I love the song with incredible wisdom by Simon and Garfunkel that goes, “I am a rock. I am an island . . I have no need for friendship. Friendship causes pain. Its laughter and its loving I disdain. . . I have my books1 and my poetry to protect me.”
When I was young, I would belt that song out at high volume, thinking that if I believed it, thinking made it so.
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So we decided to take surfing lessons during our summer holidays.
I had never tried surfing on the ocean before, but as you know, I tried surfing for the first time behind a surf boat on a lake not long ago.
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So the first step is to be cool.
You’ve always wanted to know how to be cool, too.
And I’ve figured out how to find our inner cool!
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My child said she saw an angel.
And so, children sometimes peel back the curtain of heaven for us to quickly glimpse before the curtain is closed again. All we have left is a memory. What is our response to hearing stories that push us into the realm of the divine, whether we want to go there or not?
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She sat crouched over, holding both hands to her head to stop the rhythmic, pulsating pain.
The aching pains felt in her limbs merely reflected the pain emanating from her heart, reaching to the outermost parts of her being.
She looked up momentarily to see the busy people brushing past her in their hurry to do important things.
She couldn’t throw herself back into the ongoing traffic of busy people going places and getting things done.
Not today.
But what should she do with this pain?
The pain sat like a lead weight on her stomach, pinning her to the ground.
Could anyone help lift the weight off her?
She contemplated opening her mouth to ask someone to please help her lift the load.
Share each other’s burdens, and . . . Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done . . .
They couldn’t hear her. They couldn’t see her burden. She felt invisible.
What now?
And then hope descended in the form of a feather. Was it a clue? The feather slowly floated from above and landed beside her. She examined it quizzically, then looked up to try to locate the source of this object.
She held it in her hands, the soft white of the feather brightening her otherwise grey surroundings, the dull grey she felt inside and saw everywhere she looked within her and around her.
She set the heavy weight on her stomach aside; it moved easily now, and she sat a bit longer examining this feather. It symbolized hope to her. “If another could fly, why couldn’t she?” she wondered, looking longingly upward into the sun, clouds, and blue sky that parted the grey sky as she watched.
She stood up now and wondered, “How does one fly?”
She turned around once, twice, spinning her arms with the feather outstretched in her right hand. She felt the joy soaking into her skin with the sunlight. Maybe she didn’t HAVE to stay pinned to the ground, rooted in pain to this one spot, she mused.
And then she saw it, a flicker at first. “Was that a dove circling above?” she wondered. She stopped spinning and stared, her eyes straining into the sun. Yes! There! It was fuzzy again. WAS it a dove, or…?
She doubted herself and her vision and her hope. “Who was she to think that…?” She found herself slouching against the wall again, slowly sinking back into that familiar curved position, ready to hold her head in her hands in that overly familiar position again to help the pulsating pain, which she felt beginning again.
“What do you choose?” he asked her. Jesus was now standing before her and holding out his outstretched hand. She blinked as she looked into the sunlight and saw only the shadowed outline of this person. Was it a person standing in front of her?
What was He saying? Her hearing was suddenly fuzzy, garbled, and his voice was only just clear.
“What was that?” she asked, finding one of her ears on the floor and trying to attach it. It fell off again. And he was gone, leaving only the feather.
Was it real?
“What do you choose?” he had asked her.
Hope or despair?
What WOULD she choose?
What do you choose?
(Do you choose to be awakened to hope?)
Photo Credits – Here’s A Gift by tommao wang on Unsplash, Busy Traffic by Iqro Rinaldi on Unsplash, White Feather by Nayem Islam on Unsplash, Hand Outstretched by Billy Pasco on Unsplash
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Photo Credit – Loser and Winner by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash – Notice that the “Winner” here has less money than the “Loser,” so it’s not about more money, but you already know that! For additional proof, however, consider this quote from one of the wisest people I know:
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
While training for a triathlon, I was pretty fit.
I swam to my friend’s home two bays down at the lake where we were staying as a regular training exercise.
Then I suddenly got a bit older, and I wasn’t QUITE as fit anymore, at least as I thought I was. “Could I swim to her home again?” I asked myself. A few quick years had passed, of sitting on the couch and eating donuts at every meal, but otherwise, I still felt pretty fit. That summer day, I swam and swam. I did it! Wow!
I sat on her wharf in my solo victory party, my pride rising around me like a great cloud, buoying up my low self-esteem until the cloud tried to suffocate me with the sudden unwelcome thought, “But CAN I swim back home?
No walking trails existed along the shore of these “boat access only” cottages, and of course, cell phone reception was an impossibility in that remote area, even if I did have a phone with me (I didn’t, of course).
My stomach quavered.
How would I get home?
And The Point of this Newsletter is that sometimes, as graciously illustrated HERE and HERE, we aren’t QUITE as amazing as we imagine ourselves to be.
What if that’s true spiritually, too?
Now, before you hold up your hands and caution me against speaking further, responding with the most common objection, like: “Well, at LEAST I’m not Ted Bundy or someone super bad like that! Therefore, I’m sure God will open the Great Golden gates to me!”
Again, I ask, what if being a bit “nicer” than a serial killer like Ted Bundy is STILL not an “A” on your spiritual report card according to Jesus?
(Just asking the question).
And so, how did I get home that day that I swam WAY too far and exhausted myself with my pride? A person I knew saved me. As I swam, when I saw someone I knew, I would crawl up their ladder onto their wharf to sit awhile, resting (and pretending to visit while I caught my breath), until I had enough strength to continue my journey.
And luckily for you, that’s how you can find the way to your true home, too – Just drag your tired butt out of wherever you are struggling just to get by, and rest awhile with Jesus.
He’ll give you some food for your journey, a blanket to warm your soul with increasingly authentic relationships, and a map to guide your unique life adventure to begin soaring like a bird in the sky with Him.
He energizes those who get tired . . . but those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar . . .
And the best part? God will swing open those Golden Gates to anyone who is friends with His son. What have you got to lose except a bit of suffocating pride that you don’t REALLY want anyway?
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
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The most crucial spiritual stuff we are struggling to understand is already well understood by children.
Of course, it’s understood by children and ME, too! So that’s how you know I have great spiritual depths – sometimes I am immature! (Reread the first sentence if you are confused.)
I prove that I have had a few (VERY!) brief moments of immaturity HERE.
But reflecting on the first sentence in this newsletter, this immaturity may be the source of my extraordinary spiritual wisdom!
Now, what was I saying?
Ahem.
As I was saying, since children understand the most significant spiritual truths well, I will deduce essential insights from the children’s story I shared at the front of our church last Sunday for you to enjoy!
In that riveting and insightful children’s story, I was trying to make The Point that God is NOT (notice the NOT!) a gumball machine in the sky! What I mean is that more often than we care to admit, we adults think of God’s love as transactional:
When we don’t get what we want, when the gumball doesn’t pop out of the machine after we insert our quarter of prayer, we get frustrated and shake the machine a bit, before we kick it and put it in the corner where only spiders building webs will visit it for a while.
We put God into a box and then realize that there is something wrong with the box.
There is.
The thing that is wrong with the box is us.
“And what is your point?” you ask, looking at your watch, with one hand on your laptop, ready to slam it closed.
Children don’t have as many boxes they are trying to shove God inside.
And so, this is one of the essential things we can learn from children and other immature people.
If God didn’t whisper between the “Amen” and the passing round of the Thanksgiving fixings, we think something is wrong with us or assume He is mute. It turns out that our box is way too small for God to fit inside. Would you consider being open to the possibility of Holy Spirit right next to you, whispering and trying to wake you up in ways you could never imagine.
For example, God spoke quietly and inaudibly to me as I watched some fish once.
I will let this riveting example blow your mind next time so as not to overwhelm you with spiritual profundity. The Point is that God is way more creative than we give Him credit for, in how He is reaching out to us and trying to get our attention. He is EVEN MORE creative (AND smart!) than we are, for example!
He answers our prayers, even our prayers to be able to perceive Him, in more unusual ways than we imagine.
As the song below plays, consider asking Holy Spirit how He longs to poke you, to wake you up, and in what ways you can’t seem to feel His nudge. Consider doing a 180-degree turn from how you knowingly run in the opposite direction. May more of the scales on your eyes fall off so that you can more clearly see the creative ways He is dancing in the corner of your field of vision, waiting for you to look His way, if only the blind eyes are healed.
Blind eyes will be opened, deaf ears unstopped
Got time to be awakened?
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Photo Credit: Bucket Head (Cool Hat!) by 1Click on Unsplash
1 For other helpful marriage advice, click HERE and HERE! You’re welcome! Good luck!
Sometimes I write Newsletters and then forget to tell you the point of what I wrote. It happens! For example, HERE.
Also, HERE I said I would tell you the point of this Newsletter LATER, but then I got busy swimming at the lake and laughing with friends, and I forgot I’d ever written anything!
It happens!
However, I recently startled us all (Myself included – I forgot this stuff!) with the realization in this Newsletter that we are all only a couple of steps from walking off the cliff edge of privilege into destitution if we’re honest.
I wrote that I was shocked how quickly I transformed from polite, smiling tourist to a filthy street kid desirously plotting to murder a destitute child.
It happens!
You’re also only a few steps from falling off the cliff of polite, civilized person to a mauling, violent being, too, I challenge HERE.
But the fact that our kindness is a façade produced by our privilege is also a good thing, it turns out.
What if the fact that you generally show the quality of being “nice” is simply due to the reality of having enough food to eat, a place to sleep tonight and relationships to help you out in a pinch?
Who would you become, too, if these luxuries were suddenly removed?
What do we do when we face the reality that our civilized pedantic behavior is only skin deep?
Who do we turn to when we realize who we really are?
And therein lies our hope.
“The prayer preceding all prayers is ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'”
When we come to God holding up layers of masquerade masks in front of our faces, or as a house with several façades shoddily built in front of us, and we ask to meet with Him, we have trouble drawing close. The lies we tell ourselves, and even lies we think are the truth, are like an electromagnetic force, pushing us away from Jesus. However, He is drawn like an object towards a black hole wherever there is truth.
“ . . . we must consider in depth who we are, and we will find ourselves worthy of all scorn . . .”
Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God
Reflecting on moments like who I became when I was stripped of the privilege I routinely take for granted, and wondering if you would feel the same (You would), is the beginning of this tearing down of the self to find who we really are.
And so, in summary, the point of this Newsletter is to gently point out that you’re a jerk! It happens! But that’s good news, friend!
Why is this good news?
And what do we do when we are faced with the terrifying reality of who we really are, deep down?
We open our eyes.
Jesus is sitting next to you, drinking coffee, and waiting for you to wake up so you can finally see Him sitting next to you, patiently waiting.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.
As the song below plays, consider taking deep breaths, quieting yourself and then asking God, “How do you see me? How is that picture different from how I see myself? What is one step I can make to align my thinking with who You say I am?”
And may you blossom into His most incredible vision of who you truly are, by the power of His transforming love, friend.
Photo Credit: A Gift! by Ionela Mat on Unsplash
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Here’s a picture taken just after I completed a triathlon.
I’m the one in the hat on the right. You can also tell which one is me because I’m the one that is “fit looking.” Just sayin’. Well, at least I should say that I’m the one who looks “fitter than I was.” Whatever.
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While my back still felt like an old lady’s, when I had to yell at people so they could hear me as I spoke to their waist, hunched over, I announced I would do a triathlon.
“Well . . . if I can walk, I will do a triathlon,” I clarified.
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Restoring Life 