I wrote a weekly newsletter to about 100 families from 2019-2023. These are excerpts from some of those newsletters, delivered to you here in devotional form. I hope these thoughts will inspire, encourage and challenge you on your spiritual journey.
I wrote a weekly newsletter to about 100 families from 2019-2023. These are excerpts from some of those newsletters, delivered to you here in devotional form. I hope these thoughts will inspire, encourage and challenge you on your spiritual journey.
Jesus talks more about money than we may think. In Luke 16:14 we read that the Pharisees were "lovers of money." The Pharisees were not "the bad guys," they were in fact the "super spiritual." They fasted twice a day and gave a tenth of their wealth. But even though they were externally doing the right things, even faithfully tithing, Jesus saw their inner motivations and their hearts were wrapped up in money.
It's so easy for this to happen. We are used to paying for what we get, earning our keep and working to deserve something in return, but the Gospel doesn't work this way. Jesus know that money is more than just a human construction, it can also have a spiritual effect on our hearts.
The Bible's word for freedom in the area of money is stewardship. We are not owners, but simply "ordinary servants" of the Creator. As stewards, we manage the resources that belong to the infinite one, God. The Gospel of Grace is that we get what we do not deserve, what we don't work for and what we did not earn.
Sin is a word we sometimes avoid in church because it's been used to judge, to point the finger, to shame and to heap guilt on others. But sin for Christians is really just the beginning of the story. Often Jesus speaks about sin and salvation with the metaphor of being lost and found.
The parable often called "The Prodigal Son" comes third in a suite of parables starting with the lost coin and the lost sheep (Luke 15). The third story is about the lost son, but this story should really be thought of as the parable of the lost sons (Tim Keller, The Prodigal God). Both the younger son and the elder son are "lost" in their own way, even though one goes far away and one stays at home.
The elder brother was lost in his moral high-ground, his self-made righteousness which left him thinking he deserved something from the father. Our true "home" as Christians is in a relationship with God, a relationship based on God's love for us in Jesus Christ. Just like the father in the story, God pleads with us to enter into the party, the joyful celebration of those who were lost and are now found.
As the theologian Saint Augustine said "our hearts are restless oh God until they find rest in Thee."
Luke 15 is commonly called the "Parable of the Prodigal Son." While often the focus of this parable is on the younger son, Tim Keller says in his book, Prodigal God, that the word prodigal means "recklessly spendthrift" or "recklessly extravagant."
In other words, prodigal means to spend until you have nothing left.
The father in the parable has a surprising response to his son's request "give me my inheritance, right now." Middle Eastern Culture was a very patriarchal society. A request of this kind would not only be seen as a sign of disrespect, but a typical father could reasonably respond to this kind of behavior by casting his son out of the family. Instead, this father stoops down to simply to divide his property between the two sons.
Keller notes that in order for the father to even accomplish this task he would have had to sell much of his land holdings. Culturally speaking, land in this culture was not just land, but tied to the people's identity. The younger brother is "asking the father to tear his life apart. And the father does so, for the love of his son" (Keller, 23).
This story could have easily been about mothers and daughters, God is not assigned a gender, but the parable shows us the extent of God's love for world - a love that comes at great expense and may even be considered "reckless."
In the 90's there was this phrase that became very popular in churches, "Quiet Time." This was about having your special time with God every day. It meant getting out your Bible, your journal, your pen and going off by yourself to read and write.
While a practice such as this can be wonderful and life giving, I recently thought about something my friend Dave said about being in a life stage where you neither have "quiet" nor "time." This describes many of us. The demands of raising children in 2022 are no joke. We are asked to navigate jobs, childcare, painful politics and complicated relationships, often with little support. If you have young children at home, sometimes especially during these summer months, it can be hard to keep up - with their schedules, with driving them from place to place, with keeping them out of the permanent markers!
How do you find Jesus in the midst of all this chaos? The Good News is that Jesus has already found you. I have found that in this season I need to adjust idealistic expectations about what "Quiet Time" might look like.
Perhaps it's just a pause to look at flower, I mean really look.
Maybe it's a breath prayer in the few minutes before kids come bounding into your car "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."
Maybe it's a one sentence journaling practice before you turn out the light at night "God, thank you today for..."
We may not have an hour with coffee in the morning to pray, we may not have "quiet" and we may not have "time," but the one who holds time in his hands can give us Rest that sets us free to Love.
"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him."
- Psalm 62
As Americans we often think of freedom as "being free to do what we want" or "being free from constraints," but the Church is bound together by Jesus who makes us into a family with a different version of freedom. We are free to serve one another in love. We are free from the tyranny of justifying ourselves, of never feeling like we add up to "enough."
Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians "now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). May you receive more and more of the Spirit who leads us towards life abundant, full and free.
In Response to Uvalde, Texas
Last week, we prayed as racially motivated gun violence resulted in death and terror. This week the unimaginable happened - 19 children and two adults lost their lives in a massacre.
Sometimes there are no words...
As I have read and wept over the news this week, I have found myself silent before God, praying prayers that go beyond words.
"the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know how to pray, but the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans." (Romans 8:26).
As people of faith we have a rich language of lament given to us the Psalms. The Psalmist cries out, "My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, where is your God?" (Psalm 43). Lament is not a passive throwing up of our hands or indifference to suffering. In fact, it's the opposite. As people who follow Jesus, our hearts are actually expanded to break as we suffer with others. And so we pray....
"O Lord, heal me (us) for my bones are in agony. My soul is in anguish. How long, O Lord, how long?" (Psalm 6)
Lament directs our grief, our anger, and our terror towards God. It allows us space both for grief and hope. Let us follow the example of the late John Lewis who quoted the African Proverb "when you pray, move your feet" and work towards a world where guns do not threaten our kids at school, a world that does not allow the United States to have more guns that citizens.
God, may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
This week I was invited to a Christian Parenting and Caregiving luncheon on the campus of Seattle Pacific University. Religious leaders from around Seattle met together as part of a listening project funded by the Lily Foundation to discuss ministry to families in the Church.
Katie Douglass, Associate Professor of Educational Ministry and Practical Theology, briefly discussed the research from this book and this book. She described the findings of researcher Christian Smith, who conducted a unique research project following the same group of children for a period of about 20 years to see how their faith developed. His finding - The faith of parents is the biggest predictor of the faith of children and youth. For another good Christian Smith book on teens click here.
Parents, this doesn't mean that we need to be a spiritual superstars. Today's youth value authenticity and vulnerability. Living out our faith in front of our kids doesn't necessarily mean weekly family Bible study (although it could), but it does mean being brave to let our kids know that we don't have all the answers. We have moments of faithfulness and times of failure, but Jesus is in the midst of our lives together.
The pandemic is not over, although we are moving into a new season. Parents are still not ok, as this blog post suggests. The good news is that God is "ok" with us being "not ok," and living out our messy faith with our kids.
Mother's Day cards can be tricky to pick out. How can one card, written by someone else, contain all the of the complexities of motherhood?
What if instead of the usual "you are one in a million, you were always there for me and everything I am I owe to you" we found a different kind of Mother's Day card on the shelf of our favorite supermarket?
"Thank you for being there for me, some of the time, when you were not too busy or too tired."
"You were abusive and I have forgiven you. I am trying to do better."
"You were a great mom, and sometimes, honestly, I feel like I not as equipped as you were."
Mother's Day is not always an easy holiday. Some women wish to be mothers and struggle to get pregnant, some had beautiful experiences of mothering, some of us don't know our mothers, and some of us call our mothers every day. There is as much diversity around our experiences of "mother" as there are people within our church communities.
Psalm 91:4 says " I will cover you with my feathers, and under my wings you will find refuge"
And Jesus in Matthew 23:37 compares himself to a mother "hen who gathers her chicks under her wings"
God is the only perfect father, but also the only perfect mother. Just a mother hen keeps her chicks warm, safe and secure under her wings, God is a refuge, a hiding place and a home where our souls can rest.
Now that is a reason to celebrate.
Several years ago, a family from our church gave me the book Every Moment Holy. This is a book of liturgies for all kinds of life moment. In the prayer titled "Death of a Dream" the author writes "You are the King of my collapse."
I love that. I love this especially at the beginning of a new year, when the fun of the holidays has started to die down and we are back to "normal life." For a while the lights and presents may have covered up the harsher realities of hope deferred and disappointed dreams, but ten days into January we may realize that already we have let go of a New Year's resolution.
But the King of my collapse suggests that even in these disappointments, even when things do not go the way we want or think they should go (even when we feel like collapsing) that is not the final word of our story.
I invite you to read the whole prayer here but these words especially stood out to me:
"So let me be tutored by this new
disappointment.
Let me listen to its holy whisper,
that I may release at last these lesser dreams.
That I might embrace the better dreams you
dream for me, and for your people,
and for your kingdom, and for your creation."
We all want to belong. We all need to belong. We are social beings, created to belong to one another. When I worked as a chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital during Seminary, many of my patients had experienced physical violence and trauma, but as bad as any physical pain was the psychological pain of loneliness.
In April of 2022, the New York Times published this article on loneliness. According to the article, "loneliness, as defined by mental health professionals, is a gap between the level of connectedness that you want and what you have." We know that loneliness is not simply tied to the number of people you are in contact with - you can be in contact with a great number of people and still feel lonely. Our accelerated pace of life and even technology have contributed to our sense of loneliness. It is a paradox, "people are more connected now than ever — through phones, social media, Zoom and such — yet loneliness continues to rise."
The good news of the gospel is that we are never alone. God gives us the Holy Sprit so that we can know (and be known) by God personally. And God creates out of all of us children who are knit together in a new family.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the day that kicks off the 40 days before Easter, the season we call Lent. But what is Lent anyways? And perhaps more importantly, what is is for?
Lent is traditionally marked by prayer, fasting and giving. I want to propose that Lent is season of "training" for the celebration that is coming, Easter Sunday. More specifically, Lent is a 40 day period that teaches our hearts to want God.
Our theme as a church for this Lent is "Full to the Brim."
Isn't it true that we can be full to brim with so many things?
We are full of social media, full of work, full of desires for all kinds of things. We live in a society of abundance, where the McDonald's slogan says that "More is Better."
When we are this full, it can be hard to feel hungry for God. As C.S. Lewis famously said, God may find our desires not to be too great, but too small. Do we want nothing less than the presence of the risen Jesus living in us, filling us up with his love for ourselves and for neighbor?
God longs to meet us in the season of Lent and wet our appetite and be ready for the feast of Easter Sunday.
May your desire grow this Lent.
In Matthew's gospel, chapter 5, we find perhaps the best sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes are a kind of preamble to this amazing sermon where Jesus reverses our notions of what it means to be blessed.
Culturally speaking, we are living in a time when #blessed is attached to Instagram photos of vacations in Hawaii, 5 star hotels with a pool and fancy 4 star dinners. We often present our best lives to the public, when the reality is that life is much more complicated and messy than for example, a Christmas card where everyone is smiling.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like if one year we photographed our “worst of” moments and send that card to our friends and family. Would it help us to feel not so alone in our mess and in our vulnerabilities?
Jesus’ sermon is surprising when he says “blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who are persecuted because of righteousness, etc.” What could he mean? The good news is that this is a message for a weary world. Jesus’ message is for the broken, the weak and the wanting. Jesus’ message is for all of us.
Psalm 27 reads:
I’m asking God for one thing,
only one thing:
To live with him in his house
my whole life long.
I’ll contemplate his beauty;
I’ll study at his feet.
That’s the only quiet, secure place
in a noisy world,
The perfect getaway,
far from the buzz of traffic.
(The Message)
The message of the gospel, the good news, is that God has brought us into God's house to live, starting right now. Rather than living in a physical house, God has made God's home in us. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. I love these words from the Psalm because we do live in a noisy world - kids, technology, traffic, the list goes on and on! So many things are pulling at us, vying for our attention. We try lots of ways to find quiet (and these are all wonderful things): bubble baths, candles, chocolate and wine, but the place that will offer us the deepest kind of quiet, the most complete kind of rest is in God's arms.
If today you are looking for the "perfect getaway" let God wrap you up and bring you home.