...when I'm empty

O fill me with your fullness, Lord,

until my very heart o’erflow

in kindling thought and glowing word,

Your love to tell, Your praise to show.

---Frances R. Havergal, 1872

‘Service burn-out’ is a common complaint among those who serve in positions of leadership in the church, both clergy and laity. The formula of unlimited needs answered by limited resources can exhaust the heartiest of servants. A common cause of burn-out, I think, is seeking to serve ‘empty’. Often, those who serve never take the time to be filled, inspired, refreshed.

This text reminds me that our source for the good that we do is God’s goodness. We are reminded that we speak what God speaks to us, that we lead as we are led, that we teach what we are taught by the Spirit, that we serve the world out of the fullness of God’s grace in us. In our eagerness to pour out our lives for others, let us not forget to draw from the source of our fullness.

Stop us, God, when we are empty. Fill us, that we may minister out of the riches of your goodness.

...remade, for good

We are called to be God’s people, showing by our lives his grace,

one in heart and one in spirit, sign of hope for all the race.

Let us show how he has changed us and remade us as his own;

let us share our lives together as we shall around his throne.

---Thomas A. Jackson, 1973

In a new year’s effort to loosen the grip of the 24-hour news cycle on my attention (and life), I have been watching (less contentious) house-flipping and home renovation shows on HGTV and DIY networks. These are the shows where homeowners or professional renovators take tired, dated houses and turn them into places anyone would be proud to call home. The renovators have one goal in mind—to ‘flip’ the home for a hefty profit if they are professionals, to create a cozy family gathering place if they are handy homeowners.

In this hymn, Thomas Jackson imagines God as our re-modeler, creating something ‘one’ out of something scattered, disparate. In this wordplay, God is recreating us as a home, as a family, as a reflection and a sign.

In his work 1939 ‘Life Together’, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.

God has remade us, for this life together, forever, for good.

...the undecorated heart

...make your house fair as you are able
trim the hearth and set the table
people, look east and sing today:
love, the guest, is on the way.
---eleanor farjeon, 1928

I'm trying. My boxes are scattered across the floor, tops raggedly open, in multiple rooms, guts spilling out in a Tim Burton-esque holiday dreamscape that is equal parts mess and obstacle course. Trees are up and lit (no, I mean, you know, lighted...), and because I stayed up too late last night, they all have ornaments. Magi follow stars, shepherds wander here and there in search of...something they heard whispered on the wind. The angels stand and look, but you can tell they know more than they are saying.

And I am tired. In truth, November and December present some stumbling blocks for me, and I have to navigate the days with care. The holidays are difficult for the teens I work with; regardless of their history or the tough front they may present to the world, at Christmas they are kids who can't be home with mom. And I know that friends who have suffered loss of loved ones, broken relationships, or life changes during the year feel it most keenly during "the most wonderful time of the year". 

And so my heart sometimes remains quite plain. No twinkling lights, no manger scenes or angels, no aromas of baking or wintry drinks simmering on the stove. No guiding star up above leads the way for me, or to me.

Come, Jesus. I welcome you, in this quiet, to my undecorated heart.

...stretched, and squeezed

I don't know if it is the time of life in which I find myself, or the vocation into which I seem to have fallen, or maybe it is just me. But whether as an adult with experience, a parent of young adult children, or a case manager facilitating teens with troubled histories, I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about, and listening for, and offering thoughts on love.

What does love do in a life? Can we pick it up and lay it down, like a tool or an activity? Does it light up our lives, always? Is it sweet? Does love always look the same in every circumstance? What does love ask, demand, require of us? What are we allowed to ask of love? 

I have found that from time to time love squeezes. Sometimes this feels reassuringly close, sometimes uncomfortably constricting. Is it while I am growing into love? Is it support until I am confident enough to live full in love? I have been wrapped snug in love, and I've been bruised by it.

For me, the knowledge that has become bedrock truth to me over years is that love stretches. It abides in a heart that contains it; but through the very exercise of it, love expands. And the heart stretches. And that enlarged space contains more and more compassion, and more and more passion for goodness in the lives of others. And I know this to be a wholly good transformation of the heart. But there are times that the stretching will ache, too.

The Advent heart, home to Love, continually shaped by love. Stretched, and squeezed.

...etched on their hearts

The days come, they come,
says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with my beloved in Israel
and in Judah.
It won't be like the covenant of old,
when I led the children by the hand 
up out of their bondage in Egypt---
a covenant broken, 
even though I stood as head of household 
for them, strong and caring, says the Lord.
But this is the new covenant I will make 
with my beloved people after those days,
the Lord says: 
my law will be an inner guide,
etched on their hearts
as surely as if on stone;
I will be their own, 
and they will be mine.
The need for second-hand knowledge of me
will pass away;
"Know God" won't have to be spoken,
for my people will know,
from least to greatest in the land,
says the Lord;
for I forgive the shortcomings
of my beloved people,
and cede my right to remember their wrongs
from now till forever.
---Jeremiah 31:31-34 (para. laca)