Get Up Off Your Butt

Kim, a sister of mine from different parents but the same Parent, sat in church looking at the brochure that invited her to commit to a place of service for the coming year. Many churches do this - prepare a list of all the opportunities for the members to use their spiritual gifts and talents to a the glory of God. It's why we're here, after all.

Kim scanned the list. She does a lot already. Her paying job serves those who want to learn to read. She co-leads a Sunday School Bible study. She is a lay speaker who leads in worship and preaches occasionally in her own and other churches.

All those are good. But her main ministry is acts of kindness, most often, cakes of kindness. Kim is someone who doesn't just have good intentions; she gets up and does the things she thinks about. When it's her turn to bake a birthday cake for a co-worker, Kim prepares delicious and time-consuming works of art out of a desire to bring delight and joy to another. Once, she baked a chocolate mint cake for a neighbor, because the Spirit led her to do that. When the neighbor, Kathy, wasn't home, Kim colluded with her family to stash it in the fridge so it wouldn't melt. Upon discovering it, Kathy said with tears in her eyes, 'No one ever baked a whole cake for me before.'

That's Kim's ministry. Others might look at a gorgeous cake in a magazine and think, "Wow, so-and-So would really love that." Kim bakes it and takes it to the person. Sometimes for a birthday. Sometimes just because some whisper of the Spirit moved her.

Kim does a lot for the church, but she is open to God changing her direction. As she prayed over the brochure, she realized that if she said 'yes' to another official church ministry, she would not have as much openness to the wild Spirit saying, 'Bake that.' It suddenly occurred to her, if I'm telling it right, that the ministry of getting up and baking the cakes was exactly where God needed her to be.

I think about that a lot. Not because I'm called to bake cakes - that's Kim, not me. I do realize, however, that a lot of what God calls me to do involves the willingness to get up and just do what it is in my heart to do.

We invite people to ministry at Trinity in many of the same ways other churchs do: brochures, announcements, visuals, nominating calls. We have important positions that must be filled: ushers, greeters, Welcome Center hosts, children's and youth leaders, tech team - I could fill a brochure myself with the list. But just as we need greeters at the doors, we need every single solitary one of us to greet each other. Just as we need Welcome Center hosts, we need every single solitary one of us to welcome the stranger and help them feel at home. The children need leaders, but they also need everyone who was there at their infant baptism to guide and encourage them, sit and eat supper with them at TNT, ask them about their day.

I'd like to nominate everyone, myself included, for the ministry of 'Getting Up Off Our Butts." I know it's crude, but it's how I think of it. I have a lot of good intentions. Most people do. Most people don't sit in church determined to be unfriendly, or want to trip the children who dance down the hall. Most of us aren't stingy on purpose, with our time or our possessions. We just don't act on the good intentions of our hearts. It's so much more comfortable to observe. It's a lot harder to get in the mix. But in the mix is, usually, where God is waiting.

I will if you will. Will I, even if you won't? I learned from 12-step ministries to do one thing for someone else every day, even if and especially if I don't want to. Do one thing you don't have to. Do one thing to bless someone, to grace the world with love instead of hate, with kindness instead of meanness. Not because it will make a difference, because that might not be readily apparent. But because God is for us, with us, every single day regardless of our deserving. How can I be so 'sit back and watch' about that?

Hey, Kim. If you are reading this, thank you for being such an inspiration. I can't eat cake, but your caring feeds my soul.

Not Lost After All

Sometimes, life feels like the wilderness. Something ends - a job, a relationship, a life - and we're left in a transition we did not choose. We're not sure where we are, with no clear sign where God is leading. I tend to feel anxious at such times. I envy Israel being able to see God's presence in the pillars of fire and cloud.

It reminded me, though, of one night last year. Maia and I had to go out to an area Christian school to rescue a friend whose car had broken down. I had seen the school dozens of times from the four-lane highway, but had never pondered how to actually get there. Maia looked up the address, which was sort of helpful but not clear. The computer was down so there was no Mapquest to give us directions to the door. With a mind set on prayer (desperation will do that to me), we got in the car.

We set out in the general direction of the school. I couldn't quite visualize which exit to take off the highway. Looking at the address again, I made a choice, and turned onto another highway. As we motored down the road, I second-guessed my decision. What if I should have turned right instead of left at the end of the exit ramp? What if I should have taken the 3rd exit rather than the 2nd?

Just then, a picture of the turn to an acquaintance's house flashed through my mind. I could see that turn-off, which I had only taken once. A road off to the right reminded me of that back way, and without thinking twice, I took it. We wound around in the dark, with no opportunities to turn off or turn around. Then a glow of light ahead in the night indicated we were coming close to something big. Was it a miracle that the road taken by chance led right to the school parking lot, where my friend waited for us to rescue her? I praised and thanked God for getting us there.

Some would say it was dumb luck. For all I know, they are right. Not every flash of insight leads us in the right direction. There were other ways we could have chosen to go. We might have had to stop and ask directions, or turn around. The moment I swerved to take that last road was not planned. I did not know when I turned that it was the exact path I needed to be on. In fact, as I looked ahead at first, it seemed it could have been a dead end or just lead in circles. I didn't know it was right until I got there.

Still, it turned out to be exactly the path we needed. It led to where we had to go, even though we didn't really know it would until we were almost in the parking lot.

"Trust the path," says Robert Morris in his book, Provocative Grace. In the midst of wilderness wandering, in transitional times when the future is unclear, it is possible to find peace in the assurance that the path will lead us where we are supposed to be. We had asked for God's direction before we even got in the car. Why was I so surprised that the Spirit gave us the gift of guidance?

I am sure I will doubt again. I seek to be a non-anxious presence, but sometimes I worry anyway. More often than not, though, I end up exactly where I am supposed to be.

The Circle of Affirmation

Upward Basketball is for kids, but it also trains parents. On the first night of practice, the coaches gathered us around and taught us about the 'Circle of Affirmation' as opposed to the 'Circle of Criticism.' In Upward, we cheer for everyone who does something well, regardless of whose team they are on. Refs and coaches all volunteer their time, so they are encouraged and lifted up, not yelled at and criticized. There's competition, but if one team has too few players, someone volunteers from the opposition to 'switch sides' for that one game, so everyone can play.

Bobby Knight would not be pleased, I am sure, but it seems to me a good way to do life (which, in my opinion, is the only real reason to have basketball in the church).

Upward parents are instructed to operate out of the Circle of Affirmation in games. Isn't that a great place to be in life? That doesn't mean being dishonest or dishing out false flattery. In fact, to avoid being critical, it would be important to go directly to the person I have a problem with and deal with any conflict, rather than criticize them (often to others).

Life in the Circle of Affirmation is not some fakey positive thinking that disregards the reality of the world. No matter how encouraging I am, or how I refrain from criticism, bad things will still happen and there will still be conflict. But really, how much criticism is really needed in the world? Most of the time, criticism is an attempt to control what's not really mine to control. Justice is good, but how often, really, do the words of judgment or criticism I offer actually do justice? Not very. This is a very light way to live, letting go of trying to control or manage others, trusting God to work and 'fix' things, rather than thinking I need to make it all well.

I'm living in the Circle of Affirmation. That will require extraordinary amounts of prayer, I am sure, both for strength to live there and to confess when I step outside the bounds. So I will pray, but not only for me. I want my home, the church I serve, the school where I tutor and my kids attend, all of it, to be in my Circle of Affirmation. Even if others live in a different circle.

I'm excited - it is a beautiful place to live.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem

I am praying for peace in Gaza. Not just for the violence to end, but for peace. Salaam. Shalom. Wholeness, fulfillment. For peace to break out, to just completely confound those whose lives are benefited by the continuing violence. For people to seek peace with the same willingness to die that they seek war.

O God, beat the damned swords into plowshares, melt down the unholy mortars into cymbals and gongs, end destruction and teach the people to seek truth, beauty, you.

Anger and rage, power and unforgiveness are destroying not only the people, but the land itself. Evil wins too often, there. Rightness, righteousness, justice - words get thrown around like weapons, pre-weapons, protoweapons.

I am praying for peace in Jerusalem, the home of our faith, the place where our Lord worshiped, ate, taught, lived, died, rose. For people there, and here, to understand that righteousness is love lived out in care for others. There is no other righteousness. Justice is love - there is no other justice.

I am praying for peace in Israel, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In Iraq and Iran, in Afghanistan and the million other places where violence is the power of the day. I am praying for children trained in hatred and violence, and deep down, trained to fear. I am praying for the church, there and here, to be the Body of Christ, willing to be crucified rather than give up on love.

I am praying for my own mind to be a mind of peace, for my words to be words of healing and hope and mercy, for my actions to bring blessings to others. I am praying to be a force for peace, here in Elkhart. Here in my office, my home, my church.

Pray for peace. Be peace where I am.

New Years Eve

It's nearly midnight. We mark time at midnight, acknowledging the passing of another year. A milestone. Time passes. We stop once in a while to notice.

Meanwhile, the days are once again getting longer as the earth travels around the sun. Vacation ends for the school kids, and they begin another grading period. Time passes, slowly or quickly, depending on your age and perception. 'Big wheels keep on turnin'..."

Koheleth, in Ecclesiastes, remarks rather jadedly, 'to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven,' and observes 'it's all chasing after wind.' Vanity. Foolishness. Meaningless. After all, you're born, you die, and what good is it? Perhaps, I've often thought, Ecclesiastes is there for those in the slump of a midlife crisis!

"Time passes. Will you?" declared a sign on my teacher's wall in high school. Yes, I will too. I'm not exempt from the cycles, the vanity, the season to be born, the season to die. Jesus has taught me, though, that there is more than this enslavement to time. His coming means, in part, that the cycle is far from meaningless, indeed, it is hallowed, sacred, deeply a part of a larger thing which remains outside our ken. In Jesus, God who made time became subject to its limits, and somehow filled it full of himself.

I'm part of it, the earth and its marking of time. So I'll make a toast and kiss my husband when the clock strikes twelve. I'll laugh at my exhaustedly silly children, and wonder what the year will hold. But I will also thank God that when the time He created has served its purpose, it too will be swallowed up in the glory of an everlasting life.

Where ox and ass are feeding

Not sure whether to own up to this or not, but we had an e-discussion amongst the church staff about the words 'ox and ass' in the carol What Child Is This. We wondered if we should change them, given that 'ass' doesn't communicate 'donkey' to anyone under the age of 10. To most younger children, 'ass' is a 'bad word,' one they get in trouble for saying in school, no matter how vehemently they insist they meant 'donkey'.

As a parent of a 6-year-old, I was all for changing it: "ox and lamb" was the perfectly good variation proposed by our director of music. After a few emails though, we finally decided, on this carol at least, to use the words as they are in our denominational hymnal. We changed other words in other songs during the services, but "ass" remained.

I'm glad. As I sung it, I got to thinking about oxen: big, hard to steer, able to throw their weight around. And asses - stubborn, not-so-bright, sturdy but not beautiful. I'm glad the oxen and asses were there with Christ when he was born. Maybe William Dix, who wrote the words back in 1865, knew exactly what he meant. I figure he was probably acquainted with both kinds of ox and ass (the animals AND the people), and might very well have intended both meanings.

If there were oxen and asses there with Jesus (we don't know it for sure, but it's not a big leap to think so), there might be room for me too. Even in my oxish and ass-like moments.

My family loves to watch 'Survivorman' and 'Man vs. Wild' on Discovery. Each Friday evening, we get pizza and gather around to watch what these two guys do as they survive in various parts of the globe. I've learned some interesting things. 1. If you're lost, get shelter, water, fire and food - in various orders depending on where you are surviving. 2. Go slow. 3. Keep working toward survival, because work itself gives you hope. I also learned to cook grasshoppers before you eat them, because they can carry tapeworms, and that brightly-colored insects will usually make you sick.

The big lesson, though, was one my mom taught me and the survivalists only confirmed: after you cut the head off (a chicken, an insect, a snake...) the rest of the body will continue to move around for awhile.

I don't want the Church to succumb to that fate. We can move for a long time without connection to Christ, our head. But our movements are the movements of a dying creature, futile and leading nowhere. Our primary goal as the Church is to be connected to Christ through prayer, worship, holy communion, Scripture study and discussion, fasting, giving alms... These are the tasks we focus on as we live on earth. Everything else flows from them. We can't change ourselves - to center our lives on changing ourselves or others leads only to futility and frustration.

When we stay connected to Christ, our head, when we abide in the true Vine, then blessings flow, life flows through us into the world. We are transformed in the process, and so is everyone and everything we touch.

I'm glad I know how to boil water in a plastic bottle, how to build a fire, how to make a simple shelter in this good creation of God's. I'm more convicted to turn off the TV, and this computer, and spend some time with the Source of Life.