God came down

"God is present among you and you are saying with your lives that you aren't interested."
It's an Eugene Peterson quote I stumbled across a month ago that has stayed with me. It seems even more real and appropriate as Advent begins this week.

I think it would make an awesome t-shirt (if only I can be the one to wear it in front of a mirror). I wanted to put it on my business cards and write it over my doorposts. For me, those words just seem to release a scandlous, heartbreaking truth. Everywhere I look testifies to its legitimacy. Yet, it is more than a wearing or issuing of a scathing tesimony to the world in which we live. It's also a recognition and realization of my own willing participation and complacency.

Sometimes things come into our lives that are remarkable gifts, but we fail to ever see them. We let them slip by without so much as a nod. I wonder if it will happen again this year. What unexpected gift might God be offering us this Advent and Christmas season that will simply fall through the cracks? What will sit in the corner never unwrapped?

The message has been proclaimed some 2,000 years: God is present among you. Still, we say with our lives that you are not interested. Maybe this year will be different?

A king's tale

Sensational Sam, yes, that was his name.
His remarkable character gave his fame.
There was no one quite like the one they called Sam
To him, anyone else was just part of the Fam
The way he encountered each person he met
With laughter and listening and love was at best
A genuine personality, a great deal of charm,
in every dear person he would invest.
Everyone knew him all around town
There was no mistaking this man was quite round.
But bigger than waist or popularty
Was Sam’s great big heart for poor souls like me.

Sam had a way of making everyone special
And just when u needed a boost or spark,
He offered you something to melt through the dark.
But after a while, Sam’s message got old.
It didn’t hold water in the world we’d been sold.
There’s only so much to believe in, you and me.
It doesn’t seem possible that the best things are free.
Long after that day that Sam picked you up,
More likely than not, you were back on the truck
Chasing a dream that wasn’t your own
Walking through life like you lived all alone.
By the time you were older and smarter like me,
You realized there’s no use for someone like he.

No one remembers the day or the time.
I just remember it was a small headline.
Somewhere between the want ads and sports,
Was an article that seemed all out of sorts.
A man was found dead by the creek at the dump.
He was lying with dignity, a folded old lump.
No one was there to see his final act.
After sharing coffee with a wasted old hack,
He reached out and gave her the coat off his back.
The folks back in town don’t remember a thing
But down by the dump that sensational act rings.
To the tramps near the tree, by the creek outside town,
The whole world was turned upside down.
In the midst of that chaos, Sam was a king.
But each time I hear the story it stings.

Dream deferred

Not everyone has the opportunity to see the fruits of their labor. Over time, that can be quite frustrating if you are unable to find fulfillment in something other than end results. "What happens to a dream deferred" as Langston Hughes once posed. In my own work lately, I've found myself looking around at what I assumed was a bunch of barren land.
As the teaching goes, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains just a grain. We planted a few packs of zinnias last year and ended up with a garden full. That wasn't much of a surprise. The real surprise came this Fall as I'm trimming off 10 blooms in November from a lone stem that somehow found its way to the surface a year later!
Perhaps there's more to this soil than meets the eye. Perhaps there's a whole garden of resurrection work brewing just below our line of view. Today there are 10 zinnia blossoms. And that's just enough for me to smile. Just enough smile to birth hope.

Trick or treat

Yesterday was Halloween (or All Hallow's Eve in the Church calendar).
While I didn't have the chance to dress up and parade door to door seeking sugar-filled treats. I did have the opportunity to to witness dozens of other ghouls and goblins masquerade through a Hendersonville neighborhood.
If Halloween is known for anything, it's dressing in costume. Some outfits are custom-designed or homemade. Others have all the detail of high-end hollywood authenticity. All sorts of shapes and sizes and ages. Everyone can get in on the fun.
Of course, some criticize the whole idea of dressing up for a night and pretending to be something you're not. Truthfully, I'm more concerned about us who march around day after day pretending to be something they're not.
Some criticize the idea of hiding behind a mask or masking our true identity. We close ourselves off in a fantasy world and avoid dealing with reality. Yet, over the years, I've found out, more often than not, that our costumes or masks actually reveal a deeper truth about ourselves than we might imagine. A Joker or Cinderella, cartoon character or slasher villan, dinosaur or mummy. Our masked idenity can sometimes free us to speak what our lips may never be bold enough to proclaim. That's worth the effort once a year.
Be yourself. Trick or Treat!

Walls come down

We've all heard the quote: "Good fences make good neighbors." Most can think of a half dozen reasons to back this up as well. The truth is a barrier or a wall is much easier than having to deal with someone relationally. But, every now and then instead of putting up a fence, we take one down. It seems like it only happens once every fifty years or so (maybe as a jubilee). Oddly enough, I think it happened this week somewhere in a corner of Lilesville. What will happen next remains to be seen. I have a feeling it will be interesting and I think it's just about time someone opened the door for folks to start working on living in community.
What about you? Is there a fence that needs to come down somewhere? In the meantime, it might be worth praying about. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Good news run

From all the early estimates, it was not going to be a good week. However, all that changed with a little jog and conversation on a Monday morning.
I love it when someone preaches Good News to me. I spend my week trying to be attentive to ways of doing that for others and for my community. It's my vocation. It's part of who I am. But, when someone offers that grace to me, my spirit is raised up on eagle's wings.
Two miles out from town, I decided to head back. I noticed a lady out washing her car and waved. As i turned to jog back, something told me to stop and strike up a conversation. So, I put the next 2 miles on hold and met a new friend.
She had lost her husband just 3 months ago, so it turned out to be be a great blessing to converse together. Maybe the exchange that morning was mutually beneficial. All I know is that I left knowing everything was going to be okay this week. If a new widow can stand in her yard and testify to how hard it's been, but also acknowledge she is not alone, I think my problems will work themselves out just fine. "Even in a room with a hundred people, we might feel alone. But, we're not. God is with us."
Now that's Good News.

Divine foolishness

Sandy Davis was a modern day Jeremiah. After 3 years of attentive care to her husband as his body deteriorated to death from Parkinson’s, Sandy was diagnosed 6 months later with cancer. The next two years were spent battling for her own life, even to the point of remission. Yet, the siege had not ended.
In what would be her final year of life, Sandy decided to buy the farm.

Despite facing constant fatigue, a housing market that had bottomed out, fluid build up in her lungs, record foreclosures, the daunting task of moving, and a cancer that had literally spread everywhere, Sandy decided to place her mountain home for the last 20+ years on the market and buy a foreclosure condo near her old hometown by the coast. She wanted to see the sun that winter. She wanted to see the beach again. She wanted to keep living and planning for the future because she knew there was something to look forward to.

Now, it is no good looking for fairy tale endings in life. Sandy died of cancer without ever again really being able to enjoy that sand between your toes day after day. That is beside the point, however. She lived—and died—in faith.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Aunt Sandy would want the last year of her life to be tied up with the stress and trouble of selling a home in a market that had crashed, moving/packing and leaving your closest friends, and investing in some foreclosed piece of real estate hundreds of miles away. Then, I stumbled over Jeremiah 32 and God’s promise that “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

The reality was that Sandy was building on a hope far in the future. She didn’t expect to benefit herself so much from this foreclosed piece of land near the coast she bought. But, she knew all along that "houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land." That in some far off future, someone else would be seeing that sun, and walking that beach, and feeling that sand between their toes.

Jeremiah's field was to him what the condo on the coast was to Sandy—a sign of life, of hope, and a refusal to allow despair to be the final word. To act out our faith is not always easy. Sometimes we would like certainty and absolutes. But we fail to realize that certainty and absolutes are no longer faith.