...outlandishly wide

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let Me answer prayer in you and you in Me?

John L. Bell and Graham A. Maule, 1987

What would be the impact on a life of ‘leaving self behind’? What transformations could happen from walking away from the mirror, and looking out the window, then walking out the door? How might old patterns be broken and rebuilt through new pathways of truly selfless service?

In this hymn full of questions, challenges arise. Two of the most challenging questions are set loose in this verse. Is the way we care for people affected by the demeanor of the needy? Can we care for both those to whom we are naturally drawn, and for those who may annoy, anger, or repulse us--showing the generous love of a God who loves us fully at our most unlovable? This question has me returning to take a look in that mirror I was talking about earlier.

Likewise, how prepared are we to be outcast for how fully, and how freely, we love? I have been challenged to see how very many times in the gospels Jesus faced resistance and anger--not for restricting his circle of love, care, and acceptance; but for the times he drew his circle outlandishly wide. Are we ready to love so deep and wide that our lives send people (even people that look like ‘our people’) running for cover…and throwing stones?

And what if all of this turned out to be what prayer looks like, with skin on?

...lift life heavenward

Lord, You make the common holy: “This My body, this My blood.”

Let us all, for earth’s true glory, daily lift life heavenward,

asking that the world around us share Your children’s liberty:

with the Spirit’s gifts empower us for the work of ministry.

---Jeffrey Rowthorn, 1978

Have you ever known someone with the touch? Someone who could take the most ordinary day and imbue it with otherworldliness? Turn an everyday action into a ritual of uncommon beauty? Take a passing conversation and bless the words exchanged, draw out the pain and joy masked behind safely neutral words and phrases?

I feel like Jesus must have been one of these rare persons. There are so many recorded instances of him breathing holiness into the mundane everyday of existence—everyday tasks, everyday conversations, everyday touches. In Jesus’ hands, touch healed disease and stigma, the fruit of wheat and vine became sacred sign. In Jesus’ mouth, names spoken called fishermen from their nets, taxmen from their graft, the dead from their repose, faithful women from their grief.

Is the gift for crafting sacredness from ordinariness, then, Jesus’ gift uniquely? Or are we to be imitators of Christ in this too, always open for the Spirit to move in us to transform the common into the holy…in the midst of us…through us?

Let us all, for earth’s true glory, daily lift life heavenward…

...you had one job

We all are one in mission, we all are one in call,

our varied gifts united by Christ, the Lord of all.

A single great commission compels us from above

to plan and work together that all may know Christ’s love.

---Rusty Edwards, 1985

You had one job. If you take out your preferred google device and type these words into the search bar, you will be treated to a veritable feast of flops, a buffet of buffoonery, a truckload of troubles. Go ahead...I'll wait. ‘You had one job’ is social media shorthand for ‘Wow, could you have done worse at the thing you were supposed to be in charge of?’

There are school crossings with ‘school’ misspelled. Toilet seats installed upside down. Roadkill painted under the yellow stripe in the middle of the highway. A Back to School sale sign highlighting a wine display. Steps to nowhere. Left Turn Only centered perfectly…under a right turn arrow. Someone gets distracted, and a perfectly good start turns off all wrong. Not because anyone meant it to, but because some other shiny object charmed instead.

You know, the church (the big one, the church universal), the Body of Christ, does lots of things, in lots of places, in lots of ways, for lots of reasons. And lots of those things make the world better, make the church better, make our hearts better, even. But sisters and brothers. We have one job. Jesus told and showed us what it was, over and over, and folks thought it was important enough to remember, to write down later. Love each other. Love your enemies. Love your neighbors. Love by doing. Love straight through your fear. Love sacrificially. Love unendingly. Love. Love. Love.

Do not be deterred. We have one job.

...prayer, with skin on

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let Me answer prayer in you and you in Me?

--John L. Bell and Graham A Maule, 1987

What would be the impact on a life of ‘leaving self behind’? What transformations could happen from walking away from the mirror, and looking out the window, then walking out the door? How might old patterns be broken and rebuilt through new pathways of truly selfless service?

In this hymn full of questions, challenges arise. Two of the most challenging questions are set loose in this verse. Is the way we care for people affected by the demeanor of the needy? Can we care for both those to whom we are naturally drawn, and to those who may annoy, anger, or repulse us--showing the generous love of a God who loves us fully at our most unloveable? This question has me returning to take a look in that mirror I was talking about earlier.

Likewise, how prepared are we to be outcast for how fully, and how freely, we love? I have been challenged to see how very many times in the gospels that Jesus faced resistance and anger--not for restricting his circle of love, care, and acceptance; but for the times he drew his circle outlandishly wide. Are we ready to love so deep and wide that our lives send people (even people that look like ‘our people’) running for cover…and throwing stones?

And what if all of this turned out to be what prayer looks like, with skin on?

...what feet are for

Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms;

oh, how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.

---Elisha A. Hoffman, 1887

Path. Way. Journey. Through the years, these expressions of spiritual life have come to ring truest in my ear, and resonate most soundly in my soul. While I am not always positive about my destination, and my goals change, and sometimes finish lines seem frustratingly movable, feeling called to the journey is a constant. If day breaks, there is a path, and even when I may not be totally sold on the reason, my feet will be on it, because that is what feet, and paths, are for.

In this little bit of late-19^th cent. poetry, the hymnist speaks of the path growing bright from day to day. My mind travels to the memory verse from Bible Drill---“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105) And the thing is, I’ve walked on some dark paths in my life (yep, literal and metaphorical), and I know how lights work. That flashlight? Even a good one, with the batteries you remembered to replace before you packed it up for the campout? It illuminates the path a few steps ahead.

God’s presence? Right there with us on the path, every step of the way. But that light it throws? It’s a flashlight, not a floodlight. We were always meant to walk leaning on God, steps at a time, waiting for the light to shine up ahead.

Wow. Light for the journey, and an arm to lean on. On the path with Jesus.

...complex and simple

Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild restless sea:

day by day his sweet voice soundeth, saying “Christian, follow me!”

---Cecil F. Alexander, 1852

It had been one of those weeks. In one of those months. In one of those seasons. In one of those years. Never quite getting well. Never quite getting the ‘to do’ list ‘to done’. Never quite getting caught up. Never quite feeling ready for…whatever comes next. Never quite feeling worthy of the trust placed in me, or the tasks required of me.

And then I stop. I breathe out, and in. And I notice how myopic my vision has grown, how inward-focused my hearing. With my focus drawn to my inner chaos, my shortcomings, my insufficiency--my attention must by definition be focused on…me.

And so I stop. I breathe out, and in. And I lift my gaze. And I focus my hearing. Out, in. There it is. The gentle leading, the focusing guidance. Follow me. Just that. Out, in. Complex and simple. Follow me. Lift the gaze. Focus the hearing. Out, in.

Follow me.

...there is mercy

From depths I could not have imagined
I call to you, One.
Hear. 
Will you hear?
This mystery ---
let the ear of your attention
note the voice of my reaching.
For, if you, if you are the one
who measures shortcomings, 
which of us could stand?
But with you there is mercy, 
mercy;
and we count it holiness in you.
I wait for you, my soul stills itself,
my hope rests on a word from you;
my spirit longs for your advent
more than the sleepless search the sky
for the first streaks of cold purple dawn.
---Psalm 130:1-6 (para. laca)