Sinners in the hands of a loving God
Scares us far more than Jonathan Edwards’ angry God
God’s complete, unrelenting, unconditional, extravagent love
Intimidating us so, melting our shame-based defenses
Shrinking back, we invent rules to narrow the flow, conditions for controlling
This complete, unrelenting, unconditional, over-the-top love
So terribly wonderful, overwhelming our senses, flooding our souls
Sinners in the hands of a loving God we are
Thanks be to God
Amen
“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?'” -Romans 8, Holy Bible, The Message Version
“We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us.” -Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life
A childlike wonder.
That’s what happens when we really think about it. It’s like we wake up one day and realize our lives are filled with so much grace, so much love, which we really don’t deserve. We realize their are people who really love us, and for the life of us, we don’t know why. We wake up to the fact that we are among those human beings whose basic needs are met and we have the opportunity to move through our days without excessive concern about next meals or safe places to sleep. Our awareness rises, informing us that we have far more opportunity to do, to be, to make something of ourselves than do so many others in this world.
How does this happen? Why is it that some of us are born into families who support our development, positioning us to become responsible adults who can fend for ourselves? Why is that others, through no fault of their own, are born into such chaos and brokenness that 98% of their waking energy is spent just trying to climb out of a hole?
So, do I thank God that I started where I started and not in places of deprivation or desperation? Does God take or want the credit for this; knowing that means somehow God’s involved in the plight of others who were born into circumstances far worse?
Whatever God’s role was/is in our beginnings, here’s what I know about the present and future. Spending a life putting others down to build us up is wasted life. Instead, we are here to make our contribution. We are here on this revolving globe with purpose. We are here to contribute to the common good, to make a difference in the circumstances of others. We don’t have choice over the places where we began, yet we have so much choice over the places we go today. God is calling us forward, calling us to make our contribution with the one potential-packed life we receive. This resurrection life is not timid or anxious. Resurrection life is “adventurously expectant.” May we engage life as we find it today, looking for the opportunities to spend ours with abandon, making our contribution to the common good of us all.
O God, how can you stand it? I’m sitting here reading in my news feed about a terrorist attack wherein 20, plus the terrorists, went down…this time. Earlier this week how many were killed in Instanbul? I’m losing count Lord. And now I see a report about a mother who stabbed her four children, all under six years old.
How can you stand it O God? It seems that this world is spinning downward, spinning out of any semblance of control. It appears to be a self-reinforcing downward spiral determined to bring pain and suffering to as many of us human creatures as possible. How did we get here? Why is our human family so bent on self-destruction? And, how can you stand it O God?
At some point, enough is enough. We reach the end of our patience. Our defenses against tragedy are worn down and we fall into grief. Our patience with one another grows thin and we are ready to take revenge, O God. I’m there. Many of us are there.
So what about you O God? Are you there too? Surely it’s worse from your vantage point. You see far more pain and suffering than any of we humans will ever see. Given this O God, how can you sit there and not act? In fact, we are ready for you to act O God. We are ready for some good Old Testament wrath and fire and destruction. Wipe them out O God. Take them down. Do whatever it takes to turn them to salt pillars, or bury them in the Red Sea, or take their firstborns. Do whatever it takes O God to stop this chaos! Surely you can’t stand it anymore? Are you just going to let your children kill each other until this planet and its population selfdestructs; until it all goes up in smoke? Haven’t you had enough, Lord God?
And then O Lord, what about us…our family, our tribe, our clan…even me? All this chaos makes it so clear that everything is so fragile. Our health, our finances, our jobs, our community, our church…Lord we are so keenly aware that everything can be wiped out in a heartbeat these days. Security, the kind we used to have, seems to have fled this place; fled our lives. We are living on the edge; often on the edge of chaos. Where did our safe, secure, protected life go? How can you stand all this Lord? And how can we too stand it another day?
So now, O God, we take a deep breath. We exhale all that pain and craziness and hate, and we look to you. And now we remember. We remember what we know of you. We remember what you did about the hate, revenge, and chaos. You incarnated. You took on flesh and blood and walked and lived among us. You actually embraced this whacked-out world, experiencing all of the above. You demonstrated your answer…stretching out your arms and receiving the suffering and pain. Somehow, O God, in the mystery of your cross, you did something powerful. You demonstrated love. Your love was not revengeful or spiteful. Your love embraced the enemy, the abuser, the persecutor, the angst of it all.
And in so doing, O God, you delivered us to a better way. You redeemed us from the need to exact our pound of flesh, to be the “righteous judges.” You redeemed us to do the same as you…to incarnate your love. You believe love is more powerful than hate and will ultimately heal the human family. You believe your kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. You believe in we human beings, seeing goodness and potential when we can only see evil and despair.
And this is your mission for your people called Church. This is our calling O God…to love…even when it’s so difficult. In fact this is the opportune time to be the Church, a community gathered around love, one who worships and imitates the prince of peace and Lord of love.
So, here we go O God. We have no idea how we are going to do this; to love each other and our world. Yet we know, deep in our bones, this is what you call us to do. You do not call us to smite one another. You do call us to love one another. To this end, we cast ourselves on you O God. If this calling is going to get done, to be accomplished, we must receive power from you O God, for we cannot do this in our own strength. It’s too much and too hard.
So this day, we cast ourselves on you, relying on the power of your Holy Spirit. May we be your disciples, reflecting your love, empowered by your Holy Spirit, this very day and each day to come. Through the love, grace, and power of Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.
We think we can forgive anyone most anything. We believe we have forgiven everyone most everything.
But then, we run into it. We run into a circumstance which triggers those deeply buried feelings. Or, we slow down enough (like during a holiday weekend), that our defenses of a busy life or focused work melt away, and what’s unforgiven rises to the surface.
We can forgive most anyone most anything…except that. Because that hurt too much, affected people I love, was a genuine and deep hurt, brought lasting effects to my and our lives. That injury was never healed…only scabbed over. That pain turned into bitterness, giving birth to resentment. We even thought we had forgiven; believed it was all done…given it to God, so to speak. But that one…that wound was just too deep to forgive, try as we might.
What do we do, when try as we might, we cannot forgive?
Step 1 – Turn to Jesus, the most excellent forgiveness practitioner this world’s seen. Recognize this pain, hurt, and now bitterness and resentment…is still smaller than the forgiveness required of Jesus.
Step 2 – Pray for a shrinkage. Some healing…some forgiveness, is so far beyond us, we discover we cannot do it. Somebody beyond us has to give aid. Pray that God will surround that cold hard bitter stone inside us with love…chipping away our resistance, reluctance, and everything in us that screams out against forgiving. Pray that God’s grace will melt our hardness, break apart our unwillingness, and soften our judgment. Some forgiving requires power beyond ourselves.
Step 3 – Repeat.
Through the grace, love, and power of Jesus Christ our Lord, may it be so…even today.
“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?'” -Romans 8, Holy Bible, The Message Version
“We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us.” -Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life
A childlike wonder.
That’s what happens when we really think about it. It’s like we wake up one day and realize our lives are filled with so much grace, so much love, which we really don’t deserve. We realize their are people who really love us, and for the life of us, we don’t know why. We wake up to the fact that we are among those human beings whose basic needs are met and we have the opportunity to move through our days without excessive concern about next meals or safe places to sleep. Our awareness rises, informing us that we have far more opportunity to do, to be, to make something of ourselves than do so many others in this world.
How does this happen? Why is it that some of us are born into families who support our development, positioning us to become responsible adults who can fend for ourselves? Why is that others, through no fault of their own, are born into such chaos and brokenness that 98% of their waking energy is spent just trying to climb out of a hole?
So, do I thank God that I started where I started and not in places of deprivation or desperation? Does God take or want the credit for this; knowing that means somehow God’s involved in the plight of others who were born into circumstances far worse?
Whatever God’s role was/is in our beginnings, here’s what I know about the present and future. Spending a life putting others down to build us up is wasted life. Instead, we are here to make our contribution. We are here on this revolving globe with purpose. We are here to contribute to the common good, to make a difference in the circumstances of others. We don’t have choice over the places where we began, yet we have so much choice over the places we go today. God is calling us forward, calling us to make our contribution with the one potential-packed life we receive. This resurrection life is not timid or anxious. Resurrection life is “adventurously expectant.” May we engage life as we find it today, looking for the opportunities to spend ours with abandon, making our contribution to the common good of us all.
May we be shaped by you today O God.
Not by the cultural warriors of the day.
Not by the politicians spewing anger and hate.
Not by those who’ve given up on this world as hopeless.
Not by preachers who ride in private jets while milking the emotionally vulnerable for contributions.
Instead, may we be shaped by you today O God.
May we join your movement in this world which ushers in your kingdom.
May we reflect your generous Spirit when it comes to giving away grace.
May we live like love really is transformational.
May we escape our self-limitations and live as the people you believe us to be.
May we banish all fear, knowing living in fear is contrary to faith.
May we be farmers, who harvest your fruits of the Spirit.
May we be shaped by you today O God.
Through the grace, power and love of Jesus Christ our Lord, may it be so today.
Amen.
What do you do when stress escalates, becoming distress? How about when you feel the white hot anxiety burn?
A husband feels discounted by his wife’s superior intellect so he becomes overly assertive, even slightly aggressive in his posture and mannerisms. A manager is caught in relational binds between the executives and the front line staff, finding herself chewing her fingernails to the nub. A Christian man moving through his midlife transition gravitates toward fundamentalism, unconsciously trying to find something solid in his life.
Therapeutic types have a phrase which describes these typical anxiety-based reactions: regression. Sigmund Freud first described regression, labeling it as a defense mechanism for coping with anxious experiences. Simply put, when anxiety goes up, our functioning often goes down, reverting to more primitive and less developed thoughts and actions. Regressive tendencies under stress are unconscious, happening below our awareness.
It turns out that our brains conspire toward regression. When anxiety-provoking events occur, our attention immediately flees from our large prefrontal cortex (our “thinking cap”) just behind our foreheads, moving two levels down to the amygdala. Resting just on top of the brain stem, the amygdala is the most primitive part of our brains, telling us what to do in an emergency (fight, flee, or freeze). Thankfully it is there, making the decision to slam on the brakes when a child runs out in front of the car when we round the corner.
Though adaptive and helpful in an emergency, the amygdala is not a great place to hang-out or spend much of our time. When guided by the amygdala, our reactions are primitive, designed to alleviate emergencies. We regress to very basic operations.
Given this, I’m understanding more clearly the rampant anxiety-based reactions in our world. Regression is making sense of why otherwise sophisticated and rational Christ-followers seem to trade in their understandings of God for more primitive forms when anxiety skyrockets. In particular, it’s very clear that many Christ-followers appear ready to trade in Jesus for the Old Testament Warrior God.
Early in humanity’s history, survival of the fittest was THE rule. Our ancestors tended to extremes when it came to demonstrating their fitness for survival, especially regarding violence. When one of our family members was killed, we would take out the perpetrator’s entire family in return. You kill one of our tribe’s families…we wipe out your entire tribe. Retribution was swift and excessive.
Into this context, the Hebrew people received guidance from God which introduced fairness. “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” literally. This retribution rule was far more compassionate than previous practices.
But then the bar was raised again. The advent of the Prince of Peace occurs. This Prince rules with love, believing self-sacrificing love has the power to actually transform the world. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matthew 5, Holy Bible). Jesus actually models how to live with love as one’s guiding principle, demonstrating the spiritual poverty of those who oppress and violently rule others.
Christians around the world know these things, favoring Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount as a pinnacle of his teaching. Yet, when anxiety rises, our tendency is to flee to the amygdala, abandoning the Prince of Peace and his teachings. We “go primitive,” preferring the Old Testament Warrior God over God’s son, Jesus Christ.
Evidently, it takes a very disciplined brain and mature faith to stay with Jesus when stress escalates and regression calls. May God help us rise to the occasion, rejecting regression, guided by the power of love modeled and taught by our life teacher, Jesus the Christ.
Sometimes I read a poem or blessing or prayer
Knowing intuitively something is there beyond my grasp, beyond my rational comprehension
My mind cannot organize or categorize this mystery, this truth
While surprisingly, these words beyond me, comfort
It’s as if, just for a moment, I touch mystery
It’s a reminder of the more real, solid, and substantial world of the spirit which exists beyond us
And through this, or because of this, I am strengthened
Through brushing the mystery beyond my comprehension, I come alive.
Thanks be to God.
Do you remember the hype? Did you have a bracelet? And, can you believe that was 20 years ago? WWJD was the rage, mostly among high school youth groupers.
Someone back then was inspired to reach back in history to the novel In His Steps, written by Rev. Charles Sheldon and published in 1896. As Rev. Sheldon went about his ministry as the pastor of the Congregation Church in Topeka, KS, he observed the religiosity of Christians which did not seem to translate into actual Christ-like attitudes or behavior. This awareness inspired a sermon series, which inspired him to develop the fictional characters in his novel.
In the 1990s, the foundational idea from Sheldon’s book resurrected into a movement. Youth groups and then entire congregations adopted WWJD as their unofficial guiding principle. The basic idea was that Jesus is not only a savior, but also a moral example for us to follow. By asking ourselves the question (WWJD?), we endeavored to shape our actions according to the teachings and life approach of Jesus.
Strangely, WWJD came blasting into my awareness over the last 2 weeks. Our world is still staggering from the bombings in Beirut and Paris. There is nothing good, healthy, or admirable about these attacks. Yet, for some reason, that silly abbreviation keeps coming to my mind….WWJD?
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been engaging in a high risk activity. I know, I’ve been warned, but for some reason I just keep picking it up…the Holy Bible, that is. What’s striking me square between the eyes this time is Jesus’ Sermon On The Plain from Luke 6. “To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person.” -The Message Version
OK. What would Jesus do? Pray for his enemies. Evidently God expects me to do the same. The statement above is very straightforward…we could call it a teaching, but it looks more like a command. “Do this.”
Meanwhile, my anger at these perpetrators and my desire to follow Jesus are going round and round with each other in my soul. As I move through these days, I’m noticing evidence which these contrasting voices are claiming to support their case for the appropriate response. Perhaps you will recognize some of these experiences and observations.
So, here we are 20 years later. WWJD? Does anyone really want to ask that question anymore? There was a time when it seemed like such a good idea. Those bracelets were so colorful and the abbreviation made for great slogans. But now that the answers may raise uncomfortable questions for us, WWJD is a fad many rather forget.
May God help us to follow the one whom we call savior…and model for life.
Sometimes we come to a segment of our journey which we despise. These segments are filled with suffering, problems, loss, illness, deprivation…or whatever additional human discomfort we might imagine or experience. So when we enter one of these segments of life’s journey, we do what our kind tends to do – try everything we can to bypass this segment. Surely there is a way around, over, under, or otherwise escaping this terribly uncomfortable ongoing journey. So we go to God. We plead our case. We ask for another route to travel. We grow frustrated and rage. We grow weary and collapse. We “work it” until we realize God (and life) are not at our beck and call. The journey we are on is the journey we are given. God is not rescuing us this time. We have to grow up and live in the now, walking the road we are on. Ours is to learn how to deal with the journey as it is. Chronic illness, financial stress, relationship angst, under-employment, the ongoing human condition…whatever it is, we realize this is our road to travel. That’s when our calling comes down to three words. Three words which lead to a certain kind of hard-won, ragged peace.
Accept. Embrace. Walk.
Where to from here, O God?
Accept
Accept life as you know it
Accept life as you find it
This is the road you are given
You must walk this road before you can walk another
You must learn the rhythms and ruts and undulations of this road
Lay aside your hesitation; your dislike for this road
Lay aside your expectations that life should be different
Lay aside your resistance to walking this road
Embrace
Embrace life as you know it
Embrace life as you find it
Your way through is through
Go beyond acceptance to engagement
You must actively absorb the lessons of this road
Embrace this road as it is
Lean into this journey
Let go the baggage of expectations and embrace the present
Lay aside preference and embrace the now
Proactively embrace the place, people, ethos on this road
You must do this
You know you must do this
You know this in your soul, deep down in your bones
You are terribly clear on this calling
Walk
Now, walk
And the peace of God
Ragged, hard-won, brutal at times – yet peace nevertheless
Amen
mark tidsworth 