Pondering November

The first day of November marks the start of NaBloPoMo, when I am challenged to post a blog writing every day for a month. I wonder if I really have that much to write.

Then I remember back to fall 2003. It was then that I resigned from teaching and entered full time ministry. It was a big shift, not just in my schedule or duties, but also in how I thought. It was a significant challenge to step away from what was comfortable and known, and to pursue the unknown. Reading my journal entries from that first month reminds me how much I grew through that time of change.

This is another such time. While I am sure there will be many challenges, I am already excited for when I can look back and see the results God is already bringing about in the process.

The Space in Between, Part VIII

Space is not always geographic. Sometimes it is temporal.

I preached a few Sundays back on the subject of waiting. It's something I discovered four years ago while leading kids' quizzing on Exodus, and have seen so many more times in my current walk through the Bible.

Before the Israelites crossed the sea on dry ground, they waited all night for the waters to be pushed back. Before Abraham tied up his son for a sacrifice, they walked three days through the desert together. Before God's people returned to their land after the Exile, they relocated and rebuilt their lives in foreign lands. Before Jesus began his ministry on earth, he spent thirty years growing up like many other Jewish boys. And before Jesus rose from the dead, his followers grieved deeply for three days.

What we do while waiting shapes who we become. And who we become while waiting is arguably more important than what we wait for.

I'm still thinking about these spaces in between here and there.

Blue Hope

Autumn is walking us toward winter these days. Night hangs on a little longer and lets go a little more stubbornly with each passing day. It seems a little harder to shake off sleep in the morning and to rejoin the Land of the Conscious.

The sky was deeply gray as I left home last week. Rain fell steadily. The thunder which accompanied it was more grumbly than powerful, and even the lightning seemed weak. It was one of those mornings.

Then, about halfway through the trip, I noticed a small hint of a blue hue in the distance. By the time I reached Bountiful, that small hole in the clouds had grown enough for a stream of sunlight to shine through.

Life is dreary sometimes. But even when the sun seems to disappear for a time, it is never gone.

Camp

I am constantly amazed that youth camp works. Hundreds of junior high students gather for one week, divided into cabin groups of around 10-12 campers led by 1-2 volunteer staff. These groups, often formed by combining people who do not know each other, coordinate within and beyond themselves to establish living spaces, meals, shower times, and so forth while also playing, learning, worshiping, and talking together.

It takes extra planning, extra patience, extra kindness. This alone is a great reason to come.

More Space in Between

In The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), someone asks Campbell how he went bankrupt. His reply? "Gradually, then suddenly." It is a classic and well-known line, brilliantly packaging a key insight into humanity.

How did your marriage fall apart? Gradually, then suddenly.
How did you wind up having an affair? Gradually, then suddenly.
How did your business come to ruin? Gradually, then suddenly.
How did you return to a known addiction? Gradually, then suddenly.
How did your children grow up without you noticing? Gradually, then suddenly.

Jon Acuff paints a picture of the "gradually" part in this post. Check it out, and read the comments.

I found it challenging, and would love to hear your thoughts.

Nobody Flies for Nothing

"How was your trip?" Sadly, I often interpet this question in light of snafus and annoyances - troublesome weather, lost luggage, late arrivals, missed flights, and so forth, and if there wasn't much of this, the trip was "fine." But perhaps a better, more important, more active question is this: "Who did you encounter along the way?" This is one of those things I am (slowly) learning from Mom - to really look around and see the many people with whom I am sharing these in-between moments in life.

"Nobody flies for nothing." That's what she told me after she and Dad spent many hours stuck in an airport far from home after severe weather disrupted air travel all across the country. There were a lot of tired people, with the frustration, irritability, and discouragement which often accompanies such times. Mom was not oblivious to the problem, but also was not oblivious to the opportunity. The airport particularly needed a loving spirit that day, and she had one to offer. She reached out, made friendly conversation, invested herself in their lives even if only for a short time. She gave the people around her opportunity to share some of their stories, particularly about where they were from and where they were going. People often fly for weddings, funerals, honeymoons, adoptions, family times. And nobody flies for nothing.

The crowds have begun to arrive for the 27th General Conventions and Assembly of the Global Church of the Nazarene. By Sunday, there will be tens of thousands gathering from around the world to worship, learn, reconnect, and take care of business. I want to see this opportunity through Mom's eyes of loving curiosity, and I wonder who I will encounter along the way.

Cartoon Murder

I learned many Bible stories as a child. These were often accompanied by kid-friendly pictures to look at and pictures to color. Those drawings helped us remember the stories, of course. But they also became my mental images.

The first two chapters of Exodus briefly describe how the Israelites' status among the Egyptians shifted from favored foreigners to oppressed slaves, and how Moses - an Israelite - grew up with favored status even while his people were in slavery. But that changed, too, when Moses killed an Egyptian and fled for his life.

The kid-friendly images in my mind don't show slavery very well. They break down completely when it comes to murder. "[Moses] saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand" (Exodus 2:11-12) It's like interrupting my mental show on the Cartoon Network with a gruesome scene from CSI.

It is good to see this, because I (and you) resemble this very human, clearly fallen person more clearly than the two-dimensional character I seemed to see in childhood stories. The complex character of Moses is one I can relate to.

Prayer and Common Sense

More from Oswald Chambers:

"Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer; He had the boundless certainty that prayer is always answered.... God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time, although the immediate manifestation of the answer in the domain in which we want it may not always follow. Do we expect God to answer prayer?
The danger with us is that we want to water down the things that Jesus says and make them mean something in accordance with common sense; if it were only common sense, it was not worthwhile for Him to say it. The things Jesus says about prayer are supernatural revelations."