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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Open

I kept the front door open while I was doing some work at the church. I let in some fresh air and hoped people would stop by and visit. So he felt quite comfortable when he came in to just pull up a chair and chat.

Him, "Let me ask you a question."

Me, "Sure."

H - You and your wife (Pause) you're (Pause) married?

M - Yes

H - And you have a child together, right?

M - Yep.

(Pause)

H - and he was born (Pause) AFTER you were married?

M - That's right.

(Pause)

H - Well, who else do you have a child by?

M - No one else. Just her.

(Pause)

H - Well who else does she have a child by?

M - No one.

After another long pause and a perplexed look on his face, he continued this line of questioning.

This went on for about 45 minutes with more pauses for him to think and more perplexed facial expressions with each answer given.

In the middle of one line of questions he stood up, looked at me, shook his head, and without saying anything else wandered out into the night. The way I thought was too much for him to handle and he just had to leave.

Sometimes I have to put the Bible down and walk away into my own night, too. There are things in thee text that I've reviewed and studied and wrestled with. I've had long talks with God about them but mostly I just shake my head. After a while, though, I have to recognize that God's way of thinking is just so very different from mine and, from where I sit, it's just too much for me to handle.

It wasn't long after that evening's open door conversation that he and his mom moved across town and we lost track of each other.

So it was a real surprise when I parked my van in front of my house one Saturday afternoon about eight years later that I saw him riding his bike up my street.

"Remember me?" he asked as he pulled up beside me. I knew his face immediately and his name just a minute later. I asked what was going on in his life.

"I have a kid," he said. He grinned and held up his left hand as he said, "The mom and me, we're married." A gold band on his finger shown in the sunlight.

I don't know if those two conversations, eight years apart, had that much to do with each other. But the two together give me hope: not only hope for that kid and his family but hope for me, too.

Because it makes me wonder about my desire to better know the mind of God and the conversations and studies I've had to walk away from. I hope that they might be silently working in me and showing up in my life years later in ways I might not even remember or recognize.

And maybe when I run across those passages of scripture again they won't be quite as far out of my thought stream as when they first perplexed me. Maybe stepping away let them quietly work into the fibers of my being without me even really noticing.

Maybe not.

But there is hope.

Thank you, Lord, for not ever giving up on me.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Celebrate

"Well, Happy Birthday!" I said to him and his mom. I was standing by their crowded front steps gathering information and filling in the "Date of Birth" blank on his camp form when I realized that it was his holiday.

After wishing him well I tried to move on to the next question. I was not successful.

The man who was also sitting on their steps dealing drugs called into the house to his associates. He announced that it was the boy's birthday and they all got excited. They came to the steps, greeted him boisterously, gave him big hugs, and each handed him cash.

The party spread to the stoop next door and those gather all came over for the celebration. More gave money. Another flagged down the ice cream truck and got him a treat.

After a few minutes I could see that the spontaneous party was just getting started and that there was no use in trying to finish the camp forms that night. I headed to the next campers house knowing I would have to get the other mundane information later.

I was frustrated to not have the forms done. The deadline for their submission was looming and it was hard to find his mom at home, much less lucent. Who knew if I would even be able to get this taken care of.

These are the kinds of moments that I'm reminded just how much of a Pharisee I can be. Of all the people on the steps that night, I'm the one who preaches about Joy, Hope, Love, and Peace yet was totally unprepared to celebrate his birthday. Gifts, food, and accolades seemed to pour out of nowhere from among all the others. The only thing I could focus on was the line that said, "Emergency Contact Information."

Don't get me wrong. What I was doing was important and necessary. But I thought it trumped the moment of celebrating the importance of this kid.

When I read the Gospels again, I see how Jesus got in trouble (with the Pharisees and Martha and the disciples and others) because he was ready and able to celebrate the goodness he found, even with those pesky tax collectors.

And if I were that kid, I would have seen both a group of people who were ready to drop everything to celebrate me and a person who only seemed interested in information about me. With whom would I have aligned my allegiance?

So it's not surprising, really, that 12 years later he's taken over for the men who once sat on his front steps. Oh, we still visit and he has good memories of activities at church and his week at camp. They are simply distant memories that he was able to share with the ones who he felt loved him the most.

Lord, let love be my only debt.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Drum

He gave the church his drum at the end of the service as a way of thanking us for the ministry he received that day.

He and his drum had staggered in to the church about 15 minutes before it was time to start. After visiting with me, he stumbled to the chairs and sat his drunken self down right in the middle of the room.

He played the drum during every song we sang. His rhythms were his own and had absolutely nothing to do with the songs the rest of the people were trying to sing.

During the quiet times and while I was preaching, he occasionally moaned, cried a little, and slurred a few words. These were usually accompanied by some random drumbeats.

All of this was to the complete dissatisfaction of those who had gathered that morning.

Once he presented the gift and left, a few people came to express their frustrations about what had just happened. Their concerns were legitimate and well-justified; it was a challenging hour for us all.

Then I relayed the conversation he and I had before the service.

Earlier that week he had been walking up the block by the church. A car had come around the corner. It missed him but hit and killed a girl who was on her way home from school. That day was fresh in all our minds, too.

In trying to deal with what he'd experienced he had come back to the scene that morning. He'd found the discarded toy drum along the way and had used it to keep his hands busy and accent his emotions.

As he left that corner he found himself standing in front of the church and he believed that God had put it there just for him that day.

We didn't have much we could do for him in the way of skills and resources. We couldn't fix his problems. But having a place to sit, to cry, to express himself, and to think about life itself was the ministry most needed that day.

And it's the kind of ministry I need sometimes, too.

I'm not always ready to have all my problems fixed and if people try to do so they just make things worse. I don't always need skills and resources used on me. Sometimes I just need to sit with a group of people who will let me think and make random expressions to try to process where I am.

Because life gets intense --- intensely troubling and intensely joyful. And intense times call a decompression that can only come in the presence of others and the Other.

So when you see me getting ready to beat my drum again and you know it's not in sync with what's happening around me, I beg a bit more grace than usual for a few minutes.

And I'll work at not trying to fix you when you need to bang things out now and again, too.

Then when we're done we can give those drums back to Him as we go back into the intensity life can bring.

Let the Comforter be among us, Lord.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Whatever

Brown construction paper.

That, plus some well-worn crayons and dull scissors, composed our entire allotment of our craft supplies.

And for I-don't-know-how-many weeks in a row, whenever the kids came to church, craft time meant making things out of brown construction paper.

We'd scoured the Bible looking for stories we could share with the kids in which a corresponding craft could be based on brown construction paper:

-Crosses
-Loaves and Fishes
-10 Commandments tablets
-Boats for Peter to step out of
-Bricks for the Tower of Babel
-Balaam's Donkey
-Rocks (as in "He who is without sin may cast the first stone")

As the list grew so did the desperation.

Walking to the church that chilly, gray Sunday afternoon, brown construction paper was all I had. I had no lesson. I had no activity. I had no idea what to do with the paper or the kids and no energy left to even try to figure anything out.

I'd like to say that I prayed for wisdom or inspiration or for a miracle or a combination thereof but I was too drained for that. It was a more of a half-hearted "Whatever" kind of prayer instead.

I arrived at the church just as one of our volunteers was pulling up in her car. She beeped the horn and flagged me over.

As I crossed the street she hopped out of her car and said, "My mom was in town and we were at Sam's Club yesterday. She asked if she could buy some things for the church."

As she said this the trunk popped open revealing its contents. In it were stacks of construction paper of every possible color. There were buckets of magic markers and containers of scissors. Yarn. Tape. Clay. Glue (both bottles and sticks!). The smell of the fresh boxes of crayons was the sweetest perfume.

This was Noah's rainbow and Joseph's coat of many colors and the lilies of the field and Lydia's purple goods all stuffed in a Nissan Sentra. We emptied the trunk and set the supplies on the table for all the kids to see.

And they reveled in the color. Busy hands drew and colored and folded and cut. Boisterous voices and laughter joined the celebration. Today there was no hunting and hording and fighting over the best crayons. Instead, the bounty shared with us begot a sharing of this bounty with one another.

Today's craft:

Thank You Cards.

Whatever, Lord. Whatever.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Important

The kids were getting squirrely. Through their participation in church they had earned a trip to a local restaurant for ice cream sundaes.

Vanilla
Chocolate
Whipped Cream
Sprinkles
Hot Fudge
Cherries

Though these items were all clearly on the menu, all we'd been given so far was glasses of water. We'd been seated for nearly an hour.

The wait staff had been running around the restaurant and seeming to work. Yet, when we looked around, we noticed no one else in the restaurant had ice cream, either. Meanwhile, the line at the entrance grew longer and longer, winding out the door and into the night.

Our ability to entertain our kids had maxed out quite a bit earlier so I flagged down the manager to get an update on our order. He let us know that their computer system had gone down and they were all working on it. "Once it's fixed we'll be able to fill your order," he said.

Getting desperate, I looked at him and said, "I know that the computer system is really important to you, but as a customer, I don't care. It doesn't take a computer to put ice cream in a bowl."

He looked shocked. He then went over to the computer station and had all the wait staff start scooping ice cream and distributing desserts to the customers. As we were fed, the computer healed.

As a pastor it's easy for me to be like the manager of that restaurant. The things needed to make the church run smoothly don't always like me too much. It seems that if the video projector is working then the sound system refuses to do so. The box of scissors goes rogue at craft time and there aren't enough green crayons to go around. The Popsicles leak all over the freezer and turn everything in it blue. And the package I thought was toilet paper was actually paper towels and we're now Charmin-free with a line of little kids at the bathroom.

And that's before we even begin to talk about the all-consuming denominational issues, interpersonal conflicts, theological hot spots, spiritual authority questions, and meetings upon meetings upon meetings.

But none of these things are on the list of why people come through the door of the church.

Healing
Hope
Repentance
Strength
Encouragement
Wisdom
Prayer
Community
Praise
Fellowship

These are the things people seek. Though the background organizing is important to make sure the doors stay open and the big issues of the day will eventually impact how we deliver the Message, I need to make sure I focus my energy, and everyone else's, too, on helping people get what they so desperately needed that they found their way to the church's doors.

Because Jesus didn't say that he came so we could be organized and have all the answered nailed down. The Pharisees and Sadducees already had a corner on that market. He said that He came that we could have life, full and abundant (John 10:10).

And the world is getting more than squirrely; it groans for the liberating truth of the Gospel. May I not focus so much on the church's internal workings and, instead, serve those who have come so that they might find what they seek and not be left standing out in the dark.

Lord, be my vision.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Thwap

Thwap!

We all heard it and knew what it meant.

A couple people glanced around to see who would respond but she and I already had sufficient adrenaline in us. We had jumped up from our chairs and were now heading toward the thwap.

Prayer meeting would have to wait.

As we turned on the lights in the storage room we could see the rat in the trap.

"It's still alive!" she yelled as the rat and trap dragged themselves across the carpet. "Give me a pipe."

A little scared (of her, not the rat) I handed over an old piece of pipe that was by the door. She took it and immediately began bludgeoning the creature.

It tried to escape but it was no match to her passion. The blood-stained wall and the new markings on the carpet now warned future predators of her victory.

Two latex gloves and one plastic bag later, I disposed of the corpse while she reset the trap.

Prayer meeting resumed.

When I'm trying to exterminate things that make my life miserable, like my issues and ego and habits and insecurities (read: sin) I want someone like this woman on the journey with me.

I need people to pray with me. But once in a while when the time is right, I need them to also courageously march into the dark rooms inside me where I store my old stuff, turn on some light, and take a blunt object to the problem.

Though it's messy and uncomfortable, it's important.

Because I remember years ago the letter from my pastor that contained the direct correction I needed. And I remember the annoyingly persistent accountability from a fellow disciple during a time of rapid personal growth. And I remember the counselor finally saying, "Just get over it." Those things helped free me and helped me grow more than closing our eyes and praying harder would have.

Each of those people had a choice. They could have let fear of damaging our relationships get in the way of what needed to be done and glanced around hoping for someone else to do the job. But they knew that out of relationships based on solid faith, prayer, and mutual respect come opportunities to engage in passionate, scary, dangerous, painful conflict that can ultimately lead to a more whole self.

And though our relationship may get a little stained and bloodied at first, I have to trust that His grace will sustain us and open the possibility for even deeper friendship as a result.

It's then that we are truly free to resume our prayers before our Maker together.

Lord, help me hear, know, and respond well to Truth.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Great

Some places call it "Prayer and Testimony" and no one comes. We call it "Open Mike" and people get excited about the opportunity.

And he was excited as he came up the front of the church that Sunday morning after Christmas.

"This was the best Christmas EVER!" he exclaimed. He then told of not even wanting gifts and instead taking the money he was given and buying candy for the neighbor kids. He talked about how great it was to be looking for ways to help people instead of just wanting more things.

He ended with,"And up until a couple of weeks ago I'd never even been in a church before. This stuff is GREAT!"

He laughed out loud all the way back to his seat and we celebrated by joining him in laughter and applause.

For me it's easy to forget that this stuff is GREAT. The daily grind of preparing for and cleaning up after church activities, the constant pressing needs of the community, the seeming hopelessness of the conditions in the neighborhood, all on top of my own unresolved issues clutters the manger so much that it's sometimes hard to see the Baby.

But when someone comes in and sees Jesus for the first time, the clutter gets pushed out of the way and I, too, can stand in awe of Him and the greatness of His ways.

And when I can, my life again becomes its own "Open Mike" in the world as the Joy, Hope, Love, and Peace of the Gospel are lived out loud.

Lord, let me delight in You always.