From Pops' Workshop

Category: General

  • Extreme Makeover: Soul Edition

    Extreme Makeover: Soul Edition

    Do you remember the TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition?” Or perhaps you have seen the current revival. I am most familiar with the original version which ran back in the early 2000s. When the show first started, they would fix up and renovate some deserving person’s home, making it much more livable. After a few seasons, the “renovation” had escalated to tearing down the old home and building a completely new one. That reminds me of how Jesus deals with our run-down and barely livable souls.

    It is not a far stretch to imagine the carpenter Jesus being in the home renovation business. We might call him in for some much-needed repairs. But we don’t realize that he is not content to fix the one or two things we think are the problem; he will continue the work until the whole structure is perfect.1

    In response to our request for repairs, he says, “You do know that I will find other things that need correction and I will fix those as well, don’t you? We will likely end up touching everything from the top of the roof all the way down to the foundation. Okay?”

    With cavalier bravado, we respond, “Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Listen, I just need the bathroom plumbing fixed and some new lighting in the family room. You can do that, can’t you?” We are certain that we know the extent of the repairs needed, even more than Jesus does.

    Jesus might caution us, “Of course I can do that, but you don’t really know what you are asking for.”

    If we do not stop him, our request for repaired plumbing and new lighting will lead to a new house, from the foundation up.

    New Life or Better Sin Management?

    Of course, Jesus is interested in us, not our homes. And he does not offer to improve us; he offers to make us new. We are in much worse shape than we know. He takes our wounded, damaged, malformed souls and makes them new. Not just improved, new. He said we must be born again,2 and we must start over from the beginning if we are to have a full and abundant life.3

    We don’t really know what we are asking for, especially when we first realize our brokenness and turn to God for help with our damaged natures. Jesus is in the new life business, not the life improvement business. But when we come to him, we are not looking for a new life; we are looking for an improved version of our current life. We don’t want the whole thing torn down and rebuilt from scratch; we just want him to improve the parts that are giving us trouble, or that we are starting to find odious.

    We may come to him saying, “Jesus, I get too angry too often, and I drink too much. Can you help me be less angry and get my drinking under control?”

    Knowing our deeper need, Jesus says, “Let’s work on that anger and the wounding that leads you to drink too much. Oh, hey! Here is something else I’ve noticed. You know, you’re kind of greedy and judgmental, too. That is part of what makes you angry. Let’s make you someone who loves and loves properly; someone who loves others even more than you love yourself. Then everything else resolves so much more easily.” He will make us into people for whom anger and drunkenness are simply unnatural and unattractive. We can become the kind of people for whom sin is not attractive.

    Jesus asks us to let him remake us in his image. He wants to make us perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect.4 We can say, “no.” God will not go where he is not welcome. He may well help us with the anger and the drinking, but if we don’t let him fix the deep roots of our sinfulness, the results will almost certainly be like someone who patches up gaping drywall cracks without addressing the foundation issues that caused the cracking — the cracks soon reappear.

    Many of us approach our sinfulness like someone who puts up wallpaper to cover cracked plaster. It may look better, at least for a while, but the real problem has not been addressed. We’ve prettied things up so that the problems are not obvious, but the problems are still there. We take scripture like the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 55 as a behavioral to-do list. If we exhibit those qualities, then we will have life in the spirit. The fruit of the spirit is fruit; it is the result of or sign of a spirit-filled life; it does not make us spirit-filled. It is a description of life that is aligned with and formed by God’s spirit.

    Repentance Means Turning Around

    The Fruit of the Spirit, along with other biblical descriptions of new life, is God’s promise to us – “Invite me in, let me do my work, and this is what you’ll get.” It is an invitation to take up our crosses, to die to the world, and to live in Christ and let Christ live in us. Yes, sin is important. It can block the work of God (not because he is not omnipotent, but because sin generates shame that causes us to withdraw from God). Feeling guilty or telling God we are sorry is important, but it is just the starting point; confession (and forgiveness) is the unlocking and opening of the door of our hearts to the Father. Repentance is turning around and going back to wherever we first got off track and starting anew. For most of us, that is a process we will repeat again and again and again. But as we position ourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to re-form us from the inside out, we can and will start to bear the good fruit. We can have an extreme soul makeover.

    1. I am standing on the shoulders of giants. C. S. Lewis used this analogy in Mere Christianity, and tells us he borrowed it from George MacDonald. ↩︎
    2. John 3:3 ↩︎
    3. See John 10:10 ↩︎
    4. Matthew 5:48. ↩︎
    5. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
      Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV) ↩︎
  • Paradoxes

    Paradoxes


    A light shines
    It warms
    It brings life

    A light shines
    It exposes my flaws
    It illuminates what I've hidden

    Fear and shame
    I build walls
    To hide my flaws and secrets

    Behind my walls
    In cold and darkness
    Life ebbs

    The light moves
    Seeking me
    Drawing me out

    It finds me
    I welcome the warmth
    Slowly I come to life

    Again
    My flaws exposed
    My brokenness laid bare

    More walls
    Always more walls
    To hide and protect

    Safely behind my walls
    Cold and darkness prevail
    Life is all but extinct

    My safety
    My protection
    Slowly kill me

    The light is life
    My walls are death
    To live I must die
  • Becoming Resilient in a Disruptive World

    Becoming Resilient in a Disruptive World

    I recently heard a reasonably good working definition of resilience: the ability to not be affected by or quickly recover from buffeting, disturbances, and so on. That definition put me put me in mind of walking through a forest. If you have ever walked through a forest where there are no trails, you know how hard is it to walk in a straight line. We are easily affected by “buffeting and disturbances.” We start off walking due north, and before we know it, we are off in a completely different direction. A fallen tree or a boulder blocking our way nudges us subtly off course. Traversing a slope drags us off to the left or right as we walk across it. Finding a place to cross a stream leads us further away from our intended course. We put our heads down to shield our faces from a blowing rain and soon we are hopelessly lost. Our sense of direction and our ability to walk in a straight line is notoriously not resilient!

    A compass can save the day for us, but only if we use it! And we must use it nearly constantly; we must know we are off course as close as possible to when it happens. The longer we trudge ahead without checking our bearing, assuming that we are holding our course reasonably well, the more likely we are to become lost. It would be folly to set your course and then check your compass only after an obvious challenge, buffeting, or disturbance. There are too many subtle variations in our direction; you would stand very little chance of ending up where you set out for.

    For Christians, the in-dwelling spirit of Christ is our compass. We set our course to follow Jesus’ way. As John Mark Comer teaches, the true north of a disciple is to spend time with Jesus, become like him, and do what he did.1 The world around us is our primordial forest. Social media algorithms, twenty-four hour news cycles, and the constant pressure to do more and be more all buffet us and disturb our way. If we go very far at all with out consulting our “compass” we will soon be far off our intended course. We need to constantly look to God in prayer to see if we are still true to our course.

    Nearly five hundred years ago Ignatius of Loyola described a daily prayer method, the Examen, that helps us learn to consult our “compass” at least daily. You will find many descriptions of the Examen on line,2 and at its core, the Examen includes:

    1. Quieting yourself so that you can be more receptive to hearing God’s voice.
    2. Recognizing that your day is a gift, and giving thanks accordingly
    3. Allowing Holy Spirit to guide you as you reflect on your day
    4. Assessing the thoughts, moods, and actions that drew us closer God or seemed to push away from God.
    5. Asking God to help you navigate the challenges of the next day.

    Most people pray the Examen daily and many pray it twice a day. But as Jim Manney points out in his book, “A Simple, Life-Changing Prayer: Discovering the Power of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Examen,” the ultimate fruit of a consistent practice of praying the Examen is to become people who are constantly aware of how they are being subtly pulled off course. We can become like people who always have their compass in hand, always checking and knowing the way we should be going.

    We can become spiritually resilient in a disruptive world. If we learn to frequently check our spiritual compass, then when we are buffeted or disturbed in our following the way of Jesus, we can quickly get back on course.

    1. www.practicingtheway.org/ ↩︎
    2. A great starting point is: https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen ↩︎

  • Transforming Beliefs: Lessons from Inside Out 2

    Transforming Beliefs: Lessons from Inside Out 2

    I just watched Inside Out 2. It was a terrific movie.1 I am certain that many people, while being entertained, found the movie helpful. I struggle with anxiety, as do some I love dearly, and the movie helped to illustrate that struggle and give me some needed language and helpful imagery.

    The Power of Narratives

    Inside Out 2 contains a powerful message about how our narratives, the things we believe to be true about ourselves and others, are the building blocks of our sense of self. Early in the film Joy and Sadness visit the Belief System, where Joy deposits Riley’s memory of winning the hockey game and they watch in awe as that memory grows into a belief, “I’m a Winner,” which is woven into all of Riley’s other beliefs to make her who she is.

    Beliefs, or narratives, are created by us to interpret and weave together our experiences and memories. In large measure, they determine who we are. Our narratives tell us not only about ourselves, they also tell us what we believe to be true about the world around us. As depicted in the film, our narratives combine to create our sense of self; we use them to make sense of the world and our experiences in it.

    In the movie, Joy carefully curates Riley’s sense of self, allowing only “good” memories to grow into narrative.2 We don’t have that curation in our lives. Our stories are an amalgam of good and bad, ugliness and beauty, joy and sorrow, victory and humiliation, and pride and shame. We all experience all of those things and they become part of us via the narratives we create to interpret them and reconcile them with the complex mix that makes up our belief system.

    What do our narratives look like? We may, like Riley, believe we are good friends and we are winners. Or, perhaps some of these may ring true for you:

    • I am not safe in the world.
    • I am defined by my accomplishments.
    • I earn love (or rejection) by my behavior.
    • Others are not to be trusted.
    • If I work hard I will be rewarded.

    Of course, these are only examples but they give a taste of stories we tell ourselves to help make sense of our ourselves and our experiences.

    Already powerful and defining, the narratives we believe are even more powerful because we are usually ignorant of them and so, rarely if ever, examine them. Whether we are aware of these beliefs and narratives or not, they . But here is the thing, these narratives, that shape who we are and how we act and react, can be true or false. They can be toxic or tonic. They can build us up or tear us down. It is therefore important that we carefully and honestly examine our narratives, embracing the true and discarding the false.

    Narratives and Christian Formation

    Our narratives, both true and false, extend to what we believe about God and how he views us. When it comes to how they impact our souls, our God narratives can be life-giving or deadly. Spend a few minutes with the list below; ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern which of these narratives (or ones like them) you have incorporated into your belief system.

    • God loves me and nothing I can do can change that.
    • God is a harsh and demanding judge, rewarding me when I earn his favor and punishing my disobedience or lack of faith.
    • God is intimately concerned with every aspect of my life.
    • God is distant and indifferent to my day to day struggles.
    • I am a dearly beloved child of God.
    • I am a wretched sinners worthy of nothing but damnation.
    • God is a loving father, longing for the return of wayward children.
    • God is a tyrannical judge who is waiting for me to screw up so he can cast me away.
    • I must work my way into God’s good graces.

    As before, these are only examples. But It is important to understand the God narratives we have woven into our believe system; they can help or hinder our spiritual growth and maturity.

    Christian Formation is the long, slow process of becoming like Jesus; loving and obeying the Father and loving and serving each other as Jesus did. Like all of our other narratives, we rarely, if ever, examine our God narratives. We simply do not know what they are, where they came from, whether they are true or false, and how they are impacting our ability to follow Jesus.

    If we are living under a belief system that is woven from false narratives about God and ourselves, our process of formation is greatly handicapped. That is why many spiritual disciplines and practices are designed to help us form true narratives about God, who he is to us, and who we are to him. They teach us to open ourselves to God’s love and healing.3 Aided by the Holy Spirit, we experience God’s loving presence in our lives and, again with the aid of the Holy Spirit, we begin to rewrite the false narratives about God and reinforce the true ones.

    Where to Begin; How to Progress?

    Identifying and challenging our God narratives is not an easy task; it can be hard to even know where to start.4 We did not intentionally formulate our God narratives and we are not often aware of them. So how do we recognize them and find a path that leads us to true God narrative? Happily, there is a tool, the Enneagram of Christlike Virtues (ECV), that can help us identify those false narratives and beliefs and point us toward developing true narratives.

    You may be familiar with the Enneagram of Personality, a personality typing framework that has gotten a lot of traction in Christian and secular circles in recent years. It seeks to slot each person into one of nine personality types. The Enneagram of Christlike Virtues (hereafter ECV) recognizes that we are too complex to be defined by a single number and pulls us back from a system of personality types. The ECV looks instead at nine classical Christian virtues exemplified in the life of Christ.5 Each of the nine virtues has a corresponding deadly sin that is, at root, a corruption or turning inward of the virtue. For example, in the ECV, the virtue associated with number six on the Enneagram is “Courageous Obedience,” and the deadly sin is fear. The virtue grows out of a trust in ourselves to prepare for any problems that might arise, instead of trusting in God’s protection.

    Christ exemplifies each virtue and each sin is absent in his life. In our formation we aim for that goal; we are after all the virtues, not one or two. When we take this holistic approach, looking at all nine virtues and vices and seeing where each is evident in our lives, we can begin to see where we have false narratives that are hindering our growth. To continue the example, the false narratives that may drive us toward the sin of Fear and away from the virtue of Courageous Obedience are beliefs like: “I must never let _______ happen again,” “I am unsafe unless I am in control,” and “Everything will fall apart unless I _______.”

    The ECV framework can help us see where vices and virtues are evident in our lives, and for each vice or sin can help us see the false narratives about God and ourselves that may lie at the root of the vice. The framework also includes suggested spiritual exercises or disciplines and prayer focuses that can help us position ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit’s loving, restorative ministry.

    Even more importantly, the ECV identifies that Transforming Trusts need to help us grow from sin to virtue. The nine Transforming Trusts, and their associated misplaced trusts, help us see beliefs that are hold is back from the life God calls us to and light the way to the deeper trust in God that allows us to grow evermore like Jesus.

    At the end of Inside Out 2, Riley forms an integrated sense of self. Using insights from a tool like the Enneagram of Christlike Virtues along with classical spiritual disciplines and the guidance of qualified spiritual director, we can open ourselves to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to weave into our self image all of the Christlike Virtues. If you interested in pursuing this channel of spiritual growth, please contact me or reach out to David Wu at Mosaic Formation.

    1. I know, I know, I’m late to the party, but better late than never. ↩︎
    2. Spoiler alert: That turns out to be a not so great strategy ↩︎
    3. For example, Prayer, Fasting, Lectio Divina, Solitude, and Silence. ↩︎
    4. I am thinking only about our God narratives here. That is not to say that we should ignore other false narratives that misshape us. A qualified therapist can be of enormous value here. ↩︎
    5. The history of the Enneagram is controversial and can be murky, but nearly all agree that its present form as a personality typology arose in second half of the 20th century. However, many centuries earlier Christian monks and theologians had enumerated “deadly” sins and counterpoint virtues, including a nine-point circular diagram of Christian virtues set down by Ramon Llull, a Franciscan theologian and mathematician in 1307. ↩︎
  • Fear Not

    Fear Not

    Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Jesus

    The Bible repeatedly tells us not to be fearful or anxious.

    • Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.1
    • The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.2
    • And [Jesus] said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”3
    • So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.4
    • Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.5
    • Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.6
    • Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.7
    • Therefore do not be anxious, … but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.8
    • Cast all your anxiety on [God] because he cares for you.9

    How do you feel reading those verses? If you skipped over them just now, go back and read them again, paying attention to how they make you feel. Are you comforted by them or are you convicted of your inability to trust God? It depends on how we are reading those verses. The lens through which we read scripture will greatly influence how we interpret what we read.

    Most of us were taught to view the Bible as a divine instruction book. If you do what it says, God will be pleased with you. If you fail to follow the instructions, God will at least be disappointed or, more likely, will be angry with you.

    If we view the Bible as a rule book, “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” we will see these verses as commands to not be afraid. Then, when we are afraid or anxious, we take it a sign of spiritual weakness and a lack of faith; we are not doing what God commands. With this mindset we believe that when we are anxious and afraid, we are going against God’s commands; it is a sin to be anxious and afraid.

    I used to think that way. I believed that when I was anxious or afraid, it was as a marker of how weak my faith was, of how little I trusted God. Believing my anxiety was, at best, a sign of spiritual immaturity, I would slather on a thick layer of guilt and shame. Of course that guilt and shame would just make me more anxious, believing that I was displeasing God.

    But as I have learned about the triune God and experienced his love for me, and as I have studied spiritual formation and sat with others in spiritual direction, I am convinced that the Bible is less about following the rules and is more about understanding God’s loving desire for us. In particular, the New Testament is not laying down a new law book to proscribe our behavior. Jesus is not Moses 2.0.10

    Jesus is the full revelation of a Father who loves us and wants us to be happy and well. What if we looked at those verses on anxiety and fear as the wisest of wise advice and as encouragements from someone who loves and cares for us and wants us to be happy?

    Instead of reading “do not be afraid” as a law to be obeyed, can we hear it as comfort and encouragement from a loving God? Can we hear a father, grieved not by disobedience, but by our unnecessary fear and anxiety. Consider the story of the storm-tossed boat in Matthew chapter 8. Read it slowly, imagine the scene with your mind’s eye. Pay particular attention to how you perceive Jesus.

    And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”11

    How does Jesus seem to you? Is he frustrated with his disciples? Angry perhaps? If that is the case, I invited you to sit with the passage again, this time, imagine Jesus feeling how you might feel if your child was unnecessarily frightened by a storm; not angry, but a little sad that loved ones are needlessly distressed. Can you hear “O you of little faith” as a gentle chiding? Don’t hurry; stay with this reading a while.

    How you see Jesus in this parable is likely how you expect him to be if you come to him with your fears. What we perceive about God from our scripture reading has more to do with our preconceived image of him than with the words on the page.

    If you have learned that “fear not” is a command to be obeyed, and not an encouragement to a freer life, consider this exercise. Pick two or three of the scripture passages that you read as commands to greater faithfulness. Read it over slowly. Sit with it. Chew on it. Ask Holy Spirit to help you see words of love, encouragement, and even instruction, in place of commands to be brave (or else!). The Holy Spirit loves to show us the true picture of God, the God who does not condemn but loves, saves, and restores.

    1. Joshua 1:9 (NIV) ↩︎
    2. Psalms 118:6 (NIV) ↩︎
    3. Matthew 8:26 (ESV) ↩︎
    4. Matthew 10:31 (NIV) ↩︎
    5. John 14:27 (ESV) ↩︎
    6. Luke 12:32 (NIV) ↩︎
    7. Philippians 4:6 (ESV) ↩︎
    8. Matthew 6:31(a), 33-34 (ESV) ↩︎
    9. 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV) ↩︎
    10. And neither are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. ↩︎
    11. Matthew 8:23-27 (ESV) ↩︎

  • When God Breaks In

    God will break in on your life. You may not understand it, you may not recognize it for what it is, but he will break in on your life. God is an ardent lover, and, as such, he pursues us relentlessly. He never tires of making himself known, in hopes that we will turn to him and be saved. When God’s love does break into our lives, when he gets in past the noise, clutter, hurry, and anxiety of our lives, what do we do? We usually respond in one of three ways. We can ignore it and simply carry on as before, acting as if there is nothing noteworthy happening; we can recognize God and try our best to accommodate him in our lives, trying to work out what it is we are to do in response; or we can embrace God with all we have, abandon all we have and all we are in our pursuit of him.

    Ignore

    If we ignore God’s action in our lives, we are on the easiest and least disruptive track. We will also have a lot of company. Winston Churchill once said of his opponent that he would sometimes stumble over the truth, pick himself up, and hurry off as if nothing had happened. That is an apt picture of how many of us react when the power and beauty of God’s love finds a chink in our armor and breaks through to us. We can brush it off, hurrying back to our “real” lives, convinced that nothing really happened. We can rationalize or explain away what does not fit into our understanding of how the world works. We are like Ebenezer Scrooge, who attributed his experience of Marley’s ghost to indigestion: “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.”

    If we fail in our attempts to convince ourselves that nothing happened, we will tell ourselves that our experience of God has no lasting importance. Yes, something out of the ordinary happened, but it was a blip, an anomaly, a glitch in the matrix, if you will. Like the experience of deja vu, it is interesting and perhaps momentarily disconcerting, but it certainly has no bearing on real life.

    Our all-too-common response of hurrying past or explaining away God’s presence in our lives heads us down a dangerous path. If we repeatedly dismiss and ignore God’s invitations to us, we become numb to them over time, barely noticing them. If we do notice, we have become masters of rationalizing the experience and tossing it aside like the junk mail we don’t even bother to open. Eventually, we can become functionally blind and deaf — for all practical purposes, unable to see or hear God in any but the most extraordinary moments.

    God does not give up on us. He will continue trying to break in and break through with his love for us, no matter how often we brush him off and snub his overtures. But we may so harden ourselves that we are no longer awake to his activity.

    Accommodate

    The second choice is accommodation. When we experience God’s loving kindness, we recognize it for what it is: divine care and love breaking into our lives. We understand that this is not a flight of fancy and is not to be ignored. As we learn a bit more about God, perhaps from our friends or online resources, we realize that we have a part to play in this budding relationship. So we do our level best to accommodate God in our lives. We carve out a niche for God. Between friends and family, work and leisure, and social media and entertainment, we set aside some time for God. We work him into our busy lives as best as we can.

    This sounds like a hopeful direction, but it seldom turns out well. We give God his due, or at least we try our best. We become, as C. S. Lewis put it, like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We think of God’s call on our lives as a tax to be paid. We pay what we believe is required, and hold back everything else. We don’t want to cheat God; we will pay him what he is due and continue on with our “real” lives. We want to continue to enjoy the life we have been living. We do not realize that God is due everything.1 The divine tax rate is 100%. Our ignorance of this fact is the point on which this choice falters. We think we are on the right track, racing along to the end of the line. We may be on the right track, but we have not yet left the station.

    We acknowledge God, and we are genuinely grateful. But we continue on with our lives, consigning God to the slim margins of our overscheduled lives. Over time, our memory of what we once thought of as a life-changing God encounter fades. Any claim or call we might have felt God has on our lives becomes distant, smaller, and less important. Most of our time, passion, and energy remain devoted to the incessant demands of the world, and so any zeal or passion we may have felt fades away. God’s invitation to give ourselves to him fades into the background, drowned out by all the world demands and has to offer. At the worst, we may slip back to door number one and simply ignore what we originally sensed as important.

    However, most of the time, we end up going through the motions of honoring God, but nothing much has really changed. I used to live that way, and I was often in a cycle of being inspired, fixing my will on change, and failing. Eventually, I started to wonder if it wasn’t all a hoax. I would promise God, myself, and others that I was going to change. I was going to be a new man. I really intended to reform myself. I was that new man for weeks or sometimes only days before, without realizing that it was happening, I slipped back to my old ways. When we whip ourselves through this cycle enough times, it is easy to doubt the reality of God’s promised new, full life for those who love him.

    But there is good news here! We are not ignoring God, and he does not give up on us, even when our response to him turns out to be fleeting or half-hearted. He honors any attempt to respond to him. He does not wait for us to be perfect; perfecting us is the Holy Spirit’s job. Even as we struggle to accommodate God into our lives, the door is open for us to move from accommodating him to embracing him.

    Yet there are dangers here, too. We may be satisfied with whatever meager progress toward God we have been able to make, thinking that is all he wants of and for us. Then, when God breaks in and we again meet the love of God, we may reject it, thinking, “I go to church. I’ve (mostly) reined in (some of) my more egregious sins; I am not a bad person. I drank the Kool-Aid and said the prayer; I should now be free to live my life as I see fit.” Or, tragically, when God again breaks in, we may treat that as confirmation that we are doing “the right stuff,” and think God asks nothing more of us when, in fact, he is inviting us to go further up and farther in.

    Or, if we have been, as I was, in a sin-repent-repeat cycle, we may despair of even trying again. We have spent years trying to accommodate God in our lives, and we become frustrated by the lack of real change; we can become jaded. “I’ve been down this road before, and nothing is going to change. Yes, God. I hear you. I’ve tried and tried, but this just isn’t getting us anywhere.. Let’s just leave well enough alone and stay the course.”

    The truth is that where we are is not well enough, and God will not accept our attempts to break up with him. He loves us too much to leave us alone.

    It really isn’t possible to live with one foot in the Kingdom of the Heavens and the other in the kingdoms of the world. God’s soft and gentle call is too easily drowned out by the demanding din of the world. We can stay in this middle ground for a long, long time, or we can slip back into a “Nothing to See Here” posture.

    But there is a third way. It is both harder and easier.

    3. Embrace

    The third way is to go all in, giving up any claim to career, status, wealth, security, and even our very lives. To follow this third way, we must set aside our earthly, temporal desires and put our pursuit of God above all else. Ignatius of Loyola summed up this idea nearly five hundred years ago.

    We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to
    our life in God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening his life
    in me.

    Ignatius of Loyola, First Principle and Foundation

    For those of us who nursed at the bosom of Western consumerism and self-determination, this sounds like folly. It also sounds impossible. Jesus knew how hard this would be even for his contemporaries. He used crucifixion, a horrible, brutal, shameful, and excruciating execution method, as a picture of what we must do, explaining that if we would live, we must give up our lives. He tells his followers to take up their crosses and follow him.2

    Following this way is extraordinarily hard to do, but it is also easy. It is certainly easier than trying to accommodate God while still clinging to the ways of the world and enduring the constant struggle of trying to balance between them. Imagine the difficulty of trying to keep one foot on the dock and the other on a boat that is pulling away. It is so much easier to just get both feet on the boat. It is tempting to think that the “ignore” option must be easier than casting everything aside for God, but it is not so. When we ignore God and cast our lot with the world, we find that the best the world has to offer is never enough; we are ever seeking the next thrill, the next affirmation, the next rung on the social or economic ladder. We are always seeking but never satisfied. God is the one thing that can satisfy us at the deepest levels of our being.

    This giving up of our lives is anything but a “once and done” event. It is like a lifetime commitment to regular exercise and a healthy diet, not a crash diet. And if you ever try to genuinely change, to “put to death” the old life to take up the new, you will find it all but impossible. And by our own strength, cunning, and will, it is impossible. But with God, it is not only possible, it is all but certain, as long as we do what we can and trust in God for the real change. If we press into the Ignatian First Principle and Foundation, asking God to make it so with us, he will.

    Coda

    It was only after I was about half way through with this piece that I realized I was really just riffing on the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20): The seed that falls on the path is “Ignore;” the seed on stony soil and the seed among the thorns is “Accomodate;” land the seed in good soil is “Embrace.” If I am inspired (even without realizing it) by Jesus’ teaching, that can’t be a bad thing! “He who has ears, let him hear.”

    1. Neither do we realize that when we abandon our “old” life, we are given a life that is better in every dimension that matters. ↩︎
    2. Luke 9:23-24 ↩︎
  • What Does God Smell Like?

    What Does God Smell Like?

    We often picture God in our mind’s eye. Many of us hear God’s voice. But in a recent prayer time, I wondered, “What does God smell like?” Even as I write that, it feels like a weird question. Yet science tells us that our sense of smell is uniquely tied to our emotions and memories.1 So I sat with the question of what does God smell like.

    God smells like
         Incense and candles
              Grandfather's pipe
                   Grandmother's floral perfume
                        A lonely dirt road
                             The forest after a rain
                                  Honest sweat
                                       A new-born baby
                                            An approaching thunderstorm
                                                 Freshly fallen snow
                                                      Baking bread
                                                 A springtime meadow
                                            A field after the harvest
                                       Freshly cut grass
                                  A mountain waterfall
                             Freshly turned loamy soil
                        Autumn Leaves
                   Citrus in bloom
              The first thaw of spring
         Shed Blood

    What does God smell like to you?

    1. See, for example, https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/connections-between-smell-memory-and-health ↩︎
  • The Unlooked-For Good

    The Unlooked-For Good

    Christmas is nearly here. This year, the approach of Christmas leaves me with mixed emotions. I long for a Norman Rockwell Christmas: a loving family gathering around a fragrant balsam, feasting, good-natured ribbing, games, laughter, making new memories, and sharing remembrances of Christmases past.

    That fantasized Christmas is rarely, if ever, anyone’s reality. I have come close to it a few times. But the truth is that our dream of the perfect family Christmas, a wistful melange of Rockwell, Hallmark, and Hollywood Christmas classics, is not likely to be realized. Nonetheless, we look for it, we hope for it, and we may even convince ourselves that it is”normal” and anything else is a letdown.

    This Christmas, it will be just my wife and me at home, as it was last year. This is not a bad thing. Our children are grown, with their own families and busy schedules. They should be building their own traditions and their own memories. But the truth remains: our Christmas will look nothing like my idealized version of the Holiday.

    The massive gap between what we expect and what we get can become a hazardous space. We can be like a child who had his heart set on a pony for Christmas and, when he doesn’t get it, angrily rejects the gifts he did receive, gifts which would have delighted him had he not been consumed by the wrath that came from not getting his desired pony.

    This phenomenon is not limited to our holiday experiences; it can infect our spiritual lives as well. We can set our hearts on one particular good, which we eagerly await, straining to discern its advent. Focused on that one Good, we run the risk of not noticing the good that God does offer us. Or even if we do notice it we may reject it because we are too busy chasing the good we want and expect or because we are sulking and angry that we didn’t get what we wanted.

    C. S. Lewis noted this tendency.

    “It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good. Do you know what I mean? On every level of our life – in our religious experience, in our gastronomic, erotic, aesthetic, and social experience – we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we’re still looking for the old one. And of course we don’t get that. You can’t, at the twentieth reading, get again the experience of reading Lycidas for the first time. But what you do get can be in its own way as good.”
    ― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

    The same sentiment found its way into Lewis’ novel “Perelandra,” where a pre-fall “Eve” contemplates the temptation of wanting what we expected and despising what we received.

    One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or a setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”
    ― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra.

    I find myself in this state more often than I like to admit. I have decided what is good for me, what will make me happy, or how God will come through if he really loves me. And when I don’t get what I want or expect, I miss the good I am being given.

    When my Christmas does not meet the Norman Rockwell/Hallmark fantasy I carry in my imagination, can I set aside my disappointment and embrace the good I am being given? Or am I like those in Jesus’ day who were expecting and looking for a liberating King and so missed the presence of Love incarnate?1

    What are you looking for? What is the good you are expecting? How do you want God to show up in your life? Now, in the Christmas season, and always, when you expect a particular good, and when your cherished dreams don’t materialize, look for the good that is given, even as you lament the good you were expecting. Quiet your soul, take your lament to God in prayer, then ask him, “What is the real good you are giving me now?”

    1. Thanks to Torrie Sorge for this inspiration on Threads. ↩︎

  • Pursuing Grace

    Pursuing Grace

    My Desire is here
    just beyond my reach
    I see it
    I sense it
    I need it

    With each movement toward it, it retreats
    Like a wary bird, staying just our of reach
    A slow reach toward it,  a slow retreat
    Thrusting out my arm, a dash away
    A violent rushing grasp falls on empty air

    Ever fleeing; never leaving.
    Always returning, resting tantalizingly close.
    I want it; I need it
    A siren song I cannot ignore
    Yet every move to take it fails

    Stymied, I sit
    Watching
    Waiting
    Wondering
    Planning my next move

    In my quietude, my Desire moves ever closer
    Coming to rest on my open, outstretched hand
    My chance!
    My hand snaps closed
    To hold my treasure with an iron grip.

    My Desire, as if a vapor
    Slips through my closed fist
    Soon to perch again
    Just beyond my reach
    Ever fleeing; never leaving.

    Is this a joke; A cosmic tease?
    I cannot have what I most need?
    Shouting into the emptiness:
    "Why am I made to desire what I cannot have?"
    "Who delights in withholding what my soul yearns for?"

    My anger drains me
    Emptied of will
    Bereft of demands
    I sit again with hands outstretched
    Toward the unreachable, ungraspable

    It draws near again
    To rest again in my hands
    Exhausted and empty, I do nothing
    Sitting with my desire in my hands
    But not possessed by me

    An idea grows in my mind.
    Birthed of desperation
    Or planted there by what rests in my hands
    I draw my hands slowly to my chest
    Embracing my desire

    It does not flee
    Like a snowflake falling on water
    It melts into me
    It is gone
    But it remains

    It flows into me
    It makes its home in me
    Food for my soul
    Water of life
    I hunger and thirst no more

    At peace
    No desire to grasp or hold
    No need to possess
    I am complete
    I do not want

    Grace
    It cannot be taken, only given
    It cannot be earned, only received
    Becoming empty, I am filled
    Surrender is victory

  • The 23rd Psalm for the Anxious Life

    The 23rd Psalm for the Anxious Life

    Anxiety seems to be an inescapable fact of our times. The vast amount of information available, carefully curated by algorithms to keep us engaged and coming back for more, seems destined to drive up our anxiety. Nearly everything is hyperbolic. Death, destruction, danger, and peril are presented as always just around the corner.

    Surely we do live in fraught times. We have deep and seemingly unbridgeable chasms in our society. Politics, race, gender, and religion all seem to be pulling us apart. It is no wonder we are anxious. As real as our perils are, we amplify them in our social networks, adding to our anxiety. We are anything but peaceful, yet Jesus promised his followers peace:

    Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
    John 14:27 ESV

    Years ago, inspired by a talk from Alan Fadling, I was inspired to write a “version” of the 23rd Psalm, for the hurried life. Recently, I attended another workshop with Alan, this time on living an un-anxious life. Unexpectedly, I found myself drawn again to the 23rd Psalm, this time to adapt it for the anxious life.

    The 23rd Psalm for the Anxious Life

    Anxiety is my shepherd,
    I shall have no peace.
    It makes me distrust green meadows.
    It worries me beside still waters.
    It erodes my soul.
    It leads me in paths of destruction for no purpose.

    Even though I walk in the presence of God, I will fear every evil, forgetting he is with me; his rod and his staff fill me with dread.

    Anxiety feeds me a forecast of disasters that delights my enemies.
    It churns my mind with fear; worry overflows my life.

    Surely panic and brittleness will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the chaos of my mind forever.

    Anxiety is a part of our nature; it can serve us well. But when we find anxiety mastering us instead of serving us, we shouldn’t passively accept that. It is not God’s design for us to be mastered by anxiety. As one who lives with anxiety, I can attest that there is no silver bullet. Medication and therapy are both valuable tools.

    Practicing the presence of God is another valuable tool. It can be as simple as reminding our souls of the truth of the real 23rd Psalm, “The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack” (Psalms 23:1 HSCB). Our shepherd is the wisest, most competent, and caring shepherd. Reminding ourselves of that truth regularly can be a powerful tool in our anti-anxiety toolbox.