A prayer from Leaving Ruin:
Dear God,
Meekness is beyond me today, and I cannot pretend. Pain on every inch of skin makes me swell and pitch, like the ocean, and I curse the gods inside that want to take me from you, who want to take up residence in your hall, in your place. God, my neck hurts, and my back, and my mind, and my foot, and I am so mad—just so mad. Forgive my rage, and my curses. My mouth can’t be tamed today, unless you do it, so please move your hand this way, and thank you for dogs and good friends, and new faces, pregnant with hope, and protect their innocence, Lord, their naïve belief that all will be well when it seems like it won’t all be well at all. Speak in me, through me, and kill the rebel, kill the demon inside, so that I may one day find what it means to stand before you, meek, and loved.
In Jesus,
Amen
In my imperfection and desire to fix that, I wonder what it would be like to stand before God without any barriers. I have never even been able to imagine that fully. I even imagine that there would be the feeling of guilt in Heaven sometimes. I cannot cast off my humanness even in thinking of that. Reading this book and The Shack have helped, but I continue to have barriers. I continue to feel the need to enter the throne room with my stuff as a wall.
One of the most meek people I have known is one that I would call tough-as-nails on the inside. She loves people as if she has never experienced a hurt. Yet her childhood was very challenging and she has experienced several hardships as an adult. Rather than close herself off, she has used her experience to help others. Such an example she is to many young adults!
I pray you hang on to love, to the love of dogs and good friends. May you have the courage to allow naïve belief and innocence into your relationship with God and His kids.
Shiann
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
If you had been here ...
What does Jesus say in the midst of devastation? Who is he really, when the chips are down - not just standing on the hillside or in the city street teaching, but in our lives and in this world? Who is Jesus in the face of death and pain?
On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask."
When faced with the terrible tension occasioned by the apparent failure of the Teacher whom we follow to act in our time of need, there are a variety of possible responses. Mary stays at home, sad for the loss of her brother. Martha goes out to meet Jesus, expressing faith that he could have saved her brother, but probably still feeling the sting as well.
Martha makes a bold statement, though. Even though she believes that Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying and didn't, she still chooses to voice her belief that "even now God will give you whatever you ask." Martha has an idea about who Jesus, an idea which includes wonderful teaching, miraculous healing abilities, and a special connection with God.
Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Martha expects words of comfort from the Teacher. When Jesus states that Lazarus will rise again, she hears eschatological philosophy of the sort one would expect from a wandering rabbi/street teacher. She knows that Lazarus will rise with the righteous at the end of this age, but she is still left to deal with the pain of losing a loved one. She may even be grateful for the Teacher's presence and words of comfort in her time of trial, but nothing can take away the pain. She may even be glad to have someone to hold onto in such a disturbing moment in her life, but Martha is still operating within a framework based on who she thinks Jesus is. As he is often wont to, Jesus shakes up that framework a bit:
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."
It becomes clear that Jesus' ideas about life and death are different form Martha's. The focus of Martha's understanding of Jesus to this point has been pastoral. Jesus points out that he did not need to be in Bethany any earlier than he was. Lazarus' death is a tragedy, but death is not the final word. Jesus reveals to Martha that death is powerless in the face of the Christ, God's anointed one. Against the Christ, death cannot even hold those whose bodies perish, and those whom it cannot hold will live forever. Like Lazarus, those who die will not be abandoned to the grasp of death forever. Those like Lazarus whom the Christ sets free from the power of death will live forever because the tentacles of death will never be able to claim final mastery over them.
Shortly after their conversation, Jesus literally resurrects Lazarus' body. Martha is at first taken aback that Jesus intends to brave the foul odor emitted by a dead body, but Jesus asks her, "Didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" Jesus reveals himself to be not just a teacher and miracle-worker, but one whose power reaches even to the deepest parts of life - the pain and loss of death and the loneliness of the grave. He reaches down into the grave and defeats death in order to reveal to Martha and her family that through him God provides us with a life which cannot be destroyed. May that life abide in you today and every day.
Blessings,
Greg
(John 11:17-25, NIV)
On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask."
When faced with the terrible tension occasioned by the apparent failure of the Teacher whom we follow to act in our time of need, there are a variety of possible responses. Mary stays at home, sad for the loss of her brother. Martha goes out to meet Jesus, expressing faith that he could have saved her brother, but probably still feeling the sting as well.
Martha makes a bold statement, though. Even though she believes that Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying and didn't, she still chooses to voice her belief that "even now God will give you whatever you ask." Martha has an idea about who Jesus, an idea which includes wonderful teaching, miraculous healing abilities, and a special connection with God.
Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Martha expects words of comfort from the Teacher. When Jesus states that Lazarus will rise again, she hears eschatological philosophy of the sort one would expect from a wandering rabbi/street teacher. She knows that Lazarus will rise with the righteous at the end of this age, but she is still left to deal with the pain of losing a loved one. She may even be grateful for the Teacher's presence and words of comfort in her time of trial, but nothing can take away the pain. She may even be glad to have someone to hold onto in such a disturbing moment in her life, but Martha is still operating within a framework based on who she thinks Jesus is. As he is often wont to, Jesus shakes up that framework a bit:
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."
It becomes clear that Jesus' ideas about life and death are different form Martha's. The focus of Martha's understanding of Jesus to this point has been pastoral. Jesus points out that he did not need to be in Bethany any earlier than he was. Lazarus' death is a tragedy, but death is not the final word. Jesus reveals to Martha that death is powerless in the face of the Christ, God's anointed one. Against the Christ, death cannot even hold those whose bodies perish, and those whom it cannot hold will live forever. Like Lazarus, those who die will not be abandoned to the grasp of death forever. Those like Lazarus whom the Christ sets free from the power of death will live forever because the tentacles of death will never be able to claim final mastery over them.
Shortly after their conversation, Jesus literally resurrects Lazarus' body. Martha is at first taken aback that Jesus intends to brave the foul odor emitted by a dead body, but Jesus asks her, "Didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" Jesus reveals himself to be not just a teacher and miracle-worker, but one whose power reaches even to the deepest parts of life - the pain and loss of death and the loneliness of the grave. He reaches down into the grave and defeats death in order to reveal to Martha and her family that through him God provides us with a life which cannot be destroyed. May that life abide in you today and every day.
Blessings,
Greg
(John 11:17-25, NIV)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Teach me to dwell ...
Today, a prayer from Amy Carmichael (1867-1951):
Before the winds that blow do cease,
Teach me to dwell within thy calm;
Before the pain has passed in peace,
Give me, my God, to sing a psalm.
Let me not lose the chance to prove
The fullness of enabling love.
O love of God, do this for me:
Maintain a constant victory.
Before I leave the desert land
For meadows of immortal flowers,
Lead me where streams at thy command
Flow by the borders of the hours,
That when the thirsty come, I may
Show them the fountains in the way.
O love of God do this for me:
Maintain a constant victory.
Grace and peace,
Ron
Before the winds that blow do cease,
Teach me to dwell within thy calm;
Before the pain has passed in peace,
Give me, my God, to sing a psalm.
Let me not lose the chance to prove
The fullness of enabling love.
O love of God, do this for me:
Maintain a constant victory.
Before I leave the desert land
For meadows of immortal flowers,
Lead me where streams at thy command
Flow by the borders of the hours,
That when the thirsty come, I may
Show them the fountains in the way.
O love of God do this for me:
Maintain a constant victory.
Grace and peace,
Ron
Friday, May 15, 2009
My triumph and my trouble ...
Today, a prayer:
O Holy One:
You alone know the depths of my heart,
the hope of my heart and soul,
the passion that moves me toward you.
You know my joy and my pain,
my triumph and my trouble.
you know the parts of my life
that I celebrate,
and the parts that embarrass me,
that I would hide from everyone
but you.
And so I bring them all to you;
hear me and love me anyway
if it pleases you so to do.
Love me, if you will, both for who I am,
and who I would that I were.
Love me for the good I have done
through your power,
and the good I would hope to do.
Yet asking this seems to me to require
that I pray you, I beseech you:
forgive first my pride, my arrogance,
my presumption.
“Who am I?” David asks,
and I with him.
Who am I to think that I can
accomplish anything for you –
For you have the power,
the knowledge,
the skill.
Who am I, surrounded by so many
amazing and gifted people:
your people, citizens of your kingdom?
Like those saints, you choose not to call
me servant,
but have instead named me “Friend.”
Yet it pleases you for me to be
in a small place,
a quiet place,
a solitary place,
a place where few will know me,
and even fewer will care.
May I revel in usefulness.
May I find contentment,
and give it to you as a gift:
a token of my steadfast love,
an offering to signify my trust
in your will, in your way,
in your providence.
May I be at peace.
May I live in that peace,
revel in that peace,
share that peace,
And daily speak of your peace:
peace past understanding,
peace past measuring,
peace past description,
yet powerful to save.
And now, mighty Father, having heard,
take my words;
take the lips that spoke them,
take the mind that framed them,
take the heart that felt them,
take all of me, body and spirit,
as your worship –
worship in spirit and truth,
until I am forever and irrevocably yours
through the intercession of your Son,
and the witness of your Spirit.
Amen
O Holy One:
You alone know the depths of my heart,
the hope of my heart and soul,
the passion that moves me toward you.
You know my joy and my pain,
my triumph and my trouble.
you know the parts of my life
that I celebrate,
and the parts that embarrass me,
that I would hide from everyone
but you.
And so I bring them all to you;
hear me and love me anyway
if it pleases you so to do.
Love me, if you will, both for who I am,
and who I would that I were.
Love me for the good I have done
through your power,
and the good I would hope to do.
Yet asking this seems to me to require
that I pray you, I beseech you:
forgive first my pride, my arrogance,
my presumption.
“Who am I?” David asks,
and I with him.
Who am I to think that I can
accomplish anything for you –
For you have the power,
the knowledge,
the skill.
Who am I, surrounded by so many
amazing and gifted people:
your people, citizens of your kingdom?
Like those saints, you choose not to call
me servant,
but have instead named me “Friend.”
Yet it pleases you for me to be
in a small place,
a quiet place,
a solitary place,
a place where few will know me,
and even fewer will care.
May I revel in usefulness.
May I find contentment,
and give it to you as a gift:
a token of my steadfast love,
an offering to signify my trust
in your will, in your way,
in your providence.
May I be at peace.
May I live in that peace,
revel in that peace,
share that peace,
And daily speak of your peace:
peace past understanding,
peace past measuring,
peace past description,
yet powerful to save.
And now, mighty Father, having heard,
take my words;
take the lips that spoke them,
take the mind that framed them,
take the heart that felt them,
take all of me, body and spirit,
as your worship –
worship in spirit and truth,
until I am forever and irrevocably yours
through the intercession of your Son,
and the witness of your Spirit.
Amen
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
A prayer for the day ...
O Maker and Creator,
With your gifted hands you have shaped
The space, the creation that surrounds us:
Stars above, skies around, and soil beneath.
From the earth below you have formed earthlings,
And into that still clay you have breathed life,
Sustained life, empowered life to bring life.
O mighty one, the mighty things you have done -
Just weeks ago, that which you have done
So many times: you gave us a life.
Once again you brought life into our midst –
Beautiful, amazing, resilient life –
Another life to join those other beautiful children
Who bless us with their presence.
Now we are on the very eve –
Soon, and very soon, you will bless us again.
We beseech you for a safe arrival for this little one –
Healthy and whole bring this child into our midst.
As you bring life, protect life –
Keep those we love safe as they experience
The miracle of this moment.
You expand the boundaries of our community;
We pray that you grow our hearts as well.
Open our hearts for another life, another child.
One man is the father, one woman bears the child,
Yet each child has a community of faith-fathers,
Each precious life, a congregation of spirit-mothers.
As you end birth pains for mother and child,
we ask you to end other pains long suffered –
We ask that surgeon’s skill and your mighty hand
Bring healing to our brother,
Who has held fast in the hour of hurt.
Sustain life, enable healing, strengthen body, and
Erase pain with health, purpose, and joy.
O Maker and Creator, heal our troubled hearts.
May your steadfast love beckon us from loss,
Drawing us into your gentle, loving presence,
Changing the ragged holes in our hearts from
Bottomless pits of pain and pity and might-have-been
To deep, cool wells of love and compassion –
Knowing care for our fellow-sufferers.
O Maker and Creator,
Use human hands you have gifted and shaped
To do your work amid the creation that surrounds us:
From the stars above to the soil beneath,
Bless your earth by the hands of your earthlings –
Until that day when you rescue our spirit, the breath of life,
And sustain our life into eternity, empowered forever.
From your mighty hand we ask these gifts,
Amen.
Blessings,
Ron
With your gifted hands you have shaped
The space, the creation that surrounds us:
Stars above, skies around, and soil beneath.
From the earth below you have formed earthlings,
And into that still clay you have breathed life,
Sustained life, empowered life to bring life.
O mighty one, the mighty things you have done -
Just weeks ago, that which you have done
So many times: you gave us a life.
Once again you brought life into our midst –
Beautiful, amazing, resilient life –
Another life to join those other beautiful children
Who bless us with their presence.
Now we are on the very eve –
Soon, and very soon, you will bless us again.
We beseech you for a safe arrival for this little one –
Healthy and whole bring this child into our midst.
As you bring life, protect life –
Keep those we love safe as they experience
The miracle of this moment.
You expand the boundaries of our community;
We pray that you grow our hearts as well.
Open our hearts for another life, another child.
One man is the father, one woman bears the child,
Yet each child has a community of faith-fathers,
Each precious life, a congregation of spirit-mothers.
As you end birth pains for mother and child,
we ask you to end other pains long suffered –
We ask that surgeon’s skill and your mighty hand
Bring healing to our brother,
Who has held fast in the hour of hurt.
Sustain life, enable healing, strengthen body, and
Erase pain with health, purpose, and joy.
O Maker and Creator, heal our troubled hearts.
May your steadfast love beckon us from loss,
Drawing us into your gentle, loving presence,
Changing the ragged holes in our hearts from
Bottomless pits of pain and pity and might-have-been
To deep, cool wells of love and compassion –
Knowing care for our fellow-sufferers.
O Maker and Creator,
Use human hands you have gifted and shaped
To do your work amid the creation that surrounds us:
From the stars above to the soil beneath,
Bless your earth by the hands of your earthlings –
Until that day when you rescue our spirit, the breath of life,
And sustain our life into eternity, empowered forever.
From your mighty hand we ask these gifts,
Amen.
Blessings,
Ron
Friday, September 26, 2008
Forced to fight
As Paul talks about the life of faith, it is a thing far removed from a prosperity gospel. Many prosperity preachers quote from our reading for today, but they tend to leave out or gloss over certain parts of it.
The reality of being a child of God is that we live in the same world as those who reject being children of God. At first we might think that this is unfortunate, but in reality, for those of us who once rejected the idea of being a child of God, this is very much a God thing (fortune has nothing to do with it). Only being in a world with the children of God provoked me to reconsider my stance toward God’s kingdom. Consequently, I believe that the children of God are not supposed to use the planet Earth as some sort of escape pod into eternity, but to continue to enact kingdom thinking and kingdom action in a world that desperately needs it. The job of the children of God is to restore this world, not just spiritually, but in every other possible way.
This means that preachers need to find a way to speak the transforming word from a first century context into the context of their own century. It means that a farmer ought to leave the land in better shape the day that he is planted than on the day he first planted seed. It means that the medical professional and researcher should strive for progress by finding ways to ameliorate or cure disease. And the ecologist ought to steadily restore the health of this planet.
What about people that work with children? We deal with transformation and nurture and healing and restoration, too. But we also deal with secrets that resist truth and transformation, deprivation, sickness and toxicity. Constantly exposed to pain, we have to find a way to deal with pain. Which takes us back to our reading for today.
What if we saw the world, not as a place where we could completely avoid hurt, pain, persecution, violence, disease, disaster, or death. Not only is it a place where we witness these things; it is a place where we experience these things. If we, or those we love did not experience them, what calling, what drive would compel us to combat them?
It is not that we ought to expect to avoid these things but rather that we resist where we can, suffer where we have to, and yield only when yielding is inevitable. We will do none of these things as a victim, but rather a victor: a victor in Jesus Christ. Is this not what Paul calls us to do?
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39 - NRSV
Grace, peace, and victory -
Ron
The reality of being a child of God is that we live in the same world as those who reject being children of God. At first we might think that this is unfortunate, but in reality, for those of us who once rejected the idea of being a child of God, this is very much a God thing (fortune has nothing to do with it). Only being in a world with the children of God provoked me to reconsider my stance toward God’s kingdom. Consequently, I believe that the children of God are not supposed to use the planet Earth as some sort of escape pod into eternity, but to continue to enact kingdom thinking and kingdom action in a world that desperately needs it. The job of the children of God is to restore this world, not just spiritually, but in every other possible way.
This means that preachers need to find a way to speak the transforming word from a first century context into the context of their own century. It means that a farmer ought to leave the land in better shape the day that he is planted than on the day he first planted seed. It means that the medical professional and researcher should strive for progress by finding ways to ameliorate or cure disease. And the ecologist ought to steadily restore the health of this planet.
What about people that work with children? We deal with transformation and nurture and healing and restoration, too. But we also deal with secrets that resist truth and transformation, deprivation, sickness and toxicity. Constantly exposed to pain, we have to find a way to deal with pain. Which takes us back to our reading for today.
What if we saw the world, not as a place where we could completely avoid hurt, pain, persecution, violence, disease, disaster, or death. Not only is it a place where we witness these things; it is a place where we experience these things. If we, or those we love did not experience them, what calling, what drive would compel us to combat them?
It is not that we ought to expect to avoid these things but rather that we resist where we can, suffer where we have to, and yield only when yielding is inevitable. We will do none of these things as a victim, but rather a victor: a victor in Jesus Christ. Is this not what Paul calls us to do?
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39 - NRSV
Grace, peace, and victory -
Ron
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A wineskin in the smoke
Today another meditation on a section of the great psalm, 119. Hear the words of Psalm 119:81-88:
My soul languishes for your salvation;
I hope in your word.
My eyes fail with watching for your promise;
I ask, "When will you comfort me?"
Sometimes we fret and fume when we are at a place where, for a while, we have to endure pain or suffering. We are distracted, our prayers are weakened, and we become a burden to our acquaintances (yet not our true friends). How much more trying must it be to have to live with pain? Not just for days or weeks, like most of us, but for years? I have several friends who suffer in this way. Month after month, year after year, they hurt, and they find it difficult to work, if they can work at all. The life of their family is reshaped around this suffering, from their rising in the morning, until (and if) they go to bed at night. Yet a knowledge of, and faith in, God’s word, his Torah, sustains even these struggling souls. If they can endure through the night with the hope that the day of God’s comfort, the hour of God’s blessing, will come, then surely God will bring it.
For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke,
yet I have not forgotten your statutes.
At first, we might think that to be such a wineskin means that we have been discarded, tossed into the fire like so much trash. Yet, this is probably not the meaning of the psalmist. There was a purpose for hanging a wineskin near the fire in ancient Israel; this served to mellow a wine in the warmer temperatures so as to make it into a finer beverage. Yes, the wineskin would blacken. Yes, the skin might even crack, but the fire transforms the contents into something marvelous, even as it mars the vessel through the experience. The scars of the saints may well explain the sublimity of their souls. If we can take this view of our sufferings, then perhaps we will be able to emerge, saying, “Yet I have not forgotten your statutes.”
How long must your servant endure?
When will you judge those who persecute me?
The arrogant have dug pitfalls for me;
they flout your law.
It is bad enough that we suffer in this world. Yet it is too often made worse by those who do not suffer, and who do not understand suffering. Those who treat us like pariahs, those who act as if there are not enough degrees of separation between us and them, as if our suffering were in some way contagious. Or does suffering tend to make us paranoid? If nature, and perhaps even our own body has turned against us, isn’t everybody else against us, too? Therefore it is absolutely necessary that we leave the judgment of those whom we perceive to persecute us in the hands of God. If they have flouted his law, then their pitfall shall surely catch them.
All your commandments are enduring;
I am persecuted without cause; help me!
They have almost made an end of me on earth;
but I have not forsaken your precepts.
In your steadfast love spare my life,
so that I may keep the decrees of your mouth.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. This is most particularly clear to us when we keep his words in our mouths day and night. May we choose to so honor God, whether our days are currently bringing us blessing or bane, pleasure or pain.
Grace and peace,
Ron
Friday, August 15, 2008
Charley and the Bee
Today, a parable for your consideration.
Charley and the Bee
One sunny spring morning, Charley hunted for bugs in his front yard while his mother worked in the flower beds. His search for wildlife had been quite successful, as he had already secured several interesting specimens in his blue bug bottle.
As he stalked through the clover, Charley noticed a particularly bright yellow and black bug buzzing from blossom to blossom. “Great!” thought Charley; “I don’t have one of those . . . .” As he swung his net down onto the bug, he suddenly remembered exactly what kind of bug this was. “A BEE,” said he.
Unfortunately, in his excitement, Charley more slapped than trapped the bee. The bee was not happy. With all of the resilience that God built into His creatures, the bee popped up from under the net and made a line straight for Charley’s face. “So that’s what ‘bee line’ means,” he thought as he turned to run.
Moved by the instinct common to any child, Charley ran straight for his mother. “Mom, a bee!” he shouted. As he ran up to her, she swept her long skirt over his head and held him still for a moment.
“Okay, Charley, you can come out now,” his mom said in a quiet voice.
“Mom, I’m not comin’ out ‘till that bee is gone.”
“You don’t have to worry about the bee anymore,” she answered. “He can’t sting you now.”
As Charley came back out, he searched high and low for signs of the bee. “What do you mean he can’t sting me now, Mom?”
“Look,” answered his mother as she moved her arm close enough for him to see. “See the stinger there,” said Mom. “A bee only has one, and his is now in me.”
If ever a child could feel guilty and glad at the same time, Charley did. “Does it hurt much, Mom?” he asked.
“Yes, Charley, it hurts. But it would hurt me even more to see you stung.”
“You’re the greatest, Mom,” said Charley proudly.
“No, Charley, but I do my best to be like the One who is.”
Tomorrow, the other side of the coin.
Grace and peace,
Ron
Friday, July 4, 2008
Remember to forget
Today, a poem to bring the word of the day to us.
“Forgetfulness”
by Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
“Forget” is an important, if not often used word in the Bible.
Moses, as he preaches his way through Deuteronomy,
seems to be very concerned:
Concerned that we don’t forget the things that we have seen,
Concerned that we don’t forget the covenant with the Lord,
Concerned that we don’t forget the Lord who gave it,
Concerned that we will forget God by not keeping his commandments,
Concerned that we will forget God and serve other gods,
Concerned that we will forget the times that we have provoked God to wrath.
God is too important to forget.
God’s covenant faithfulness is too powerful to forget.
God’s generosity in blessing would make one ungrateful to forget.
God’s commandments provide protection to us
that it is in our best interest not to forget.
God with a capital G is to be remembered,
while gods with a little g need to be forgotten.
Then, at the end of his sermon, Moses gives the children of Israel
an odd little command:
he tells them to not forget to forget the Amalekites.
I’m serious.
Here it is:
“Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget" (Dt 25:19).
So how do you remember if you’ve kept the instructions of Moses?
If you remember, have you forgotten what you were supposed to forget?
At first this question may seem absurd, and even frivolous.
But it’s not.
Let me explain.
Being human means that six things happen in our lives most every day:
1 - We do good things to other people,
2 - They do good things to us,
3 - Other people do good things to other people;
4 - We do bad things to other people,
5 - They do bad things to us,
6 - Other people do bad things to other people.
Now, certain things seem immediately and intuitively obvious:
We would like to wipe 4, 5, and 6 off the list.
Sometimes people think they’re doing 2 or 3 and yet they’re really doing 5 or 6.
Sometimes we think that we are doing 1, but really what we’re up to is number 4.
Since, to quote Novalee Nation, “we've all got meanness in us,” sometimes we even do 4-6 on purpose.
These six things are all part of being human.
The Amalekites were humans who had done some bad things to the children of Israel.
Things so bad that you wouldn’t want to talk about them in front of the children.
Moses told the children of Israel to forget that the Amalekites even existed, to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.”
Somebody wrote it down so that the children of Israel wouldn’t forget the command to forget. Ironic, hunh.
Ironic because it points out the extreme difficulty of forgetting when
someone inflicts a trauma on us.
Ironic because it also points out the dangers of trying to bury the memory
in our subconscious as well.
So what were the children of Israel supposed to do with their pain
and their memories of it?
What are we supposed to do with our pain and our memories of it?
We can’t, and we shouldn’t, forget the pain caused by other people.
We can’t, and we shouldn’t, forget the other people.
We can and we should wipe out the power of that pain over our life. And, until they repent and repair the relationship, we should wipe out the power of those other people in our life.
Absolutely.
That doesn’t mean that we forget those other people.
That doesn’t mean that stop praying for those other people.
It might even help if we can love those other people,
because then we can start loving ourselves again.
Especially when we’re supposed to be a part of the same family.
“It takes two to tango,” our dads may have told us
as we tried to blame the fight on our sister or our brother.
And we believed it, because much of the time it is true.
So when we hate somebody else for something they have done to us
there remains a little nagging voice, whispering in our ear, that says,
“There might be, you know, just one half of one ten thousandth of a part
of possibility that I might have, possibly, contributed to the problem.”
So, maybe, just maybe, to be mad at,
or to hate somebody for something they have done
causes some of that anger, or loathing, or hate to stick to ourselves.
Which just kills us. Much worse than it affects anybody else.
Does that mean that we shouldn’t me mad, or angry, or even furious at someone
who wrongs us?
Absolutely not.
Pull out your Bible. Turn to Psalms.
It is full of psalms called laments.
Laments are songs where the children of God have been getting mugged by the “others”.
The children of God get tired of it, so they cry out to God.
Unfiltered. Uncensored. Unafraid. Inspired.
Here is a small sample:
"Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers; seek out their wickedness until you find none” (Ps 10:15).
“The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates the lover of violence. On the wicked he will rain coals of fire and sulfur; a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup” (Ps 11:5-6).
“May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own — who is our master?’” (Ps 12:3-4).
Notice that the children of God are not asking God to let them break arms,
rain coals, and cut off lips.
They’re asking God to do it.
They want God to “cry ‘Havoc’ and let loose the dogs of war.”
This is an extreme variant of number 6.
And then they do an amazing thing: they leave it up to God to do,
or not to do, what they have asked.
First, they describe in great detail exactly how they feel about their pain
to the Creator of the Universe,
then they describe in graphic detail the kind of pain
they want their enemies to experience,
and then they let it go.
Probably not after one lament;
maybe not even after one hundred.
But as long as they’ve got a hold on the pain and anger,
it has a hold on them.
As long as we have a hold on it,
it has a hold on us.
We can’t stop the memories in the present of the power of pain in our past,
But the pain will stop when we stop giving the memories of our past
power over the present.
Forget the Amalekites; God has removed us from their power.
Forget the Amalekites; God has dealt with them,
or is going to, soon, and very soon.
Forget the Amalekites.
I know that this sounds simplistic.
Perhaps it is; but perhaps sometimes we just make the answers too complex.
We tend to think that our problems are too complex for simple solutions.
And that may be.
Yet sometimes the truth is that we just have to keep doing the simple thing
until it finally works.
Sooner or later the children of God have to decide:
Decide to go gather straw and begin making brick again, or
start picking grapes, grapes in clusters as big as a man.
Decide to parse out every violation of the Law they have ever done, or
praise God for the grace that saved them from that indictment.
Decide to bathe in the river of wrongs done by the Pharaoh in Egypt
and themselves in the desert, or
cross the river and wipe out the power of the past
by embracing God’s power in the present.
What do we need to decide?
Our Father is trying to awaken us out of our nightmare to show us that
he has disposed of our monsters, chased off our fears.
Now we need to recognize his face, remember his strength,
see where we’re at, and decide to forget the monsters.
Remember to forget.
Grace, grace gives peace,
Ron
“Forgetfulness”
by Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
“Forget” is an important, if not often used word in the Bible.
Moses, as he preaches his way through Deuteronomy,
seems to be very concerned:
Concerned that we don’t forget the things that we have seen,
Concerned that we don’t forget the covenant with the Lord,
Concerned that we don’t forget the Lord who gave it,
Concerned that we will forget God by not keeping his commandments,
Concerned that we will forget God and serve other gods,
Concerned that we will forget the times that we have provoked God to wrath.
God is too important to forget.
God’s covenant faithfulness is too powerful to forget.
God’s generosity in blessing would make one ungrateful to forget.
God’s commandments provide protection to us
that it is in our best interest not to forget.
God with a capital G is to be remembered,
while gods with a little g need to be forgotten.
Then, at the end of his sermon, Moses gives the children of Israel
an odd little command:
he tells them to not forget to forget the Amalekites.
I’m serious.
Here it is:
“Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget" (Dt 25:19).
So how do you remember if you’ve kept the instructions of Moses?
If you remember, have you forgotten what you were supposed to forget?
At first this question may seem absurd, and even frivolous.
But it’s not.
Let me explain.
Being human means that six things happen in our lives most every day:
1 - We do good things to other people,
2 - They do good things to us,
3 - Other people do good things to other people;
4 - We do bad things to other people,
5 - They do bad things to us,
6 - Other people do bad things to other people.
Now, certain things seem immediately and intuitively obvious:
We would like to wipe 4, 5, and 6 off the list.
Sometimes people think they’re doing 2 or 3 and yet they’re really doing 5 or 6.
Sometimes we think that we are doing 1, but really what we’re up to is number 4.
Since, to quote Novalee Nation, “we've all got meanness in us,” sometimes we even do 4-6 on purpose.
These six things are all part of being human.
The Amalekites were humans who had done some bad things to the children of Israel.
Things so bad that you wouldn’t want to talk about them in front of the children.
Moses told the children of Israel to forget that the Amalekites even existed, to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.”
Somebody wrote it down so that the children of Israel wouldn’t forget the command to forget. Ironic, hunh.
Ironic because it points out the extreme difficulty of forgetting when
someone inflicts a trauma on us.
Ironic because it also points out the dangers of trying to bury the memory
in our subconscious as well.
So what were the children of Israel supposed to do with their pain
and their memories of it?
What are we supposed to do with our pain and our memories of it?
We can’t, and we shouldn’t, forget the pain caused by other people.
We can’t, and we shouldn’t, forget the other people.
We can and we should wipe out the power of that pain over our life. And, until they repent and repair the relationship, we should wipe out the power of those other people in our life.
Absolutely.
That doesn’t mean that we forget those other people.
That doesn’t mean that stop praying for those other people.
It might even help if we can love those other people,
because then we can start loving ourselves again.
Especially when we’re supposed to be a part of the same family.
“It takes two to tango,” our dads may have told us
as we tried to blame the fight on our sister or our brother.
And we believed it, because much of the time it is true.
So when we hate somebody else for something they have done to us
there remains a little nagging voice, whispering in our ear, that says,
“There might be, you know, just one half of one ten thousandth of a part
of possibility that I might have, possibly, contributed to the problem.”
So, maybe, just maybe, to be mad at,
or to hate somebody for something they have done
causes some of that anger, or loathing, or hate to stick to ourselves.
Which just kills us. Much worse than it affects anybody else.
Does that mean that we shouldn’t me mad, or angry, or even furious at someone
who wrongs us?
Absolutely not.
Pull out your Bible. Turn to Psalms.
It is full of psalms called laments.
Laments are songs where the children of God have been getting mugged by the “others”.
The children of God get tired of it, so they cry out to God.
Unfiltered. Uncensored. Unafraid. Inspired.
Here is a small sample:
"Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers; seek out their wickedness until you find none” (Ps 10:15).
“The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates the lover of violence. On the wicked he will rain coals of fire and sulfur; a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup” (Ps 11:5-6).
“May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own — who is our master?’” (Ps 12:3-4).
Notice that the children of God are not asking God to let them break arms,
rain coals, and cut off lips.
They’re asking God to do it.
They want God to “cry ‘Havoc’ and let loose the dogs of war.”
This is an extreme variant of number 6.
And then they do an amazing thing: they leave it up to God to do,
or not to do, what they have asked.
First, they describe in great detail exactly how they feel about their pain
to the Creator of the Universe,
then they describe in graphic detail the kind of pain
they want their enemies to experience,
and then they let it go.
Probably not after one lament;
maybe not even after one hundred.
But as long as they’ve got a hold on the pain and anger,
it has a hold on them.
As long as we have a hold on it,
it has a hold on us.
We can’t stop the memories in the present of the power of pain in our past,
But the pain will stop when we stop giving the memories of our past
power over the present.
Forget the Amalekites; God has removed us from their power.
Forget the Amalekites; God has dealt with them,
or is going to, soon, and very soon.
Forget the Amalekites.
I know that this sounds simplistic.
Perhaps it is; but perhaps sometimes we just make the answers too complex.
We tend to think that our problems are too complex for simple solutions.
And that may be.
Yet sometimes the truth is that we just have to keep doing the simple thing
until it finally works.
Sooner or later the children of God have to decide:
Decide to go gather straw and begin making brick again, or
start picking grapes, grapes in clusters as big as a man.
Decide to parse out every violation of the Law they have ever done, or
praise God for the grace that saved them from that indictment.
Decide to bathe in the river of wrongs done by the Pharaoh in Egypt
and themselves in the desert, or
cross the river and wipe out the power of the past
by embracing God’s power in the present.
What do we need to decide?
Our Father is trying to awaken us out of our nightmare to show us that
he has disposed of our monsters, chased off our fears.
Now we need to recognize his face, remember his strength,
see where we’re at, and decide to forget the monsters.
Remember to forget.
Grace, grace gives peace,
Ron
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