No longer a slave to fear.

He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds. –Psalm 147:3

For you have been a stronghold to the poor,
    a stronghold to the needy in his distress,
    a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. Isaiah 25:4

This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, in its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good. For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for His neighbors. –John Chrysostom

And really the most caringest and kindliest person I know is my sister Jenny.

I know I have told this story before, a piercing childhood memory that still makes my eyes sting because it is such a clear picture of unexpected and undeserved kindness.

Fallsvale Community School was a marvel in sitting-on-the-teacher’s-lap time to read, and a marvel of hands-on, project-based learning as we smashed open acorns and leached them for tannins and ground them on rocks and then patted them into little cakes to roast over open coals next to our fort in the woods the exact dimensions of the Mayflower. And in our tiny community, we children knew the insides of the neighbors’ refrigerators as well as our own.

Yet part of me never really recovered from my bestest friend Stephen Cowen getting struck and killed by lightening when I was in first grade. And now there were only three children in my grade, and sometimes those other boys could be pretty mean to dorky Chrissy-Pissy-in-her-Pants. And on the long walk up the curvy mountain road to home, they would throw rocks at my feet to make me dance. And one lunchtime they pushed me off of the seemingly great big boulder by the side of the school and I scraped my hands sliding down the rough granite, but mostly my little heart was scraped up and I didn’t know what to do so I did something naughty: I kicked a boy’s lunch box across the playground. And he tattled on me, and I couldn’t really explain to the teacher why exactly I had done that naughty thing, so I had to stay after school for half an hour to think about it.

And at the end of my carefully ticked-out thirty minutes I was very, very sad, not at all about my clear transgressions but rather about the vast and never-ending injustices of life. And my memory is that I felt lonelier and more misunderstood than anyone ever in the history of mankind. And I tied my button-up sweater around my waist, grabbed my own lunchbox and pushed open those great big wooden doors which led out to the concrete stairs leading up to the two-room stone schoolhouse.

And seated there on those steps, in the fading sunlight, with her arms wrapped around her knees, was my little sister Jenny waiting for me. Waiting to walk with me that long lonely mile to home.

And wow, her tenderheartedness has only deepened over the years, as I follow her around her beautiful city of Denver, beautiful, yet quite chilly city of Denver. Sort of like this beautiful yet chilly world in which we live.

I watch her purposely engage with the thin man with the wrinkled pants by the side of the dog path while I realize that he will probably be spending tomorrow, Christmas, alone. And she moves beyond chit-chat with the girl ringing up produce at Sprouts long enough to bring a smile of gratitude to her weary eyes. And man oh man, how the two neighbor ladies’ eyes lit up too when they found out who I was, and again and again they marveled, yes, even prattled, over the intentionality of Jenny and Tim among these yellow mid-century brick houses.

And truly this is how Jesus walked these same long, dusty roads of life. That led to the lifting up of the cross and smashing of sin’s power. And even while He hung, spat upon and bleeding, His eyes were on the other, not only His mother of course, not only upon those quite guilty thieves hanging beside Him, but also upon the spitters themselves, who knew not what they did.

Who know not what they do.

LORD please make me ever aware of Your Spirit, moment by moment wisdom, quicken my spirit to immediate, full-of-faith obedience. 

My Saturday prayer yet again this grey-skied morning, and forevermore.

To be a true imitator of Christ.

Christine, little Christ.

Amen.