I Will See Him

I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me! ~Job 25-27, NIV

When did my beloved and very smart son become more of a Calvinist than me? That realization struck me this morning as I replayed in my memory something he will often say in the face of life's up-ticks and (especially) its downturns.

"Dad," he'll tell me in his best monotone, "It is what it is." And with that view of God's will expressed, he moves on.

Wow! How I admire that ability he has, to let go of life's junk with a shrug and sometimes a sigh, and more or less accept whatever is sitting on the plate before him with a degree of faith and a lot of teflon. As he wrestles with his chronic health issues, he may feel regrets sometimes - maybe many times, but he doesn't let them eat him alive. And bitterness? Well, I can't say he doesn't ever feel the twinges of that - after all, he is human. But I'm not sure he'll ever give in to bitterness planting its toxic roots deeply in his heart without a fierce fight. And my son is a fierce fighter. He's got to be - my son has Crohn's disease.

Right now, as I wait on God, I am wrestling with life choices of my own. Choices to move on and live in the moment, glad for the present and hopeful for the future. Or choices to stick in a mire of slimy regrets and freeze into bitterness over what has happened in my life - specifically, in my loss of position, salary, and sense of worth.

How I choose to face this current situation and live out the rest of my life is up to me.

Yeah, I got bumped pretty good. Blind-sided, even. But I want to be a Calvinist in this, like my "Dad, it is what it is"  son. I want to live into God's unfolding will. So here I borrow the text from a familiar expression of faith popularly known as "The Serenity Prayer..."

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next.
Amen. ~Reinhold Niebuhr.

Remembering this wonderful old prayer, I want to choose, as my son does, as Niebuhr prays, to have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, without regrets and bitterness. And further, I want to face each day set before me with the courage to change the things I can, including the things about myself that are possible to change. But with this, also the wisdom to distinguish between hope and regret-ridden bitter thoughts and feelings, so I can gladly and freely choose to live into hope, with faith in God providing, on each new day.

Because after all, like Old Testament Job once exclaimed - my Redeemer lives. And I will see him.

A Place to Stand

Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise. Habakkuk 1:3, ESV

What does it mean to fail? Since losing my position as senior pastor, on a very deeply personal level, I've had to deal with this depressing question almost every single day. It isn't easy. It isn't easy to admit I've failed. But that is how I feel and the evidence surely lends validity to that awful feeling.

I thought I was in the ministry to serve God. That was my original understanding of my calling. And through some 25 years of being a minister, I more or less held to that idea. Only, over the years I guess other stuff, other junk, worked into the picture, clouded the vision, made this about serving me at least as much as about serving God or his people. So maybe somewhere along the line, I lost sight of my calling, my serving God and what it means to do that. I really don't know. What I do know is I am unemployed.

And the hard thing to do, from this pile of spent career rubble I'm sitting on, is to sort the pieces out. And hopefully to start again one day, but this time on the right footing. God-willing. And so I wait.

Waiting on God invites introspection like this. I am not good at waiting, but I have a knack for delving deep into layers of junk. And if that junk happens to be layers of me, so much the better. Only it's easy to get tangled in that delving and lost in that introspection. It's easy to forget the Accuser is all to glad to use whispers of "failure" to discourage and further wreck what already feels like a life in shambles.

What is needed is perspective. Perspective on success and failure, and what these words really mean. Reading from Jerry Sittser's book, THE WILL OF GOD AS A WAY OF LIFE has helped me find a little perspective. Quoting Benedict Groeschel, a Franciscan, he writes:

"It is commonly thought that if we begin a project for the Lord, the pieces will fall into place. It doesn't work out that way... Disasters befall projects of the good spirit, as well as those of the bad. Success has never been a sign of God's will. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta has observed, 'God calls us to fidelity and not to success.' It seems to me a sure sign that a certain project is the work of God if we have the grace to struggle on without bitterness in the face of difficulties and frustrations."

I guess it really isn't about pass/fail, or success or not. Besides, who really gets to measure these things, anyway? Thanks to Groeschel, Mother Teresa, and Jerry Sittser, I have something a bit more positive to think about and hold to: 'God calls us to fidelity and not to success.'

So maybe in the end it's not whether my ministry career has been a success; or even if it is truly over. It's more about fidelity and grace. And perhaps, where fidelity and grace abound, and until God sees fit to open the next chapter, I guess I can find hope to wait and a place to stand.

Change and Challenge

"We ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed." ~Brother Lawrence

"We face our greatest challenges not when God requires us to live heroically and sacrificially but when he calls us to be faithful in our daily routines. Living with routine can easily lull us into complacency."~Jerry Sittser, THE WILL OF GOD AS A WAY OF LIFE

"And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." ~Colossians 3:17, ESV

As I wait on God, I'm finding myself stuck in a daily routine not of my own choosing. Home, and without a call, I have settled into eight straight months of wondering what God has for me next. That it might be God wants exactly this for me has hardly stirred my soul with inspiration. But if Jerry Sittser is right in what he said, I may well be in a period of my greatest challenge, ever. Perhaps God is saying to me, in effect: So you want humility? You want spiritual maturity? You want to serve? You want to grow in your walk with Christ? Then sit still and wait on me.

Yikes! So now I get to practice the presence of God (like Brother Lawrence) in the ordinary things of being home and unemployed. I get to learn it's ok, and even a blessing, to load and empty the dishwasher. Lessons in keeping house are a struggle, but I have recently vacuumed the house and pushed the wet-mop across the tile. I run daily errands, like the grocery or other things of that kind. It's hot as blazes this summer, but when I can do it without heatstroke (which in Florida summers is pretty rare), I can go outside and do a bit of yardwork or crank up the old grill and cook our dinner. And I am delving into some spiritual disciplined readings and writings, which I feel have been therapeutic for my wounded soul.

The main point here is that whatever I'm doing, the routine, the ordinary, the unasked-for idle time can be filled with self-pity and bitter complacency (some days...). Or it can become an opportunity to glorify God in even the most basic tasks of being. I'm wanting to choose the latter, and am trying to re-wire my expectations and my actions to meet this great challenge which God has now set before me.

Like this picture of a guy hosing those wooden pallets on the street, I'm desiring more and more to want to do it, whatever it is, humbly, thankfully, and to the glory of God.

Message in a Chinese Fortune Cookie

This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God's weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. ~1 Corinthians 1:25, NLT

Does God work in mysterious ways? Yes. Does he even work through foolish-sounding things - like a Chinese fortune cookie? Haha! A month or so ago I would have said, absolutely not! However, I got a message in a cookie recently that leads me to re-think my first answer, and believe that God might not be too proud after all, to use a simple cookie to remind a hurting guy like me that waiting on him is what he wants.

My mind-changing fortune cookie read: "Right now you need to be patient."

Given my present situation, this cookie-gram really caught my attention!

I remembered that God once spoke with an erstwhile prophet named Balaam through his donkey.
And Jesus once said that if the people were silent about him, God could raise up the rocks and stones to proclaim his glory.
The psalmist once noticed that "out of the mouths of babes and infants" God speaks and raises bulwarks against his foes.
And theologian/apostle Paul observed that God speaks through the wonders of creation itself (see Romans 1).

So why not wait? Why not a fortune cookie?

Learning Curve

Just came back from the movies. It's a Sunday afternoon as I write down some random thoughts. Today we saw "The Help" and were brought back to a time when white racism toward black people was just a way of being, one that few people of my race thought about or questioned where I grew up. In some ways I feel more like I've been to church than when I actually go to church. Maybe that's because it was a particularly powerful movie and life lesson, and could very well fall into the category of "inspirational" or even "inspired."

At one point in the movie, one of the characters gets unexpectedly and unfairly fired, and she commented something to the effect that "in just ten minutes time, my whole way of life was ended." Everything she had known was over.

I thought at the time how much I can relate to this character's experience of sudden disconnect. When I was told last November that "we want you to take early retirement," I was absolutely astounded. It was shock I was feeling, both at the abruptness of this demand and the unjust callousness of it; I was shaken to the core.

That was almost 9 months ago as I look at the calendar. Some of the rawness of that moment has eased, but the sadness and shock has lingered. In the time in-between I've worked on forgiving and loving the ones whose hearts seemed made of stone. It hasn't been easy, and some days, all but impossible. But once in a while, I feel the peace of actually letting go.

A couple of things come to mind. First this passage from the Gospel:

“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” ~Matthew 22:36-40, NLT

The other comes from that same Gospel:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. ~Matthew 6:33, KJV

It strikes me that these two distinct passages are really one, each in support of the other. It also strikes me that waiting on God's will is a learning curve - learning to love God and neighbor, and discovering in this learning (and loving) the actual seeking of God's kingdom and his righteousness as an outgrowth. Difficult, but true in the Mississippi and the South at the time of "The Help" and also difficult but true in the life of this once and future minister as I wait upon the Lord for guidance and direction and calling.

Sometimes wisdom comes to those who wait...

For if you cry for discernment,
Lift your voice for understanding;
If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will discern the fear of the LORD
And discover the knowledge of God.         ~Proverbs 2:3-5, NASB

All Ears, Still Waiting

“Speak Lord; your servant is listening” 1 Sam 3:10

Kinship

My soul languishes for your salvation; I hope in your word. My eyes fail with watching for your promise; I ask, "When will you comfort me?" For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes. How long must your servant endure? ~Psalm 119:81-84, NRSV

The dried, wilted rose jumped out at me that day. I was walking through New Orleans' old St. Louis Cathedral and found it, as if lying in repose, on a flat surface in a prayer intentions area. It had been left near a small bank of public votive prayer candles you can light and burn for a price. It held the look and the place of long-suffering need and of the languishing prayers of the faithful. I can so relate.

As I wait on the Lord for vindication, for resolution, for direction or guidance, I realize his hand is providing for me still. I have my daily bread. And yet his same hand has allowed my vocational sense of "me" to be removed from the active and vital place it had occupied since before 1984, when I first sensed the call to ministry - a call which has led me along a labyrinthian path of highs and lows that has wound up leaving me here. Unemployed.

Today I feel disconnected, and I languish as if I have been cast unfairly into some cruel prison, or left abandoned to shrivel and die on the cold surface of some anonymous prayer intentions area. And as I experience this, I increasingly grow to feel true kinship with this dried, wilted rose. And with the Psalmist's cry of anguish.

My prayers still flicker, burning like the candles beside the rose. When will my hopes and prayers find their answer?

Like A Drought

“My soul languishes for your salvation; I hope in your word. My eyes fail with watching for your promise; I ask, 'When will you comfort me?'” -Psalm 119:81-82, NRSV


“I have reservoirs of want enough to freeze many nights over.” -Conor O'Callaghan


“How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not save?” -Habbakkuk 1:2, NIV

Waiting is agonizing when you're not at all sure of what you're waiting for. When you do know, it can be even worse. Like living in coastal Florida from March to late June, beautiful but bone dry. Lush but rainless. Living things begin to shrivel and die.

Maddeningly, clouds begin to form in early June. You see the promise, you hear distant thunder rolling. You might even see a flash of heat lightning when night falls. But nothing more. There is little to be done except to just wait for the rainy season to finally make its appearance. Or else hope for an early hurricane.

Waiting on God can feel a lot like that.

“After long drought, commotion in the sky; After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes, The rain.” -Mark van Doren

See the flower energing from that cracked, parched ground? Hoping in God can turn out just about like that. God does eventually show up. But meanwhile, the waiting can seem endless.

Thank God for Good Friends

O LORD, you know all about this.
Do not stay silent.
Do not abandon me now, O Lord.
Wake up! Rise to my defense!
Take up my case, my God and my Lord. ~Psalm 35:22-23

A very good friend of mine has suggested that as I wait on the Lord I do so pro-actively. In other words, he said I needn't hesitate to express some real urgency in asking God to hurry up and resolve my situation. And my friend cited the example of the psalmist, who minced no words in urging God on to get things fixed in his life.

Citing certain verses from Psalm 35, he told me:

"Both of us know that the grace of God is sufficient, but it often is hard and we're impatient."

You know, it's good to have some very smart and faithful friends like this. I truly appreciate this guy. In fact, I said to him how much our friendship means to me, and that what he suggested:

"It's a line of prayer only a tough-minded, practical Midwesterner like yourself could have suggested and one I may never have even thought of on my own."

So in the midst of waiting on God, in the midst of despondency, in this struggle with growing frustration, it is good to have a different perspective on how to pray my way through this stinky mess. And it is really good to have good friends like mine.

Thanks, Jim.

Frustration and Hope

"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do." ~ John XXIII

Waiting on God can be, for me at least, an exercise in total frustration. I am part of that instant gratification generation of Baby Boomers who have grown very used to having it all just the way I like it, and having it that way right now. So waiting taxes my reserves of faith and hope to the maximum. It pushes my every impatience button. It leads me to all sorts of unwelcome thoughts and places that I'd just rather not go.

Which is to say that the longer I wait on God unsatisfied, the more I wait with a host of tangled emotions wanting to burst out into the open. I find anger present. I grow afraid. I feel impatience growing. My humility evaporates. I can become despondent. I can also lash out irrationally at the unwanted situation and all its perceived players. Any and all of the above, and more.

I hear the psalmist's cry, and I realize it is my own.

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? ~Psalm 13:1-2, ESV

Yet I see the example set by this little clover plant, which has overcome the frustration of trying to live on its own terms and in its preferred conditions, and instead, has burst forth in green life from an unhospitable crack in a wall. And I hear the wisdom of the words once spoken by John XXIII, inviting all who hear, to follow not their frustrations, but the potential which God sets before us and in us.

And so at least for the moment, I resolve to meditate on these thoughts and set as much of my frustration aside as I can each day. And to "trust in the Lord with all my heart," and lean not unto my own (limited) understanding. Perhaps as I slowly train myself to acknowledge him in all my ways, I will begin to find those pathways made straight. And maybe some form of green vitality may finally burst forth from the inhospitable cracks in my wall/my life. I can hope.

Waiting leads to...?

It’s nothing all too special to come by:
The bench, the station,
The passing trains in my wrong direction.
I always wondered what might happen,
If I just took off in one of those
And not have to wait for what I already know. -Joel P.

Picture someone standing alone on the dock of a commuter train station, waiting for the same train he or she always took, headed for the same predictable destination. Same thing every day. While waiting on that train’s arrival, and seeing multiple tracks, many of which head in different directions, what might run through that someone’s mind as they wait?

One person ventured a guess and put that guess into poetic verse.

I don’t know who Joel P. (the author of this verse) is. I picked his brain by accident when he was quoted in a blog post I was reading, written by someone else. Joel’s view on waiting spoke to me of my present situation. You see, I too am waiting. Not for a commuter train, though. I am waiting on God for some badly needed life direction. Thing is, I want to take the familiar life track. Only it appears that my familiar track is not presently available to me, and I am facing some unknown direction, looking at tracks that will take me only God knows where.

As is permissible and typical in many blogs, a reader can respond. And I did. This is what I told the blog’s author in response: What if we didn't wait for what we "know" but took off in some unknown direction. Life would likely be far less boring for lots of us. Maybe.

As I consider this thing we call “waiting” it appears to be something that is not too different from a kind of building material. What I mean is, it could be in the waiting that God builds the anticipation for what's coming next. And maybe the patience. And maybe the trust to go off into the unknown, to take the unknown track, to head out to those who knows where places in life.

In the Bible, old Abram, the patriarch, was given this great opportunity. He got to wait on God and was offered tickets to take a life direction he hadn’t expected, didn’t consciously ask for, but could hardly refuse. God came to him and said: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1, NIV)

God told Abram to leave it all behind. In those days, there were no trains. No cars. No planes. In those days, when you went out into the unknown, you were on your own. Survival was not guaranteed. Life could suddenly become a great adventure. It says later that Abram believed God and went. And God reckoned it to Abram as righteousness, and blessed him and his line greatly.

What or who are you waiting for? Maybe when you wait on God, sometimes you just have to be ready to go when and where God says go, even when the timing feels “off” and the tracks before you don’t go in the expected direction, and the trains traveling them aren’t all that safe-looking or familiar.

Surprise Happens

“Readiness for God means that we are prepared to do the smallest thing or the largest thing— it makes no difference. It means we have no choice in what we want to do, but that whatever God’s plans may be, we are there and ready.” –Oswald Chambers

“Always be ready! You don't know when the Son of Man will come.” –Matthew 24:44, CEV

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning…” –Luke 12:35, NIV

“None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.” –Kathleen Norris

When I lost my position as pastor, I was totally unprepared. Just finishing up a very restful and family-filled Thanksgiving week vacation, the unexpected phone call summoning me to a mysterious meeting at someone’s home that very day came as a total surprise, complete with denominational officials and the church personnel chair. In my own words, following the shocking request that I take early retirement and resign as pastor, “I didn’t see it coming.” I was dumbfounded by the suddenness of it all – a six month severance package, yes; but no appeal, no real denominational safeguards, just resign and be gone within a few short weeks. That was the shocker.

But surprise happens. And from that moment, I began to grow acutely aware that the process of waiting on God had begun in earnest. I also began learning that waiting includes being ready for whatever may come, expected or not. And being ready for the expected also best includes being prepared for the unexpected, as both happen all the time. And often do. So what’s next?

Dealing with it
I have re-played the tapes many times.
I have played the “what-if” game over and over.
I have tried to imagine who was responsible, so I could focus my energy on blaming.
I have cried and appealed my case before God and others. I have told and retold the story to friends.

I have felt much grief of my own; I have also felt my wife’s pain.
Doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change what has happened. Fact is, I’m unemployed and it’s a bad time to be unemployed. And I’m a bad age to be unemployed, in a bad profession to be unemployed in. At least that is what the conventional wisdom tapes currently playing in my head are telling me. Like Job’s friends, these tapes say failure is my one true reality.

Yeah, but… while I do need to face what has happened, my faith is also speaking, saying that the trick to dealing with this is being ready, being prepared; waiting on God. I need this, to rise above my disappointment and pain. In other words, I just gotta turn off those darned tapes and turn to God, become open to whatever God is doing in my life now - it could be entirely new.

Hurry... and Wait

“Never was a faithful prayer lost. Some prayers have a longer voyage than others, but then they return with their richer lading at last, so that the praying soul is a gainer by waiting for an answer.” –William Gurnall

"God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
to the woman who diligently seeks.
It's a good thing to quietly hope,
quietly hope for help from God.
It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times." –Lamentations 3:25-27, The MESSAGE

Waiting is the bane of modern existence. Fast foods, instant fixes, rapid transit – nobody in today’s America feels their time should ever be spent waiting for anything. How impatient we grow in heavy traffic, or standing in a check-out line of some grocery or mart. How crabby we become when our aspirations for having something immediately at our fingertips is thwarted by technology failures, human error, or simply the laws of physics. As far as we are able to arrange things, all things are geared toward the ideal of “have it your way,” and right away.

So please, have your exact change ready when you board.

With this in mind, I am going to say something here that may seem like heresy to many a modern ear. I am going to disagree with the beloved concept of instant gratification, much as my own soul seems to want it in most things (as I am sure your own soul does also). I am going to say here that waiting is good for the soul. Yes. Waiting can be good for the soul.

This comes from personal experience and observation, study, human interaction, and prayer. But having said this, I must also say that waiting is not and never will be easy. At least not for me, and I suspect not for you either. We are conditioned by our culture to naturally expect those immediate delights we each so deeply long for. And like you, I am a product of that culture. I want it all, and I want it all today.

Which is to say, waiting, or learning the value of waiting, is not easy for today’s people. In fact if we do learn to wait, it will likely be the by-product of much invested time and effort, trial and error, courage and determination. It will be a back to the drawing board struggle, with highs and lows, wins and losses. It will take nurturing the ability to succeed without growing over-confident. And it will also take the grit to face disappointment and failure without giving up.

But most of all, learning to wait, learning the value of waiting, in the little things of life and the larger than life things, is going to take faith in God. This I am sure of. And this is really why I am writing this down. Waiting is a positive spiritual exercise. It may not feel that way at the time, but waiting can be a great faith adventure. It can also be a tedious journey. Yet entering into it is how we can put spiritual roots down, deep in the fertile soil of God’s gracious love and provision. So come, let’s go. Hurry up, and wait with me.

Colour My World

Just a short thought this evening. It's Tuesday, a week or so from Mardi Gras. The pre-Lenten revelry is going full swing in my home city of New Orleans; one might never suspect that at its roots is a religious theme. Except Mardi Gras is the last precursor to a time of preparation and introspection that culminates in the Easter miracle of Christ risen. But then looking at the spectrum of colors projected on this church skylight wall, one would not readily suspect that the colors of life are there either. Apart from the light of God's love shining through. May that light and that love shine, and wherever we may be, colour our world in all its richness and beauty.

Heron at Sunset

Solitude is not about being lonely. Not always. Sometimes it is simply the state of being alone. Alone, like this heron at sunset. Alone, waiting. Alone, anticipating. Alone, secure in the knowledge that you are not ever really alone with God. Jesus Christ is Immanuel - "God with us." How then could anyone ever really be alone?

No Afterthought

Ghost Ranch, NM. Went here last July for a conference on photography and spirituality (other than LSU football, my family, and my dog, these are two of my favorite topics). Anyway, the idea in connecting spirituality and photography was to help us learn to visualize the unseen (and show it). Sounds like a paradox? Try it yourself. Plenty of fun and challenge.

So here's a shot I took while there. A bible sitting alone on one chair of a row of empty seats in the outdoor chapel. Seemed kind of forlorn to me at first.

But then as I have considered it more carefully, it is not forlorn at all. It is the written Word, waiting. Waiting on God. Waiting on someone to discover it. Waiting on someone to remember it. Waiting to provide insight and wisdom to guide someone needing insight and wisdom for the living of their life. Not just randomly waiting or alone, but ready at all times for any and all such purposes, and more.

A metaphor, perhaps, for the individual whose faith is placed in the One whose Spirit inspires each and every word in that waiting bible, either at the point of its being written, or that point in which it is read or spoken aloud. Forlorn and forsaken? Or waiting and ready to receive?

The question is: am I ready to receive? Are you? There is plenty of wisdom and guidance there, inside that one book. Maybe we should consider. Maybe take a seat beside it, and receive.