Thursday, June 26, 2014

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection--Snuggle

Snuggle

MATTHEW 19:13-22
13Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; 14but Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs." 15And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.

When was the last time you did this?

When was the last time you let that inner child emerge?

When was the last time you played? I don’t mean cards or that game on your phone. I mean, knees dirty, tongue out, dirt under the finger nails type of playing?

When was the last time you tried to catch a firefly in a glass jar?
A scene from "the Jesus Storybook Bible." This beautiful
book, with its engaging artwork and compelling
story telling, can be found in the newly remodeled
First Presbyterian Church, Helen Musa Rankin, library
and reading room. Please come by and check it out!


When was the last time you called time out from the busyness of your day and just sat, while coloring a picture?

When was the last time you prayed as a child? When you didn’t think about the “right way” or all the different types and forms of prayer? When was the last time you snuggled on the bosom of God and sat wide-eyed or teary eyed at the feet of Jesus?

Perhaps this isn’t your thing. Perhaps this practice or thought of it is too much for you.

Then I ask, when was the last time you listened to the Spirit whispering in your being?

When was the last time you tried something new?

You, at one time, were one of these little ones. In all honesty, you still are.

So put aside that independent woman or tough guy persona and let God take care of you.

Our faith can be stunted and frustrated if it remains content with the bare externals of worship: “saying prayers,” “going to church,” being respectable. What God wants, how Jesus welcomes us, and the way the Spirit leads us, is for us to enter into our faith, this relationship with the Triune God, as children. Prayer is the deepening of personal realization in love, but also awareness of God (even if this awareness amounts to a perceived “absence”).

As children engage with the world –without pretense, without fear, and with wild, hopeful imagination-- so we should engage the practice of prayer. Remember, prayer is not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart, but the orientation of our whole body, mind, and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration.


So, when was the last time you did this?

May you come to remember that wide-eyed and wild imaginative child that lives within. May you remember that God listens to you always. 

Even when all you can pray is a whisper too quiet for words...


Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection--Sitting

Sitting

Over cups of coffee:

old men talk about the weather…

professors and students talk about their latest assignment…

young lovers discuss whether or not to make it facebook official…

seasoned lovers plan for their retirement…

she plays with her cup, as she tells him "I don't think this is going to work"…

friends ask, "how are things?" between sips and slurps…

strangers play a friendly game of cards…

business is done, and hands shake…

and the barista briefly becomes a priest,

as news, the good and the bad, is confessed.


Life has a tendency to happen over a cup of coffee; tea; wine; beer; water…

Sitting in this booth at that new coffee shop in town, I’m reminded of that night, in that upper
room, with those friends of his, over a cup of what was probably wine [or Welch's Grape Juice] Jesus said this:


I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

In his farewell discourse, at a shared meal, over bread and a cup of wine, Jesus reminds the disciples...

…reminds us…

that our identity is not in our titles or labels or even the names on our sign out front; neither are we defined by our creeds, charters, or the confessions we have in our constitution; nor does it lie in our ability to recall all 66 books of the bible; nor is it in how articulate we are or sound when we use them Christian-ese words like justification, sanctification, or when we theologize the Incarnation.

Rather, we are defined by Love.

The story of this love is also told over our Sunday meals— the one with a loaf of bread and a cup. Around that table and over one cup or many tiny cups, we are moved from being the citizens of empire to the citizens of heaven. We taste love, those words Jesus promised with a cup in his hand:

a cup of compassion
a cup of justice
a cup of mercy
a cup of spirit
a cup of love
a cup of life

Over cups flowing with wine, Jesus gave us the language of love. But Wisdom’s whisperings weren’t contained only in that upper room. We see Love wooing on streets full of those living in the shadows, at pools where those burdened by bad luck gathered, and in homes of those who had only perfume in a bottle to offer. Jesus never withheld love and never does.

We as God’s people, as followers of Jesus, witness to God’s love for the world by living as a community in which the presence of Christ obscurely manifests in the love we share for one another.

To fully know the love of God we must not be afraid to come to God exactly as we are. Those whom Jesus loved(s) struggled through crowds, traveled long distances, and defied the status quo to sit in the presence of Love Incarnate. The result?

They received life, while Christ lost his.

One cup marked the end of one life, only for it to overflow into the cups of others.

So take a moment, remain sitting, and over a cup of tea, or coffee, or whatever it is you are drinking, and consider what is happening above, around, beside, and within you.

What is happening over your cup of life?

What new stories of love are being told?

What new insights of love are being made?

What new dreams are unfolding, inspired by love?

May you have courage to brew with God a life of joy and excitement. May you in turn, offer the goodness that is your life to the empty cups around you.


Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection--Show Up

Show Up

Why do people continue to show up at the ballpark on Addison and Clark in Chicago? They don’t show up because the team is a winning ball club, bringing championships and pennants to the grandstands. In fact, any honest Cubs fan will tell you the team hasn’t been good in years and it’ll be years before the hope of capturing the elusive World Series will enter back into our dreams.

Growing up in Peoria my family often went to Peoria Chiefs baseball games at old Meinen Field. I remember chatting my dad’s ear off asking him about where we were sitting, if I could get autographs from these no-name ball players who one day would be the next Ozzie Smith or Ken Griffey Jr., and what the chances were of me snagging a foul ball. I went with great expectations.

Now that I am much older and more aware of the beauty and the spirituality of the game, I have come to realize not only why so many continue to go watch a bad ball club but also the reason why I go myself: 
connection.

We are a part of a world of disconnection. Things were created to be a certain way, and they are not that way, and we feel it in every fiber of our being.

We feel it when our heart sinks at the sight of Styrofoam cups and burger wrappers lining our creek beds rather than flowers bursting with beautiful blooms.
A disconnection with the environment.

We feel it when we realize what once gave us life --a relationship, our work, and perhaps even our church-- now feels like an obligation, something that exhausts rather than excites and inspires.
            A disconnection with each other.

But it hasn’t always been like this. In the first chapter of Genesis, when God creates the first people, God blesses them. This is significant. The story begins with humans in right relationship—in healthy, life-giving connection—with their maker. All of their relationships flowed from the health of this one central relationship—people and God.(1)

Then, like the 2003 Cubs team, everything goes south. They choose another way. And they become disconnected. They are told there will be conflict between one another; there will be conflict between them and the soil.

We’re severed and cut off, disconnected in a thousand ways, and we know it, feel it, and are aware of it every day. It’s an ache in our bones that won’t go away. And so from an early age we have this awareness of the state of disconnection we were born into, and we have a longing to reconnect.

"Stadiums are less majestic at times, but several are famously intimate,
linked to their communities by their own histories and traditions,
representing much more than concrete and steel...
Only the spiritually numb would miss the wonder of Wrigley Field,
one of only two stadiums [the other being Fenway Park] still standing
from the construction binge that began early in the last century..."
~John Sexton, Baseball As A Road To God
I face the traffic of Lake Shore Drive during the dog days of summer to catch a baseball game for that reason. It is why you go to the Met in New York to be with a group of people and listen to an opera that will move you in ways you never have been before. It is why you go on that boat trip or hiking trip with your buddies because what you see and experience reconnects you not only to each other, not only to yourself, but to something greater:
to the God who dwells within you.

Standing up and stretching while singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” connects us to something beyond ourselves. We don’t know all those who have gathered. We come from vastly different backgrounds, we disagree on hundreds of issues, but for an evening, for a fleeting moment, we gather around these ball players and that artwork, this artist and these songs, and we get along –we connect. The experience moves us because it taps into how things were meant to be, and few places exist where we can experience what God intended on such a large scale.

That desire is why people continue to show up, for a hundred years now, to Addison and Clark. It’s why we walk through the doors of any concert, church service, or rally for a just cause. We feel connected to the people we’re having the experience with, and not just connected, but the experience taps into that awareness of something bigger than all of us that we’re brushing up against in the process.

That in itself is reason enough

to

show

up.


(1) Sex God by Rob Bell