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A new grip

But God’s discipline is good for us April 22, 2024

Hebrews 12:10-13 Our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us … there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

I’m writing to you from the beautiful mountains of Colorado, where the new life of spring looks a bit different from Pennsylvania.

My takeaway today from thinking about this passage from Hebrews? God’s discipline is not just for my personal growth, but even more, for those around me. My right living can open a pathway of peace and strengthening for others. And so can yours.

It’s not just about “me”—it’s about us. We’re all influencing each other.

Sometimes I’m the weak and lame one who needs extra support.

And sometimes, because God gives me the extra infusion of perspective I need in order to keep hanging on when things are tough, other people can say, as many told me after Karis died, “If she could find grace to not give up, with all she had to deal with, I can too, with what I face.”

Sometimes, when I “strengthen my weak knees” through prayer and worship, the Holy Spirit can transform my pity party, as Karis called any kind of griping, into the ability to shift my focus away from myself to listen, understand, and pray for others.

This idea of “new grip” reminds me of a Notre Dame football story. Karis innocently sat at the football players’ table in the dining hall while they were all getting their food. The team “adopted” her, and she helped tutor some of them so they could stay academically qualified. One Saturday morning she was still in her PJs when she heard a knock on her dorm room door. One of the football players filled the doorway.

“Karis, hurry and get dressed. We’re playing touch football and I want you on my team. I promise, I won’t let you get hurt. I’ll wait for you in the common room.”

This is a funny story for so many reasons. Little Karis, who didn’t even understand the rules (that’s another story!) playing in any meaningful way against massive opponents? Without getting hurt?

What the football player did during play was hand Karis the ball, tell her “Hold it tight,” pick her up, and race for the touchdown.

I think you can tell where I’m going with this. Karis had only one task: hang on to the ball. The rest was all about trust.

We’re all team players, in some way influencing the outcome of the game we’re playing. The “ball” God is asking me to hold on to has everything to do with trust in his game plan and in the other players. I don’t even fully understand the rules, and the opponents I face are way too big for me. My part? Strengthen my grip and trust him to carry me.

Broken Vessels (Amazing Grace), Hillsong

Like newborn babies

But God offers spiritual milk

1 Peter 2:1-2 Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good.

My granddaughter scrunches her face. “Yuck!”

“But you haven’t even tasted it! I promise you, this tastes good. I’m quite sure you’ll like it.”

She pushes the plate away. “I won’t. I can tell.”

“Just a tiny taste.”

“No!”

I sigh. Is this battle one I want to fight today? I finally convince her to try a tiny taste. She makes a horrible face and spits it out.

“See? I told you I wouldn’t like it.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Cucumber slices and baby carrots and tomatoes. And sweet peppers. Four of each because I’m four.”

I can live with that.

The next week I serve the yucky food and don’t say anything about it. She eats it with gusto.

“How often am I like a four-year-old?” I muse. “The struggle isn’t really about food. It’s about whether she gets to choose for herself. Like she used to say, I can do this ‘my byself.’”

You too? From the overflowing table of God’s provision for us, what nourishment do you crave today?

I crave words of kindness and gentleness. Understanding. Hope. I want to know the Lord is with me; that he perceives the weight of my concerns and is willing to share them. Today, I am drawn to drink from Psalms 145 (one of Karis’s favorites), 146, 147:

The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love … The Lord always keeps his promises; he is gracious in all he does. The eyes of all look to you in hope; you give them their food as they need it. … The Lord is close to all who call on him (145:8, 13-15, 18).

Joyful are those who have God as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God. … The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down (146:5, 8).

The Lord heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. … His understanding is beyond comprehension! … The Lord delights in those who fear him, those who put their hope in his unfailing love (147:3, 5, 11).

I feel the Lord’s benevolent smile as I savor this spiritual milk, relaxing into his love and kindness. And in the fact that though he gives me choices, he is in control; I’m not. All will be well.

What will you drink today? It’s your choice!

An anchor for our souls

New birth into a living hope

1 Peter 1:23 (Titus 3:5) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Romans 6:18-19 It is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.

So, I’m curious: Have you tried the “new song” idea from my last blog—applying praise to whatever is going on in your life today? I would love to know! I sang a “new song” as I found reasons to praise God as our family absorbs the reality and implications of our six-year-old grandson’s Celiac Disease diagnosis.

I’m quite excited about this understanding of “new song,” in part because it takes me back to a vow I made to the Lord while Karis and I were jetting to Pittsburgh from South Bend in the middle of the night in response to the first intestinal transplant call she was ready to consider.

I vowed to find something to praise God for every day of this upcoming adventure. I had no idea at the time how life- and hope-giving that practice would be. Keeping that vow forced me back to the Lord time after time when otherwise I could have floundered in the excruciating disappointments and reversals we experienced. Hope became for me–for us–a lifeline, an anchor, a safety rail, a source of strength for not giving up as Karis faced death day after day after day. I am deeply grateful to the Holy Spirit for prompting me to make that vow.

There are so many wonderful references to hope in the New Testament that I had trouble choosing, even from the book of Hebrews. The Greek words translated as hope are elpis (noun) and elpizo (verb), from the root elpo. They mean to anticipate (usually with pleasure), to trust, and to expect with confidence (and the corresponding nouns).

Peter emphasizes the fact that our hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus, whose victory over his own death extends to us in ours. That’s why we don’t grieve when a loved one dies or in thinking about our own mortality with the same despair as those without the hope of new life after death (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

In thinking about this, I remember Karis’s brilliant smile after she wrote in big scrawly letters with her left hand, “I love ____” each one of us. At the end she wrote, “Call the doctor. I can’t breathe,” just as a team burst into her ICU room to induce her last coma to give time for the antiviral to work (it didn’t, but this gave our family time to gather and to prepare ourselves as well as we could for her death). I believe Karis knew she was going Home, which we learned later through her journals she had been pleading with God to allow her to do.

This isn’t Jesus’s tomb, but it is a preserved tomb and round stone from the first century, like his might have been. Thanks to Marilyn Chislaghi for permission to use her photo taken in Israel.

Living hope: an empty tomb. A brilliant smile. An anchor for our souls through terrible times.

The Anchor Holds, by Ray Boltz

A new song

But God reveals himself to us a day at a time

Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. (See Revelation 14:3, Psalm 33:3, 40:3, 96:1, 98:1, 144:9, 149:1, Isaiah 42:10.)

We have several gifted songwriters in our congregation, nourishing our worship with their beautiful praise, in a variety of styles and traditions. I can picture one of them composing an amazing anthem for the “thousands and millions of angels around the throne” in Revelation chapter 5.

Can you imagine hearing that mighty chorus? One day, we will!

Meanwhile, though, how can I, with my limited musical gifts, respond to the psalmists’ repeated invitation to sing a new song to the Lord?

It occurs to me today, just off the phone with one of my daughters discussing a challenging medical diagnosis one of our grandchildren has just received, that a “new song” for me today would be to praise God for who he is for us in the middle of this new situation. I have never before worshiped God in the face of this particular circumstance—that’s what makes it new.

That means every day offers an opportunity to sing a new song—even if for some of us it sounds more like joyful noise (Psalm 100:1—apparently that’s OK too!). Each day brings its own joys and sorrows, never exactly like the day or week or month or year before.

What circumstance in your life is calling for a new song of trust today?

Let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God” (Hebrews 13:15).

Don’t these anemones look like they’re singing? Shutterstock: LedyX

In light of our Revelation text, here’s a “new song” from Africa:

Sing Unto the Lord a New Song, by Newlove Annan, sung by One Voice Choir, Ghana,

New life: our part

But God holds us individually responsible

Romans 6:13 Give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. [See also: Romans 5:18, 1 Corinthians 15:22, 2 Corinthians 5:15, Galatians 3:21, 1 Peter 1:23.]

Galatians 6:4-5 Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct.

Ever since I posted that photo of our Lenten roses with the comment about living a confessional lifestyle, not just a discipline for Lent, I’ve been wondering what I could offer that might be helpful to us (starting with me) in practicing this daily grace. Alice Fryling gave me an answer through her book Aging Faithfully, which Dave and I are reading for an upcoming mission retreat. Fryling quotes ideas she learned from Adele Calhoun in her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. (I love the interweaving that led to enrichment for me!)

I imagine you’ve heard of 16th century Ignatius Loyola’s Daily Examen rooted in his concepts of consolation and desolation (we can talk about them another day). The Daily Examen has helped people through the centuries to walk more closely with God and it can’t be “improved,” even while it requires some training to practice. Fryling takes the basic idea and suggests we ask six simple questions each day, similar yet more specific than the practice may of us are familiar with of identifying our high point and low point in a given period of time. I added the Scripture references to Fryling’s questions:

  • For what moments today am I most grateful? For what moment today am I least grateful (Colossians 3:15)?
  • When did I give and receive the most love today? When did I give and receive the least love today (John 13:34)?
  • Where was I aware of living out of the fruit of the Spirit? Where was there an absence of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)?

What do you think? Would you like to join me in responding to these questions daily through this short Easter season until Pentecost?

I think they will help us notice and be thankful for the new life God is growing in our lives.

God gives pansies life and makes them grow, but he won’t plant them for me! Shutterstock: lcrms

A new and life-giving way

Hebrews 10:19-20 We can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place.

Mark 15:37-38 Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

Our Lenten roses are still blooming, reminding me that the confessional life we practiced during Lent is meant to be not a fad but a lifestyle.

“Grammy, if it’s spring, why is it snowing?” asked six-year-old Caleb when he got off his school bus a couple of weeks ago.

“Caleb, we’re going to look for signs of spring!” his four-year-old sister Talita told him. “Come on!”

They didn’t stop at ten, the number I had suggested. They found sixteen signs of spring in their yard. And each time since that I’ve gone to their house, they’ve shown me more.

In this hemisphere, spring is associated with Easter. It’s a natural fit: the celebration of new life. In Brazil, though, Easter comes as fall begins to ease the heat of summer. Jesus is truly a man for all seasons.

Since I’m in Pittsburgh, though, I’ve been thinking about new things. A quick survey of the New Testament revealed references to 33 new things (plus repeated references) in the NLT New Testament. For this brief Easter season (which ends with Pentecost on May 19), I’m going to choose a few of those to highlight, beginning today with one of the consequences of Jesus’ death and resurrection: direct access to God.

This was a completely new concept for Jews steeped in God’s holy inaccessibility. God’s Presence filled a small space in the Temple protected by a thick curtain (9cm/3 ½ inches thick, according to Jewish tradition). Hebrews 9:7-8 reminds us that “only the high priest ever entered the Most Holy Place, and only once a year … the entrance to the Most Holy Place was not freely open as long as the Tabernacle and the system it represented were still in use.” (See Luke 1 for a story about this. The chosen priest entered the Most Holy Place with a cord tied around his ankle, so his body could be pulled out in case he was struck dead by the holiness of God.)

I find the tearing of this 3 ½ inches-thick curtain, from top to bottom, one of the most startling and intriguing collateral events associated with Jesus’ death. Clearly, no human could have done this. Hebrews tells us that now we can “come boldly to the throne of our gracious God” for his help and mercy (4:16). And Paul says our own bodies are now the Temple of God, where Christ dwells in us through the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19-20, 2 Corinthians 6:16). Think about that next time you’re tempted to abuse or misuse your body!

Jesus, through his incarnate life, brought God close to us. Through his death, he ended the separation between us and his Father. And in his resurrection and ascension, he left his Spirit to indwell, teach, nurture, guide, convict, gift, and empower us, growing beautiful fruit in our souls (Galatians 5:22-23).

What signs of new life do you find in the garden of your heart?

Let’s listen again to Kristyn Getty sing Before the Throne of God Above.

He is risen indeed!

Psalm 103:22 Let all that I am praise the Lord.

Litany of Penitence concluding prayer:

Show favor to your people, O Lord, who turn to you in weeping, fasting, and prayer.

For you are a merciful God, full of compassion, long-suffering, and abounding in steadfast love.

You spare when we deserve punishment,

And in your wrath, you remember mercy.

Spare your people, good Lord, spare us;

In the multitude of your mercies, look upon us and forgive us,

Through the merits and mediation of your blessed Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Sorry I didn’t post this on Saturday! It’s wonderful to be on the “other side” of Lent now, celebrating Jesus’s resurrection. May his life-giving Spirit continue to flow through our lives as we live into Easter.

Jesus Paid It All, by Elvina M. Hall, 1865, sung by Newsboys

Not sure which of the two cuties below decorated my pillow yesterday.

Our other two cherubs enjoyed Easter with their family at the beach. Up in time for sunrise!

Doxology

But God’s kingdom encompasses all he created  March 28, 2024

Psalm 103:19-22 The Lord has made the heavens his throne; from there he rules over everything. … Praise the Lord, you armies of angels who serve him and do his will. Praise the Lord, everything he has created, everything in all his kingdom.

Litany of Penitence 12

For our failure to commend the faith that is in us

Lord, have mercy upon us,

For we have sinned against you.

In The Psalms, Jesus’s Prayer Book, Volume 3 Psalms 73-106, Douglas D. Webster says:

“Psalm 103 reminds us that we bow before King Jesus. The third stanza widens the circle of praise to include all of creation. All the angels and the heavenly hosts are summoned to worship before the throne of him who rules over all. Total praise. There are no spectators. Everyone is in the choir and everything is centered around the throne of the Lord. … Whatever your perspective on worship styles … in the end we’ll be worshiping together. … The key concept for the future of the human community is doxology.”

So, besides confessing our failure to “commend the faith that is in us,” how can I, how can you, share our hope with all whom we love, so they too can join this worship fest around the Throne? How can we free the River of Life to overflow from our hearts?

Shutterstock: Stanislavskyi

A beautiful hymn, based on Psalm 103, celebrates much of what we’ve been considering this Lent as we’ve worked our way through the Litany of Penitence: Praise my Soul the King of Heaven, by Henry Francis Lyte, 1834, sung by St Laurence’s Church.

This evening our church has a Maundy Thursday service. The word Maundy comes from the Latin for “commandment” – Jesus’s “new” commandment (John 13:34) to love others just as he has loved us. If you know Spanish or Portuguese, think mandamiento or mandamento. The service includes footwashing (John 13:1-17). At the end of the service, the lights will slowly dim as the altar is stripped of all ornamentation (and we remember Jesus’s arrest). As we find ourselves in total darkness, a voice reads Psalm 22. We exit in silence.

Tomorrow, we watch with Mary as her Son hangs on the cross from noon until 3:00 p.m., when he cries “It is finished.” Artists in the congregation have created pieces depicting each of the Stations of the Cross. (I featured last year’s Good Friday artwork on this blog.)

On Saturday, a quiet day of meditation, I’ll post the final prayer from the Litany of Atonement and the final line from Psalm 103.

Easter Sunday at 6:00 a.m., we enter the sanctuary in darkness, and the first half of the service is held by candlelight. Gradually, daylight filters through the stained glass, but remember, the last time we were in this space, it was stripped of all other adornment. When the lights suddenly come on, though, and the organ and trumpets and choir announce Jesus’s resurrection, we see the church filled with fragrant flowers. All of our senses are engaged in this magnificent celebration of restored Life. Once again, we can sing and say “Alleluia,” which we have not done since Lent began.

While all this is wonderful, I find it bittersweet, because Karis loved Easter so much. But in a flash I remember: all we can do is but a shadow of the incredible joy of being in the very Presence of God on his rainbow throne. We may still experience waves of grief. But for her, and for each one of our missing beloved ones and yours, all is glory.

I’ll wish you and your family now a lovely Easter.

Awe

But God’s forever love cost him   March 25, 2024

Psalm 103:17-18 But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments.

The Hebrew word for covenant (beriyth) in this verse is a blood covenant, a compact made by cutting flesh. Jesus offered his body to the thorns, the nails, the whip—out of love for us. He paid the whole price of his covenant with us on the cross. For you. For me. He is the only one with whom I have this kind of relationship. Yet how often do I honor other people’s opinion of me more than his, enough to get my tail in a knot when I think they don’t like or approve of what I believe or do or think or say or create?

Litany of Penitence 11

For seeking the praise of others

Rather than the approval of God,

Lord, have mercy upon us,

For we have sinned against you.

Chatting with a friend this week, we both admitted we tend to let other people’s opinions of what we do affect us too much. As we expressed it, we give them too much power over our emotions. I used the example of letting a negative review of something I have written cancel the joy of finding out someone was blessed by what they read. I’m learning to ask myself, “Is my conscience clear before God? Have I, as well and faithfully as I know how, followed what I believe was his direction?” If so, even though I always have room to grow, I can live from a center of peace no matter what others think or say.

Holy Spirit, cleanse, renew, and grow my awe of what Jesus did for me. Shutterstock: LovelyDay

This doesn’t mean I can’t learn from other people. I’m talking about letting their opinion rob me of joy and confidence. My temptation is to criticize myself and become self-centered (preoccupied with myself) rather than nurturing a solid confidence in God’s love that fosters a balanced perspective of both myself and others.

Here are a few more texts I’ve been thinking about in connection with today’s confession: Mt 6:1-2, 16-21, 23:5-12, Mark 6:1-3, John 12:42-43. Perhaps you can suggest other Scriptures on this topic.

Love Ran Red, by Chris Tomlin