In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? ~John Stott from “The Cross of Christ”
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. ~J.R.R. Tolkien from Lord of the Rings
With all that happens daily in this disordered world, in order to even walk out the door on this spring equinox day, I fall back on what we are told in God’s Word, in 365 different scripture verses for each and every day of the year:
Fear not.
Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good.
And so – we must overcome — despite our fears in this world of pain.
As demonstrated by the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary of Bethany, we must do what we can to sacrifice for others, to live in such a way that death cannot erase the meaning and significance of a life. We are called to give up our own selfish agendas in order to consider the needs of others.
It is crystal clear from Christ’s example as we observe His journey to the cross: we are to cherish life -all lives- even unto death. As Christ Himself forgave those who hated and murdered Him, He forgives us as well.
Our only defense against the evil we witness is God’s offense through His Love. Only God can lead us to Tolkien’s “where everything sad will come untrue”, where we shall live in peace, walk hand in hand, no longer alone, no longer afraid, no longer shedding tears of grief and sorrow, but tears of relief and joy.
On this first day of Spring, we are longer overcome by evil but overcome with goodness, all to God’s glory.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. ~Mary Oliver, “The Uses of Sorrow”from Thirst
Someone spoke to me last night, told me the truth. Just a few words, but I recognized it. I knew I should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and I was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks. Now I remember only the flavor – not like food, sweet or sharp. More like a fine powder, like dust. And I wasn’t elated or frightened, but simply rapt, aware. That’s how it is sometimes – God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you’re just too tired to open it. ~Dorianne Laux “Dust”
On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain- I do not expect a miracle Or an accident
To set the sight on fire In my eye, nor seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent
Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then — Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largesse, honor One might say love. At any rate, I now walk Wary (for it could happen Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical Yet politic, ignorant
Of whatever angel any choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear Of total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this season Of fatigue, I shall Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur, If you care to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again, The long wait for the angel. For that rare, random descent. ~Sylvia Plath “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”
Even when we open up an unwanted box of darkness, it too can be an unexpected gift:
it is no trick of radiance nor is it random when He comes to our window, waiting patiently for us to let Him in.
This descent to us is planned and very real: He seizes us and does not let go even when we are too tired to open to Him.
We wait, this long wait while moving rocks uphill; longing to feel His Light again. Rapt, aware, weary, yet awake and ready.
photo by Nate Gibsonphoto by Nate Gibson
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention… And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov from Sands of the Well
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
I who don’t know the secret wrote the line. They told me
(through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can’t find,
and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines
in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for
assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all. ~Denise Levertov “The Secret” from O Taste and See
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah 40:3
This is the time of year when I tend to get off track, lost and wandering in a wilderness of winter doldrums.
Winter clings like a chilly cement suit, its deprivation gone on too long. I yearn for respite.
I am bewildered by life much of the time. Anyone looking at these postings can see my struggle as I try each day to make this sad and suffering world a little bit better place.
I have little to offer a reader other than my own wrestling match with the mysteries we all face.
And so each day, I seek out a secret line, or a clue from the sky, or a voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way:
to look where I’m going, to walk this path with a goal in mind, to stop meandering meaninglessly, searching for what actually lies right before my eyes.
My path, if straight and true, leads me to join others also harkening to the call, all of us searching for His Truth in the mess of this broken world.
I am not alone on this road. Nor are you. We travel together.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
Another sleepless night I’m turning in my bed Long before the red sun rises In these early hours I’m falling again Into the river of my worries When the river runs away I find a shelter in your name
Jesus, only light on the shore Only hope in the storm Jesus, let me fly to your side There I would hide, Jesus
Hear my anxious prayer The beating of my heart The pulse and the measure of my unbelief Speak your words to me Before I come apart Help me believe in what I cannot see Before the river runs away I will call upon your name
Jesus, only light on the shore Only hope in the storm Jesus, let me fly to your side There I would hide, Jesus ~Elaine Rubenstein, Fernando Ortega
Light after darkness, gain after loss, Strength after weakness, crown after cross; Sweet after bitter, hope after fears, Home after wandering, praise after tears. Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end, He is making all things new. Springs of living water shall wash away each tear, He is making all things new. Sight after mystery, sun after rain, Joy after sorrow, peace after pain; Near after distant, gleam after gloom, Love after wandering, life after tomb. ~Frances Havergal
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When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your unfailing love, LORD, supported me. Psalm 94:18
As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain free fall, and float into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace, knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace. ~Denise Levertov “The Avowal”
I don’t like flying – at all. Human beings weren’t made with wings and I simply don’t think I belong up there. Then too is the feeling of the sudden drop which can happen with severe turbulence, the kind that leaves your stomach in your throat.
It is very much like the free-falling feeling that wakes you from a dream with an abrupt thud landing upon your pillow, your heart beating fast and your breath coming short, wondering what just happened.
It is good to know there is Someone there to hold me safely since I was born with no wings and own no parachute. There is nothing to be done but accept all-encompassing, all-embracing, all-surrounding grace that is pure gift. Such a rescue is not a reward, certainly not earned, nor does it arise out of my own skill or ingenuity.
God is simply there, ready to catch me as I fall.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun?
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. ~Mary Oliver from “I Happened to be Standing” from A Thousand Mornings
All that matters is to be at one with You, the living God; to be a creature in Your house, O God of Life! Like a cat asleep on a chair at peace, in peace at home, at home in the house of the living, sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world, yawning at home before the fire of life feeling the presence of You, the living God like a great reassurance a deep calm in the heart a presence as of a master, a mistress sitting on the board in their own and greater being, in the house of life. ~D.H. Lawrence “Pax”
When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular name. ~T.S. Eliot from The Naming of Cats
In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety… Psalm 4:8
Humanity longs for the peaceful untroubled rest promised in the Psalms.
Yet the world remains in turmoil; bombs continue to drop in countries at war, often killing the innocent. Homes, no longer a refuge of safety, become graves of destruction and devastation.
The Lord’s covenant with His people ensures the time will come when we shall rest in His house of life – in peace and security. His Son took on the brunt of the world’s hatred and violence, His sacrifice an atonement for the ongoing evil.
The Lord’s promise of peace and rest remains forever, His ineffable presence we long for, like a great reassurance, a deep calm in the heart…
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:8-9
We’ve moved into a bigger house. Now our voices wander among the rooms calling, Where are you?
And what we can’t forget of other houses confuses us as we answer back and forth, Over here!
It’s a little like returning to the village where you were born, the sad bewilderment of discrepancies between what you remember and what’s there.
No. It’s more like a memory of heaven. Voices coming closer, voices moving away,
and what we thought we knew about life on earth confounding us.
And then that question from which all the other questions begin. ~Li-Young Lee “Discrepancies, Happy and Sad” fromBook of My Nights
You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him. He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together
Ready or not, you tell me, here I come! And so I know I’m hiding, and I know My hiding-place is useless. You will come And find me. You are searching high and low. Today I’m hiding low, down here, below, Below the sunlit surface others see. Oh find me quickly, quickly come to me. And here you come and here I come to you. I come to you because you come to me. You know my hiding places. I know you, I reach you through your hiding-places too; Touching the slender thread, but now I see – Even in darkness I can see you shine, Risen in bread, and revelling in wine. ~Malcolm Guite “Hide and Seek”
When I go to the doctor, I trust I’m seeing someone who tries to know me thoroughly enough that they will help me move out of illness into better health. There are times when, as a patient, I need to be asked: Where are you in your life right now? What are your worries and fears? How can I support you through this?
This is how acceptance feels: trusting someone enough to come out of hiding, even when ashamed or fearful or feeling hopeless.
As a physician myself, I am reminded by the amount of “noticing” I needed to do in the course of my work over the decades. Each patient (and there were so many) deserved my full attention for the few minutes we are together. I started my clinical evaluation the minute we sat down together and I began taking in all the complex verbal and non-verbal clues they offered up, sometimes unwittingly.
As their audience, I become a witness to their struggle; even more, I must understand it in order to best assist them. My brain must rise to the occasion of taking in another person, accepting them for who they are, offering them the gift of compassion and simply be there for them – just them – right then.
God doesn’t struggle in His Holy work as I did in my clinical duties. He knows us so thoroughly because He made us; He knows our thoughts before we put them into words. There is no point in hiding from Him.
He can hold us in His Hand, discerns our secret heartbeats.
We, the no longer hidden, are His. His alone.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears; Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me. ~Christina Rossetti from “A Better Resurrection”
<Peter> saw the linen cloths lying there,and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. John 20: 6-7
It dawned on me that perhaps the first thing the risen Lord did after he defeated death, as his heart once again began to beat, was to fold his grave clothes.
This seemed to me to be good news for laundry doers everywhere—and especially to moms who probably still carry out the bulk of this mundane chore.
The risen Christ folded his laundry.
I suppose the angels could have done it but angels probably don’t have much experience with laundry. ~Doug Basler from “The Poetry of a Pastor” from Ekstasis Magazine
I remember, as a child, my panicky feeling, when my mother would help me take off a sweater with a particularly tight neck opening, as my head would get “stuck” momentarily until she could free me.
It caused an intense feeling of being unable to breathe or see anything around me – literally being frozen in place. I was trapped and held captive by something as innocuous as a piece of cloth, but the panic was real.
That same feeling still overwhelms me at times when I find myself stuck in my worries and fears, anxious and struggling to loosen what binds me, unable to look right or left, up or down.
My impulse, once free of whatever is smothering me, is to toss it as far away from me as possible. I want to be rid of it and never touch it again.
I certainly don’t take time to gently fold it up for all to see.
Jesus took the time to carefully fold His facial death cloth and leave it where anyone who entered the tomb would recognize it as proof that His body wasn’t stolen.
He had risen, leaving a clear message that all was in good order, as He said it would be.
Understanding that, I now find folding laundry more meaningful, not nearly as mundane. It is a reminder that a tidy and empty tomb is something to celebrate: new life quickens like spring sap rising from a fallen, faded leaf.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it?
…rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty…
…be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. ~Paul Harding in Tinkers
I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
Nothing that comes from God, even the greatest miracle, can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4. It touches one; it is only seen and grasped when the heart is open and the spirit purged of self. Then it awakens faith. … the heart is not overcome by faith, there is no force or violence there, compelling belief by rigid certitudes. What comes from God touches gently, comes quietly; does not disturb freedom; leads to quiet, profound, peaceful resolve within the heart. ~Romano Guardini from The Living God
On my doubting days, days often full of uncertainty, I recall how the risen Christ invited Thomas to place his hand in His wounds, gently guiding him to His reality, so it became Thomas’s new reality.
Thomas then understood: this God’s open wounds were calling out for belief.
Christ’s flesh and blood awakens our fragile faith by a simple touch.
…he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” John 20: 27-28
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. John 5: 1-18
I am overcome by ordinary contentment. What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment? How I love the small, swiftly beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples; its bright, unequivocal eye. ~Jane Kenyon from “Having it out with Melancholy”
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end?
…birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Thou art indeed just, Lord”
It seems so obvious: someone lying on a mat near a healing pool for 38 years – an Old Testament reference to Israel’s wilderness journey and inability to enter the promised land – wants to get well.
Jesus knows this man’s heart is troubled.
Yet Jesus asks this paralyzed man whether he wants to be healed. Not if he is ready to be healed, but whether he wants to be well. It doesn’t seem like a hard question to answer, but at times in our own lives, we too may not feel ready for a transformation to wholeness?
Maybe we really aren’t sure what “well” and being healed will mean to our lives. We wander in the wilderness of weak, struggling bodies and minds, hoping and praying to be led into a promised land of no illness or limitations. But often we aren’t sure. We only know there are many compelling reasons – no help, no hope, isolation from family and friends – to explain why we are stuck where we are.
We can’t imagine it being any other way.
Some are born with disabilities determining what they can and can’t do, knowing no other existence than to be dependent on others for help and care. Others develop illness or experience injury that changes everything for them, creating overwhelming needs leading to profound discouragement.
Some try anything and everything, proven or unproven, to find relief from their symptoms, to find their way out of their wilderness — sometimes with lasting results, often with no improvement.
Jesus is asking this man and asking us: are you ready to live a full life that takes you beyond your current limits? If so, we are transformed from who we have been, to someone we and others may no longer recognize.
It is a scary prospect to pick up our mat, carry our own baggage and walk. But when Jesus enters our life and asks us, point blank, if we want to get well, to become whole, to leave our wilderness behind and join Him – we should not hesitate – wasting precious time explaining all the reasons it hasn’t worked so far.
Jesus is ready, willing and able. And we will be transformed.
…our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Romans 8:18
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong its appetite for the luxury of the sun! ~Jane Kenyon from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems
This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.
Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.
…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that.
Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.
The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.
We can.
We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.
It remains with us whether to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer. ~C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. ~Jane Kenyon from “Otherwise”
A year ago today, I was shocked (thankfully, not literally!) to learn my coronary arteries were significantly occluded with plaque, despite years of daily barn chores, and blood pressure/lipid level management.
Stents were placed emergently to open the two critical blockages. I began more powerful medications with a new awareness as I go about the mundane routines of my day – someday – maybe soon, perhaps a decade or more – it would be otherwise.
I celebrate my year of opening my heart each day to the Son.
My appetite is strong for light and warmth, to leave discouragement behind. My desire is to delay death, piercing through the decay to flourish among the living, to open wide my face to the luxury of a luminous grace freely given.
A year ago today I turned a corner out of darkness, being given more time to choose Light. Grateful, I still follow the pathway of the Son.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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