The fish fountain splashes can drown out the sound of traffic down Broadway, if I let it

 The wonder of it all. Sometimes, um, like almost all of the time, I let the mundane settle in around me.  Like this morning for instance, 4:15 clicked on and I popped into the kitchen, drank two glasses of water, put on the expresso pot, unloaded the dishwasher and put away the dishes in the counter rack, tossed a load of clothes into the machine, wiped down the sink, and scanned over the stacks of recipes and shopping and to do lists before I knelt before Him and sat at His feet, ready to listen. 

And the guy wandering Mt. St. Francis Retreat reminds me of when suddenly His magnificence breaks in, and the impact it has on the ones who were noticing. When the nets came back loaded with fish and Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” for amazement had seized him. After the storm was quieted, everyone marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” When John saw Him, his eyes like blazing fire and   His right hand holding seven stars, he falls like a dead man, at this new glimpse of Who He Is.

But Jesus placed His right hand on him and said, "Stop being afraid! I am the first and the last.”

And today, once again, I ask, “May You be my First and my Last. The one who fills me with wonder as I pick up Miss Everette and head down Speedway Boulevard with my lists tucked in my pocket.”

May Your magnificence, Your face like the sun shining in all its brilliance, fill my heart as I truly celebrate Your great love today. May Your presence that quiets my storm and fills my nets with Your abundance be ever in my thoughts.

Hallowed by Thy name.

“Come in, -- come in! and know me better, man!

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:11

He who did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? This talks about the generous heart of God. This invites me to explore just how generous God is, and once we begin to see Him as generous, we ourselves get to express and emulate His generosity here on earth.  This is a great opportunity to freshly see Him and an opportunity to follow Him by what we say and do. And think. He thinks generously of me. Beyond my wildest imagination.

Thus, I ask You LORD to create in me a clean heart, with no cluttered and stacked-up-high resentments or stained memories or stinky low expectations this-is-what-always-happens. And renew a right spirit within me. The spirit of a safely tucked-up-under-your-wing child who is dearly beloved and thus can love unconditionally. Even as You have loved me, with every good gift and every perfect gift, coming down from You, the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. 

Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves. Psalm 126

And the guy standing on a roof in Kansas City reminds me that praising God is a verb, an action word, and his community is trying to be intentional about it all, and when someone says “Praise God,” what they mean is Tell me a story about what He is doing in your life, making Himself manifest.”

Let us silence the lies of the enemy and the fear of man, and let who God is and with what He is doing in our lives come in. Practice praise, engage in praise, make praise a verb in our lives. Because From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength, To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.

And my childhood verse and Facebook password of Rejoice in the LORD always, I say it again rejoice is very closely tied together with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. And the prayers and praise are to be so intertwined as to be indistinguishable. Back, once again, to eucharisto. Giving thanks even as the bread is being broken. His name is hallowed before the request for daily bread and forgiveness of trespasses. From the mouths of infants and nursing babes underscores that this is not a complicated process, but rather a natural response in the created order, the restored order.

I love that Heather and Dustin are teaching Everette sign language because she even though she isn’t much of a talker she has a lot to say. May I too say much with not just words but with how I live out my day, carrying seed and shouldering my sheaves. With joy.

Fear not for I have overcome the world

Let the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners come before You, and by Your great might spare those who are condemned to die. Psalm 79:11

So when God comes near, He always challenges our fears. This guy went to Mozambique, Africa and few years ago and had the opportunity to go to an orphanage that was near a dumpster. And the nuns first took him into a room filled with men weak, thin and dying of AIDS and then they took him into another room filled with women weak, thin and dying of AIDS and malaria. The most shocking of the rooms was next, filled with cribs wall to wall with little babies whose parents were dying.

The guy looked down and saw the cutest baby in the entire world (except Everette of course) with a round face and curly hair, and he asked the nun if he could pick her up. The nun said, with hesitation, that he could. He still remembers the little baby’s name, Muyena. Muyena wrapped her little legs and little arms around him and buried her head right into his chest, and then peeked up at him. The nun said something to him that he would never forget, “Everyone wants to be held by somebody.”

He thought to himself, “How true this is. The God of the Universe is extending His arms to you and I and saying ‘I want to be in relationship with you; let Me hold you.” But He also has to say something else, the same thing He told Zechariah, He told Joseph, He told the group of shepherds, and He told Mary: “Fear not.” One of the things that keeps us from engaging in a dynamic, intimate relationship with the God of the Universe is our fear. Can we really trust Him?

And each of us is held prisoner by our fear. Well, at least I am. And every morning I leap off of the kitchen counter of myself into the strong waiting arms of my Father, and He catches me. But somehow I wiggle free from His embrace and scrabble up again to my precarious perch of, “Thank you but I would rather be in control.”

And all of the condemnation is self-inflicted. Jesus came not into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. And Chris reminded us last night, as we explored the last advent candle of Peace, that as we wait for His redemption, the thing about Jesus is that He shows up, no matter on how well we wait, whether with impatience, apathy, disbelief. His breaking in does not depend on us.

Peace He gives us. Me. A permanent, lasting peace that lasts through our transitory lives. Jehovah Shalom: I am your peace. And may I too wrap my legs and my arms around Him, and bury my head right into His chest, and peek up at His face.

And this is the blessing I will chose for today, and Lord Willing every day: “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”’

Because it is His will. And His promise.

Thus says the Lord who made the earth the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is His name: Call to Me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. Jeremiah 33:2,3

Except that I sent an email to my beloved sister last night, Subject: road trip

Put your trust in Him always, O people, pour out your hearts before Him, for God is our refuge. Psalm 62:9

 And the 24/7 guy for today stood on a bridge overlooking a blustery Chicago and reminded me that when God draws near He often disrupts the ordinary to usher in the extraordinary. Mary was a sixteen-year-old girl whose ordinary life was extraordinarily interrupted by an angel of God who spoke to her life and said, “Mary, highly favored of God, God is with you and He is about to highly disrupt your life and send it in a new directions.” He continued, There may be someone right now, listening to this podcast who might be thinking that my life has been interrupted in this crazy way and I am not really sure what is going on. But a life disrupted by a God encounter may be the best gift that could ever happen, because when God disrupts a life He ushers in an extraordinary adventure. So embrace the divine chaos.

Ah, chaos. Yesterday the new teacher who is taking over my Spanish classes watched my little world of chaos as the small group projects welcomed us into their Christmas parties from around the world. And well, the powerpoints were pretty ordinary, as always, not exactly like all of the hundreds of thousands small group projects powerpoints that were happening all over this grand country of ours yesterday in lieu of the multiple page multiple choice final exam of yesteryear because these were narrated by a wide range of Spanish speakers whose occasional utterances in a fumbling Spanish set my teeth on edge and my heart into a whirlwind of dismay at the gaping holes in my instructional pedagogy.  

But afterwards while we cut small triangles from tissue paper for Mexican papeles picados while juggling sweet corn and beef tamales and menudo all of which ended up on the floor and needed to be scrubbed up with Clorax wet wipes and we ate ham rolls with olives and raisins and played marbles with chalk-drawn circles on the carpet for Costa Rica and then we ate arroz con verduras and played marbles with small rocks in those same circles because they are too poor in Perus for marbles. And the class pretty much disappeared for a long time with half the class with El Bebe Jesús and El Sabio booktaped to them and hiding and half the class seeking after I told them not to get Mrs. Voelkel in trouble on her next-to-last day by making bad choices.

The divine chaos. 

And this morning I had to scrape ice off of the windshield for the first time this winter and we couldn’t even see the time clocks because of the massive moist fog hanging over the pool so the coach had to shout out the times. And I kicked as hard as I could on those 200s so that I could earn ten-seconds rest, but sometimes I had to take little shortcuts just to get five seconds breath because I was in a too fast lane and finally I was just going around and around with no rest so I climbed out of the pool and headed for the cold showers which left me a little numb but refreshed very deeply down.

And yesterday I gave into the cheerful begging of my bestest friend from the U of A Summer Writing Workshop and visited this sixth grade Language Arts class chock full of cute low-income Hispanics and blacks and international refugees but no teacher. And there are 43 languages spoken at this TUSD school just two miles on an easy bike ride from my home. And they have had a sub every single day this year and have not read a single book but have just done photopied worksheets every single day this year and maybe they aren’t so very cute because some of the subs didn’t even last a full day but over on the shelf there is a classroom set of The Giver and I have twenty hours of engaging everything-you-should-have-learned-in-sixth-grade-but didn't lesson plans for The Giver sitting right here on my hard drive especially written for struggling students who had to take an extra two weeks of summer school in order to pass that year. But I shook my head no.Well, at least not yet.

And this afternoon we are going to the graduation of Mr. Wali who, was it six years ago? had no idea what he was getting into, but he got on the Greyhound bus and showed up in Tucson Arizona and was a Kurd sharing a bathroom with an Arab and went to the neighborhood high school for mostly exceptional needs kids and now is graduating with a double degree in physiology and business and getting The Wildcat Award presented to the senior graduating this fall who has overcome significant obstacles in front of a limited-ticket only crowd at the Eller Auditorium.

And his story speaks to my heart about getting onto the bus even if the red lettered destination is not clear.

And perennial Nobel contender Somalian-born Nuruddin Farah told Scott Simon on NPR news that the bravest thing for a writer is to face an empty page.

And my page is empty. The life disrupted. 

But the billowing fog over Hillenbrand Pool this morning was truly beautiful even if I couldn’t see through it to the other side.

Put your trust in Him always, O people, pour out your hearts before Him, for God is our refuge.

The shepherds went back full of joy

Put your trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and feed on its riches. Take delight in the LORD, and He shall give you your heart’s desire. Commit your way to the LORD and put your trust in him, and He will bring it to pass. He will make your righteousness as clear as the light and your just dealing as the noonday. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him. Psalm 37:1-7

24/7 Prayer Advent: When God comes near  reminds me of song, of trust that swells up into melody. Luke is full of it, of song: the song of Mary, the song of Zechariah, the song of the angels, Glory to God in the Highest, Peace, good will toward man.

Our immediate visceral reaction in the middle of devastation is that God has left me, He is apart from me, What is there to sing about? And I question this whole concept of goodwill. Really? 

May I find my way into the promise that is imbedded deeply into the soul of all men, the promise being Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

The lie that most of us listen to, including myself, is that God is somehow, some way absent in my pain, that I have to swallow it alone, forsaken, and only at certain brightly colored sunrise moments does He appear. But the truth of the matter is that when Jesus burst into the scene in the middle of the first century, it is not as though God were absent before.

Advent is God making His presence known in a new and peculiar way. And all of these people respond by erupting into song. The central task of advent is not to say, “God come here because You are not present,’ but rather to say ‘God you are already here’ and to shepherd-like go and look for Him, for He will be found, and I too will erupt into song, albeit out of key.

So where are those places in my life…these places of desolation where I need to open my eyes and join my song to that of Mary, the song of Zechariah, the song of Simeon. The song that at the very center is the cry, Emmanuel. God with us. Forever.

Then Mary sang, “My heart sings with thanks for my Lord.  And my spirit is happy in God,

Then Zechariah sang, “The heart of our God is full of loving-kindness for us.”

Then Simeon sang, “You have made Him ready in the sight of all nations.”

May my eyes too see the One.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Let my mouth be full of your praise and your glory all the day long. Psalm 71:8

And the guy with today’s 24/7 Advent Prayer reminded me that sometimes you just do it. Fill your mouth with praise all day long and pretty soon it swirls its way down into your soul and bubbles up out of your heart, coloring in the stark black and white lines and giving true perspective to every thought.