Intimate Mystery



To travel within and know is not for me

Though I did ask, how could I not
Dumbstruck by the mystery
To carry one so intimately
Yet so blindly
My body supports his very life
In fact he could take mine from me
And I wouldn’t even know him who’d slain me
His creator is yet again silent
The perpetuator of intimate mysteries
My job is intricately complex and yet innately simple
With vast knowledge of body care I can pretend to make it more
But it’s soul care I care most about
Oh God of wisdom, grant it
This child is yours before if ever mine
I acknowledge you as provider sufficient
I fear not what I know not as my knowledge is not uniquely needed
He’s in your stead and I am content with my allowance
 

Snapshot Jamaica: From this Girl's Lens

(Ocho Rios to Falmouth to Montego Bay & the roads in-between)

Black for the people.  Green for the land.  Gold for the sun.  Rasta Red for the blood of the people.  Both welcoming and potentially extortionate to the foreigner.  We went from a low-level all inclusive resort to a mosquito net and picked up a few notables along the way.
Respect mon.

 

·         Ya Mon is really used as much as you stereotypically might think… it’s out of control.

·         Summer is Jamaica’s off-season, so if you want to dodge tourists, go then.

·         Everyone has a nickname and everybody knows everything.  The island has a two point something million population, so with the exception of Kingston with almost one million, if you’re outside of the capital – there are almost no secrets.

·         Good luck understanding Patois, but everyone knows English.  Don't be surprised, you will be talked about.

·         The metric system is alive and well.  The speed limit signs are in kilometers, and you will fill up a car in liters.  Again thanks to the British, you'll drive on the left-hand side of the road which puts the steering wheel, you got it, on the right.  And counties are parishes.

·         This is the island of jerk chicken, so if you love spicy BBQ, you’re in luck.  Curries are here too, who knew?  And they know how to cook a mean banana or plantain (or other fruits) into many a fish dish.  My opinion: fish dishes with fruit are better than fish dishes without fruit in Jamaica.

·         Don’t be surprised, a ‘Made in Jamaica’ tag is hard to come by.  However, sugar to molasses to rum is island authentic.  Rum lovers should not be disappointed.  Welcome home.

·         Don’t expect to easily find diet drinks (unless of course you’re hanging out where only tourists go).  “Those are for women in other countries who don’t appreciate a good fat ass!”  Excuse me, I like their taste.  I was in the minority.

·         I hope secondhand pot inhalation is not too damaging to a newborn in the making… it was tricky navigating some of the air currents.  Will it be legalized here I asked.  The general answer, no, that would be too much drain for the American economy of course.  However, nobody in Jamaica seems to get busted for it.

·         I was not offered drugs (other than secondhand).  That however, was not true for my spouse, which seems to generally be the case wherever we travel.

·         I was called ‘my lady’ ‘princess’ or ‘boss’ for our ten days there.  BTW that last one was not a commentary on me personally, just white women in general, in case you were wondering.  Elijah got ‘mon’ or an occasional ‘captain’ (cruise ship culture).

·         The Jamaican dollar is about at a hundred to one USD – do not exchange at the airport – they will lie to you about their good deals.  Everyone accepts USD.  Bring over $100 or more in ones and fives for tips.  You will be expected to tip and you should.

·         Minimum wage is calculated more by week than by hour, though it was designed for a 40-hour work week.  It is fifty USD.  Abuse of the system without good checks and balances certainly occurs.  The educated workers generally have unions, but that’s not everybody.  Can they live on that minimum wage?... can US citizens live on ours?

·         Book taxi services like a tourist and get screwed.  Book like a local and Elijah and I paid $1 each for an approximately 8 mile trip.  Now be forewarned, the taxi holds 4 passengers (or more, suck in) and the taxi doesn’t go anywhere until it’s full.

·         This should go without saying, however we wish someone had said it to us.  When pulling cash from a local ATM whose currency is also in DOLLARS and who use the $ sign, make sure to enter the desired local currency amount.  If, for instance, you enter $200, you will just have been charged by your bank in the states $5 to pull out $2.  Though it may be difficult to type in $20000 for the withdrawal amount, do it the first time.

·         Don’t like to barter?  You better beat that bad boy before you land on Jamaican sand.  When I was told the necklace in my hand was 25 USD, Elijah can testify, I almost sprayed the gulp of water in my mouth on her display table before I laughed.  She took $5 and rightly so.  Again, cruise ship culture.

·         Even though statistically Jamaicans are predominantly Christian, there is no perceivable Jesus culture, and perhaps for better, the big guy is not overtly marketable.  We were told by a non-church goer, I presume, that only the women go to church, the men go to the bar.  In the tiny town we stayed in for the second leg of our Jamaica experience we were to be there over a Sunday, so I asked the owner if there were any churches in town.  He told me he had built his business in that location precisely because there were no churches in town.  No churches meant no sinners and he had an open bar!

·         However, Jamaica has 7 national heroes and 3 of them are Baptists.  Paul Bogle.  George William Gordon.  Samuel Sharpe.  And we saw the William Knibb Memorial Baptist Church where the shackles of slavery were famously buried in a coffin at a powerful funeral service.  Elijah wouldn’t dream of missing spots like this on a vacation.  Yes, we also saw the beach.  I insisted ;)

 

So if you've got a little cash to blow and want to do it in the Caribbean, they will tell you in a heartbeat, Jamaica No Problem.

 

Who makes the deaf, the mute & the blind?

Today I want us to look at our concept of incapacity.

We have an incredible ability to excuse ourselves, to rationalize what we can & cannot do.  If we’re codependent we do the same for others, always a reason for their behavior or lack thereof.  The Bible has a very strong word for us today on our perceived inabilities.

You remember Moses?  If you do not know about Moses you need to borrow someone’s Bible & read Exodus 1-4.  He was supposed to be murdered as soon as he was born; rough start.  He was hidden away as a secret for 3 months before he was thrown into a river.  He was rescued but then raised into adulthood by adoptive parents who weren’t of his same race & by one who later tried to kill him.  His whole life was surrounded by murder & eventually he too became a murderer.  Then he ran from the law of the land.  He finally had gotten settled into his new life when this happened…

Exodus 3, from the second book of the Bible, verses 1-10.
 

Let’s pause & look at those first ten verses.

They tell us Moses was married.  His father-in-law was a professional religious man; it said Jethro was a priest, and Moses worked for him, but not in a religious occupation.  He had a down & dirty kind of job, probably like you & me when we work.  And this particular job led him into a wilderness.  While he was there he had what you & I would call a hallucination if we didn’t know any better.  He saw something burning that was somehow not being destroyed by the fire.  So curiosity drove him to it & then the ‘hallucination’ became auditory & personal.  Has anyone in here been diagnosed with schizophrenia?  Anyone know someone close who is?  Meet Moses.  Today we might have called him that.

Back to the passage, God speaks & identifies his presence as making things holy, or set apart.  Then he identifies his history with Moses specifically.  He immediately tells Moses who Moses was from birth.  Remember Moses was only uniquely with his birth family for 3 months.  God looked at a man who was in his 3rd identity and told him he'd known him from his first, actually before his first because he says I knew your parents and your parents' parents back 500+ years.
 

Moses then had 2 responses that are fairly easy to understand.

1.      He was afraid.             2. He hid.

The text actually says he was afraid to look at God which means that he believed the voice in the fire in front of him was God.

As an aside, if you haven’t already, whenever you do have an encounter with God, the one true God (not all the demons you’ve been worshiping in your life whether you know it or not), you will feel as Moses must have felt here – which is known, a beautiful & yet fearful thing, being known.  And the spirit inside of you who was created by that same God will recognize its maker.

Verse 6 says “Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.”  Later in Moses’ life, after decades of diligently seeking to know the God that knew him, he eventually asked to see God’s glory.  At that point Moses in effect wanted to see the face of God.  If the story of Moses really catches your interest you can read about that yourself when you get to chapter 33.  I’ll let you think about those two different desires on those two different life timelines & how they might relate to your life.

Back to our passage today, God then says, I’ve heard & seen the suffering & it’s time for deliverance.

There is a time for everything & it’s not always time for deliverance.  But if you’re miserable & crying out, this passage clearly tells us in verse 7, God is concerned.  He’s not unfaithful to you or your family when your life or lives are difficult.  Seek him & when it’s the right time, he will come.  If you want to know more about that – read the Psalms.

Verse 11, “But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should… (dot dot dot)”  Moses said specifically in this case, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh & bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

What was God’s response to this identity confused runaway murderer?

Verse 12, “And God said, ‘I will be with you.’”

See that’s the answer to all our concerns about our perceived inadequacies.  Nothing is reliant on us.  We’re called to know & obey the all-powerful, all-sufficient God.

Was Moses convinced?  Let’s read the bulk of our passage, chapter 3 verse 13 through chapter 4 verse 9.

Moses brings a question, “Suppose this…, what then?’  God answers it, then he answers it some more.  He even prophesies to Moses the whole run-down of the process as it will unfold in history.

Enough for Moses?  No.  He simply moves on to his next ‘what if…’

God again answers, this time with ‘magic’, three times over.  With each question he seems to meet Moses’ concern with a fuller answer than the question Moses asked.

So now Moses shifts his focus from others’ potential negative responses back to his own perceived inability.

Verse 10, “Moses said to the Lord, ‘…I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant.  I am slow of speech & tongue.”’

He tells God, perhaps like we do as well, basically, “I’ve always been broken & I still am.”

The Lord’s response to Moses’ & our own pathetic arguments & complaints present some of the most difficult concepts in the whole of Scripture.  Listen closely.

Verses 11 and 12. “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth?  Who makes him deaf or mute?  Who gives him sight or makes him blind?  Is it not I, the Lord?  Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’”

I don’t know about you, but I struggle to understand that God, my God, the same God of the Bible can say without argument or any seeming difficulty:

            I made the deaf.

            I made the mute.

            I made the blind.

I see those as handicaps & so somehow less than God, maybe at times, even evil.  But yet here it is, so clearly pronounced in Scripture – to paraphrase, God says “your perceived ‘handicap’ is not without my sovereignty, even design & when I call you, you follow me regardless of your feelings of brokenness.  I am enough.  I am sufficient.  I am all you & anyone else need.”

My husband & I are 3 months pregnant.  How are we to understand this passage?  How?; just as it is written.  When my friends ask me, “do you want a boy or girl?”  And I smile & say “it doesn’t matter.”  They respond, “of course not, all you want is healthy.”  This passage tells me that even our concept of ‘healthy’ is not the goal.

So if you have been told you are or you feel unhealthy, insufficient, broken, handicapped, inadequate, even sinful & you’re full of excuses, God’s answer to you is ‘I AM’ & ‘I WILL’ & as history tell us with Moses & the rest of the story, God’s end of the equation is more than enough.

I ask you the same question I ask myself every day, “Will you obey him?”  I pray your response is the only appropriate response to God, “Yes.”
 

A Child of & for Community

Elijah & I have been married almost 11 years.  Three months before we married I started birth control at the age of 22.  My doctor didn’t believe I was a virgin until the exam.  I’ve learned not to care for cynicism so I switched doctors.  We used oral contraceptives for 8 years.  In our anniversary years two through seven I was the sole breadwinner as Elijah focused on graduate work, so I never considered another alternative.  My maternal clock must be quite delayed as it failed to occur to us we were getting older.

A year after we moved to Marshall, Elijah’s job felt more stable so we decided it was time & May 2010 was our last month hindering this God-given natural process.

One and a half years later we still hadn’t conceived, or at least that’s what we thought as we prepared to take a ten day mission trip to Ethiopia.  It wasn’t until after I received vaccinations for measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A & live typhoid that I missed my first period.  We were pregnant & I’d just proffered our unborn one month old many of the worst communicable diseases in the world.  We miscarried from Dubai to Addis Ababa.

Again it never occurred to me that pregnancy post-pregnancy is an easier phenomenon & within 2 months we were pregnant again.  I was recovering from our first grief, subsequent pneumonia and treatment & was still on anti-malarials.  This child too, left as quickly as it came.

Another year passed & Elijah asked to begin seeking medical answers regarding our infertility.  It didn’t take a physician long to identify our major problem & for the first time I realized I may never hear the word ‘mama’ personally.  How much greater the earlier losses became.  The news brought a sudden grief, but also a release from hope.  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”  My sick heart found healing in the ‘possible’ being disclosed as practically impossible.  God is enough; he always has been.  I needed to feel myself confess that again.  We stopped ‘trying’.

And as God would see fit, within weeks we were pregnant.

He told me to share with Elijah we were ‘Expecting the Unexpected’.  Yes, he knows our hearts so intimately; he speaks a language of personal significance.  I recognized his grace & love over all of it, the sorrows & the sunshine.

Long before we were seeking to start a family, my only prayer regarding children had been a prayer God himself gave me, “Let us conceive as you’ve chosen the child.”  Others have prayed for us.  I am astounded and humbled to discover, many others.  My husband prayed for the lives of our first 2 children when we knew they were in danger & before they were lost.  I did not.  I was present with them in their brief lives and in their deaths.  Death is a part of life & I embrace it without reticence.  Though I grieved, I still did not ask God for a child.

Since this conception God has given me a dream where I saw the child truly is Elijah’s & mine, but also is his.  As we share our news I know in a greater capacity this is also the child of a caring believing community of Christ followers for it is the church in our lives, not I, who can & have confessed, “I prayed for this child, & the Lord granted my request.”

Thank you friends and family for demonstrating to us the incarnation of Christ through the church.  We are blessed by your love.  Just as you’ve born our sorrows, so also you share our joys.

 

Thank you Jesus for healing Malchus

Let’s back up a little from Easter Sunday & refocus on a mid-arrest miracle, the last miracle that the Scriptures record Jesus performing before his own death & resurrection.

The first books in the 2nd part of the Bible, the New Testament, are mostly stories and testimonies about Jesus, God's son who came to earth about two thousand years ago to walk among us.  He fulfilled God's redemptive plan in our broken lives.  He made a way for us to be forgiven apart from the law, that as you know, we couldn't keep.  Jesus' perfect life & death & resurrection was that plan & we can still read specifically about it today in the first four books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.  The books are called gospels, because gospel means 'good news', which if you know anything about Jesus, he certainly is.  A Harmony of the Gospels is a book which tells all four accounts of the story side by side, Matthew's, Mark's, Luke's & John's.  I'll read the story of Jesus' arrest using a Harmony blending all four accounts so we have the benefit of the fullest telling.

To study them on your own, read Matthew 26:47-56, Mark 14:43-52, Luke 22:47-53, John 18:2-12a.
 

“Now Judas, who betrayed (Jesus), knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.  So Judas, one of the Twelve, came to the grove, leading a large crowd of soldiers and some officials sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the Pharisees.  They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.  Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.”  Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.  Jesus knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”  “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.  “I am he,” Jesus said.  When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.  Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”  And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”  “I told you that I am he,” Jesus answered.  “If you are looking for me, then let these men go.”  This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”  (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.)  Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?  Friend, do what you came for.”  Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him.  When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?”  And Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear.  (The servant’s name was Malchus.)  Jesus commanded Peter, “No more of this!”  And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.  “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.  Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?  Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”  Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs to capture me?  Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me.  But this is your hour – when darkness reigns.  This has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.”  Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus.  Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.”

Three Sundays ago I was sitting around with a group of adults in a Bible Study at our church & we read this passage, the one in Luke, and verses 49-51 kept coming back to me.

“When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?”  And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.  But Jesus answered, “No more of this!”  And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.”

I started thinking about Jesus’ miracles.  Most of them are him healing people, healing physical ailments or setting people free from demonic strongholds.  Of course he has others you will certainly remember, like turning water into wine, a miracle you probably wish he’d done in reverse if you got picked up with open containers.  He miraculously calmed a storm, fed thousands of people, walked on water & a handful of other things.  There’s 37 specific miracles the New Testament records that Jesus performed & the book of John says in chapter 21 & verse 25 that Jesus did many other things as well, and as you might imagine, they’re just not all recorded.

But this miracle in Luke, in the garden at night in the middle of Jesus’ arrest is different.  It’s not like any of the others.  This miracle, Jesus’s last recorded miracle before his death follows an act of violence.  Violence from one person to another, and not just from any person, but from one who we would now call a Christian, & not just any Christian, but one of Jesus’ most intimate followers.

I want that to resonate with you a little.

If you’ve heard me come in here before and share, you may think I’m starting to sound like a broken record.  I find the same message in every story of the Bible it seems.

People hurt people.  Even people who are “not supposed to hurt people”, hurt people.  And sometimes because we expect something different, those are the worst injuries.

However, even in the midst of our innocent Savior’s barbarian-like arrest, surrounded by people he had made & who he had authority over, in the midst of his active decision to obey his Father’s perfect redemptive will at the cost of his completely wrongful personal humiliation and extreme suffering to death – Jesus stopped – and he healed.

What can I say?  What can you?
Thank you Jesus for healing Malchus.

I’m surrounded by Peters in here.  Passionate people who live life on the edge.  People who carry a sword & sometimes use it.  Great people who when they’ve lost sight of the Lord’s will can also cause great harm.  I have a little of Peter in me as well.

Thank you Jesus for healing Malchus.

I’m surrounded by Malchuses in here.  Servants or slaves to a powerful system that is all too frequently corrupt.  Who show up in the dark of night to do another’s bidding and who then become a casualty of another man’s war.  I have a little of Malchus in me as well.

Thank you Jesus for healing Malchus.

I want you to walk away from here and intentionally think about the violence in your life.  I want you to acknowledge that you’ve harmed people, maybe maliciously.  I want you to know that God fully knows you’ve also been harmed.  But harm done to you in no way nullifies your sin or excuses it.  Jesus was greatly harmed & did not return the offense or pass it to others.  We stand before a Savior who extends his forgiveness through himself, & it’s for all who come to him.  He is a God of healing and can meet you where the pain is.  He is a God of healing who can meet others where we’ve created pain.

It gives me hope to pray – God continue to heal the Malchuses in my life.  And help me to put my sword away.

Let’s pray.

 

 

Romans 3:10 "As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one...'"

Romans 3:23 "...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..."

Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 10:9 "if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Romans 10:13, "for,'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'"

Proximity

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." Matthew 25:35-36

 

How many times have I heard people say "I want to help, but I don’t know how?"

I’ve come to realize how is not the problem, who is.  I don’t know who, is the problem.  Proximity is the crucial issue.  People generally muster good responsiveness to needs directly before them.  But the need not before them becomes too elusive to be practical.  Proximity.

* Am I incarnate in people’s lives?

* Do I know the "who’s" who should be in my life?

* Am I known by them?

When I walk with the hungry I naturally feed them.  Those in the spheres I choose to be among who are thirsty don’t stay thirsty for long if they don’t want to be. Strangers lose their strangeness when I invite them in.  Who wouldn’t clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty or feed the hungry?  Anyone would.  The question is, where are those with such extreme needs?  When’s the last time I had dealings with a naked person?  Mentally ill people might be naked, infants or young children, severe illness that cripples one's independence, extreme and sudden impoverishment, trauma or disaster might leave someone without the ability to clothe themselves either functionally or financially.  Some released from prison have no clothes to change into.

Am I in close enough proximity to the sick, to the imprisoned, to any of those with such needs as our Lord discusses here?

Because if I am not, it stands to reason...

          I will not know how to help because I will not know who to help.

"whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40