Going to the same place?

Amos 3:3 Do two people walk hand in hand if they aren’t going to the same place?

Amos is laying out examples of natural consequences as a prophet foretelling judgment on both Israel and Judah, but this line got me thinking about relationships.

At the start of a relationship, people take hands, assuming they’re going to the same place. When their goals become clearer and still the same, they may marry. But what happens if, as they walk down the path of marriage together, they grow and change and start wanting to go to different places? Then, they start pulling on each other, each one wanting the other to join them on their path and what you can end up with is a full-on power struggle. What they don’t see is that their paths are diverging, that they need to let go, follow their paths and see if they come together again, at a different stage of life perhaps. I think of couples with small children, where one is working outside the home, and the other is immersed in a world of first diapers and feedings, then play dates, school, meals and so on. They both feel their contribution is undervalued, that the partner doesn’t understand their experience. Many will reconnect as the children get older, but other couples find themselves, after the children have left, with a partner they’ve completely lost touch with. Then they need to ask, “Are we headed in the same direction?”

It’s difficult to see when the road divides, and it gets harder and harder to hold onto the partner’s hand. A good question at that time might be, “Where are we going? Do we still want the same things in life? Or is it time to let go?”

Prayer: Dear God, You call us into relationship and I wonder, do You sometimes call us out of them as well? Help me discern the path that is best for both of us, that will call us both into a fuller, richer life in You. Amen.

He makes his move

2Chronicles 22:12-23:1 He was there with her, hidden away for six years in the Temple of God. Athaliah, oblivious to his existence, ruled the country. In the seventh year the priest Jehoiada decided to make his move and worked out a strategy…

Queen Athaliah, after the death of her son, the King of Judah, has ruthlessly murdered all the King’s brothers so that she might rule instead. She doesn’t know that baby Joash has been saved, hidden away in the Temple of God. Jehoiada the priest knows about Joash, but he doesn’t reveal the boy right away. He bides his time, until the time is ripe, and then makes his move.

How often have I leapt to get something done only to have it blow up in my face? How often have I stubbornly persisted in something, just wanting to get it completed, only to have it get hopelessly messed up in the process? When is the time to let go, and recognize the time is not right, and when should I persevere to follow through on my intentions? Jehoiada waited, and developed a strategy, and when the time was ready, he acted. Perhaps this is one of the greatest fruits of my walk in faith, is the ability to wait when necessary, and act wholeheartedly when the time is ready. As long as I see myself as in control, the responsibility thoroughly on my shoulders, I tend to keep plunging along, even though everything around me is telling me that things are not going as they should. Faith, and the recognition that God is in control and all I need to do is to surrender to God’s will, empowers me to see what exists, wait till the moment is right, and act with purpose out of my whole being. That is what I would call Right Action, and, especially with messy, human situations, it is usually the most effective action. When I can wait with God, my whole being in readiness until the moment arises, my action is then a direct response to circumstances and is able to cooperate with the conditions which have arisen, rather than trying through blind will to force a solution that I think is right, but may not be the best overall.

Prayer: Dear God, I know that Your will unfolding in me and my life offers my best hope for fulfillment. Give me patience and courage to abide with You, trusting that Your Divine Hand will lead the way and call right action forth from me when the time is right. And give me confidence to know that I will have the ability to do all that is necessary, and that You will provide whatever else I need. Amen.

Just stand firm

2Chronicles 20:17a You won’t have to lift a hand in this battle; just stand firm.

Sometimes all that is required of us in difficult situations is to show up and hold our ground.

I get very intimidated by difficult conversations. I try to plan out what I want to say, figure out what’s going to happen. I think of all the fancy retorts I can use, plan the battle strategy, figure out my defensive positions. In other words, I get ready for battle. All the fear and anxiety, though, ends up shutting me down, and I put it off, distracting myself with books and other enterainments. This verse reminded me that a conversation, especially a difficult one, doesn’t require a battle plan or a defensive strategy. I am called to be a peacemaker, or at least not to retaliate, so I don’t really need all that thinking and planning, which doesn’t get me anywhere anyway. This understanding of my call, and the knowledge that God is with me, allows me to engage in a difficult conversation, say what I need to say in as gentle a manner as I can, and hold my ground in whatever emotional upheaval occurs without responding in kind. In this way, I honor the path God calls me to, I honor the cherished child of God that my partner is, and I honor myself as well.

Don’t just do something; stand there! Sometimes, when God is in charge, that is all that is needed.

Prayer: Dear God, I am so grateful for the way that You lift these heavy burdens off my shoulders when I am willing to surrender my agenda to You. Give me the strength, courage and confidence to meet my difficulties with equanimity and compassion for all the others involved, that I may reflect Your love to those around me. Amen.

Cursed things

This entry from the archives lifted my spirits, and helped me deal with a difficult week this morning:

Joshua 7:13 You won’t be able to face your enemies until you have gotten rid of your cursed things.

Joshua, the invincible, has lost an important battle. He prostrates himself before the Lord to find out what is wrong. The problem is one of his men have kept precious things from a previous battle, things which are tainted with the Canaanite gods, and were to be destroyed. It struck me that there is a deep, psychological truth here. The cursed things within us – our hatreds, our greed and covetousness, our projections of our evil impulses onto others and our arrogant holding on to only “positive” traits, that make us look and sound good -- all these things divide us internally, give us vulnerable attack points. It is only when we acknowledge, accept and are cleansed of their power – that is cleansed of the curse of them because we recognize the fault in us—that we can stand firmly in our own integrity, unassailable. These are the tools, the weapons our ‘enemies’ use against us, but if we acknowledge them and hold them ourselves, they can’t trip us up. This is the genius of 12-Step. It gets us focused where we have the most power, addressing our own behavior. Then, when we take a stand, we are standing for something – ourselves and what we need and deserve rather than against the other person, in all their brokenness. If we don’t attack, we are not as vulnerable to counter-attack, and if we know our faults, we can stand strong in who we are, the broken places stronger than the smooth ones because of the power of healing. It is through our brokenness that we actually can form strong alliances with others, a cohesiveness that comes from sharing brokenness stronger than that which comes from sharing strength, because it is more true.

Prayer: Dear God Help me always to look at myself first, to be ever mindful of my own flaws and brokenness and then to take and hold whatever stand you call me to. Amen

This one fell on his knees

2Kings 1:13 The king then sent a third captain with his fifty men. For a third time, a captain with his fifty approached Elijah. This one fell on his knees in supplication.

The first two captains and their 50 men each have been incinerated by lightning called down by Elisha; they were sent to command Elisha, a prophet of God, and Elisha’s response was to show that no one but God commanded him. This captain, though, doesn’t try to boss Elisha, as the previous two did, but instead humbles himself, essentially throwing himself on the prophet’s mercy. This humbling of himself breaks the stalemate, and saves his life and the life of his men.

How often, when I am in a tug of war with someone, do I think to relinquish my position of being “right” and humble myself before the other? I think particularly of struggles in relationships with people I love. It is very hard for me to either admit being “wrong” or to approach the person with some sense of humility rather than an agenda to show them something: where they’ve done wrong or where they could improve. This suggests that finding a moment of humility might be a better course, to lower the heat of conflict, defuse the situation and open a path to a different kind of conversation. John Ruusbroec, a 14^th century Flemish Christian mystic, describes humility as “an interior bowing of the heart and mind before the transcendent majesty of God.” (James Wiseman, O.S.B., translator) Just as this captain bows in humility before Elisha in homage to the God that he represents, I can bow in humility before my partner, friend or family member, honoring the God that manifests in their being. I do this not to get a result, but to honor the other as a child of God, and remind myself that we are both under God’s power and the walk of Christ calls me to bow before Him in everything I do, even in an argument.

Prayer: Dear God, As I continue to struggle with my relationship, let me always remember that we are both Your children and so contain the light of Your presence within us. Teach me to honor that both in him and in myself, that I may submit my will to Yours in all things and thus reap the joy and fullness of the life You call me to. Amen

Sitting on the fence

1Kings 18:21 Elijah challenged the people: “How long are you going to sit on the fence? If God is the real God, follow him; if it’s Baal, follow him. Make up your minds.”

I have a hard time making decisions. First, I hate to make mistakes, so I often over-analyze a decision to make sure I’m not doing the “wrong” thing. Then, I want to keep my options open. It’s as if I want to see the future, and know what all the ramifications of my decision are, how it’s all going to turn out, so I can do the thing that will get the result that I want. There’s a couple of problems with that. The first is that not making a decision is making a decision, the decision of inaction. I once heard a CEO say that he had been hired because he was a decision maker. For the health of this business, it mattered less that the decisions were right or wrong than that they were made. The paralysis that comes from deferring decisions is worse for the movement of the business (or sometimes, for my life) than making a few wrong decisions. Sometimes, you can’t really tell if a decision is right or not until you start to see it played out; that’s where I really learn about what works and what doesn’t.

The other side of not making decisions is the notion of keeping your options open, hedging your bets. This is what the Israelites, and specifically King Ahab, were guilty of. It’s appealing to keep options open, because it gives me the illusion that I can still choose and get one of the options, but in reality, I’m not getting anything until I make a commitment. I can’t give myself wholeheartedly until that happens, I can’t experience the fruits of my choice, I can’t really be in the relationship if I am still dancing around unwilling to make a commitment. God wants our wholehearted participation in the lives that God calls us to, our wholehearted commitment to walking the path of God’s heart.

Prayer: Dear God, I feel I am straddling so many fences right now. Help me to make some decisions, take some steps to clarify my commitments, my intentions, and at the same time let me allow You to be the guiding light in choosing my direction. Not my choice, but Your choice be done. Amen.

They'll do anything for you

1Kings 12:7 They said, “If you will be a servant to this people, be considerate of their needs and respond with compassion, work things out with them, they’ll end up doing anything for you.”

Solomon has died; his son, Rehoboam is king, and seeks the advice of his elders in response the complaints of the northern tribes. This is what the elders say: treat the people with compassion and they will follow you anywhere. What does he do? He follows the advice of his young cohorts with no experience who are eager to show how tough they are. As a result, he loses the northern tribes to his rival, Jeroboam, and the kingdom is split in two.

The servant leader: how few of our leaders understand the value of this approach. It was Jesus example to his followers, and here we see it modeled in the Jewish tradition as well, the foundation of Jesus’ thought. Leaders often think they need to use power and control to keep people in line: think bosses, coaches, police, parents. Over and over, however, people find that by interacting with those you serve/have power over, by establishing good relationships you end up having more influence for the good, than if you try to force people just to do what you want. I think of programs where the police work with the community to combat crime, instead of holding the community hostage. I think of Phil Jackson, who showed you don’t have to browbeat your players to get excellence. The funny thing is, as soon as he has one losing season, after a nearly unprecedented winning streak (don’t know enough basketball to be certain of this) his whole method is discounted, whereas all those other teams that are losing are using the power and control method, and yet it isn’t discounted. The difficult thing is that in some ways, using power and control works; it initially gets people to respond. The downside is that when you are ruling with fear you constrict people’s creativity and productivity, and you are filling a well with resentment. It is especially true with parents. You can get your little children to do what you want (though they may fight and scream) by using physical and emotional force, but there will come a time when they are too old for that, and if you haven’t established a strong relationship by that time, you’ll lose them. They’ll rebel, just like the northern tribes, and head out on their own, often into worse trouble than what you’ve been trying to keep them from.

Prayer: Dear God, You have invited me into opportunities for leadership. Help me remember that my duty as a leader is to serve those I lead, to care for their needs and inspire them to do their best. Call me into the power to fulfill your mission for me, and for them. Amen.

God's True Prophet

Numbers 22:18 Balaam answered Balak’s servants: “Even if Balak gave me his house stuffed with silver and gold, I wouldn’t be able to defy the orders of my God to do anything, whether big or little.”

Balaam is a prophet. He is a foreigner, not one of the tribes of Israel, but still a prophet, a prophet of the same One True Living God that Israel worships and that has brought her out of bondage from Egypt. No matter how much money you throw at him, he will only speak what God tells him; he is a man of true and profound integrity. We don’t see many like him in any time period, and people such as this are especially lacking, it seems, in the political arena.

I don’t know about you, but I am deeply humbled by this image of someone who follows God’s call so unswervingly. I have been lured off God’s path by so many temptations– by money, a desire to get along and avoid conflict, or just to get what I want – that I feel totally inadequate, undeserving of even calling myself a God-follower in the face of this level of commitment.

Balak, the king of Moab, has called on Balaam to curse the People of Israel because he fears their strength, but all Balaam can do is bless them. And I guess that’s a message I take, too. I may not be a prophet on the order of Balaam, but I am trying to speak the truth that God brings me, in the hope of being a blessing to others, and I think God honors that, and even loves it, as a parent loves a child’s indecipherable scrawl on a blank page and calls it art.

Prayer: Dear God, I see the integrity you inspired in your servant Balaam, and I know I can’t hope to attain his power. I offer you what gifts I have, and the truth and love of Your Presence which guides me and which I am hoping to make known to those who don’t know you yet, or don’t yet know you well. I ask your blessing on my work, that through me others may gain a glimpse of your Divine Presence. Amen.

God's portion

Numbers 18:29 This is your procedure for making offerings to God from all the tithes you get from the People of Israel: give God’s portion from these tithes to Aaron the priest. Make sure that God’s portion is the best and holiest of everything you get.

God is telling Aaron and the Levite priesthood how they are to handle the tithe that God receives from the People of Israel. They are to tithe that tithe, that is give 10% of the 10% that all the people give, and use the rest for their livelihood, since they have been given no land. They are not to give just any old ten percent, though, they are to give the best and holiest of everything they get.

God wants the best part of us. When I was a child, milk was delivered in returnable glass bottles, and since the milk was not homogenized, all the cream sat at the top of the milk; you had to shake the bottle to make sure it was distributed equally. God wants that cream at the top of the bottle. God wants your attention when you are at your freshest, brightest and most clear minded. That doesn’t mean not to go to God when you are struggling; it means to make sure that that is not the only time you seek God. When we only seek God in times of distress and trouble, we don’t develop a strong enough foundation in God’s presence, and may find God inaccessible when we most need the Sacred Presence. It is the daily practice of placing everything that I am before God, the best of what I am, my life and all that I do, which develops a spiritual foundation that is capable of sustaining me in difficulty.

Prayer: Dear God, Whatever I offer You today, let it be my best. Let me remember to honor You and thank You for all that I have with all that I am. Amen.

We'll be your slaves

Genesis 50:18 Then the brothers went in person to him, threw themselves on the ground before him and said, “We’ll be your slaves.”

Joseph’s brothers are haunted by what they did to him. Now that their father, Israel, is dead, they worry that Joseph will finally take his revenge. They have a hard time believing that he can really forgive them – would they, in his place, forgive such an act as selling your own brother into slavery? Their offer to become his slave is an attempt to right the wrong in a tit for tat way: we enslaved you, so you enslave us. While it demonstrates genuine remorse and a desire to redress the imbalance, Joseph responds with mercy and generosity. He is not God, to judge them. And he reminds them of all the good that God brought out of their evil intentions. He weeps at their expression of regret, and convinces them of the truth of his forgiveness.

This passage speaks to me in two ways. First is the recognition that the evil we do haunts us, lives with us, distorts our presence in the world; it will hold on to us long after others have forgiven us. Today we might say that the brothers need to forgive themselves for what they did. And the second thought is the mercy and compassion that Joseph models to them. He sees the wider picture. Because of his steadfast faith, he understands that God is working through him to advance God’s purposes, even when that seems most unlikely. Out of that understanding, that great blessing has come out of the adversity Joseph has faced, comes true forgiveness of his brothers, a generosity of spirit untouched by bitterness and reproach. He truly harbors no remnant of recrimination, no hidden resentment, because he has been able to walk with God through the difficult times and see the flowering of God’s favor now that they have come to an end. Can I say the same thing about myself?

Prayer: Dear God, Cleanse from me any touch of bitterness or resentment about past wrongs others may have done to me. Let me look to the life to which you lead me unhindered by regrets about the past, that I may experience the full, rich life you have planned for me. Amen.

A Changed Man

Genesis 44:34 How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? Oh, don’t make me go back and watch my father die in grief!

Judah is a changed man. Gone is the jealous older brother who conspired to sell Joseph to the passing caravan, without a thought for his father’s grief. What has happened to him? First of all, he has had sons of his own. The first died, and when he gave his second son to the widow, he died also. It was the right of a widow to marry the brother of her dead husband, so she could have a son in the dead man’s name to carry on his line. Without such an heir, she would be destitute. But Judah hesitated giving his third, and last, son to Tamar, his son’s widow. She tricked him, however, and got him to admit that he was wrong.

So how do I think these events change Judah? First of all, he has experienced the sorrow of loss, losing not one but two sons. That grief pierced his heart deeply, so much so that he didn’t want to follow the traditions of his people and risk another loss. Secondly, he has been humbled, and by a woman no less. Grief and humility are good antidotes for pride and jealousy. So, life has softened his heart.

When I look back at my life, I realize that it is the broken parts of my life that have made me who I am, not the successes. I don’t mean to say that I discount the successes, or don’t honor them, but success doesn’t change us the way a reckoning with loss and humility does. Stephen Levine, who talks to a lot of dying people, asked some children with various cancers this question: If you could be completely cured of your cancer, but you had to go back to being the person you were before you got the cancer, would you do it? Mind you, some of these children were facing death, and granted, it is a hypothetical question, but they all said no. They recognized that cancer had made them understand life in a way they hadn’t before. Many spoke of having more empathy with kids who were teased for being outside the mainstream, because cancer had put them in the margins among their peers. Life can really put your through your paces, and while it isn’t usually pleasant, if one is honest, one can see that these experiences, perhaps because of their difficulty, have the capacity to change our character for the better.

Prayer: Dear God, I thank you for all those difficult experiences I have gone through, which you have used to teach me about love and life and what is important. Help me remember that perspective even when things are going well, that I may be filled with compassion for others’ suffering and less protective of my own good fortune. Amen.

God was with Joseph

Genesis 39:20b-21a But there in jail, God was still with Joseph.

God was with Joseph from the beginning. It aroused the jealous and enmity of his brothers who sold him into slavery. It aroused the lust of Potiphar's wife, which got him thrown into jail. But God stays with him through thick and thin, eventually bringing huge bessing out of Joseph's suffering. We shouldn't conclude, though, that just because God is with him, life is easy for Joseph: he had to avoid temptation, maintain his integrity and work hard to prove his capabilities to his captors. He is fully aware of the desperateness of his circumstances: he refers to the jail where he has been put in charge as a "hole", and later refers to his hardship and sorrows. But he trusts in God anyway, remains faithful despite all the adversity that comes his way until God's mysterious purposes begin to be worked out.

Some people look at faith like an insurance policy or a good luck charm. 'If I believe in God,' they think, 'if I have faith, than nothing bad will ever happen to me.' We might call this the Gospel of Security, a close cousin of the Gospel of Prosperity. God, however, makes no such promise. Unfortunately, as a result of this false belief, many who find themselves in difficult circumstances see that as evidence of God's abandonment, and then they themselves abandon faith, abandon God.

Faith isn't about protecting us from life. Faith is an action, a series of practices, a discipline that gives us the tools to engage in life more fully, to experience all that life has to offer, the sorrows as well as the joys, the hardship as well as the abundance, tools like endurance, resilience, steadfastness, gratitude, compassion, peace. Such faith equips us for living; it doesn't keep us above the fray, but plunges us more deeply into it. It enables us to experience our own lives more fully, and to be present with others as they walk in the shadow of death. So develop your faith not to avoid things, but to live the full, abundant and rich life that God has prepared for you, for all of us.

Prayer: Dear God, It is hard to remember when times are tough that you are always with me. Help me remember to turn my face to you when all else seems lost, to have joy in your presence and gratitude for the gift of grace, even when I can only find it in the shelter of your heart. Amen,