Sunday, August 28, 2011

Fellowship (of Presbyterians et al.) in the Kingdom God


 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:9-21


Saturday night in worship at LNPC we gathered around this scripture and talked about times we had experienced these things in real life.  Mutual affection, weeping when someone weeps and rejoicing when they rejoice, extending hospitality to strangers or overcoming evil with good.  We shared a story, each of us, of just one time when we had been part of one of these things, and what it felt like.  And then we looked at a whole list of human needs/values that we all share, which also characterize life in the Kingdom of God, and we circled the ones we had experienced in that moment.  When human life functions as God designed it, and when the Church is truly being the Church, we participate in life-affirming interaction with one another. There is trust, joy, connection, integrity, mourning, compassion, clarity, contribution, and authenticity.  And we were designed by God to thrive in this way, to share in God’s purposes when we experience and contribute toward these things in the world, living into the wholeness we each need in our very core. 

This scripture text presents an impossibly beautiful picture of what life in the Kingdom of God is meant to be, what being the Body of Christ should look like – and it is easy to read it and feel paralyzed or despairing by the stark contrast with what most of us experience regularly.  

This week the Fellowship of Presbyterians gathered in Minneapolis – 2000 people grappling through how to be church in all its nuances with our various interpretation of scriptures or understanding of faith or desired practices as communities.  Twitter was going crazy with people from the outside, desperately seeking to get a sense of the discussion, or throwing in their own snarky judgments as the days unfolded.  And, as with any such gathering, there were some things said about (and at) the event that did not contribute to wholeness or reflect God’s intention for life in the Body of Christ.

But my week was centered around a side event, “Eats & Empathy,” that was designed to help anyone – regardless of nuances in theology, experience, interpretation, emotion, etc. – to stay grounded and present, open to God and one another in the midst of the discussion.  We practiced empathy – really seeking to see and hear one another, to understand the needs and values being expressed within the words that are spoken or the actions that are taken.  And we looked at our own needs and values, grieving those that may have been unmet in the experiences of the week - such as communication, connection, respect, mutuality or security - and celebrating the beauty of these God-given needs anyway.

On Friday, our second evening, we addressed “enemy images” – those labels we use that allow us to dismiss one another, most glaringly and prominently “Liberal” and “Conservative.”  Sitting there together, a whole eclectic bunch of us, with all the enemy images we bring to the table, across from and next to these very people we’ve categorized and dismissed, or others we’ve labeled and assumed to be just exactly like us, we found ourselves experiencing solidarity, hope, shared grief, community, inspiration, the sense of understanding and being understood. 

And we could acknowledge that within this debate our denomination has been waging for 25 years, some people are really in touch with the needs for inclusion and justice and others are really in touch with the needs for integrity and faithfulness. But in truth, we all share all of these needs, and the needs themselves do not conflict.  In God’s Kingdom there is integrity, inclusion, faithfulness and justice.  In God's Kingdom all people are made whole and God is glorified.  So no matter which needs any of us gathered there tend to hold more dear, we found ourselves able together to grieve the way we fall short of these things as the church.  And at the same time we were freed to celebrate together the beauty of what we are called to as the Body of Christ and the foretaste we glimpse of eternity when we experience them here and now.

On Saturday night, when our tiny rag tag group of Presbyterian Jesus followers in all our weakness and humanity left our church worship service, we were filled with hope.  Holding in front of us these ridiculously full charts of qualities of life in the Kingdom of God that we’re evidently regularly part of - often without realizing it – and feeling the significance of what we had shared the night before on behalf of the larger Church, we were profoundly aware that this is indeed the Body of Christ.  And that we are indeed individually members of one another.  And I, for one, am so very, very grateful to be part of such a holy and mighty undertaking.  Thanks be to God.


(For more on the Fellowship of Presbyterians, Romans 12, and being the Body of Christ, see last week's entry: Living Sacrifice)

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Living Sacrifice

photo "holding hands together" from sethskim




On Friday I was driving down 35W, and on the 35th street overpass a man was standing, looking down at the cars below, with a dog sitting beside him.  He was holding an enormous American flag in one hand, which was billowing in the wind, and with the other hand he was pressing a handmade sign against the fence, the words barely legible to the passing cars, it read, “Thank you Nick for your sacrifice. We will miss you forever.”  
Here was this person, demanding to be seen in his grief, seeking to honor someone who had died, I assume, in service to his country. And this man’s need to share it, to be seen and heard, was so great, and had so little outlet, that he had to silently shout it to strangers in their cars on their way to work. 
I couldn’t see the man’s face, but in the narrative I constructed, it was streaming with tears, defiant and proud and lonely tears, and, (just to make it all the more heart-breaking), I imagined that the dog beside him was this Nick’s dog and the two of them stood as a testimony to Nick’s sacrifice – that somehow by their actions he could be remembered and honored – even if just by the two of them in all the world.

Seeing that man and dog made me think about sacrifice, about this exhortation in our text today to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God.” We see sacrifice as giving up something, hurting us in some way for the sake of another.  The ultimate sacrifice you can give is your life, like Nick. It means you’re dead.  Gone.  The sacrifice, then, the exchange you made or thing you let go of, was everything that you could have been and never got to become.  The sacrifice was putting someone else’s battle, someone else’s agenda, someone else’s calling ahead of your own, or taking it on as your own in exchange for whatever you would have been without it.  Thank you for your sacrifice, you will be missed forever.

In Paul’s context, a sacrifice was dead as well. To bring a burnt offering, a sacrifice to God was a religious symbol, recognizing God’s sovereignty and your place as God’s subject; it was a way to worship and honor God.
So this language about being a living sacrifice, about your bodies, your lives, your whole beings, being a living sacrifice… it hardly even makes sense.  A living sacrifice is almost an oxymoron.  Nothing is put to death in this sacrifice, nothing is killed or made dead. Instead it remains vibrant, thriving, vital; the life lived becomes the sacrifice. 
Rather than giving up who you are; you fulfill it.  You let your every day, your imagination and actions, your creativity and fears and hopes and skills and relationships and encounters be the way of honoring God. 

In fact, this urging of Paul says we honor God most when each person lives fully who they were created to be, no less, in mutuality and connection with each other.  Everything you do, then, is part of this gift back to God, this thank you so much! lived out in each moment.  It’s not separate – the spiritual and the bodily, it’s one and the same.

You belong to God!, Paul has been saying for chapters and chapters up until this point – you belong to God and not to sin, you belong to grace and not to condemnation, you belong to freedom and to wholeness and not to slavery and brokenness, so live like it. This is your new natural state, you need to live your way into it.

And here’s how, he says, with your whole selves as an offering to God.  And this is absolutely and completely tied up in how we treat one another, in all of us together sharing in this thing – many bodies, one sacrifice, many members, one body, many gifts, one calling, many functions, one intention, serving the whole as we serve each other, and honoring God by doing so.  That is how we share in the purposes of God on earth.

Sitting here today, you probably cannot sense it in this moment, you probably have not seen the increasing build up, but our denomination is in a tenuous place, and this week some of that will come to a head. In congregations all over the country, this is the Sunday before, the Sunday of prayer and preparation, for this national Gathering put on by the Fellowship of Presbyterians here in Minneapolis.

This week the more conservative end of the one-dimensional spectrum we’ve created to judge and rank ourselves, this week those “conservatives” that are not so far over that they’ve given up completely on the rest of us, the ones just in from them, and then lots in the middle too, are gathering to talk about the future of their congregations, their presbyteries, their faith and how they practice it and whether it can still be practiced in the PCUSA, and if not, then what?
And the those on the more liberal side of this deceptive and perilous teeter-totter we’ve all frantically balanced ourselves upon, are either ignoring this large and emotional Gathering altogether, watching with concern and apprehension, or openly mocking and criticizing it. 

A few days ago someone whom I would consider a friend, or at the very least, a friendly colleague, wrote a scathing blogpost about the event, in which he, in essence, judged the motives of those attending as being about power and money, and finished with a “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.” approach.  He was lauded for his words by some; and I wept when I read it.

 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to ….
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

If they go, (whoever “they” are), we who stay, (whoever “we” are), will lose valuable, integral parts of our body; we will not be able to function as we were meant to.  Where each person, and each congregation - in our limited awareness, and capacity, in our own little faith or great faith, in our gifts and our strengths, our weaknesses and blindspots - let our whole lives be part of this amazing thing we are called to, let our lives participate with God and each other.
Where will be prophets and the givers if we are separated?  What leaders and compassionates, which ministers and teachers will we lose?  And how will we carry on without these parts of our body?  What are we really saying, if any one of us thinks we can dismiss the other, or ourselves, from the body? We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

These verses before us today are the first verses I really remember memorizing, (aside from John 3:16 and the other givens).  I was at summer camp, I must have been about ten, and we got points for different various activities, one of which was memorizing verses.  This one sounded so much like a sermon that I threw open the windows of our bunkroom, and shouted it down to passers-by until I had the whole thing perfected in the cadence of an old-timey preacher. 

Do not be conformed to this world!  I would roar out the window, jabbing my finger at the sky.  This doesn’t mean, like I thought it did when I was ten, not to swear or cheat or kiss boys or think bad thoughts or lose your temper.  It means not to let yourselves be dominated by the mentality that some are better than others, or that we are not utterly connected and dependent on one another.

This week is the 2-year anniversary of our move to embrace Sabbath more fully as a congregation.  I was asked to contribute some articles to a worship website on the meaning of Sabbath and how we practice it together, and as I wrote I found it fascinating to remember why we chose to do this, and to reflect on what it has given us. 
Sabbath breaks us out of the cycle of this world, the 24/7, non-stop, consumer-driven system that sees people as competition instead of companion, that sums up your full worth by your net worth, that isolates us as individuals instead of binds us as a body.  Sabbath demands that we stop and sense the grace given to us, and recognize the God who breathes life into it all.

Sabbath renews our minds and helps us resist the messages of this age.  It means, stop being solitary you in traffic, on the way to your own job and absorbed in your own life and look up at the man on the overpass – standing there in his grief and his need to be seen – and see him, and his friend who is gone, and your connection to them as human beings, and realize how grateful you are for your own connection to others, for places of belonging, for people who will grieve you when you are gone, and see your life for the living sacrifice it can be – the offering, the gift – to God and to the world, each and every day that you are living, and not only when you’re gone.

Sabbath rest means being reoriented, reminded, that God is God, and that you are part of the people of God, and that is how you are defined first and foremost –and in Christ you have a unique and particular role to play and others are blessed when you are fully you, living that role out alongside them being them and God being God.

All week long, with thoughts of Sabbath bumping around my brain, and watching the internet hubbub build up around the PCUSA, I was aware of the constant struggle not to be conformed to this world, and how even in the church, everywhere in fact, we are indeed opposing the forces that would throw us back into sin, that would lie to us about ourselves and our world and our God.  I was reminded that allowing ourselves to be renewed, body and mind, is a deeply spiritual and radically revolutionary act of resistance and honesty.

There is joy in all this too, by the way. Not like I preached it from the second floor bunkhouse window. Not all hellfire and brimstoney and preachy.  But worship, worship it becomes!  Full on, joyfilled worship, thank-you-God, worship, worship that says, yeah, things are bad, and they are hard, but still you are God and I am so thankful to be yours. 
Not worship as our world worships – worship of self and self-sufficiency, of wealth and fitness and independence and the sacrifice of death.  But worship to our creator and designer of life, who knit together this striking and intricate, eclectic body and knows how it all works together, worship that finds its rest and purpose and meaning in the one who sets us free and then holds us accountable to live in our freedom.
I urge you, therefore, it says, – wherefore?  Because from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever and ever amen! (vs. 11:36)  That kind of worship.

As we head into this week, I pray for the strength to keep seeing one another- as individuals, as members of one another, as a church and a denomination, as human beings, family and friends - to keep seeing each other and not leave one another stranded on the overpass in grief and isolation.
And I pray for the vision to recognize that this is God’s body, and not our personal property, and that each and every one of themespecially the ones I can’t relate to or don’t understand – are part of this body with me, and their purpose is necessarily different than my own, and I am not complete without them.  
And may my discomfort be a sacrifice of worship and widen my capacity to love,
and may my anxiety become a sacrifice of praise and expand hope in God’s design,
and may my apprehension or confusion become a sacrifice of surrender and deepen trust within me.  
And may I know the joy of belonging to God and each other, that each day, by imagination and action, our lives may sing out together in all their notes and harmony, into a living and holy sacrifice of praise, which is our spiritual worship.
Amen.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Happy Sabbath Anniversary




This week I spent a day at Sabbath House, a home in the middle of the city, where some Sisters of St. Francis open up garden, bedrooms, library and lovely, airy porch to people in need of a respite.  I napped, read, listened to peaceful music while the breeze made the wind chimes ring outside the window, and ate a delicious meal with fresh garden goodies from their CSA.  I felt tucked away and hidden from the world, right in the middle of it, and it gave me a chance to reflect on the two years our church has spent intentionally practicing Sabbath.


It was here, at Sabbath House, that half our congregation gathered over two one-day retreats to learn about Sabbath from these Sisters, to experience a day of it and worship together in the context of Sabbath.  It was here that our dream of practicing Sabbath as a congregation began to grow real live roots and leaves, and become something we could nurture and grow and live into.  We had explored how, for us, worship went far beyond sitting in pews, and hospitality was about truly meeting God and others, and had decided we wanted to embrace a fuller, more expansive experience of worship and hospitality, that could maybe be explored if we practiced Sabbath together. 
 (I have shared about our congregation's transition to a Sabbath-keeping pattern of worship  over at Clayfire Curator.  You can find that article here).

In the two years now, that we have been practicing Sabbath as a community, we have settled into a rich and nurturing rhythm.  First and third Sundays we worship on Sunday mornings in all our Presbyterian glory.  Second and Fourth weekends we meet Saturday nights, by candlelight and harp, and sink into Sabbath rest together.  The “preached word” takes many forms, looser in format than the Sunday sermons, and often very interactive.  We hold silence each week, two whole minutes that sometimes stretch into eternity, but have become life-giving.  Simple, Taize-esque music is woven throughout the service, and we center our worship around shared prayer (something that has invaded our Sunday morning services as well).  
Our Saturday worship continues with a communal meal, prepared in love by a member whose large house and grown children are on the other side of the country.  She leaves her seminary dorm room to meditate in the warmth of the church kitchen for the day, feeding her own soul in the preparation to feed us.  Then we go home. 

And on Sunday, we spend the day in Sabbath.  Here and there, all over the city, individuals and families purposely stopping.  The guidelines we give ourselves are to try to do nothing from obligation, to pay attention to the struggle to stop and offer even that as a gift of gratitude, to get outside some, to play some, to do something that gives us delight.  To be with others if we’re alone a lot. To be alone if our lives are busy.  To make the day different than our ordinary days. To pay attention to what our souls need.  And it works for us.

Today I met with our music director to plan for the next few weeks, and together we marveled that we have reached the two year mark.  And we realized that neither one of us could ever go back to the pattern of life and worship we had known all of our lives. This way of worship has become who we are, and has fed us abundantly as a community and as individuals.  So, in gratitude we celebrate.  
Happy Sabbath Anniversary, Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church!

To read more about what Sabbath is and why we keep Sabbath, see an earlier article on Clayfire Curator here, and check out their many Sabbath reflections and resources this week.

____________________________________________________________________

Our Opening Sabbath Ritual is adapted from the Jewish Shabbat, and involves lighting two candles labeled “Observe” and “Remember,” drawn from the two places in Scripture (Exodus 20:8 & Deuteronomy 5:12) where the Sabbath command is given.

LNPC Sabbath Opening Ritual:

God meets us here as we come together.
We set aside our plans and open up our lives
to be nurtured in sacred time.

By resting from our labors and worries,
and delighting in that which gives us joy,
we discover who we are,
and in whose image we are made.
We are drawn into the rest of God,
we are refreshed and renewed,
and so we Observe the Sabbath.
(“Observe” candle is lit)

We meet God here as we come together.
We lift up our hearts and open up our lives
to recognize God in sacred time.

By resisting the rule of an anxious and fearful world,
and lingering in the wideness of God’s generosity and love,
we discover whose we are,
and in whom our life is found.
We give our trust and gratitude to God,
we are reoriented and reminded,
and so we Remember the Sabbath.
(“Remember” candle is lit)

Prayer
God of creation and deliverance,
Christ with us in life and death,
Spirit of love, forgiveness and hope,
We meet you here,
and you meet us here,
as we come together in sacred time.
  
(liturgy copyright Kara K Root and Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church)

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Telling Time or Living Time


Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 14-15
Matthew 14:22-33



There is a time to mourn and a time to celebrate, and so often in life, these times are one and the same.  This is the third occasion this weekend on which this passage has been featured  – first at Doug Johnson’s funeral, where we celebrated his ordinary and remarkable life and the love that poured from it, and we mourned his passing and grieved losing him, and we did both of these things at the same time, even while recognizing that Doug is held in God’s eternal time.

Then yesterday this passage came up again at my Dad’s wedding, where two people with broken pasts and broken hearts who have found each other started over together. And it was, for them, truly a time to celebrate as they joined their lives into one and the future opened up before them. But for me, sitting there, as a living part of the time that was in my Dad’s past, it was painful. I am thrilled for him, but I grieve over the brokenness of my family that can never be recovered, and the way that brokenness invades my very being.  And it was really, really hard to find myself inexplicably mourning when anyone at all can tell you weddings are times to celebrate.

There is a time for everything and so we like to use this passage to tell you what time it is. It’s happy time, not sad time; it’s time to build up, not break down, it’s time to look forward, not backwards, it’s time to speak or dance or smile, not be silent or sit quietly or weep. Get with the time.

But the problem is that almost nothing in life is just one thing or the other. And all these times nestle so close to one another that one person’s time for silence is another’s time to speak, and building up often demands some breaking down at the same time, and joy and sorrow are such a shaken up cocktail that they can barely be tasted separately and are impossible to completely extract from one another, and tears and laughter absolutely belong together at funerals.

And I hate when people use scripture, any kind of scripture, to tell you what you should do or how you should be.  We do that to ourselves all the time.  But that’s not what this book is. It’s not a how-to manual.  It’s not a self-help guide or a right-living formula.  It's so much more valuable and powerful than that.
This is the story of our faith. This is the story of life. Of God. Of God’s involvement in people’s lives.  So it is mostly not prescriptive; it is descriptive.  What I mean is, this beautiful poetry read in so many different times and contexts is not telling us that we should divide life into these clear-cut categories and try really hard to do the right thing at the right time.

It is observing, noticing, that life is filled with all of these things, that sometimes we mourn and sometimes we dance and sometimes there is war and sometimes peace, and we keep and we throw away and it’s all part of the package, this great big mixed bag called life. And it is suggesting that in every season there is purpose, meaning, and mostly, it is recognizing that in the midst of whatever season we find ourselves in, God is there with us, this God who holds all these times, and all time, in God’s hands.

And so when we come to our passage of Peter walking on the water, I can’t help but feel almost irritated, because there is nobody who has been in church for any amount of time that hasn’t heard sermons on this text, and 99% of the time they are prescriptive.  They tell you what time it is. It’s faith time, not fear time! It’s worship time, not doubt time! You should have enough faith to get out of the boat. You should not be distracted by the storm. You should keep your eyes on Jesus. 
Duh. Nobody needs to be told that.  We know that.  It just makes us feel bad to be told once again to keep your eyes on Jesus because if we are honest we are very often distracted by the storm, and who wouldn’t be?  And very seldom do we really have the faith, or stupidity, or whatever it is, to get out of the boat in the middle of it.   And who in the world can keep their eyes always on Jesus and what in the world does that mean anyway?
 
So, we could sit here, all itchy and annoyed, ready to be told once again how we are supposed to feel or follow, what we are supposed to do or believe, and let the beauty and ridiculousness and reality of this story blow right over us.  Or we could really listen to the story, immerse ourselves right into it and let it describe instead of prescribe, let it help us observe life and ourselves, and fear and faith, and worship and doubt and let it show us a little bit about what it mean to be human and how hard it is, but mostly, let it tell us something of who God is and what God is up to.

Immediately following the feeding of the 5000, where the disciples not just witness, but participate in this doubt-busting miracle, they head out alone into the boat on the Sea of Galilee.  And then they spend the entire night fighting a relentless storm, thrown around, bailing water, struggling with sails and bracing against wind with no respite in sight, terrified for their very lives, and, I can imagine, utterly and completely exhausted. 
It has not been a good night.
And in the wee hours of the morning, wind still gusting and waves still heaving, here comes this figure, walking atop the water. 
So let’s just pause there and note that, at least to me, their fear makes complete sense. This must be the end, right? They’re seeing things, they’re going down, or they’ve already died. 
But when he’s within shouting distance Jesus tells them, “Don’t be scared, guys, it’s me.” 
And Peter, dear Peter, calls back, “Jesus, if it’s really you then tell me to walk to you.” (which of course, no ghost or figment of your imagination would do-?).  So Jesus invites Peter out of the boat, and Peter actually climbs out of the pitching, heaving boat and puts his feet onto the water and stands up. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but that seems to me some kind of faith.  “You of little faith,” Jesus calls him later, little faith like a mustard seed that moves mountains, little faith that gets you raw, open and vulnerable in the middle of the storm because you’ve asked Jesus to call you there. Just sayin’. Little faith is no small thing.

So Peter steps out and walks to Jesus. But he is suddenly distracted by the raging sea and the roiling sky and the wind screaming around him and he begins to sink. 
And here is where we get told to just keep your eyes on Jesus, as though somehow it’s God’s goal to get you out of storms, even ones you’ve put yourself into the middle of, or that God sends storms to test us and we are supposed to have some big faith, bigger than Peter’s little faith, and just resist. 
We also like to assume at this point that discipleship is some kind of mental game of focus, like karate or zen golf, and if we just believe hard enough we wont sink, like seeing the storm is what causes the sinking, so if we just keep ourselves from acknowledging that the elements are raging around us and threatening to break us down, somehow we’ll coast along the top of the water and everything will be peachy.  But when we admit our fear, or notice how terrible things really are, down we go, under the waves. And apparently, Jesus is just there to get us back on track.
So buck up, little Christians, and put on that smile! This the time for bravery and stoicism!   This is the time for faith!  
But with all the encouragement we get with this passage to keep our eyes on Jesus, we rarely take our eyes off of Peter long enough to really look at Jesus.  Where is he in this story? What is he doing? What does he do when Peter cries out?  Who is Jesus here?

Biblical scholar Dave Lose says,
“Jesus, finally, isn't simply our guide or life coach; he's our Savior, the One who does for us what we cannot. Too much of American Christianity, I think, has forgotten that, reducing the gospel to one more spiritual self-help recipe, hardly different from what you might hear on Oprah. But the Lord who walks atop the sea in this story not only directs wind and wave but also death and life. This Jesus wants more than to command our attention; he wants to save our lives. And he has promised to do just that.”

Jesus, Lord of wind and rain, is right here in the middle of the storm, face to face with Peter, catching him when he sinks, climbing back into the boat with him.  And the disciples who began this encounter not even recognizing him, fearing and doubting him, now worship him.

There are two places in Matthew where doubt is talked about – here, and after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  And both places, doubt sits right alongside worship.  They doubted and they worshiped.  In both situations the time for doubt and the time for worship were one and the same.  They so often are when encountering this God-man in all his divine humanity and messy holiness in the midst of this painful joy of a life.

It’s not about how to be a good Christian who doesn’t fear or doubt or notice life’s storms; it’s is about what it is to be human and who God is in the midst of it. 
And it isn’t about defining or categorizing our times, trying to find the right way to be and only that, it is about what it is to be human and who God is in the midst of it.

Being human means that there is no experience that life doesn’t throw at us, but whether we’re laughing or crying, tearing or sewing, seeking or losing, planting or harvesting, warring or at peace, dancing or mourning or doing them at the very same time, God invites our honesty, our humanity, our doubt and our worship, because the God who stands both outside of time holding it all, and also drenched to the bone and reaching out in the very center of the storm
is right here,
in all things,
no matter what,
and there is nothing that God doesn’t have us through.
Amen.

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

Psalm 46 ,  Jeremiah 31:31-34 When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion o...