I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes

Let them know that this is Your hand, that You, O LORD, have done it. Psalm 109:26

Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your Name give glory; because of Your love and because of Your faithfulness. Psalm 115:1

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. Philippians 4:1

So I can pretty much relate to ol’ Paul these days. Except he was in prison and I am on summer vacation. Nicole just encouraged me to ride up A Mountain after swimming today, so I am all happy and showered and have a second cup of coffee. Which is not like Paul. But I do have lots of folks on my heart whom I love and long for. And reading Steinbeck very much makes me tenderhearted, as he details the aches of being human, of the hunger of a million souls, reaching, stumbling forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes.

And today as I pray for each one of you, there is this consideration, that through it all you may see His hand. And however He choses to will and to work in your life, that you will perceive it as His love and faithfulness, standing firm.

May His Name be glorified. 

While pushing my cart past the fruits and vegetables

Haced todas las cosas sin murmuraciones ni discusiones, para que seáis irreprensibles y sencillos, hijos de Dios sin tacha en medio de una generación torcida y perversa en medio de la cual resplandecéis como luminares en el mundo. Filipenses 2,14-15

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. Philippians 2:14-15

You sweep us away like a dream; we fade away suddenly like the grass. In the morning it is green and flourishes; in the evening it is dried up and withered. Psalm 90:6

Prayer: Grant that I may know and understand what things I ought to do, and that I also may have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.

For some unknown reason, as I wandered the Voelkel bookshelves for something to read on my Friday night, I pulled Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. We have lots of copies in pretty good shape, having had so many kids go to Desert, and it’s not the sort of book one takes with one when packing up for Germany.

But he sure does a great job of describing the fading of grass into dried and withered. And I am so thinking that all of us Christ-followers should read at least the first chapter out loud pretty often, to reminds us of what is true and of value, and I forget that a lot and my life starts looking, but mostly sounding, like I am trying to store up treasures here on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy.

Which leads into grumbling and disputing.

And I have been the chiefest of grumblers and disputing these past few weeks. My U of A class was not up to my rather stringent standards of instruction and complex higher order thinking and effective use of class time. So I pretty much let everyone know it all day long.

And boy, did that dim my light in the world.  And what was truly important, re: of eternal value, about this class were the fifty-four other students and teachers in it and the five instructors.

And all I could think of during the time of evaluation and feedback was how could sneak my evaluative sheet out of the yet-to-be-read pile and erase some of my “average” ratings that were actually pretty accurate unless the should have been circled “poor,” but the point is that isn’t what is important in this crooked and twisted world. Because what is crooked and twisted in this world are all of the aching souls. Every single person in that room is a brokenness bearer. And some of the people obviously remembered that when they looked the other in the eye and encouraged with a big smile and thank you. And I am afraid that all they are going to remember of the Desert CHRISTIAN lady is her grumbling and disputing, and not her light.

And as I live this Saturday of driving Jack and Mary Anne to the airport before swim practice and returning the go pro whose screen had leaking black squiggles across it and make a few more phone calls to American Airlines and sort cupboards to take stuff to Goodwill and pop into Fry’s to buy bleach and corn on the cob and more grated cheese, let me remember where my treasure is stored and what blameless and innocent is all about.

Prayer: Lord, please fill me with Your grace and power that my light will shine before men and thus they will glorify You, my Father who is in heaven.

Prompt: Write for one minute about poverty. Prompt: What makes you angry?

Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.

There are all sorts of poverty and all sorts of anger. And these days I have been mulling over the Sermon on the Plains that took place after this conversation with the Pharisees, as Jesus explained what it meant to really follow Him. And somehow those who are poor and hungry and weeping are blessed, while those who ask, “When did we ever see you?” are cursed.

And I have seen some of the blessed ones. And poor means the rehydration room with my baby strapped down onto a piece of plywood with eleven other babies and the IV bottles that only drip irregularly and no one has any diapers and the only place to sit is leaning up against a 2 x 4 nailed into the bug-specked wall and it is okay that we have no food and drink because the water isn’t running in the hospital that day so there is a big mound of multi-shaded poop in the toilet and it is hot and humid and the bathroom door won’t shut all the way and one of the little boys dies during the night and even though his momma crawls up onto the board and weeps there is nothing we can do but sit there helplessly and stare with big round tired eyes.  And hungry means that we wake up in the morning and really every single thought for the whole long day is how to get one cup of white rice for each member of your family that day. And the lady from the government says that it would be good to have a matchbox-sized piece of meat once a week but that is only for rich people who live in the town up the hill. And sometimes my best friend Ramoncita said she wasn’t hungry but I knew that really it was because there wasn’t quite enough food to go around and three of her children died from vomiting and diarrhea, which really means they starved to death. And weeping is when our border collie Daisy ran out into Country Club Road and got hit by a car and the neighbor lady came out and covered the body and when Ali saw the sheet-covered body he wept and wept because when he lived in Iraq a sharpshooter killed his favorite uncle and his dead body lay in the street outside his front door for a week but Ali had to walk past the dead body every single day without looking and without crying because maybe if he showed that he knew him or cared the sharpshooter would shoot him too. So now a year later he wept for his uncle and his friend and his taxi cab driver whose arm was blown off and the principal of his school who wouldn’t give his address to the guys with the machine guns. And for his country, he wept.

And right now there are people marching around with signs with red, white and blue paint on them. Angry people shaking their fists at tired and poor and huddled children, the homeless and tempest-tossed yearning to breathe free. And I could get really angry too but that sure wouldn’t help anything, and anyways even when people were spitting on Jesus and calling him names He said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” and what I do know is what I can do and do it, and that is enough.

Bind them around my neck.

Nada hagáis por egoísmo o por vanagloria, sino que con actitud humilde cada uno de vosotros considere al otro como más importante que a sí mismo, no buscando cada uno sus propios intereses, sino más bien los intereses de los demás. Filipenses 2:3-4

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Philippians 2:3-4

According to the Greek, Philippians 1:27 actually says, “Only behave as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ…” thus let us not allow our public dialogue distract from the message of God’s love and Christ’s death and resurrection. This is what matters, and any sidebars from this message most likely is not from God. This plea for unity is followed by a promise that we will indeed suffer for His sake, so let us not cling to our “rights” but have the mind of Christ, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

This morning I read an article in Christianity Today by John D. Anazu entitled, “Religious Freedom vs. LGBT Rights: It’s complicated.” And he does a good job reminding us that we Americans are citizens in a pluralistic society, and that Pluralism rests on three interrelated aspirations: tolerance, humility, and patience. And while we American Christians fret and strain at relative gnats and smugly glance over at the bloody non-pluralism taking place in Sudan and Iraq and Palestine, let us be reminded that Jesus (and John and Leviticus as well) very clearly teaches that according to our Heavenly Father, if we hate our brother in our heart we are a murderer. And he spells it out fairly clearly, and repeats Himself if we can’t hear so well, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire,” lest we judge one another.

And really the best thing about my summer writing course is the absolute pluralism present in the class. They managed to collect students, teachers and professors from absolutely every walk of life from here in Tucson, Arizona. And we are absolutely free, even required to discuss any and all topics with tolerance, humility and patience, and we practice it all day long. And since my nametag reads Desert CHRISTIAN School, I am very aware that every word I say, every word I write, every word I speak in my eyes and every word I inflect with my tone reflects on the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have a pretty high bar looming in front of me five days a week, seven hours a day. And this is a privilege and a challenge to not be distracted from the three that remain: faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.

May I prove worthy.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me

El Señor hace nulo el consejo de las naciones; frustra los designios de los pueblos.El consejo del Señor permanece para siempre, los designios de su corazón de generación en generación. Salmos 33:10, 11

The LORD brings the will of the nations to naught; He thwarts the designs of the peoples. But the LORD’S will stands fast forever, and the designs of His heart from age to age. Psalm 33:10-11

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel… Philippians 1:12

Some of us teacher types got talking about the “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” quote yesterday, as we walked over to the Poetry Center after lunch. And this used-to-be-Mormon-then-Jehovah’s-Witness-now-agnostic friend said that she hated that quote because then it makes all of the evil in world seem purposeful, laid at the feet of some helpless or uncompassionate god.

And it is really difficult to ignore the Bleak House in which we live, especially with the current tag team of Palestine, Iraq and border children, when I have so many connecting heartstrings to each of these situations, in a long line of situations tracing its way through history.

And yet, somehow the heart deep down believes in the supracultural understandings of justice, mercy, grace, kindness. And love. This morning NPR radio played a previously recorded interview with an elderly Afghanistan writer whose book of short stories was first published when he was 79 years old.  And there was a sweetness in his voice even as he detailed life among war-torn tribes.

And Week magazine, my source of all short snippets of relevance, included a summary from a recent study published in Science 2.0:

WHILE MILITANT ATHEISTS like Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesn’t exist, God, if he is around, may be amused to find that atheists might not exist.

    Cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged.

    While this idea may seem outlandish—after all, it seems easy to decide not to believe in God—evidence from several disciplines indicates that what you actually believe is not a decision you make for yourself. Your fundamental beliefs are decided by much deeper levels of consciousness, and some may well be more or less set in stone. 

    This line of thought has led to some scientists claiming that “atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think,” says Graham Lawton, an avowed atheist himself, writing in the New Scientist. “They point to studies showing, for example, that even people who claim to be committed atheists tacitly hold religious beliefs, such as the existence of an immortal soul.”

And while the rocket's red glare, and the bombs bursting in air are certainly part of our human experience, there are also the signs of image-bearing at our deeply engrained levels of consciousness everywhere I turn, patiently offering up iodine-swabbed veins at the Red Cross Blood Donation Center, quietly filling the Community Food Bank box at Sprouts, and even the palpable heartbreak is evidence of His love so lifted up being part of who we are.

And this is the gospel, the good news, that each of us is beloved and children of the God Who so loved the world, and that His will stands forever. And each of us is the design of His heart from age to age.

And today may I be that good news as I live through this day, noticing one at a time the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, with eager expectation and hope and in full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.