Do You Treat God Like Old Aunt Myrtle?
“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” Luke 18:17
When ever I have hear this verse taught the point is pretty much the same: we should have a child like trust. What does that even mean? It gives me a vision of children sitting around gazing up at us with trusting goo-goo eye all day. As if. Obedience? Ever known any real-live children?
Become like little children. Perhaps Jesus meant this comment more literally than we usually take it. I happen to know a thing or two about children and off the top of my head, here’s a quick list of typical behaviors:
- They bring you their boo-boos to fix
- They follow you around chattering about any little thing they can think of, just to be with you
- They ask questions – lots and lots of questions
- They test boundaries
- They look to you to show them who they are
- They sometimes have to learn things the hard way
- They like to make you laugh
- They seek you out when they are lonely, bored, restless
- They like to learn more about you and your life
- They ask more questions
- They like to show off what they’ve learned
- They want you to approve of them
- They want to share all the tiny details of their lives with you
- They must often be prodded, pushed, persuaded and sometimes even punished to behave properly
- Their love for you sometimes boils over and they have to let you know how much they love you
- They push back to learn where and how firm the boundaries are, what the motivation is, and if you can be trusted to be fair
- They need you to understand them when they mess up and forgive Continue reading “Do You Treat God Like Old Aunt Myrtle?”
Would you run?
Could you forgive the way that the father of the prodigal son forgives? Would you want to?
Last winter as things were really unravelling with the qxh (quasi-ex husband), I was, of course, very upset with him. I was considering at what point a couple could say that they had hit the point of no return. At what point would it be reasonable to say that I’d had enough and wasn’t going to consider trying to fix things anymore? To my horror, as I prayed God brought to mind the story of the prodigal son and challenged me to be like . . . the father. Really? Uh, that’s not for me. Tell me I’m the prodigal who needs to come home or tell me that I’m the older brother who needs to get over himself. But don’t tell me to run out to joyously meet someone who has willfully ripped my heart to shreds without even getting an apology and admission of wrongdoing first? Ugh.
I’m not kidding when I said I was horrified. Yet each night before dinner our family prays “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” When we pray that, it’s not just a quid-pro-quo: “I’ll forgive him and you’ll forgive me”. It’s also telling us that forgiving as God forgives is our goal. And God does forgive by running out and making a complete fool of himself to welcome back the wayward son. He doesn’t wait for us to grovel, to set up a payment plan, to promise on our lives never to do it again. He just says, “welcome back.” Continue reading “Would you run?”
When God Cleans
For some time a couple of years ago I was blessed to have a spiritual director who I met with monthly. Towards the end of my time with her, I remember complaining, “I feel like God is getting down into the nooks and crevices and cleaning out every little speck of dirt he can find. I wish it would stop. Hasn’t he done enough? Does he really have to get into all the little, tiny places? I’m ready for him to be done”
It’s like it says in scriptures: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.” (Hebrews 12:11) Too often, we think of discipline as punishment, but discipline is teaching. It is correcting, leading, challenging and pushing the recipient to mature and grow up. In proverbs, discipline is described as “training a child up”. Punishment isn’t the point. Correction is. And when we submit to the training God would like to take us through, it is easy and rewarding enough. But often God starts messing in places we’d just as soon leave alone. I mean, if I sometimes say mean things when provoked, that’s only normal and hardly needs God to attend to, right? But God says that his work is to perfect us. And according to him, such things really do require attending to if they are not to be a barrier between us.
The end of that verse from Hebrews holds the promise, though: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Today, I am glad that God was willing to reach into all those nooks and crevises to get out as much dirt as possible. There is no way I could survive the place I am walking through if he hadn’t. At the time, I just wanted it to stop, but God knew what was coming. Continue reading “When God Cleans”
The Mystery of Faith
I always wondered about faith. Evangelicals say that you have to choose to have it. Calvanists say that you are predestined to either have it or not. It’s a free gift that you cannot earn. But you have to nurture and hang onto it. Catholics and Orthodox Christians practice it with rituals. So many contradictory ideas.
What I have learned is that faith is the little voice that pops up when you are discouraged or even despairing and points you back to God. It tells you something true and sometimes what is true is not what you want to hear. And you can choose to embrace it and continue walking by faith or you can reject it and try to find your own way forward. And when times are hard, you have to really listen for it. You have to really hold onto what you hear. Because soon enough something will come and wash that little piece of comfort away.
When I have taught my kids to pray, I have always started with the story of Elijah at Horab from 1 Kings 19:
So He said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing. Continue reading “The Mystery of Faith”
What a white girl knows about race
I am the whitest of the white girls. I just am. I’m cool with that. One of my black girlfriends told me that when she had moved to the Chicago area back in the 80′s my hometown was one of two places she was told by her mother to avoid ever being in. Before going to high school, the only african american I had ever spoken to was working at a store. But, one of the first people I met at the Catholic high school I attended was Elaine, an African American from Joliet, a small industrial city about 30 minutes from my home. We were both in the honors program, so we had most of our classes together and we hit it off. We shared a wicked sense of humor and spent inordinate amounts of class time writing long notes whose main purpose was to get the other person to laugh out loud while reading it. I can’t believe we never got caught!
We never really talked about it, but there were differences. We were BBFs (Best Buddies Forever), not BFFs. Mostly she ate lunch with the other black kids and it never occurred to me that she would do otherwise. It’s got to be hard spending all day surrounded by people who can’t really “get” you and may not even like you no matter how good or nice or cool or talented you are. I’d want a break too.
Looking back, I realize that I was white-girl clueless in a way that a less tolerant and kind person might have been unwilling to deal with. Continue reading “What a white girl knows about race”
What sort of garden do you grow?
The best parenting analogy I have heard compared having a child to being given a plant. Some plants are more demanding to grow than others. Some are more sensitive to change. Some must be nurtured for many seasons before they will show their flowers and bear their fruit. Others are easy and sunny and thrive on neglect. We create a lot of trouble when we try … Continue reading What sort of garden do you grow?
Throwing Pennies at God
You know the story of the widow’s mite? How Jesus said this widow throwing her last two pennies into the collection box was more faithful than those putting in large amounts from their wealth? I always read the story and assumed that the widow was giving her last two pennies out of reverence. But lately, I’ve realized that I’ve been that woman throwing her last coins into the Salvation Army bucket. And it wasn’t often done out of reverence. When I was younger, I might put my penny in so I wouldn’t feel bad about walking past the bucket without putting anything in. Sometimes I did put my last coins in as a way of saying, “I know it’s not much, but it’s what I’ve got. I’ll just trust you to provide the increase.” A few times though, I put my last coins in as an act of protest and complaint; “You want everything? Fine take my last pennies. I do my best, I trust in you and I get left with nothing but a couple of pennies.”
Research has found that poorer people give more of their money away than others. A lot of that is because the amounts given as often so small that you weren’t going to do much with the money anyways. It occured to me that maybe the widow wasn’t so sanguine about her life and her struggles either. Two copper coins wasn’t worth much. It would barely have bought food for one meal. And then what? Maybe that widow too had been walking this path for too long. Maybe she was more broken than obedient and was throwing those copper pieces as a form of defiance and challenge to God? Continue reading “Throwing Pennies at God”
Telling the difference between an excuse and a reason
I’m not one to put much stock in sterotypes, but I was raised Catholic. And I have Catholic guilt. Bad. But I’ve worked really hard to get rid of it and I’ve learned some things along the way. Like that the problem with Catholic guilt is that it relies on a very inaccurate view of how the world works. It’s mostly sustained by the holy trio of bad ideas:
1. Somehow everything is my responsibility
2 Everything that goes wrong is my fault.
3. What I want or think is almost certainly wrong.
Catholic guilt’s hard to get rid of because of the specter of pride lurking just over your shoulder. If you reject the triumvrent above, it’s because you are giving into pride. Giving into pride is giving into a delusion. Taking the risk of being delusional requires lots of evidence and really, what have you ever done that’s so special any ways?
One of the things which I have had to learn as part of the process of moving past feeling guilty for bothering people with my breathing is how to tell the difference between an excuse and a reason. Continue reading “Telling the difference between an excuse and a reason”
My I hate rant
You know what I hate? I hate not being able to be real about my life because dealing with other people freaking out over the things I say or am going through or feel is a burden that I don’t have the strength to carry on top of everything else. I hate that on the basis of not a God damned thing people think that … Continue reading My I hate rant
Buy One Give One
Want to help put quality, accessible and engaging Christian reading material into the hands of a trucker, prisoner or recovering drug addict? For each copy of The Upside Down World – A Book of Wisdom in Progress purchased directly from me for $12 plus $2 shipping, a copy with be donated to a local ministry to distribute to a person in need. Additional copies for donation may … Continue reading Buy One Give One
The Upside Down World 