says that God is a gentleman, he won't force himself upon you. You must ask for him.
Conflict is not your enemy. Don't run from it. Don't be shamed by it. When it happens ask what it is exposing in you deep down. Address that. Ask God what is happening in the conflict that he wants to expose. Ask the one who hears our cries to come and meet you in the conflict and to bring peace that passes all understanding with him. No great story is told without great conflict.
Depth doesn't in life doesn't come from what you do...
It comes from who you have spent time with. We see this in Jesus life that he spent his life living from a place with God to people. Not the other way around.
Sometimes having to be RIGHT is the WRONG thing. It is always interesting to see people who have positional power over another person, who in every way could crush the other person based on their office or position and who continually do so. I always walking away thinking that, that person is actually very weak. Strength is knowing you have the ability to crush someone, and not doing it because you don't need to prove yourself to anyone. Even if you are cussing me out, threatening my family, you have no power over me. You may even kill me, so be it, I know where I am going. If I am not threatened by you I don't have to defend myself from you. I am free to love you while you kill me. I may be RIGHT and you may be WRONG, but what is right for me is to Love you in your wrongness while not having to assert my rightness. Hopefully you get the idea, I only have 1 min 30 seconds left.
Love is the most disarming quality you can have that destroys walls and offenses. If you seek to Love another before having to be right you will have won them over. If you seek to be right first and love second you will have missed your opportunity to have loved.
Time is up. Your turn.
So the question is...If you only had 30 minutes left to blog or leave a message to the world what would you say to others. It is a personal challenge to myself and whoever is reading this. Sit down and set a timer for 30 minutes and when it stops, you stop, mid sentence, mid word. Then post it here in a comment or email me or show no one. I'm just curious to see what you might have to say.
Here I go....
Life is not about climbing ladders or subjugation of others. There is an internal posture in life you can take in which you can have conflict and love, peace and poverty, joy and sorrow all at the same time.
I am sure there are other things but the point is that our lives are lived in tension where we have to choice to fill in what is exposed by the traffic of life with embrace encouragement and seeing the best in others or we can fill in what is exposed by the traffic of life with judgement, contempt, bitterness, and anger. The choice is before us every day. What will you fill in the gap with?
Start your day in quiet contemplation. Don't rush to the first thing of the day. There must be some sacred time that no one else can impede on between you and God. Watch how he changes your perspective, attitude, and emotions when you start your day with Him. Watch as he will open your eyes to what he is doing around you and the opportunities he is giving you to create and speak truth and beauty into people and the world.
Seek the Holy Spirit. The HS is the one who hears our cries. It is out of our brokenness that we experience the love and grace of God. But you must cry out to him to be filled with him. This reminds me of my friend Eric who says that God is a gentleman, he won't force himself upon you. You must ask for him.
Conflict is not your enemy. Don't run from it. Don't be shamed by it. When it happens ask what it is exposing in you deep down. Address that. Ask God what is happening in the conflict that he wants to expose. Ask the one who hears our cries to come and meet you in the conflict and to bring peace that passes all understanding with him. No great story is told without great conflict.
Depth doesn't in life doesn't come from what you do...
It comes from who you have spent time with. We see this in Jesus life that he spent his life living from a place with God to people. Not the other way around.
Sometimes having to be RIGHT is the WRONG thing. It is always interesting to see people who have positional power over another person, who in every way could crush the other person based on their office or position and who continually do so. I always walking away thinking that, that person is actually very weak. Strength is knowing you have the ability to crush someone, and not doing it because you don't need to prove yourself to anyone. Even if you are cussing me out, threatening my family, you have no power over me. You may even kill me, so be it, I know where I am going. If I am not threatened by you I don't have to defend myself from you. I am free to love you while you kill me. I may be RIGHT and you may be WRONG, but what is right for me is to Love you in your wrongness while not having to assert my rightness. Hopefully you get the idea, I only have 1 min 30 seconds left.
Love is the most disarming quality you can have that destroys walls and offenses. If you seek to Love another before having to be right you will have won them over. If you seek to be right first and love second you will have missed your opportunity to have loved.
Time is up. Your turn.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Feel Better
In this busy season of life it is funny how God can get our attention and speak to us through our children.
During the middle of running all over the place trying to get things done I raced home so that some friends could pick up an old freezer I was giving away. We came flying into the driveway and practically jumped out of the Expedition before the vehicle had stopped. This particular week had been one of the busiest of the month and I had a student staying with my family who had been pulled out of an abusive home situation with me as my friends showed up to get the freezer out of our storage room.
During the melee of moving the freezer and watching my two boys and this student I took my eyes off Noah who was running in the driveway laughing and playing tag with Toby. Everything seemed fine and we began to move the freezer out. A moment later Noah screamed out in pain and the long draw of breath before the next sound let me know that this was going to be a good one.
Noah had fallen and deeply scraped his left knee. We quickly set the freezer down and headed out to Noah to tend to his wounds. I picked him up and took him into the house and got the necessary first aid items together and bandaged his knee. As he was crying I felt awful for him, you never enjoy seeing your child hurting. I pulled him in close and hugged him and kissed him continually and told him he was going to be OK. Noah seemed to not hear the words that I was saying and kept saying through his tears, "Make it feel better." I didn't know what to do so I just kept hugging him and trying to console him but he continued to say, "No, make it feel better." So finally I asked him, "Noah, what do you want me to do?" Noah replied, "Ask Jesus to make it feel better."
To be honest, his response caught me off guard. I am a pastor. I work hard to get others to be connected to God and to include him in every area of their lives. But, in this moment it didn't even occur to me to ask Jesus to make it feel better. So with Noah in my arms and the student standing near us I began to pray. Noah closed his eyes tightly, his head moving back and forth slightly with pursed lips. He was intensely praying with me for his knee. As intense as any adult I have ever seen pray.
It was a simple and short prayer. I remembered what my friend Dan had said at a recent staff meeting at work that our Faith is grown when we pray for healing and then take the next step to ask and see if God healed it. So I asked Noah if it felt better. Noah stood up and gently walked a few steps and said that it did feel a little better. The student who was staying with us got a gleam in his eye and emphatically said, "Jesus did that!"
I had no idea what was happening at that moment. The whole situation had taken me off guard. Here Noah had been hurt, inconsolable, and he lead me to pray. The student had been watching the whole thing and recognized it was Jesus. Meanwhile, I was nearly speechless.
A few days later our Stirring baptism was taking place and I still had not taken off Noah's original bandage. At this point I expected to see a huge scab, or at the very least an open scrape. When I took off the bandage there was nothing there at all. Not a scab, nothing. It was like it never happened.
In the Greek, (the language the New Testament was written in) God and Jesus promise to send us the "Paraclete". The word "Paracleta" means "the one who answers our cry." How often I forget that it is not until I cry out and seek Jesus that my own wounds, pain, and brokenness can be healed. Unless that cry surges up from the consciousness of our true reality and need for the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit will not come.
During the middle of running all over the place trying to get things done I raced home so that some friends could pick up an old freezer I was giving away. We came flying into the driveway and practically jumped out of the Expedition before the vehicle had stopped. This particular week had been one of the busiest of the month and I had a student staying with my family who had been pulled out of an abusive home situation with me as my friends showed up to get the freezer out of our storage room.
During the melee of moving the freezer and watching my two boys and this student I took my eyes off Noah who was running in the driveway laughing and playing tag with Toby. Everything seemed fine and we began to move the freezer out. A moment later Noah screamed out in pain and the long draw of breath before the next sound let me know that this was going to be a good one.
Noah had fallen and deeply scraped his left knee. We quickly set the freezer down and headed out to Noah to tend to his wounds. I picked him up and took him into the house and got the necessary first aid items together and bandaged his knee. As he was crying I felt awful for him, you never enjoy seeing your child hurting. I pulled him in close and hugged him and kissed him continually and told him he was going to be OK. Noah seemed to not hear the words that I was saying and kept saying through his tears, "Make it feel better." I didn't know what to do so I just kept hugging him and trying to console him but he continued to say, "No, make it feel better." So finally I asked him, "Noah, what do you want me to do?" Noah replied, "Ask Jesus to make it feel better."
To be honest, his response caught me off guard. I am a pastor. I work hard to get others to be connected to God and to include him in every area of their lives. But, in this moment it didn't even occur to me to ask Jesus to make it feel better. So with Noah in my arms and the student standing near us I began to pray. Noah closed his eyes tightly, his head moving back and forth slightly with pursed lips. He was intensely praying with me for his knee. As intense as any adult I have ever seen pray.
It was a simple and short prayer. I remembered what my friend Dan had said at a recent staff meeting at work that our Faith is grown when we pray for healing and then take the next step to ask and see if God healed it. So I asked Noah if it felt better. Noah stood up and gently walked a few steps and said that it did feel a little better. The student who was staying with us got a gleam in his eye and emphatically said, "Jesus did that!"
I had no idea what was happening at that moment. The whole situation had taken me off guard. Here Noah had been hurt, inconsolable, and he lead me to pray. The student had been watching the whole thing and recognized it was Jesus. Meanwhile, I was nearly speechless.
A few days later our Stirring baptism was taking place and I still had not taken off Noah's original bandage. At this point I expected to see a huge scab, or at the very least an open scrape. When I took off the bandage there was nothing there at all. Not a scab, nothing. It was like it never happened.
In the Greek, (the language the New Testament was written in) God and Jesus promise to send us the "Paraclete". The word "Paracleta" means "the one who answers our cry." How often I forget that it is not until I cry out and seek Jesus that my own wounds, pain, and brokenness can be healed. Unless that cry surges up from the consciousness of our true reality and need for the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit will not come.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
true story
He Never breaks his stare. He sits facing forward nothing moves his gaze other than when someone walks up from behind him through the door. Even then, it is only a slight glance over his shoulder. It's 110 degrees outside the Starbucks and he wears a beanie covering his bald head. His weathered wind worn face and down turned lips match his tan exhausted aviator glasses. He doesn't walk he saunters slowly to the counter to fill his stainless steel coffee cup. He wouldn't be caught dead holding a starbuck's cup in his hand but he was content with dark and strong liquid in his steel cup. If I had not seen him go to the counter I would have assumed it was whiskey. He is clearly over 60 but his shoulders are square and strong, still a formidable force in a fight. Looking at him from behind you would think he was 30 and fresh out of prison, stuck in a cell with nothing to do but push ups. His muscles were not enhanced with steroids, he just had the look of a strong man, every movement is slow and seems calculated. This man looks like a killer.
After a few minutes of awkwardly sitting near this man, trying to look un-weak a middle aged father with his socially awkward kids come walking in. The father looks like a typical nerd. He has an awkward mustache reminiscent of Tom Sellick during the 80's and wears the matching short shorts with a Hawaiin print shirt and big square reading glasses. You can't fault him for this look, no one apparently told him the 80's ended over 20 years ago. But either way you can tell that he is a good provider for his family and well meaning, just completely disconnected from that fact that it is 2011 and that much upper leg being shown on a man in a Hawaiin print shirt is no longer in vogue. The boys 16 or 17 with curly red hair and curly brown hair walk in trailing dad awkwardly through the nearly empty store. Halfway through dad tells them to wait there and they both comply. As the dad walks up the counter, striding forward in all his Magnum PI glory his sons stand awkwardly in the very spot he told them to stand. They are unsure of where to place there hands. In the pockets or out of their pockets, at their side or behind their back. One of the boys points to a cup and mumbles something to the brown haired one who looks at the cup but doesn't move his head so as not to be noticed. There are over 20 chairs available but they sit in none of them because their dad did not tell them they could.
The man just sits, his gaze unchanged as if the annoyingly unmanly youth stand directly in front of him don't exist. I'm not even a biker and I felt compelled to somehow harm them just because it looked so easy. But the biker just looked annoyed, he lives in a world of people whom he rather slap around than speak to. But, there were just too many of us who deserved to have our asses kicked so instead of kicking all of our asses he just slowly stood up and went outside to smoke. He lit the cigarette and set his elbow on the table. He took one slow draw on the cigarette, his hand barely moving at all as it came towards his mouth. The smoke slowly billowed out of his mouth moving as slow and calculated as the man himself.
As I sat and watched him from my leather seat in the corner of Starbucks Pandora played a Ray Lamontagne's song "Lesson Learned" that was reminiscent of an old tragically romantic western song. I envisioned this biker as a young man, happy but tough, losing a love, and becoming the hardened man that sat before me today. I wondered what it would be like to be this old, weathered and angry man who sat before me today. What happened to him that made him who he was today. After he finished his cigarette he came back inside to finish his coffee. He sat near me and I contemplated starting a conversation with him. Just to see what would happen. After a few moments, I gained the necessary courage and asked him if he rode his bike in this kind of weather often. The question was awful but I didn't know where to start. He sat motionless for a good 10 seconds that felt like an eternity then his eyes slowly looked in my direction while his head remained motionless. When his eyes acknowledged my question I realized I should not have spoken. His glance confirmed he would kill me if I spoke again and so I remained silent as he slowly stood and sauntered out the front door to his Harley.
Lesson Learned
After a few minutes of awkwardly sitting near this man, trying to look un-weak a middle aged father with his socially awkward kids come walking in. The father looks like a typical nerd. He has an awkward mustache reminiscent of Tom Sellick during the 80's and wears the matching short shorts with a Hawaiin print shirt and big square reading glasses. You can't fault him for this look, no one apparently told him the 80's ended over 20 years ago. But either way you can tell that he is a good provider for his family and well meaning, just completely disconnected from that fact that it is 2011 and that much upper leg being shown on a man in a Hawaiin print shirt is no longer in vogue. The boys 16 or 17 with curly red hair and curly brown hair walk in trailing dad awkwardly through the nearly empty store. Halfway through dad tells them to wait there and they both comply. As the dad walks up the counter, striding forward in all his Magnum PI glory his sons stand awkwardly in the very spot he told them to stand. They are unsure of where to place there hands. In the pockets or out of their pockets, at their side or behind their back. One of the boys points to a cup and mumbles something to the brown haired one who looks at the cup but doesn't move his head so as not to be noticed. There are over 20 chairs available but they sit in none of them because their dad did not tell them they could.
The man just sits, his gaze unchanged as if the annoyingly unmanly youth stand directly in front of him don't exist. I'm not even a biker and I felt compelled to somehow harm them just because it looked so easy. But the biker just looked annoyed, he lives in a world of people whom he rather slap around than speak to. But, there were just too many of us who deserved to have our asses kicked so instead of kicking all of our asses he just slowly stood up and went outside to smoke. He lit the cigarette and set his elbow on the table. He took one slow draw on the cigarette, his hand barely moving at all as it came towards his mouth. The smoke slowly billowed out of his mouth moving as slow and calculated as the man himself.
As I sat and watched him from my leather seat in the corner of Starbucks Pandora played a Ray Lamontagne's song "Lesson Learned" that was reminiscent of an old tragically romantic western song. I envisioned this biker as a young man, happy but tough, losing a love, and becoming the hardened man that sat before me today. I wondered what it would be like to be this old, weathered and angry man who sat before me today. What happened to him that made him who he was today. After he finished his cigarette he came back inside to finish his coffee. He sat near me and I contemplated starting a conversation with him. Just to see what would happen. After a few moments, I gained the necessary courage and asked him if he rode his bike in this kind of weather often. The question was awful but I didn't know where to start. He sat motionless for a good 10 seconds that felt like an eternity then his eyes slowly looked in my direction while his head remained motionless. When his eyes acknowledged my question I realized I should not have spoken. His glance confirmed he would kill me if I spoke again and so I remained silent as he slowly stood and sauntered out the front door to his Harley.
Lesson Learned
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