Invitation: Turn to Me with your lament

But God’s love is unfailing

Joel 2:12-13 The Lord says, “Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead. Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love [rav-hesed: great or overflowing or abounding in love and faithfulness]. He is eager to relent and not punish.

As you know if you’ve been following this blog, I’m in a season of intentional soul work. Soul work takes time, and energy, and focus. For the last while I haven’t felt like I had anything to say to you. This morning, though, I woke with this thought: Turn to Me with your lament.

Monday evening (three days ago) I hurt someone I love. It happened within the context of a series of soul-wrenching situations that were not my fault. Yet I felt them as if they were, as if I were culpable too. Perhaps something like Nehemiah felt as he wept for the people of Israel (Neh 1:4-10).

A third of the psalms are laments. A friend mentioned yesterday that it takes deep faith to lament before God, to be that vulnerable with our intimate feelings. It’s an act of trust that again and again we see God welcome and honor. What is your lament today? Can you express it in words? Sometimes I can’t. I don’t have enough clarity about what’s behind the anguish I feel. But God is skilled in understanding our emotions too deep for words (Rom 8:26).

During Lent this year I wrote a lament. This morning I revisited and added to it. It may not be great as poetry, but that doesn’t matter. The point is how well it expresses some of the weeping that is the subtext of my heart through this season. Perhaps you would like to write your own lament to bring before the Lord’s rav-hesed. It doesn’t matter what form it takes as long as you feel like it helps you name what is in your soul.

Smashing, shattering, breaking—

NO.

This is not the Jesus way.

War is not a video game, reboot and replay.

It is torn, tender flesh.

It is hunger and thirst, darkness and cold.

It is disease, deprivation, despair.

It is death.

Snatching, scattering, beating—

NO.

It’s easy to destroy, to decimate

What others have found courage to create.

The GOOD Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,

Willing to feel their distress,

With compassion, drawing their hearts into his.

Swindling, sucking, betraying—

NO.

Carelessly wasting what others need to survive.

Each child, cherished, precious unique

Thrown away. Trashed, like the earth

While mothers watch, and weep, and wait

For the One whose own flesh is bleeding and bare.

Salvaged, solaced, belonging—

YES??

My heart aches for those who know nothing of grace,

Who may not taste the Kingdom when it comes.

Whose souls have been ravaged by greed and dis-grace

Their longings mis-shaped into vengeance.

For they too were made in the image of God.

Come, all who are weary, Porter’s Gate

An abundance of flowers!

But God’s vision is joy!

Isaiah 35 Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days. The wasteland will rejoice and blossom … There will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! … With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees. Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to save you. … The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy! … Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be filled with joy and gladness.

Luke 7:22 “Tell John what you have seen and heard—the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.”

1 Peter 1:6 So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while.

In my Bible beside Isaiah 35:2 I noted in 2012, “Val’s wedding!”

I’ve never attended an event with such an abundance of flowers. The wedding was held at a campsite outside of Joinville, in southern Brazil. The decorators did such an amazing job with flowers, linens, crystal, china, and candles that you would never know you were in a plain camp dining room.

I was as surprised as any other guest when I walked into this gorgeous setting. Though mother of the bride, I was unable to participate in the planning of this milestone in Valerie’s life because I was in Pittsburgh caring for Karis. She (Karis) had planned for months to travel to Brazil for her beloved little sister’s wedding, but an untimely accident left her in the hospital instead of on an airplane. That’s another whole long story. Karis called it the biggest disappointment of her entire life.

I left Karis in the care of my beloved younger sister and traveled to Brazil with no idea of the beauty that awaited all of us. I experienced in my own small way the joy foretold in Isaiah 35. For that day, I was able to set aside my “tired hands, weak knees, and fearful heart” for Karis and let my soul absorb the loveliness and joy of Valerie + Cesar. A celebration that renewed my strength for the long days awaiting me in Pittsburgh on my return.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, and fulfill in some measure today your promises of future joy.

But God makes the seed grow

1 Corinthians 3:3-4, 6-7, 16-17, 21-23 You are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other…Aren’t you acting just like people of the world? … I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. … Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? … God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. … So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you—whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

My sister Linda has an interesting perspective of the various expressions of the Christian church. Having experienced a variety of them firsthand, she notes that each one seems to have a specific gift to offer the whole Body of Christ—like the gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4, but at a denominational level instead of individual.

I love that perspective. It fits well with this third chapter of 1 Corinthians. All the fulness of the Holy Spirit was in Jesus, and when he ascended to Heaven and then sent the Spirit to the church on Pentecost, he distributed spiritual gifts—like light shining through a prism, diffracting and making visible all its beautiful colors. We need each other, because no single person, church, or denomination contains all the gifting of the Spirit. God fully lives in all of us together.

And here’s the truly wonderful thing: What God gives to you, he gives to me, too. What he gives to me is meant to bless you. “Everything belongs to you,” Paul told the Corinthians, and that “you” is plural. If we are jealous, critical, or rejecting of other parts of the Body of Christ, we lose a part of what God wants to give us. And when we think we are the ones who have it all, we lose too through not sharing.

I’m reminded again of the story I told in the last post. Eight children, eight fun gifts for Christmas. But many of those gifts weren’t fun to play with alone. Games and toys and puzzles are designed to be shared. And if just one or two of my sisters and I tried to play Monopoly by ourselves, we missed out on our brother Steve’s ingenuity. He always managed to make play time more fun by creating new rules and strategies. (He even got us girls to wash dishes when it was his turn, by reading Jeeves to us while we worked. Humdrum tasks filled with laughter when Steve was part of them.)

All was not joy and laughter in our home, though. We’ve all struggled with “zero-sum” thinking: there’s not enough to go around, so if I gain, you lose; if you gain, I lose. That’s a big topic for another time. But listen to what Paul says: Everything belongs to you! To all of you! All of us collectively as well as individually. There’s no need for envy or fighting or squashing you so I can get ahead or stay in power. God’s upside-down Kingdom is marked by the magic of abundance, generosity, and service, not stinginess or hoarding or manipulation. In Christ small becomes big, enough for everyone. A boy’s lunch, a widow’s penny, a flask of perfume, a man’s donkey, a mustard seed of faith, a rich man’s tomb . . . Because when given back to God, he makes our small offerings grow into something much greater than what they would be if kept to ourselves.

P.S. I wrote other thoughts about 1 Cor 3:6 on August 2, 2018. Check it out: Karis and a life-giving story from “Aunt” Claudia!