It is your heart that gives your words their meaning.  Someone with a pure heart produces good fruit — good kingdom deeds and kind, lovely, powerful words season after season.  –Matthew 12

Sometimes the only way to get there is to surrender the things we think we can’t live without. Here are the artist’s thoughts on this.

I always wanted to be one of the popular kids. I watched the popular girls closely enough to know exactly what it would take: I needed Guess Jeans, a jean jacket, and a couple of Izod shirts to layer on top of each other. A Swatch watch, straight blond hair and parents who would let me stay out late wouldn’t hurt, either. But none of that ever came together. In the end, I was happy enough to be the kid who got along with everyone and who quietly went about her business.   

As I got older, I realized that changing how I looked in order to be popular probably wasn’t going to fit my genuine interests and gifts (I played the pipe organ and loved algebra, after all). And a funny thing happened. As I got more comfortable in my own skin, other people got more comfortable with me, too. As I became secure enough to show people my heart, they wanted to be part of my life. And I’m still a work in progress – still learning who I am and how to live it out.

There is an attractive beauty that clings to people who are authentically themselves. We’re attracted by their quiet confidence. We’re attracted by their joyful clarity about life. We’re attracted by their kindness and generosity; because they’re secure in themselves, they can pour themselves out for other people. We want to be like them.

The same can be said for churches. Of course we want to be the popular church.  We want the big youth group. We want to be known in the community for our effective service and outreach. We want to be respected and admired because we’re growing and affluent. And churches are like people: you can change what the program and worship looks like, but it is what’s on the inside that really matters.  Churches that know who they are and are confidently living into it will have an attractive beauty that others want to be part of.

Here’s the attractive beauty that I think people are starving for: people these days, just like in Jesus’ time, are dying to be loved and to be taught how to love.  People are starving for others who have gone to the deep places of faith and who can guide them there, too. People are parched for authentic community, where they and their kids are loved and treasured, even when they’re a mess. People are aching for opportunities to pour their hearts, their energy, and their resources into the world, where they can die to themselves and really change the world. Churches that have these three: deep, joyful connection with God, compassionate love for each other, and challenging and rewarding service in the world, will be the churches with that attractive beauty that calls people home.

Death is all around us.  We see it in nature since for all live things, continuing to live requires food.  Eat or be eaten.  We see it as we say goodbye to our friends and as our loved ones die.  We see it in ourselves, as we acknowledge the stiffening of our joints, feel our hearts skip a beat (and not for joy), and know that from the moment of our births, we are dying. 

 But death isn’t just physical.  We all face death every day, in large ways and small.  We grieve the fights and grudges that darken our days.  We suffer when our gifts and abilities, the best we’ve offered in our life’s work, are rejected.  We rage in frustration when our hopes and dreams are thwarted. 

Perhaps the most universal and daily way that we experience death is in loneliness.  We are all lonely sometimes.  In the words of Sting, “It seems we’re not alone in being alone.”  If it weren’t so tragic, we could laugh at the irony.

We are lonely as we wonder if anyone really loves us.  We are lonely as we realize that no one  truly knows us, any more than we truly know anyone else.  We are lonely as we realize that we don’t even really know ourselves.  Loneliness steals our identity.    

Here’s the thing:  You are not alone. 

Whatever your suffering, you are not alone.  There is One who has gone before you.  There is One who has experienced the worst that death has to offer, and who has broken the power of death.  And this One, this Jesus, this man who was also God, loves you beyond belief!  Jesus took on the suffering of the world. Jesus surrendered to death  because he loves YOU that much.

You are not alone.  We often talk about Jesus like he’s not in the room.  But he is. 

 Jesus walks with you in your darkness.  Did you know?  Your darkness won’t last forever.  Jesus has already won the battle.  Light is already pouring in.  Jesus is right now filling you with life.  Love is surrounding you.  Jesus is covering you with the power of his kingdom.

You are not alone.  In your crying, in your dancing, in your boredom, in your gladness, in your loneliness, you are not alone.

A while ago I picked up a book about communicating with your spirit guides.  I’m curious about how other people pursue their spiritual lives.  I learned that some people leave little bits of food out as offerings for the kitchen and garden fairies. I learned that as the author meditates, she imagines herself crossing a bridge into a beautiful meadow.  In that meadow she has constructed the house of her dreams.  It might be simple or it might be elaborate.  It contains whatever furnishings her heart desires.  

 There was also a section about communicating with angels.  Turns out that there are lots of classes of angels, each of which has certain jobs (like healing, or bringing wisdom).  Each class corresponds to a certain color and gemstone.  One of the themes of this section was that angels are there for our benefit.  According to the author, they are delighted to help us in our lives, so we should be specific and ask big.

I’m currently reading another book on angels for my D.Min class on death and the afterlife  (No Ordinary  Angel:  Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus by Susan R. Garrett). I can’t recommend this book highly enough.  It’s a look at what the Bible says about angels, what anceint cultures said about angels, and what contemporary culture says about angels.  And then the real point — what does all this angel talk have to do with Jesus? 

Dr. Garrett draws the contrast on page 36:

“The self-help angels say:  BE SPECIFIC AND ASK BIG.  But Jesus says of Paul:  “I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).  To us Jesus says:  “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:38).  When we take up the cross we commit everything we have and are to the quest for God and God’s righteousness.  The self-help angels serve individual wants and desires, and make no demands.  They urge us to ask for their aid in getting what we think we require.  But the crucified and risen Jesus heals us by reordering our desires.  He brings to the surface the “desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy.”  This one desire, which overwhelms all others, is the desire for God — what Paul calls “the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Christ fills our mind and heart with this desire until every other desire pales by comparison.  Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:45).  So too we who would follow Jesus “sell all that we have.”  We exercise control over what we own.  When we “sell all,” we relinquish that control.  We say, “Jesus, this property, this family, this career, this life are no longer mine.  They are yours.”  And we have made a good exchange.  We have purchased to pearl of great price.”

What does it mean to be healed?  What does it mean to get our heart’s desire?  For whom do we live our life?  Do we live for our own benefit?  Do we live for the well-being of others?  Are those exclusive of each other?  Whose mansion do I want to live in?

Jesus is about transforming lives.  Yours and mine.  So I’ll buy that pearl.  I think Jesus will do us right.

I’m gathering that our house is marked.  Like hobos, through the mysteries of their communications, the neighborhood kids have discovered that our home serves RAMEN.  Maybe it’s the squiggly lines footprinted in the snow.  Some days bowls are lined up like the table service in Madeline’s orphanage.  Between little girl, a passionate devotee of ramen herself, and the kids who show up on our doorstep, I might as well buy ramen by the pallet.

Our family went Christmas tree hunting after church one Sunday.  We drove to a place called Sulphur Creek which, true to its name, stunk of eggs.  Hiking through the snow, Jack picked out the tree.  A BIG tree.  So we cut it and tied it to the top of the Subaru with our trusty Bungee cords.  

We’ve been doing this trip for years.  Usually we cut the tree in Montana and bring it 230 miles home.  So we’re not novices.  And this year we were only 60 miles from home.

Nevertheless, we got on the freeway and a couple of miles up the road heard a thud behind us.  I craned my neck to see out the back of the car.  There, in the middle of the road, with cars swerving around it, sat our tree.  As I watched, a pickup truck squared up on the tree.  You could just about see the driver thinking, “Oh, Goody.”  And the truck drove right over our dear tree  (It was pretty much O.K. – when we got home the flat side fit nicely against the wall).

Michael got out of the car to go retrieve the bungee cords and the tree.  The wire hooks on the bungee cords had all straightened out.  They weren’t going to hold the tree to our car ever again.  I hopped out, too, just to provide moral support.  As I walked back toward the tree, I noticed a wad of rope lying by the road.  A wad of rope, in fact, exactly the length we would need to tie the tree back onto our car.  If we would have lost our tree even 20 feet earlier, we wouldn’t have found that wad of rope. 

It could be just a coincidence.  But eyes of faith see God at work.  I wonder, did God set the whole thing up, from the rope’s previous owner losing the rope, to our bungee cords failing, just so we would wake up and notice?  Or did God know that our bungee cords were going to fail and gave them a little help at just the right time?  The details of God’s work so often remain shrouded in mystery.  But we are blessed when we open our eyes and find God, right there next to us.

Advent.  A beginning.  A new beginning.  This is the season of the year when we prepare for Christ’s birth. 

When Jesus was born, the shepherds knew that something was afoot.  The wisemen knew that God was doing something special.  The angels were singing God’s praises, too. 

But most of the people who knew Jesus as a baby just thought he was just another baby.  One of many.  The littlest.  The least.  Most people didn’t have any idea that in Jesus, God was doing something new.

And I suspect that most people didn’t think that Jesus was anything special until he grew up and began his ministry.  Crowds flocked to see his miracles and hear his teachings.  Even then, most people didn’t understand that God was doing something new.  They crucified him, after all.

When Jesus was born, God did something new.  And it’s strange to me that it was thirty years—a whole generation—before many people noticed.  It was like the people were startled awake one morning, “Holy cow!  God did something new in our midst 30 years ago!  And I’m just now noticing!”

God is doing something new in our lives, too.  God has been up to it for quite some time — our whole lives, in fact.  God is giving us a new beginning.  God is giving us a chance to start over, a clean slate.  God has made us his children.  We are reconciled to him and to each other, too.  Have we noticed?  Does the new beginning that God gives us in Jesus mean anything to us?  Is it our greatest treasure?  Or are we asleep?

It’s Advent.  Jesus is calling us to wake up and discover this new thing he’s been doing in our lives.  You can trust that the imprint of his hand is on you.  He’s been holding you your whole life.

When Michael and I got married, we bought a small wooden nativity set that was made in Africa.  I’ve loved it for the sleek, dark figures that make it up.  

Last year, Jack also came to love the set — particularly the baby Jesus, who is about the size of a pinkie finger.  He played with the baby Jesus quite often, always returning the baby to its cradle — until the day he didn’t. 

You can imagine what happened.  Baby Jesus went missing!  Michael and I looked high and low for that baby; how many places in a house can a baby Jesus hide?  During the spring, we finally decided that Jack must have snuck the baby into the diaper pail or the garbage, and that our dear nativity would no longer have a Jesus with it.   

Easter came and went, and as we celebrated the empty tomb, we laughed about our empty manger.  Then one night right before Pentecost, Michael was making toast for a bed-time snack.  Suddenly, the toaster burst into flame.  The flames shot out of one of the bread slots, licking the bottom of the cabinet above.

When the toaster cooled down and our hearts quit racing, Michael pulled out the bread and noticed something — a giant crumb, perhaps? — lodged at the bottom against one of the heating coils.  He dug around  with a knife and finally came out with a piece of something dark and ashy.  After washing it off, he realized that it was our baby Jesus.  Our baby had been in the toaster for months — who knew how many times he had been toasted.  Since he was black to start with, he still looks pretty good — the char doesn’t show unless you know to look for it.

During Advent, we look forward to the coming of baby Jesus, meek and mild.  But we also look forward to the second coming of our risen Lord — Jesus who at Easter saw and defeated the fires of hell.  And as we are reminded throughout the Advent season, Jesus who comes to us as Lord has the capacity to turn our lives on our heads — to light fires in our hearts and under our feet. 

May we all be blessed with Jesus in our lives — challenging and changing us, seasoning us with fire, and bringing us home into his glory.

I met a guy who is different than the rest of us.  He lives out things like justice and mercy.  Love just pours out of him.  He seems so in tune with God.  I want to be like him.  He loves me.  And I love him back.

On my way home a couple of weeks ago I was listening to a National Public Radio talk show called This American Life.  This episode featured an interview with a man who, for medical reasons, had quit producing testosterone.  It was a couple of months before the doctors diagnosed the problem and began replacing the hormone, but in the meantime the man experienced some very interesting symptoms.  

As the testosterone left his body, so did all of this man’s ambition and competitiveness.  It was nothing for him to sit on his bed for three or four hours at a time, not bored or sad or lazy, but just inert, content to look at the wall.  This man began to enjoy monotony.  He was happy to eat Wonderbread and drink milk for every meal—in fact, he wanted his food to be bland. 

One of the side effects that this man experienced is truly remarkable.  He started noticing everything.  It was as if his filters that helped keep him from being distracted were lifted, and now he saw everything, everything with equal emphasis.  As he walked down the street, he would notice the streetlight telling him to go or stop, but he would equally notice the grass growing out of the crack in the sidewalk and the bolt holding the wheel onto the car.  He believes that he saw them objectively, without judgment, as they really are.  Without testosterone, he saw the world without emotion, without sentimentality.  And so, for those two brief months, he saw the world as it really is.  Without passion and desire clouding his sight, he saw clearly, rightly. 

And as he saw the world as it really is, he kept thinking, “That is beautiful.”  That grass coming through the sidewalk is beautiful.  That lug bolt is beautiful.  And not in a sentimental way, but in an objective, factual way.  The things he saw were in and of themselves beautiful.  He thinks that for a brief time, he saw the world as God sees it.

I think he’s right.  I think that God looks at this creation that he made and thinks, “That is beautiful.”  God looks at things and sees them for what they are—what they really are.  And God sees that they are beautiful.

This doesn’t stop with grass growing from the sidewalk and lug bolts.  God looks at you and sees you for who you are—who you really are.  He sees the good and the bad, everything that makes you, you.  God looks at you and says, “You are beautiful.”

And you are.