God at the Center

I heard a reading of Scripture  in a podcast from another Methodist church last week that captured my interest and spoke to me in a new way about this particular passage from Luke 1.  Here’s what I heard:

 God’s messenger, Gabriel, was sent to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a young woman who was engaged to man named Joseph, who himself was a descendant of the great King David. And the young woman’s name was Mary. And God’s messenger said to her, “Hello you who are full of grace! God is with you!”  And she was perplexed by his words and a bit shaken up by them. And Gabriel continued, “Don’t be afraid Mary. God has a special place in his heart for you. Because of that you are going to have a baby, a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 

I’ve been imagining what it might feel like to hear from a messenger of God, “Hello you who are full of grace!” or “God has a special place in his heart for you.” 

Those words remind me of what an amazing young girl Mary was.  Her nature and her heart must have reflected all the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control).  After all, she was the one chosen and trusted by God for this precious and amazing mission, to be the mother of God’s Son, Jesus.

I compared myself to Mary and of course fell short of seeing in myself the nature that God must have noticed in her. I was feeling pretty miserable about myself and the areas that I continue to fail in. And I found myself apologizing to God for not being more like Mary!   

And then out of nowhere, it hit me. I sensed God saying something to me and I heard all the words in a different way.  ”Hello you who are full of grace! God has a special place in his heart for you.” 

And I was reminded. Those words are really not about us. 

They’re about God.

This morning I read our Grow Pray Study guide passage from Isaiah 9: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

Throughout the Bible we are led to remember the experiences of people who have struggled in the darkness. God wants us to take time to remember where we have been and where we are going. Without remembering my own experiences of deep darkness I cannot appreciate the freedom and light I know today through my relationship with Jesus.

Walking in deep darkness is a phrase that can describe cycles of the human condition. Fear, anxiety, apathy, depression, confusion, crisis, pain, suffering, and hopelessness are some of the feelings that can fuel the deep darknesss. 

God created our life here on Earth to cycle from dawn to daylight and the deepest night back to dawn again.  This cycle helps us remember that as deep as the darkness may be, dawn always comes again. We can depend on it.  It gives us hope. Deep darkness doesn’t have the last word. God does. 

Today I want to remember that no matter how dark or overwhelming a situation may feel to me, God always has the last word and the last word is not deep darkness. The last word is Jesus.

This may sound strange, but I really like being in the fog!  I’m not talking about  a mental fog, but the mist that surrounds me on a foggy morning, like this morning, as I walk and think about God being present here with me. 

Fog is really a cloud that makes its way down to earth and when I find myself swallowed up in white misty fog, as I am this morning, I am reminded of the great ocean of God’s Spirit that surrounds me each moment of every day. How can I not feel his presence? Why do I struggle to take more of it in? 

Throughout Scripture God’s presence has often been represented as a cloud, especially in the story of Moses.   I love this verse from Exodus 34:5: Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD.

God came down as a cloud, enveloping Moses in his presence.  Still, God had to introduce himself to Moses. That’s kind of funny but it’s also real.  As human beings we constantly struggle to live in the present with an awareness of God being near.

In this day, I want to practice developing my awareness of God’s presence.  I also want to make this my prayer for the week: God, show me your will for my life. Amen.

Before I enter into the busyness of this day, I enter into prayer and slow down my thoughts to place God at the center of it all. I think about all the people and situations I might encounter in this day.  Just as God is present with me here, God will be present with me in every moment of this day. God sanctifies ordinary people and ordinary situations and makes them holy.

I read from 1 Corinthians 3 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? …For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

That last sentence is one I spend some time thinking about. ”For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”  What an amazing thought.

Something about the way I heard that sentence today brings new understanding for me. ”For God’s temple is holy” is a phrase I can  comprehend more easily.  But, “and you are that temple,” is a phrase I have to spend some time on.  I emphasize different words in that phrase to try and gain new understanding. And you are that temple. And you are that temple. And you are that temple. And you are that temple.

I am that temple, the temple where God lives. I carry the living God with me. Wherever I go, whoever I’m with…I carry God with me.  I carry God’s heart in my heart.

i carry your heart with me by E. E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done by only me is your doing)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate)
i want no world (for beautiful, you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

I remember reading a book once titled Good Grief. I first thought it might have been written by one of the Peanuts characters, “Good grief Charlie Brown!” is what I immediately heard in my head. But it turned out that it was a book that helped me understand healthy ways to deal with grief. The author is Granger Westberg and the book is still in print. 

The book outlines 10 stages of grief we journey through in timelines that are generally unique to each individual. The most basic teaching from this book is that grieving takes us to places we may be unprepared for but we must be patient and accepting of ourselves and the process. We’re okay! I was reminded that God wired us to cope through time, faith and relationships.  We need to let people we trust know when we need help and encouragement.

 I’m going through a period of grief right now. Yesterday I was energetic and felt completely in control. Today I’m sad and hurting. I felt a little guilty yesterday because I felt so good, I felt at peace. But I reminded myself that my mind, body and emotions know how much grief I can cope with at one time. I’m not completely in control of this process. I need to be patient with myself. I knew the tears would come again. But each day brings new progress. As I look back I know I’m better today than I was on Monday.  

 If you’re dealing with grief don’t be impatient with yourself. Take some extra hugs, talk with someone about how you’re feeling, they may be feeling the same way. Grief is something we do together.

I can’t say that I really have words to express what I was given a glimpse of at 2:22am this morning, but I’ll try. My precious friend Charlene passed from this world, which is veiled with things that distract us from God, into our real world, the one where we are completely present with God for life. I’m still breathing in the mystery of that moment.

Charlene’s love for God, faith in Jesus and heart for making faith and love real for everyone within her reach provided a great gift to all of us. She helped us see what she saw, and she never shied away from helping us tighten up our focus on God. How could we miss him while in her presence? And she challenged us to do more than look for God, “living in obedience” was her mantra. How many times have we heard her respond to our questions and ponderings with…”sometimes we just have to be obedient to God and the rest will come.” When all that is swirled together with a huge flair for comedy, creativity, zany brainstorming, competitive game playing and detailed list making…well, you’ve got a whirlwind of fun named Charlene.

So last night I had the sweet privilege of being close by as my dear friend slipped from this world to the next. As she took her last breath, I felt as though I too had stopped breathing. The room was silent to me, but I know there must have been weeping. I was swept away into a place of spiritual imagination (a phrase I had only learned earlier in the day), watching her as she entered heaven. I sensed the wonder and amazement she must have been experiencing in that moment. I imagined that the presence of God swept over and through all her senses, leaving her filled with peace…leaving her filled with refreshment. Complete is the simple word that kept coming to my mind.

Then someone in the room asked me to pray.  I really didn’t want to break through the silence with the sound of my own words but I knew it was time to be present with her family. So I did my best to bless that holy moment with my own inadequate words.

All I can say now is, “Thank you, lovely Charlene, for being my friend!”

Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend who was struggling to understand more about God and suffering.  When a person knows that the pain they are experiencing will likely continue for the rest of their life, and they have many years of life yet to come, the future can feel hopeless and overwhelming. When we lose someone we love, life may not make sense for a long period of time. We all hurt and we all have questions about why.

Questions like, “Why did God choose this to happen?” are valid questions for all of us to explore.  So I’m sharing a link to a sermon by Adam Hamilton, Senior Pastor of the Church of the Resurrection UMC in Leawood, Kansas. Adam explores these questions and provides a perspective on God’s role in our life and death that I appreciate. I’ve shared a link to that sermon. Check it out if these are questions you’re exploring as well.
God and Suffering

Today I am receiving a lot of comfort and hope from God through a poem and a prayer.  The prayer is from the Apostle Paul and the poem, which is deeply connected with the prayer, is titled A Future Not Our Own.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!  Amen. ”    Ephesians 3:14-21

A Future Not Our Own

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

poem by Bishop Ken Untener

Four year olds experience life with emotional freedom. They are uninhibited in the way they express their feelings.

I’ve been treasuring the moments when my four year old grandson, Joshua, walks through our front door.  He immediately runs in to find me because he knows where I’ll be. His arms are stretched out straight as runs through the house calling out, “Gramma, where are you?” He does this because he knows how happy I’ll be to see him and how happy he’ll be to see me.  He knows that when he reaches me I’ll scoop him up in my arms to hold him and tell him how much I love him. He’ll tell me he loves me, too. As he grows older these encounters will change. Like the rest of us, Joshua will become a bit more reserved and relationships will become more complicated.

But four year olds can teach me a few things about the simplicity of loving God. I can make it a lot harder than it should be.

I know where God is…he is here with me. So in this moment, can I simply throw out my arms uninhibitedly and call out his name?  Can I simply love being with him without complications or agendas?

Psalm 63:3-4 says, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”

God treasures these moments with me.