On Being Planted

In my student women's group last night, we lingered on the words from Psalm 1: 
[Those that chew and digest the word of God] are like trees
    planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
    and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

We turned these words over a bit:
what are the streams of water in our lives?
how are we in or out of season?
what is "prospering" for someone on this deep spiritual path?

This morning, I am reading in Tracy Balzer's Permission to Ponder and she engages the same verse in her first chapter:
"...I am to be planted....a tree grows because it has been planted; it grows strong and mature because it remains planted."

"To be planted" means to let our roots grow down deep into the soil of the heart of God.  It is also to put roots into community, into place, into knowing our own identity and soul.

The practices of being planted are many--perhaps in our church lives and in this chapter of the psalsm, we mostly consider meditation and devotional reading (the chewing and digesting of the word of God), but these are far from the only practices of being planted.

To be planted means to:
practice gratitude for what is
share a meal made with love with our family
honor the seasons of the place (geographical) that God has us
be intentional about knowing the land and nature around us in the particular place we are
celebrate the markers of live with our community
tend a garden (of flowers, vegetables or children) in our lives

Today, I am intentionally settling deeper into the soil of my life by writing cards for those in grief,  sitting in my own space by the fire--taking note of this time, place and space that God is at work.  Reading scripture, carrying prayer in my heart, calling a friend from Oregon to remember that place as well and my heart there.

How are you practicing "being planted" today?

God in a Box

[I started this blog post thinking I was writing about how we need to get God out-of-the-box....which is true...but I guess that's for another day. ]


"While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan."  --Joshua 3:17

This is the story of the second parting of a sea.  Joshua is leading the people out from their tents to cross over the Jordan and God instructs him to have the priests go ahead of the people and carry the ark of the covenant on their shoulders.  When the priests feet touch the Jordan, the waters part. The Israelites pass through on dry land.

The ark of the covenant was so holy that God instructed them to create a space of about three thousand feet between the people and the ark as it passed through the crowd.  Only the priests could carry the ark.

The Israelites truly had God-in-a-box.  Or that-which-represented-God-to-them was in a box.

When God came to this planet and took the form of a human being, the need for a box was obliterated. We no longer need to carry God in a box as we pass through the rivers of life.

But I think that we are just as desperate as the Israelites to get God into a box so that we can get our minds around who God is.  God is much easier to manage when God is safely crammed into a container in our lives.  When we pick God up, or put God somewhere, or stay a safe distance (3000 feet from God), we feel much more secure.

A relationship with the Living God is much harder to navigate than a list of commandments, beliefs, and responsibilities that is left to our pastors to carry around on their shoulders.  Jesus came to set us free from the boxes!  This is true all the time.

But here is where this rests with me today:

We all need a "God-in-a-box" at times of challenge in our lives. We need beliefs and promises that are clear and steady and that we can write down on our arms in sharpie and tattoo across the tops of our feet. We need to see the people around us holding promises of God in their lives and in their hands in tangible ways.
We need pastors and spiritual friends who bear the weight of God on their shoulders and who show Christ in their faces.  We need them to go ahead of us with God as we pass through the rivers of life and death.

A relationship with the Divine Omnipotent Being of the Universe is much of time to huge and mysterious for us mere mortals on some(even most) days.

And on those days, I am thankful for a God who is sensitive to the human condition.  That we have this God who created an ark of the covenant to lead the ancient people of God when they desperately needed something to touch, see, hold, and even keep their distance from out of awe and wonder.

Perhaps today you need God-in-a-box.

You may be called to be that person who carries God with you on your face and in your hands, on your shoulders and in your heart as you stand in the midst of the river of life and death so that others can pass through on dry land.  They may keep 3000 feet from you. You may never know their story or see their face, but they are watching you--seeing you holding God for them. Being the one whose feet touch the water and give space for the Spirit of God to move.

You may need a scripture or truth to write down in sharpie across your palm or on your the cardboard of the coffee cup.  And carry it with you as your own teeny ark that bears God for you.

As you walk through the river of life and death today, how do you carry God with you?

Will you move into the new land?

"I know that the Lord has given you the land."--Rahab to the spies from Joshua 2.

In our post-colonial days, the idea that any group of people would go and claim land that someone else has is concerning.  I read the story of the Joshua and the spies who searched out entering Canaan and it is disturbing.  I wonder about this idea of promised land and how God could call a group of people to slaughter another group of people over land.  Did they hear God right?  Is that what God called them to do?  (...that's for another blog post). I do know that God is about creating family and place for the homeless and lonely.  I do know that God created a way for God's people to leave slavery and bondage and move into freedom.  God was and is in the business of giving us "land"--the place to put roots into the soil of relationships.


Today I am leaning into these few words:  I know that the Lord has given you the land.

God does give us new space for us to move into when the old land is no longer ours.
It's easy to remain in the "old country" as Henri Nouwen calls it and not move into the "new country."

Where are you standing at the edge of land that God has given you?
What is the new land of your life that God is creating a way for you to move forward?

Who are the unlikely people (like Rahab) who will help you claim it?
I have found it is the unlikely and sometimes the unholy who give us eyes to see the land that God has for us.

Beyond our personal mission statement

In Acts 3:3 Peter and John are stopped on their way to pray at the Beautiful Gate by a man who could not walk from birth.  The man asks them for alms, and they look at him intently, and Peter says those famous words, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk."

On an ordinary day, doing what he did every hour or every day, this man got more than he asked.  We often hear  "You don't have because you do not ask"--true-- and that in this culture and in our relationship with God you have to ask for what you need and want.  Also true-depending.  I have heard many sermons encouraging me to ask for more of God, more blessing, more challenge, more wisdom, more growth.  It begins with the asking: my heart first recognizing my great need for God and the things of God.  I have encouraged many people myself to know what they want and ask for it in various situations.  We meet with others for clarity about what we want and need in life and how to move forward.  

In this story is another truth and one that I don't contemplate very much.

God is interested in giving us life beyond what we even know to ask.  We do not need the imagination or the vision to ask for what God has for us.   We don't need to have a full life plan or a mission-statement or a life vision or even an earnest prayer regarding the ways that we want to grow.  Those things certainly are helpful and the development of wisdom and discernment is a mark of maturity in Christ, but we are not limited in life-abundant by what we have eyes to see or words to name.

At the heart level, God desires to give us more LIFE than we could ever ask or imagine. 

Eph 3:20   [God] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us...

And as Hannah Whitall Smith says, "God wants to give us the kingdom more than we want to have it."

The man lame from birth on the side of the road got more than he could ask or imagine.

God has life for us like this too.  Beyond our asking. Beyond our thinking. Beyond our praying. Beyond our vision.

Perhaps the work is to recognize what in us is lame, crippled, broken-down, and in pieces. So that we can be intent on recognizing the marks of what is done in us that it is the name of Jesus. 

Non-Anxious Living Despite Pain

calm before the storm

"The real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated...."

American philosopher and psychologist  William James (1842-1920) pens these words that ring true to us as followers of Jesus. The permanently patient heart reminds me of Eugene Peterson's translation of 2 Pet 2:6 passionate patience.  This is the non-anxious way of living, the relinquished way of walking through life in which pain and suffering flows through us, in us, around us but does not control us.  We may live in the valley of the shadow, but we know deeply--at our core--that we are family members of steadfast God who will not let us go.  This is the way of living that is full of endurance and has the unshakable anchor of relationship--real knowing of Jesus. This kind of permanently patient heart cannot be gained by anchoring to a set or system of beliefs. It can only be gained in the practice of friendship with God. It is forged in the everyday knowing of Christ which leads to belief over time.  But you cannot trust Christ--really--without knowing Christ's heart. And that takes time.

However, William James continues that quote with these words:
 "...And this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether."
--William James

Now this catches my attention. Because it is true.  There are those in my life who have not lived in the valley of the shadow, but also have this non-anxious presence. Perhaps it has not yet been tried, but when you are with them, you see that there is some kind of deep endurance and steadfastness in them. Again, this patient, enduring way of living is not found because of pain or suffering, but is found in cultivating relationship with God. And, the belief system of Christianity does not encompass God. Relationship with Jesus, listening to God can happen outside the confines of the religion that we American Christians have set up as the form in which one must go through in order to encounter God.  These words may seem uncomfortable--even heretical at first--but yet, if you think about it--which is bigger--God or American-style Christianity? It begins to push at our neat boundaries of what is or what is not faith.  Christianity is the religion of knowing Jesus. It is the practice according to the forms of our cultural context of knowing Jesus. But knowing Jesus--that is bigger than anything we can humanly define and put into the a box that we can measure and understand.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, or the Life--yet many will meet Jesus without ever knowing the religion of Christianity such as I do in my church down the street.

Rob Bell modern telling of the Beatitudes--so good.

A modern telling of the B-attitudes by Rob Bell.. 140 characters at a time via @realrobbell

Blessed are those who don’t have it all together.

Blessed are those who have run out of strength, ideas, will power, resolve, or energy.

Blessed are those who ache because of how severely out of whack the world is.

Blessed are those stumble, trip, and fall in the same place again and again.

Blessed are those who on a regular basis have a dark day in which despair seems to be a step behind them wherever they go.

Blessed are you, for God is with you, God is on your side, God meets you in that place.

The gospel is the counter-intuitive, joyous, exuberant news that Jesus has brought the unending, limitless, stunning love of God to even us.

Psalm 23 The Mothering Psalm

The experience of God as shepherd is a nurturing, protecting, comforting, guiding image. I love this Psalm as do all of us because it is our soul food and nourishment. Since I don't have shepherds in my life on a daily (or annually for that matter) basis, I reflected on how the image is translated in this context. Both fathers and mothers are comforters, protectors and guides. In Psalm 23 the picture of God as a host--inviting us to the banquet table spoke to me of a mother-hearted God. I am put this Psalm into my own words--inspired by Eugene Peterson in The Message, and my by own vision of God mothering me.

Psalm 23 in my words:

God you are a mother to me.
With you, all my needs are met.
You lead me to wide open places,
You find me quiet water to refresh my soul.
You guide me in the right direction
and speak truth because you are Truth.

Even when I find myself in the darkest valley,
I am not afraid.
My Mother never leaves me,
protecting and nurturing,
And so, I am comforted.

You invite me into your kitchen
And serve me cup after cup of hot tea.
You draw a steaming bath for me
And light a a fire that never goes out.

Your beauty and love follow me
every day of my life.
I will make my home in your house
For the rest of my life.

A leaping baby and a christmas bell

Reflections on Luke 1:39-45

Luke gives us his account of the life of Christ: “after investigating everything carefully from the first so that we would know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed”.

And it warms my mother-heart that the author included the leap of a child In utero as one of the signs of confirmation that Mary was truly carrying the Christ. If you think about it and the culture and society this was recorded, it is quite unique that the detail that certainly no man has ever experienced directly, could have found it’s way into this account.

And Elizabeth is the first one to give testimony to the birth of the child who would change everything.

I have drawn in this passage to these words: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

And blessed is she who believed…

It reminds me of some of the last recorded words of Jesus in the book of John “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

To believe, it is to be blessed. To be blessed: to make happy, to be consecrated, set a part, to be made holy. To be honored. To besanctified. Big meaning in this little word--blessed. It is blessed to believe.

I am wondering these days about what it means to believe.

Belief is the crux of our faith. But what is it to believe? Some say that believing is a choice, a decision of the will. Is it a feeling in our gut? Or perhaps you believe that belief is a mixture of mental energy, deep passion and daily practice? A common definition of belief is to have the confidence in the truth and reliability of something without absolute proof. And perhaps you experience confidence in your believing every day of your life, or perhaps you wonder and question, or perhaps you believe because you believed yesterday and the day before that. Perhaps you believe with gusto with every inch of your being or perhaps you have a thimble full of belief somedays.

A favorite children’s book was made into a film a few years ago. The Polar Express. A small boy is beginning to doubt the existence of Santa and the Christmas spirit when on Christmas Eve the Polar Express comes to a grinding halt in front of his door and he boards the train and finds himself on a journey to the North Pole. When at the North Pole the boy encounters Santa, Santa selects him to request the first present of Christmas. The boy chooses a silver bell from Santa’s own sleigh. Santa gives him the bell and he slips it into his robe pocket, only to find when he returns home that his pocket has a hole in it. With great despair the boy goes to bed, but the next morning the boy finds a small package under the tree with that very bell inside. When he rings the bell, he and his sister hear the most beautiful, magical sound. But his parents hear nothing. As he grows up, his friends also lose the ability to hear the bell and then even his sister can no longer hear it ring. When the boy is a man, he still hears the bell. “The bell rings for me”, he says at the close of the book, “and for all who truly believe”. We certainly can wonder what the story is calling us to believe in. However, there is something for us that rings true as believers in Christ.

There are many things in this world that keep our ears from hearing the bell of God in our lives. There are many obstacles to believing. We even have an Adversary who delights in finding ways to silence our hearing and disrupt our belief. Many of us doubt and despair and long for absolute proof in a God that doesn’t give us a God-on-demands-according-to-our-terms.

In Advent we are given a few weeks set aside by the Church to listen afresh for the bell of Christ in our ear. To do something audacious and courageous, to believe in the risen Christ without physically putting our fingers into the palms and side of Christ. To be as bold as to believe that the stirrings in our hearts is the Holy Spirit just as the baby stirred in the womb of Elizabeth.

My prayer for you and for me is that this Christmas we would hear the bell of Christ ringing in all kinds of new and unexpected places—and some old familiar and worn places as well. And when you do, when you find yourself believing with fresh ears, remember the words of Elizabeth: Blessed is the one who believes in the fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord. And in the words of Christ: Blessed are you who have not seen and yet come to believe.

Where has this psalm been all my life?

Where has this psalm been all my life? I feel like I have never read it or heard it before.

Psalm 15: The Way, The Truth, The Life
O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?

Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
and speak the truth from their heart;
who do not slander with their tongue,
and do no evil to their friends,
nor take a reproach again their neighbors;
in whose eyes the wicked are despised,
but who honor those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
who do not lend money at interest,
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be moved.

This is a beautiful, inspiring psalm. It is the way to live in the world--how to be deeply rooted in a foundation of truth. It reminds me of that sunday school song (excuse the sexist language): The wise man built in his house upon the rock, his house upon the rock, his house upon the rock...and when the floods came up and rains came down, the house on the rock stood FIRM.

How do we make our home with God and live in God's house?

• Do what is right
• Speak the truth from our hearts
• Do not stretch the truth to hurt someone
• Do not do evil to your friends and neighbors
• Honor those who live a life of God
• Stand by your promises even when it hurts
• Do not lend money in order to make money
• Do not take a bribe that hurts the innocent

If you do these things, you will never be moved.

I love that thought of never being moved. It makes me think of one of the tall trees here on the Oregon coast that when you look at the top you have to strain your neck. The whole tree gently sways in the wind, yet its root system is so deep and complex that it will never be moved. Even if someone were to come along and chop it down, to remove the stump and roots all the way is almost impossible. The root system is so huge and far-reaching that it require tons of earth to be bulldozed away. And the words of the psalm tell us that our lives can be even more secure and deep in God than a tree in the ground. The practices of a holy life make us into holy people. When we live in a way that is righteous and blameless, we become righteous and blameless. Our holy-lived lives make deeper and deeper root systems that plant us into the heart of God so that we will not be swayed. What a simple truth to teach and live into.