Tag: sin

Preparing for Joy: Rend Your Heart

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dillymoment

“Even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
    with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

13 Rend your heart
    and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love
Joel 2: 12-13

There is no motivation for works of love
without a sense of gratitude,
no gratitude without forgiveness,
no forgiveness without contrition,
no contrition without a sense of guilt,
no sense of guilt without a sense of sin.
~Edna Hong

 

We must start with a torn heart; there is no other way to finding and sharing joy.
It isn’t enough to “do good” because we are “good” as the secular world would suggest.
We aren’t good enough, not by any stretch, and never will be — just look at the headlines, at the video of slaughtered sons, husbands, fathers, beheaded by sons, husbands, fathers.

We can never love enough on our own until our own heart owns our own sin, and we bring those broken heart pieces back to its Creator for His fix and glue.

sin –> guilt –> contrition –> forgiveness –> gratitude –> love –> joy

The only true pathway to joy.  Everything else is a shortcut to nowhere and nothing.

Becoming the Disturbance

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photos by Nate Gibson
photos by Nate Gibson

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No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
~Charles Lamb

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
~T.S. Eliot  “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

This New Year’s Day, like so many that have come before, arrives with the ordinary revelry,  yet a lingering odor remains.  All is not as it appears and is faintly disturbing.  Like a dog joyfully rolling in something stinky simply because it was there,  2015 may look squeaky clean but reeks of what has come before.  It can’t be ignored and, even brand new, is already badly in need of a bath.

I too tend to prefer things familiar, safe and routine, even if that means I roll about where I shouldn’t, still smelling like yesterday, if not last month.   It’s time I stop being indifferent to the passage of time and the change that it brings.  There is no turning back or staying stubbornly with how things used to be.  Time leads irrevocably forward, with me in tow, and I must follow,  acutely aware more of my life has been lived out than lies ahead of me.

Do I dare disturb my own comfortable universe?  Or continue to disturb others with that lingering odor?

Perhaps this new year I will try walking a slower walk, stay clear of the stinky stuff, take time to look at all things with new eyes, breathe each cleansing breath appreciatively, keenly aware it was not my last.

Then others near me might breathe more freely.

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Listening to Easter — Hear the Bells Ringing

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sunrise10123

Hear the bells ringing
They’re singing that you can be born again
Hear the bells ringing
They’re singing Christ is risen from the dead

The angel up on the tombstone
Said He has risen, just as He said
Quickly now, go tell his disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead

Joy to the world, He has risen, hallelujah
He’s risen, hallelujah
He’s risen, hallelujah

Hear the bells ringing
They’re singing that you can be healed right now
Hear the bells ringing, they’re singing
Christ, He will reveal it now

The angels, they all surround us
And they are ministering Jesus’ power
Quickly now, reach out and receive it
For this could be your glorious hour

Joy to the world, He has risen, hallelujah
He’s risen, hallelujah
He’s risen, hallelujah, hallelujah

The angel up on the tombstone
Said He has risen, just as He said
Quickly now, go tell his disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead

Joy to the world, He has risen, hallelujah
He’s risen, hallelujah
He’s risen, hallelujah
Hallelujah
~Keith Green

a stream of people walking up the hill this morning for Easter Sunrise Service on our farm
a stream of people walking up the hill this morning for Easter Sunrise Service on our farm
Some of the worshippers at our 2014 Easter Sunrise Service on our farm hilltop
Some of the worshippers at our 2014 Easter Sunrise Service on our farm hilltop

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins

Too often, the bright light of Easter morning dims over time
as I return to my daily routine.
In mere days,
the humdrum replaces the extraordinary,
tragedy overcomes festivity,
darkness overwhelms dawn.

The world encourages this,
I don’t muster enough resistance.
I climb right back into the tomb of my sin,
move the huge stone securely back in place,
and lie there waiting for rot to settle in.

I am not alone. I have plenty of company with me behind the stone.

The stone is pushed aside,
the burden shouldered,
the debt completely paid.

How can we allow the light to dim?

He is risen.

We are eastered beyond imagining.

Hiding Nothing

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changedpriorities
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

One of my Monday morning jobs in our college health clinic is to meet with any student who got so intoxicated they had to spend part of the weekend in the emergency room.  Alcohol poisonings are distressingly common on all college campuses, and ours is no exception.   What I do during our morning-after visit is review the records with the student so they have some idea what took place before they woke up hours later on a gurney in a noisy smelly emergency room– alcohol is an effective amnesia-producing anesthetic when it doesn’t manage to outright kill its consumer.   It is a humbling experience to read about what one said and did while one was under the influence of intoxicants and yet have no memory of any of it.   That is why my time is well spent with the recovering and remorseful.   Not only does their stomach lining still burn from all the vomiting, but their head hurts from acknowledging the risks they took in the name of having a good time.  It is rare that I ever need to meet again with the same student about similar behavior.

This, in reality,  is a very effective kind of hurting, one that is crucial to future decision-making: dangerous behavior is far less appealing when one still carries the scars.  Priorities change for the better.

Today I won’t be able to work in several hundred now-sober students into this morning’s clinic schedule after the unfortunate and widely publicized events that happened just a couple blocks off our college campus a little over 24 hours ago.  I suspect most of the students involved remember more than they wish to about their participation in a big-block-party-gone-terribly-wrong.  They were part of an aggressive mob mentality threatening law enforcement personnel trying to disperse an increasingly rowdy and obnoxious crowd.  Some are finding themselves in video and Instagram/Facebook documentation of their profane words and gestures, throwing potentially lethal objects, vandalizing private and city property as well as causing thousands of dollars of city resources to confront out of control drunk rioters.   These students can try to lay low but there is no place to hide from their inner knowledge of what they have done, the part they played and the irreparable damage they caused to individuals, relationships, property and as well as the reputations of the city and the university.  There is no comforting alcohol amnesia to hide within this time.

The only possible healing from an event like this is to come clean about what one has done, admit the mistakes made and work to make it right no matter the cost — to dare to acknowledge the sins committed and accept the consequences of one’s actions.

Hiding is cheap — guilt and shame remain behind the mask.
Grace and forgiveness is costly but there is no longer need to hide and be eaten away by a continually hurting soul.

My prescription for this day and in the days to come:  changed priorities ahead.  College is about obtaining a valuable and precious education, not about finding the biggest and best party of intoxicants.

Take with food and a large dose of humility.

Lenten Grace — Yet Rise it Shall

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the fallen leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

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”

I remember panicking as a small child when my mother would help me put on or take off a sweater with a particularly tight turtleneck 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, literally shrouded.  I was trapped and held captive by something as innocuous as a piece of clothing.

That same feeling still overwhelms me at times, and not only when I wrestle with pulling something snug over my head.  I’m still held captive, but not by a turtleneck.  I’m frozen in a winter of my flaws and deficiencies, bruised and fallen and fading in my struggles to be freed.

There is no salvage without new life quickening within me.  There is no freedom without spring sap flowing, His life blood rising in what is left of my dried husk.

And rise it shall — the confining shroud discarded and cast aside.

Now, once again,  I can breathe.

 

 

 

Lenten Grace — Dungforks and Slop Pails

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Farmer with a pitchfork by Winslow Homer
Farmer with a pitchfork by Winslow Homer

To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory,
but a man with a dungfork in his hand,
a woman with a slop pail,
give Him glory, too.
God is so great
that all things give Him glory
if you mean that they should.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thanks in large part to how messy we humans are, this world is a grimy place.   As an act of worship, we keep cleaning up after ourselves.  The hands that clean the toilets, scrub the floors, carry the bedpans, pick up the garbage might as well be clasped in prayer–it is in such mundane tasks God is glorified.

I spend an hour every day carrying dirty buckets and wielding a pitchfork because it is my way of restoring order to the disorder inherent in human life.  It is with gratitude that I’m able to pick up one little corner of my world, making stall beds tidier for our farm animals by mucking up their messes and in so doing, I’m cleaning up a piece of me at the same time.

I never want to forget the mess I’m in and the mess I am.  I never want to forget to clean up after myself.  I never want to feel it is a mere and mundane chore to worship with dungfork and slop pail.

It is my privilege.  It is His gift to me.
It is Grace that comes alongside me, to keep pitching the muck and carrying the slop when I get weary.

The Angelus by Jean-François Millet
The Angelus by Jean-François Millet

A Perfect Pear

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“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A moment’s window of perfection is so fleeting
in a life of bruises, blemishes and worm holes.
Wait too long and nectar-smooth flesh
softens to mush and rot.

The unknown rests beneath a blushed veneer:
perhaps immature gritty fruit unripened,
or past-prime browning pulp readily
tossed aside for compost.

Our own sweet salvage from warming humus
depends not on flawless flesh down deep inside
but heaven’s grace dropped into our laps;
a perfect pear falls when ripe, tasting like a selfless gift.

“A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!”
~ Abraham Lincoln

Weeping Stone

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photo by Josh Scholten

We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep.
Marilynne Robinson–Gilead

Created with the freedom to choose our own way, we tend to opt for the path of least resistance with the highest pay back. Hey, after all, we’re human and that’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it. No road less traveled on for most of us–instead we blindly head down the superhighway of what’s best for number one, no matter what the means of transportation, what it costs to get there, how seedy the billboards or how many warning signs appear, or where the ultimate destination takes us.

History is full of the piled-high wrecking yards of demolition remnants from crashes along the way.

It’s enough to make a stone weep indeed. Certainly God wept and probably still does.

And He knew what He was doing and thought it good.

photo by Josh Scholten

Noticing the Dirt

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photo by Josh Scholten

“No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.” ― C.S. Lewis

I am a big fan of hot baths, always have been. No matter how long the day, how sweaty the work, how gritty the accumulated grime, a bath takes care of it. That cleansing is something to look forward to: staying dirty is only temporary, not a permanent condition.

Somehow I manage to stumble and fall regularly, get mussed and messy, and need to get clean all over again. And again. Thankfully there is plenty of hot water, clouds of soap suds, and a stiff scrub brush.

Time for the tub…again.

photo by Josh Scholten