Remembering

I spent yesterday afternoon having tea with my daughter, a senior in college. Some events over the weekend had prompted the invitation to come and chat. Most of what we did, as it turned out, was reminisce. You might think that at the ripe old age of 21 there is not much to reminisce about. But we have always had a close relationship so sitting and thinking about the various milestones in her life could have gone on much longer than the 2 hours we spent.

As it was, we spent our time smiling, laughing, and crying together as we remembered.

We laughed about the skinny, awkward middle school years. We smiled about the insecurity of her high school years, time she spent (as do many young people) trying desperately to figure out who she was. Our hearts warmed as we remembered some significant events and people of her junior year of high school, one in particular, who helped ease that insecurity and move her self-awareness forward. And we cried as we recalled a devastating, life-changing event her freshman year of college, an event that left her mentally bruised and battered, yet significantly stronger.

And perhaps that was something of our mutual take-away yesterday.

I remember at the time of her tragic experience wondering if, when, and even how she would recover from what happened. For months afterward she would say that this event had “killed her.” But as she recovered, I remember thinking to myself that this young woman – this post-trauma young woman – this was the young woman I had hoped she would become someday. And in fact her ‘becoming’ had happened not in spite of the tragedy, but because of it.

Tragedies can often lead to a sort of remembering that tries to press the rewind button on life, remembering that asks ‘what if.’ She and I have done plenty of that.

But ‘what if’ remembering is both unproductive and despair inducing.

Productive remembering looks at the past in a way that takes the full weight of tragedy and triumph into account. It learns from these events recognizing that while we cannot change the past, we can use it to shape the future.

Perhaps this is why one of God’s most frequent commands to Israel is to remember. In looking back, Israel could not only see their mistakes, but see God’s healing hand at work, bringing new life out of death.

Obedience

It is not particularly uncommon to hear Christians talk about what I will call ‘weekend behavior’ in ways not all that different from their non-Christian counterparts. Somewhere along the line, the very true idea of salvation by grace alone has been warped into the notion that what I do doesn’t really matter that much. After all, I am saved.

Christian Smith, a sociologist and author of Soul Searching and Souls In Transition has made exactly this point with respect to 14-28 year olds. Morality, for this group basically means being nice and not offending anyone. This holds true for the conservative Christians he interviewed, as well as those from other religious backgrounds. In further studies, he has noted that this attitude was caught from parents (my age group). So the problem runs deep.

In my time with God today, two texts leaped off of the page. One was from my ongoing personal reading which brought me to 2 John 6 today. That text said, “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.” The other text, from the assigned reading in my devotional book was John 14:21. It reads, “Whoever holds to my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me.”

In other words, to ignore God’s commandments is really like saying to him, ‘I don’t love you.’

That’s worth thinking about.

What does the ever-growing-in-popularity choice to live with one’s boyfriend or girlfriend rather than marry that person say to God?

How about partying like a rock-star on the weekend?

Or stealing from the government by cheating on your taxes?

Or gossiping?

So we sing “I love you Lord” on Sunday morning but participate in behaviors like these during the week. According to the two texts I read today, as well as the understanding of what love is throughout the Old Testament, actions like these make our words fall flat.

If I want to respond to God in love, I must obey. That will likely cost me something. And it might offend someone. But in our response to God, as with our lives in general, actions do, in fact, speak louder than words.

God and the Lake

I have been on a silent retreat for about the last 20 hours. We were at a camp on Lake Michigan about 25 minutes from my home. The weather was perfect: mid-70’s, sunny, with a mild breeze.

Over the years, Lake Michigan has become a place where I often feel God’s presence in a unique way. For me, it is one of those places that Celtic Christians might identify as a “thin place.” A thin place is a place where it is thought that heaven and earth come close, where God’s presence can be keenly felt. While I sometimes get this feeling at the top of a mountain, I nearly always get it at the shore of Lake Michigan or at the ocean.

There is something about being on the shoreline of a vast body of water that pushes one’s mind toward the Infinite. The perceived lack of boundaries combined with the uncontrollable power of the lake reminds me of God. Like the powerful lake, God is not a being you approach without due caution. As the Beaver’s in C. S. Lewis’s classic tale say of Aslan, he is not safe, but he is good.

And indeed that is true of both God and the lake. To not respect the lake is to court death. And so it is with God.

This past summer I learned to sail. It was a beautiful, thirty foot boat (that’s the technical term J), with a single mast. As I looked at the lake this morning and at a sailboat on the lake, I thought of my experience. In a sailboat, the captain can make decisions about the direction the boat will take to some extent. But she cannot tell the lake or the wind what to do. To try to ignore the currents and the wind and do her own thing would be foolish.

The first thing the captain must do is submit to the wind and the lake. Only then will she make progress.

Unfortunately, as I thought about my relationship to God, it seemed to me that I spend much of my time fighting with him, rather than submitting to him and his will. Perhaps that is why my progress is limited.

Sailing can be a struggle when the wind and the lake seem to be against you. You can get stuck in one spot if the wind suddenly stops. Or you can get blown in a direction you did not intend if you are not paying close attention. It can be frustrating. And God’s ways in my life can be frustrating too. But deciding to do it my way will inevitably be even more frustrating.

The key, of course, is trusting the One who knows me better than anyone, the one who knit me together in my mother’s womb and loves me more than any human ever will. Trusting a God who is not safe can be hard. But remembering that he is good and will always do what is best for the kingdom can make that task just a bit easier. I am so glad today that my life, my future, my hope, is in his hands.

Camping and Daily Bread

I like to camp.

When the children were young, camping allowed our family to travel to a variety of places on a limited budget. Plus, kids really like being able to fool around in the woods with sticks, stones, leaves, and whatever else they can find. Boring and camping just don’t go together in our experience.

And we were not the sort of campers who had to bring along everything from home. We didn’t bring bikes, television, or toys. We did bring books, board games, and marshmallow sticks but other than things like that, entertainment was as wide as our children’s imaginations.

Over the years, we probably tented the most, although we did have a nice little pop-up camper for about seven years. It was pretty basic as campers go with very few comforts of home. But it was more comfortable than a tent.

A few years back, having camped in a tent for about six more years, I decided I had done enough sleeping on the ground. I also thought that, unlike our old pop-up, I would like a bathroom on site. Midnight walks to the bathroom can be scary. So I bought a new little trailer.

And it has some bells and whistles. It has a fridge with a freezer, a small bathroom, an oven, and even a microwave (although we so rarely have electricity where we camp that the microwave is more of an extra cupboard than an appliance). It is really nice.

I love camping because I love waking up in beautiful places and going to sleep with the sounds of the woods all around me. But I also like camping because it reminds me of what is necessary in life.

In this modern world, it is so easy for me to think that I really need this or that new thing. Maybe it’s a new phone, or an iPad, or a pair of shoes, or a new countertop. But when I camp, I realize how little I really do need. In fact, back in our tenting days, I realized that I could get by with the barest of necessities. Even my new little trailer, although much less work than tenting, still has very few of the things that people at home would think they could never live without.

And that is the best reason for me to camp. It reminds me that when I pray for ‘daily bread,’ it is a prayer for necessities. My mind tends to have a list of banquet-like “needs,” but Jesus’ own prayer helps me remember that not only should I be sharing the abundance that God has entrusted to my care, but that my ultimate need is not for more stuff, but for more bread from heaven. Jesus said “I am the bread of life.” That is what I most need. And having little, even if only a few times per year, keeps my true need in focus.

Rainbows

It is not new news that much of the United States has been experiencing record heat and drought-like conditions this summer. In Michigan, my home state, this has also been true.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love our generally sunny summers with wonderfully warm temperatures, usually in the mid-80’s with occasional jumps into the 90’s. And I don’t really mind our humidity unless it becomes particularly high and oppressive. I actually much prefer it to the skin-shriveling dryness of some western states.

But this summer we have experienced numerous periods of above 90 degree heat, often with high humidity, and even several short periods (3-5 days each) of temperatures that soared above 100 degrees. Given that a good part of the year in Michigan we live with our windows closed because of cold temperatures, I detest having to turn on my air conditioning and live with my windows closed in the summer as well. Under these conditions, however, I did exactly that. Our newlywed daughter and her husband even moved home for a few days at one point because they simply could not stand their upstairs, un-airconditioned apartment for one more day.

At least as strange as the high heat were the weeks on end with no rain and no prospects of rain. Rarely does a week go by in Michigan where there are not at least some clouds in the sky. A “Pure Michigan” sky is a beautiful blue with a few white puffy clouds hanging around to add interest.

It got to the point that I felt like Elijah after the showdown on Mt. Carmel. If I saw a cloud the size of my fist in the west, I hoped it was bringing rain. But even when we did have a few clouds, they managed to scuttle by without dropping any moisture at all. There was frequently not even any dew on the ground in the morning.

About a month ago the sky was quite dark because of some clouds that were passing over but, as usual, not producing rain. I was feeling a bit glum that day. Some circumstances of life were getting me down. Some prayers I had been praying seemed to be hitting heaven and bouncing back down. I was having a bit of a pity party.

That morning, I walked out of my garage to let my dog out and saw the most beautiful rainbow stretching from just above the house across the street all the way to the farmer’s field to the west (or so it seemed). It was beautiful not just in color, but because I knew that somewhere close by it was raining.

And then I thought about the occasion for the rainbow: God’s sign of his promise to Noah and Noah’s descendants. A promise God has kept. And I realized that just as God has kept that promise, so also has he kept his promise to be a God to his people, to be with them, as the divine name suggests. That, of course, meant that he was with me, and listens to me, and loves me, despite my feelings to the contrary. I felt as if that rainbow was placed right there, just for me.

And maybe it was.

Grace

As I walked today, I was thinking about how people change or rather, if they change. It seems that humans by nature—fallen nature, that is—choose to act more like beasts than images of God. Everything in culture pushes in that direction: science, advertising, movies, ‘that’s just the way I am’ mentalities, to name a few examples.

But Scripture offers quite a different picture of humanity. Scripture radically claims that we are not animals; we are not just the most developed being on the evolutionary trajectory. Genesis 1 already makes this clear in the structure of the chapter, a structure based on separation. Each component of creation is separated from the next with the aim of preparing a place for the grand finale: humans. This final creative act is clearly different from those that precede it in both form and function.

So regardless of the messages that culture sends, and regardless of the ways our own fallen nature tries to convince us that we are nothing more than naked apes, the Bible is clear that we are intended to be so much more.

And this is where grace comes in. Proverbial wisdom tells us that a zebra can’t change his stripes. Or, we might say, a human can’t change their fingerprints. The point of this proverb is, of course, that people don’t change and you shouldn’t trust someone who says she has changed because, after all, ‘zebras don’t change their stripes.’

Grace, however, in fact changes our ‘stripes.’ Grace picks us up, turns us around from a trajectory toward beastly behavior, and points us toward and enables truly human behavior. Grace, in other words, not only changes our stripes, it moves us in the direction of the stripes God intended us to have: image of God stripes.

And maybe, that is one part of what is so amazing about grace.

Contentment

I wonder a lot about contentment. It seems like a characteristic that is similar to peace. If one is content, one will be at peace. Paul writes, from prison no less, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” (Phil. 4:11) He then goes on to list a variety of physical situations that he has lived through and in which he was “content.”

This contentment that Paul writes about clearly comes to him from God (vs. 13 and 19). And contentment in all circumstances seems to be a goal that Paul advocates, given the general context here.

But my question in all of this, is whether it is ever ok to be discontent. Are there circumstances in which we actually should lack contentment?

So, for example, should we be content with poverty in the world? Should we be content that women and children are regularly exploited in various places? Ok, so those examples are rather extreme.

What about our own spiritual growth? Should we be content with where we are spiritually and not strive, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, toward holiness even though it often feels like we are making little progress? Should we be content when a friend, or loved one, or acquaintance is content with where he or she is at spiritually or should we gently prod them to strive for more? For example, perhaps you have a friend who doesn’t think they need to go to church anymore. They can worship just as well on a hike. Should we be content with that, allowing them to find their own path, as it were, or should we carefully and pastorally call attention to this spirit-killing behavior?

Or is contentment, the sort Paul is talking about, something like being discontent with situations like these and striving for change, and yet being content as we work and pray knowing that ultimately God is in control? And maybe is that even true with Paul’s situations? Could it be that the learned contentment  with being imprisoned, for example, had to do with praying for release – a lack of contentment with the immediate situation – yet an overarching contentment knowing that whether in prison or out, God would accomplish his purpose.

So maybe contentment, at least in certain cases, must always be mixed up with a dose of holy lack of contentment.