Ponder this...

Believing is seeing pt. 1

Towards the end she was able to witness more life than anyone I have ever known. It was as if the awareness of her mortality had widened her field of vision and she began to notice things that the rest of us miss. The simplest events took on fresh significance: a well cooked meal, a comfortable chair, a safe trip to the grocery store were all occasions to celebrate and be thankful. Shared moments with others, no matter how mundane, were now experiences to be savored. Life long habits like brushing her teeth, cleaning clothes, and setting the alarm clock were transformed into triggers of gratitude setting off smiles, laughter and prayers. A cup of hot tea was an occasion to celebrate the joy of tasting, the craftsmanship of the cup, and of course the blessing of having someone to share it with.  

After seven decades she was just now observing and absorbing the life that she had been living. She had somehow become attuned to the beauty and grace that lie just beneath the normal interactions of each day. It had all been present before but in some way she hadn't been present to see it.

She had come to recognize that each moment was a gift just waiting to be unwrapped - and unwrap she did! She became for those in her life a kind of tour guide to a world of the present-but-unnoticed. She fervently shared her appreciation of all the ridiculous and richness of life with an astounding fierceness. It was like she had been given a new set of eyes and was intent on describing what she was seeing to anyone who came near.  

When I first started meeting with her I was pretty sure she was crazy...

Twittering

I've been using Twitter for a few weeks now and I feel like I am finally able to use it in a helpful way!  Here are few tidbits that twitter has sent my way the past week:

"We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it. God’s purpose isn't limited by your past." - Rick Warren

"Your problems are not punishment; they are wake up calls! God is trying to get you to change.. Ps. 119:67

"It is always more Christlike to resolve a strained relationship than to disolve it. Hang in there. Gal.6:9 - Rick Warren

"Facing your fears is like grabbing an electric fence. It's a jolting experience, but you live thru it." - Tim Sanders

Bob Kilpatrick's "Secrets of Silence: Praying w/out Words" next on my list. He quotes Mozart: "The notes are silver, the rests are gold" - Len Sweet

I've also got in a free book giveaway, learned a bunch about making speeches and read a lot of Scripture. I also find it a fun challenge to get my thoughts down to 140 characters! 

Talks online

Here are three talks that I gave this Fall at the Annual Conference for the Canadian Council of Christian Charities. Download with a right-click or listen online with the player on the left.

Lifes Remains - Hope

Lifes Remains - Faith

Lifes Remains - Love

Parts of me

Death has made an appearance more often this year than any other in my life. I’ve been to more funerals this year than the last 15 years of ministry combined. Each person was taken too soon. I was not done with them yet :). Yesterday, I learned of another friend who will be moved to a hospice soon - another wife with cancer…

Part of me just wants to lie on the bed, curl into a fetal position, hug a blankey, and rock back and forth.

Part of me feels like everything is spinning out of control. We are on a train careening off the walls of a black tunnel - bouncing, jarring, never smooth, all of us holding our breath, waiting for the next collision.

Part of me wonders if gravity has increased. Is life getting heavier?  Is this what growing older feels like? Is this the ending of the world?

Part of me is awakened to the after-death reality of our faith. So many books, so many talks on this life, and yet without the hope of the next I feel only despair.

Part of me wants to seize this moment, to squeeze love into and out of my family like never before - in gratitude that we have today – in fear that we won’t have tomorrow.

Part of my heart lurches and tears come to my eyes whenever the word “resurrection” is spoken or sung. My faith leans desperate and hard on the hope that the Bible is true.

Part of me realizes that “hanging on” to faith, hope, love and life is our greatest challenge and greatest accomplishment.

Sunday night reflections

Some sermons are easy and fun to preach; the words kind of dance off the lips and it's an enjoyable experience to speak and to hear. Then there are days like today.

Today was the kind of sermon that causes me to debate whether or not I'm actually going to go though with it right up until the moment I step on to the stage. It can't help but be delivered without some trepidation and a whole lot of "help me Lord!" I didn't expect or want to have anyone tell me that they enjoyed the sermon as they left the building... and nobody did. It was the kind of talk where I walk immediately to a quiet room, get on my knees and pray, "dear God I hope that will do someone good... someday."

I spoke about how we will never be able to love fully if we carry guilt and anger. I spoke about confessing your guilt to the person you've hurt and forgiving the one you are angry with it. Part way through I thought that someone had sucked the oxygen from the room - it got very, very quiet.

Of all the sermons I've preached, the ones I remember the most are the ones like today. Ones that I didn't really want to preach, ones that I knew wouldn't make people happy, ones that I was uncomfortable giving, ones that I just felt Pushed into preaching.

Perhaps they are the ones I have most needed to hear.

Why bother attending Church? Part 3

Imagination.

The main role of Sunday gatherings in my life is imaginative. By imagination I don’t mean “pretend.” I mean the ability to form a mental picture of something that is not present to the senses. Each Sunday morning the task on the table is to engage our ability to imagine things - to form mental pictures of ourselves, our neighbors, our world, our future, to envision new reality. What we see behind our eyes transforms what we see in front of them.

This is a colossal opportunity and responsibility.

Competition for our imagination is fierce and subversive. I recently read that the average Canadian views over 3,000 ads each day. One quick glance  around my desk and I can see over 30 brand names! Each second our conscious and sub-conscious minds are blasted by images that are being stitched together to form our perception of the world and our place in it. Many of the deadliest “isms” (materialism, narcissism, consumerism) are not values of our choosing, but the result of years of images that have led us to see “reality” in their framework.Over time our imagination shrinks to the lowest common perception of what is real and what is possible. Eventually we just assume that the way we “see” the world is the world.

This is why faith is so important. James Whitehead describes faith as; “the enduring ability to imagine life in a certain way.” This God-life is so much more than what we think or how feel. It is in higher definition and way more profound than that.It’s a fresh way of experiencing and viewing and responding to the world. It is the handing in of one set of images and taking up another. It is the journey of learning to see the world, each other and ourselves as God sees us, and then to live as if God’s reality were the only one that matters. This is the great gift of imagination - the ability to choose the images that we will believe in and which will in turn will shape our lives.

Church services are an act of imagination designed to change the world. After 6 days of living in what everyone else considers reality, I come in and sing and listen and participate with other believers to imagine an alternative world.  I receive images and metaphors and reminders of great Truth that most people don’t choose to realize. I take in and put on a different perspective that is very definitely upstream, against the grain of the dominant reality. Slowly, in a sideways kind of way, I start to explore what might be. In faith I imagine that I am healed and whole. I begin to see myself in love with my enemies and neighbors. I dream of a world based on gratitude rather than selfishness. I envision myself loved by God and loving all that God loves. I walk into the sanctuary with one view of my life and then with the help of the community and the songs and the Story I look again - in faith – and things look very different. 

I need that.

Why bother attending Church? Part 2

Love.

Years ago I heard the very prolific videographer, Bill Gaither (I think he used to sing too ;)) say, “the older I get the fewer things I believe but the things that I do believe I hold on to tighter and tighter.”  Me too. I believe less things than I used to. Things that I once considered essential somehow became just a strong opinion and then evolved into a preference and now I find myself not wanting to even discuss them. What does remain are two or three things that I cling to more intensely than ever. The main thing left is Love. I believe in love. I want to love. I long to see love and be in love and show love. I think that the most important journey of my life is to become a better giver and receiver of love. Being part of a weekly gathering of God’s rag-tag people helps me traffic in love.

For one thing, church attendance puts me in the midst of some pretty great lovers. When I sit down in church I’m surrounded by examples of faithful marriages, prodigal-loving parents and head-over-heels- young lovers. I know there are other great examples of loving people that don’t show up at church, but I like to brush shoulders with loving people each week - they fill me up, they inspire me and let’s face it – they’re fun! Thanks to years of surrounding myself weekly with people like Bernard and Carol, Sue, John and Diane, Ellis, Gene and Barb and many more, I have glimpsed the power and possibility of love. In fact I’ve become something of a “love inspector” at church. My eyes and ears are peeled for the stories and samples of love in action. Try it for yourself and see. I’m pretty sure that if you take the time to dial in you will discover that at every church service you go to there is love in the air! To me that is worth sticking myself in the middle of, taking a seat and breathing deeply!

Of course there are other types of people at church each week too! Every Sunday I am in close proximity with people who are very different from me and who I find hard to understand and challenging to love. To be honest, sometimes I wonder if their only redeeming quality and usefulness on this earth is to teach me how to love! For many years I labeled those types of people “not useful.” Not really bad people, just people that I wasn’t interested in, didn’t particularly like and who I would not particularly miss if I never saw them again. Gradually however I’m shifting my sights and now I am convinced that those same people are actually God’s gift to me – to teach me how to love. (If you don’t know of any hard-to-love people in your church, then you need to go to a church where there are some.  If love is as important to God as I think it is, then He wants to put you in a place where you can grow in love. This is why it seems so sad to me when people change churches because they are “at odds” with someone. That isn’t a reason to leave – that’s a great reason to stay! God is inviting you enroll in Love School baby!) For the sake of my heart and my growth I need to be with people who I need God’s help to love. I need to be reminded that we belong together because we belong to God.

Love shows up to groups of people in fascinating ways. In a culture that turns everything from “we” to “me” there is something that feels so right about gathering with others to celebrate something larger than all of us. Sometimes, on the best of Sundays, I sit in the congregation and I am poignantly aware of my deep connection to those around me. We share a deep yearning to be loved and to love. We are united by the love we have gained and lost, the love we remember and hope for, the love we cling to and must let go. There is mystery here, but we are all hoping that somehow through these simple songs and words we could discover the healing and wholeness that we were made for. Love does arrive, and in its usual way - not as a mysterious force or feeling but as a person. Encouragement is passed through smile. Hope is shared in a hug and a handshake. Joy is found in commonality. Love arrives and gets passed around.

Tomorrow – part 3

Why bother attending Church? Part 1

After announcing my resignation from the blogworld of "how can we do church better?" I thought that it would be worth pondering a deeper question that I have about church: "Why bother with it at all?"  More specifically, "Why bother taking a couple of hours out of my week to attend a church "service."?

It's a question that many people in my country have answered with "I don't bother!" Maclean's magazine reports that 80% of Canadians believe in God, and two-thirds of us that Jesus Christ is His divine son.  But only about 20% attend anywhere on a typical Sunday morning.  In other words, "I like God and I believe in Jesus, but I don't see a real connection between those things and gathering with other believers every week."

Before I start, you need to remember that for the past 18 years I've been financially supported by local churches to plan and participate in their weekly assemblies. If there were no assemblies (or people attending them) I would be out of a job! So there is an occupational motivation for me to suggest that church attendance is "worth the bother." But my experience also means that for 18 years almost every week I've been thinking through the potential upside and downside of what happens on Sunday mornings. I've wrestled with this question a lot. I am intimately familiar with the downside of organized religion and the irrelevance, wasted resources, and problems with church assemblies (in fact,I am pretty sure I have  two problems for every one problem you have with how church is done). I understand that "You can't go to the church because the church is you." I know well the temptation to "start over" with a new structure in a new place out of frustration with what I see at the moment. And yet, here I am...again, 18 years into it and I'm still excited about the potential for our assembly in an established church, in a church facility, this coming Sunday. 

Here is the first of my reasons for attending a church service every week:

Habit.

We make habits out of the things that we value. There is no such thing as “just a habit.” If it’s a habit it’s because you value something enough to make it one. Take my teeth for example. I brush them every day because I value healthy teeth (and fewer trips to the dentist). On the other hand I don’t seem to value them enough to make flossing a daily habit (at least not beyond the 2 weeks of guilt-induced flossing that I do after each professional cleaning). If I value the big picture enough I will make habits that will create and color in that picture. Church attendance is a good habit. It is a spiritual discipline. It is intentionally putting myself in a position where I have the opportunity to grow spiritually.  

Here’s some more about my habit.

It’s a habit of inconvenience. Someone described it like this: "I go to a place I didn't choose, at a time I didn't choose, to be part of something bigger that I do choose." I purposefully position myself against the flow of the rest of culture. Every week I can think of that would be more fun, more interesting and more entertaining than a church service. On any given Sunday I would rather be golfing, playing squash, hanging out with my wife and kids or sleeping. This habit reminds me that I am not a victim of my wants. In a culture that tries to cater to my every whim, the fact that I choose to inconvenience myself to go to church forms me and reminds me that life is not all for me or about me or up to me. I need that.

It’s a habit of rhythm. More and more I am realizing that life needs a beat. My lifesong needs a good groove. I need to give and I need to receive. I need solitude and community. I need intellect and emotion. I need work and rest. I need to lament and to celebrate. Fast and efficient is so embedded in this culture that I need somewhere to slow down and receive – whether it feels or looks  effective or not. Even God took a day off. Church attendance isn’t the same thing as a Sabbath, but it does change up the rhythm of my week and that makes my lifesong all the more interesting to sing and to listen to.

It’s a habit of the unusual. Church services are strange and that’s the way that they should be. Sometimes we forget how unusual it is to sing with other people, to read and listen to old literature, to willingly give money away, and to participate in ancient rituals. Where else in culture do we do these things? The strange rituals in an assembly tie me to history and deep symbolism. I need to do things that I may or may not feel like doing in order to bond myself to the meaning they represent. Besides, sometimes I just like doing things that are strange – it makes me feel special.

It’s a habit of attending. There is value in just showing up and waiting. There are things that can only be received by waiting – by being available and open. By intentionally placing myself in a position so that I can hear what I need to hear when it happens. For instance, all the sermons throughout the year are not going to impact you equally. But the discipline attending puts you in a position to hear the handful that are what you need to hear - and we never know which ones they are ahead of time. Most growth is a result of discipline and often times the discipline of showing up blooms into opportunities and learning that would never have occurred otherwise.

Part 2 tomorrow.

Your greatest gift

At CCM Magazine, Matt Redman talks about suffering and worship:

"At the age of 7, Matt’s father committed suicide, although Matt didn’t discover the cause of death until he was about 10. “It’s interesting,” he says, philosophically, “seasons like that either propel you toward God or away from Him. I think when times like that come in your life, you either go down the path of bitterness and complaint, or you choose to trust God. Even at that age, I knew enough about God to know that—well I don’t understand this, but God is good, and God is real. So I actually chose to get more plugged into Him at that young age of 10, after hearing Luis Palau speak at a large rally in a football [soccer] stadium.”

When Matt’s mother married again, he says his step-father “turned out to be quite an abusive guy. I’ve thought a lot about that Psalm that says, ‘God’s a father to the fatherless’ (Psalm 68:5). I would lean on that a lot, when I was 13, 14, 15, and there was a lot of terrible stuff going on at home. It made me lean on some of those things that I knew to be true about God. It’s a funny thing, because you never want those things to happen. No one asks for a painful time, but looking back, you can see how God made me to be fruitful in the land of my suffering. Being a worship leader now—writing songs—I look back, and I can see that that solidified my walk with Christ, that time.”

Read the rest of the article

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I think this begins to explain why Redman's ministry has been so powerful.  Our greatest gifts to the world will always flow somehow out of our most difficult and powerful experiences.  The challenge is that many of us never intentionally process, reflect upon and allow our perspective to be continually shaped by the tough things we have gone through in life. It just hurts too much to go back there.  But whether it is accident, tragedy, or the loss of a dream or the breaking of an expectation there comes a time in life when we need to go back and dig around.  To shovel deeper and explore further. There is  gold in them there memories if we have the courage to find it. 

It's a sad thing when someone you love is unable or unwilling to search for God in a painful experience.  Years and years go by and the result is a double-tragedy.  Not only did a bad thing happen, but any redeeming growth and ministry to others is shut down.  More and more I am convinced that we never become all we need to be if we do not join hands with another and carefully and prayerfully enter back into our memories.  Rather than avoiding the blackness, over and over the path to changing our world winds it's way through the dark, dying things and comes out the other side in surprising new life. 

You give and take away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Easter Surprises

I realized again this year just how surprising Easter is.  Resurrection amazes me. Yes, I mean The Resurrection, but I'm becoming more aware each year that Easter is more than an event, it is also a definition of how God gets things done. It is His way.  It’s as if He has never forgotten breathing life into Adam and he has never stopped. He's still into resurrecting, creating life from death, making ashes rise,  taking the irreversible and reversing it, gathering the long-shot, the hope-less and the impossible into Himself and then breathing into them - and nothing is ever the same. Easter messes with my definition of reality. What is possible? What isn't?

This year I am pondering new life in Adam and Jesus and the seeds of it in you and me. It's incredible and weird. It goes against good sense and common sense. It leaves me feeling like I imagine the disciples did when they first witnessed resurrection - eyes popped wide open and heart racing - a mixture of amazement, fear and hope. Fear and hope. Because I realize that those in whom God does His great work have to first of all be dead. God works not by protecting us from death, but by bringing us back to life again. Each moment of each day carries the possibility of new life - the seed of resurrection - and when my eyes rest on that seed I find hope growing in me where I least expect it.

I’ve seen a lot of resurrection going on this past year.  I saw it in a marriage that I was sure adultery had killed - in a mother whose spirit I thought had died with her son -in a church that seemed about to expire -in a heart that I thought bitterness had strangled years ago -in a relationship that I had already had a funeral for!

Where I live Easter usually happens before Spring. There are no flowers poking through the snow here, no lilies to signal new life. But resurrection still happens in this place. After six cold months of winter - it still happens. God weaves it into our experience to remind us how much more there is to life than what we can understand, see, touch and feel. I think He has planted resurrection in the daily grind to remind us how much we need it and to help us learn to trust it.

What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven--and the future starts now!

1 Peter 1:3-4 (MSG)