The Center

“(Stay) right at the center of God’s love, keeping your arms open and outstretched, ready for the mercy of our Master, Jesus Christ. This is the unending life, the real life!” Jude 1:21 (The Message)

It takes true skill to stay within the circle of someone’s love. We may continually question their motives, or doubt our own appeal. Either way, we find ourselves setting traps for the person, testing whether their care is genuine. Or we push them away, as if to prove we were never within the reach of their love.

And Most Remembered

And Most Remembered

(“These are the stains in your love-feasts, as in your company they shamelessly gorge themselves; rainless clouds they are, carried along by winds; fruitless autumn trees, twice dead and uprooted.” Jude 1:12)

It was true, the banquets often lasted too long,
but not from verbose speeches and lengthy awards;
it was the people who would not leave for love of
a place to call their own. Their own homes damp,
their kitchens ravaged by dust that settled upon their poverty.

It was true, the banquets never solved the source of heartaches,
but they reminded (the bread with the wine) each diner of
the better time now within the refuge, inside the comfort
of unlocked protection and embrace. Their own faces
showed the joy at the tables and bounty in their voices.

It was swift, the aroma that switched from pleasure to scorched,
but the beginning of the overdone courses was slow to come out of the dark.
They hugged as well as they had at first, smiled the same gritty teeth,
but hazards implied their overheated eyes lusted authorship,
(their songs, their recipe, their work, their cutlery)
and might take the whole kitchen home unless applauded properly.

It was true, there were fewer at the tables after the fruitless left,
the clouds that mimicked showers, the dead pretending life;
but the joy rose higher, the wine flowed freer, the bread was
shared unhindered

And most remembered why they came.

The Wilderness Hard Times

“I took care of you during the wilderness hard times, those years when you had nothing.” Hosea 13:5 (The Message)

Ah, the wilderness, the place where another human soul is days away, either by travel or because of broken relationships. The place where there is scarcely food or drink and where, though depopulated of people, creatures like scorpions, serpents and beasts have made their home. This is the literal wilderness to which God refers. When Israel was in the barest and most barren place, God took care of them.

pragmatism

pragmatism

(“Dear friend, don’t copy the evil deeds of others! Follow the example of people who do kind deeds. They are God’s children, but those who are always doing evil have never seen God.” 3 John 1:11)

Pragmatists hollow the riverbed the quickest way,
one slope-bank to the other. Years to follow feet will tread the
earthen dam eased dry and accessed free, proving their peninsula.

Downriver of the earth-pile, the styles have changed,
fish aren’t fried, and likeable souls furrow their brows
that an apex undebated, such a clear focus unabated to everyone
could finally benefit, imagine that, only the upper half.

Without Knocking

“And this is the confidence we have resting on Him, that if we petition anything in agreement with His will, He hears us.” 1 John 5:14

Communication is the key to most important relationships. Most family counselors and books about marriage focus on communication. Knowing how and when to say the important things are crucial to relationship growth. And, giving time to honestly listen to each other is equally essential.

Give it a Rest

Give it a Rest

(“Think how much the Father loves us. He loves us so much that he lets us be called his children, as we truly are.” 1 John 3:1a)

We know how hard you’ve worked,
and how loudly you run that vacuum machine
careening into the table legs to make your point.
No one has ever noticed food on the floor like you do.

Give it a rest, son, let the best give way to the
love that’s done more than your chores (duly noted)
will finish today. We hear you put the cleaning brush away,
the cabinets close loudly, your exclamation point.

Give it a rest, daughter, let the mess whisper like a
pile of dead leaves God let sit months until the following spring.

We know you know much, how much you know is punctuated
by your opinion pressed against the best ideas, even when
you came into the conversation one breath between a comma
and the final question mark.

Give it a rest, brother, let the silence attest to how you
and two or three, know less than cement opinions that
wall out hugs and empathy. You know we know that
you don’t know it all. We know less than we know and
still are blessed.

We know how frightened you’ve become, and loud words with
concrete argumentation stone you silent or sting you
to grind your teeth with words you’ll take back later.

Give it a rest, sister, let the decibels suggest your distress
is full of woodpecked holes you never asked for; meet
the agony with less anxiety recoil, instead let the silence

Within the loved child that you are, let the dust settle and
the words fall upon the floor. You are more than their agitation
and your itch to set everyone straight. A child of love, the King
has named you; the whisper of the name more certain than
the shouting of the exceedingly sane.

An Unchanging Promise

(“This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life!” 1 John 2:25 [The Message])

Anyone can make a promise. There are promises of health if you just drink someone’s juice product. You can lose 50 pounds in 2 days if you use the most recent weight-loss gimmick. Men and women promise to live together as husband and wife, “forsaking all others”. Friends graduate from High School, and, before moving off to college promise to make sure they will stay in touch.

No Fooling

“If we say that we have not sinned, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth isn’t in our hearts.” 1 John 1:8

Have you ever struggled with a loved one who had a medical condition and wouldn’t admit it? Perhaps they had constant, sever pain and hid it. Finally, after seeing them grimace time and time again when doing some simple task like leaning over to pick up the newspaper, you realize something is wrong. They admit to you that, not only is their pain severe, but they have actually battled it for more than a year.

All Landscaped with Righteousness

All Landscaped with Righteousness

(“We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.” 2 Peter 3:13 [The Message])

I never knew all their names, the roses in my North Dakota
garden bed. Five bushes lined the driveway, from the velvet caret
to summer-noon yellow. Each winter I covered their delicate roots and
with three or four making it through the winter, I thought myself blessed to
replace the rest when spring lately warmed their cradle.

I’m no gardener, make no mistake; someone else had planted them there,
left for my adoption. Fed, watered, pruned and gifted; front yard
July mornings urged the new canes to catch up with the few.

The best blooms never saw more sun than a day or two, given away
to my wife, my daughter, and sometimes to an accidental hello;

Plus my kindergarten friend across the street.

Sad, a few weeks later,
that the rose I fetched her had “died”, I’d pluck another,
sweet pink laced with white as milk. I think she gave it to her mother,
(roses are never meant to be hoarded or collected like coins or stamps,
but displayed in ways that say the person who receives even one
floral masterpiece is more beautiful than the gifted blossom.)

Just before winter crumbled the remaining hips on their canes,
sad eyes stared me down one morning again about the previous rose’s demise.

 I could not help it, but told her, no lie, I would bring her a rose,
next summer,
that would never die.

As soon as the frost departed and left its home vacant for warm loam
crawling with life and enrichment, I rushed downtown to where
the local vendor displayed spring’s best wares underneath a warming tent,
and searched for the best, never-die rose, for a 5-year-old who would
know the difference,

And, paying with my mud-knuckled fingers, hurried to her house,
dug half a hole and knocked on the door. She giggled, her mom smiled,
and my little friend and I planted the best place for a rose to be:

Right out front, for all her neighbors to see.

Let it be Recorded

Let it be Recorded

(“But you are our Lord and our God! We ask you to keep us safe…Then everyone in every kingdom on earth will know that you are the only God.” 2 Kings 19:19)

Have you crunched the numbers recently;
multiplied your best efforts by the money in the bank
and then reckoned the ratio of your retirement needs
to your best earning potential? Fearful?

Have you added your near misses to the pop quizzes passed
with hidden cheat sheet help? Everyone did it and no one knew it,
none of us would have left there alive without
a nod and code, smart to less.

Have your projects turned to dust,
or the trust you put in the instructions clear
while you searched the catalogues for the proper tools,
only to discover you bundled the fretboard to the
sound hole and body unabridged and unrepeatable?

Buy a home and keep it short, lose what you hoped to live in
free after 65 and clever. Keep the worries now inside your heart
occasionally letting them out to wallow in the rain. Public doubt
is frowned upon unless you explain every detail of your dilemma
and swear you’ve prayed and fasted long enough that others see
your gaunt and pasty effigy.

But whether my failure is entered absolute zero, or my troubles infinity
divided by nil…

Let it be recorded that I hope and pray, doubt on my left
and my failures weighing down the right, waiting to see
Your glory, not mine, shine like the Northern Lights as far south
as Corpus Christi just about dusk on a midsummer’s day.

Taking the Lead

“But you are not that way. Instead, the most prominent among you must be as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” Luke 22:26

There is no dearth of information on how to be a good leader. It would be cynical to say that most of them disagree with Jesus’ teaching about servanthood; but I don’t think that is entirely true. Most business models emphasize being the best at providing for your customers’ needs. That seems to parallel Jesus’ statements about leaders who serve.

The difficulty is in personally acting it out in our own lives. Today I played guitar for 25 fifth-graders at a Veterans Day Assembly. It was fun and I truly enjoyed it. I learned “This Land is Your Land”; Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem and practiced the fairly easy arrangement with them twice this week.

Besides the usual musician’s joy of playing, there is another side of me that likes people to know I’m good at something. I suppose that is part our human nature generally, and my desire for accolades personally. “Hey, I didn’t know Mark played guitar…or that he played it that good!”

With that back story and confession behind us, I take you to this morning. First of all, I forgot a pick. Big deal; use your fingers. But we guitarists know that does throw things off a bit. Plus, finger picking, without properly grown nails, is about half as loud as with a pick. I had forgone the use of a microphone for the very reason that I was using a pick.

Without time to run home and find a pick, I did my finger-picking best. It was not nearly loud enough, the couple of flourishes I did “flat-picking” didn’t work at all with my fingers, and, worst of all, I miscounted the number of verse we did. No big deal, except that the final chorus was to end with the last line repeated a little slower.

It didn’t happen, not with the guitar anyway. The director and fifth-graders hit their mark perfectly on the ending line, but I kept playing on tempo, right on through, as if we were riffing right into another verse. As everyone always says, “Nobody probably noticed.”

Wrong! I noticed. I noticed not playing it the way I wished. I noticed that the guitar probably wasn’t heard well. And I noticed, keenly noticed that I raced right past the ending. What I didn’t notice was how happy the students were when everyone clapped for them.

I’m a real servant leader, I tell you! I was happy to play for fifth graders instead of Carnegie Hall. I was ready at the first phone call to spend a couple of mornings at the Elementary School. I was glad to leave the important duties in my office to play a simple song for a room full of 10 and 11 year olds. But, you see, even though it appeared to be servant-like; my interior was still aching for recognition.

I’m not being too hard on myself…truly I am not. I know the very fact that I realize what was going on inside me is evidence I’m not all that into myself. But it does illustrate for me the deceptive nature of leadership and recognition. Even when we are trying to serve others, it can feel less fulfilling if no one notices. Or, when they do notice, it is when we have not performed up to par.

Whether it is to accompany elementary students, or lecture grad students at an Ivy League University, our drive can still be measured anywhere from self-serving to self-deprecating. I believe the healthy attitude is at neither end of that spectrum, but rather an attitude that places the needs of those I lead above my need for recognition.

So, next time I’m invited, I will once more gladly accept. And next time, if I forget my pick, I will try to be just a little less self-conscious, and a little more focused on how much fun those particular students are actually having. After all, it is our Loving Heavenly Father I serve, and I thing He enjoyed the music my friends and I made.

One Small Obedience

(“But Daniel determined that he would not defile himself by eating the king’s food or drinking his wine, so he asked the head of the palace staff to exempt him from the royal diet.” Daniel 1:8)

Good food is one of the exquisite joys of life. Not everyone may like exotic fare, but a well prepared meal with top-notch ingredients and perhaps a few items we have not tasted before, is seldom turned down. Growing up in a lower-middle class minister’s family, I had little opportunity to sample much high-class cuisine.

Disinherit Now!

Disinherit Now!

(“Above all else, cherish intense love for one another, for love covers up a mass of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8)

Are you really going to throw him out?
Disinherit him and carry him to the limit,
to the cliff, to the sidewalk curb and leave him,
brown socks and flannel shirt, to look for a dangerous bed
somewhere in the city?

Did you say he is gay, and there is no way you will allow
such an abomination living under your brand new roof,
the crown you devoted to God-first and family-second, as if
God wants your weeping boy out in the cold anyone,
no one knows where they will find him
or his body
when you hope to seat him the day before Thanksgiving.
(You never said he couldn’t eat at a table running with gravy,
so long as he was gone by nightfall).

And for those who read this (the few), I had planned to write
a jolly ditty, and celebrate love; the way it lifts the clouds or
sings above the fogs; the way it keeps the flowers in bloom at the courthouse
till nearly a week after January 1.

But then I read of homeless shelters in Minneapolis, maybe more,
where a third served there, in the shelter, in the cold, the upper frozen
where sidewalks cannot support winter mattresses; a third served there
are L&G&B&B who came out to their families and their families misinterpreted
it as slap in the face of their good name!

How many sins, if you believe they are sins, would be warmly covered
by families who loved the way a certain Father welcomed a vagrant son

And

Turned it around a long time ago…ran away from home, sought the homeless life
and had no shelter yet but an arid memory. How will we keep our own who say
they just cannot live the way we expected? Will Extravagance win the day,
or will we send them soon so another homeless shelter can feed them

What we refused to prepare.

Under Laminate Table

Under Laminate Tables

(“This is the message of God, the Master: ‘I’ve put up with you long enough, princes of Israel! Quit bullying and taking advantage of my people. Do what’s just and right for a change.’” Ezekiel 45:9 [The Message])

Is our hiding a dangerous planet where breezes blow hot
and friendships grow cold? Or is it
merely an experiment in language that calls Home
the place we occupy plus
the place we wish to return?

Are the caves in the hills welcome respite
from the sun that broils skin to leather,
or prisons to which we retreat when the
enemy runs to fast to notice the grotto’s closed mouth?

A fence holds bully and victim
both within its perimeter, chain-link mainly made
to keep us all from slopping onto the street. Borders are
no better when the authorities can send the helpless away
and file their reports at the end of the day stating
“one less in state, one more over there”.

Maybe today one man with a mouthful of power will
speak without though of protecting his position
and instead will dread the outcome of tiny lies to
tiny people that pile up like hay too late in the fall.

Maybe someday we will never think to bring the whole ship down
just to rid us of the one non-swimmer. Could be
this day
the dangers won’t press their luck
within conference rooms underneath
laminate tables,
but rise to the top where everyone will see

What Truth Himself has seen all along.

So today, though hiding is this planet’s magnetism,
and the gravity of the world would grasp me by the temples,
I think I’ll wait out the cons and the causes of the downstream blue,
and fashion sweeter air while I meander my way from present loved
and future hoped home.

Things Wear Out

“You were rescued from the useless way of life that you learned from your ancestors. But you know that you were not rescued by such things as silver or gold that don’t last forever.” 1 Peter 1:18

The longer I live the more I observe the decay inherent to this world. The photos from our wedding 34 years ago are faded. (The fashions have decayed in altogether another way.) Rust invades my vehicles. The Bible I’ve used for preaching the last 20 years is well-worn with pages falling out. But most of all I feel the decay in my own body.

Who God Hears

“Again he prayed earnestly and heaven gave rain and the soil yielded its produce.” James 5:18

I think nearly everyone prays. Put a driver on an icy mountain road in the middle of a blizzard. Let the tires start to lose traction and her car slide precariously near the ridge where it drops off hundreds of feet. You are certain to hear her cry, “Help!” Who is she talking to? Even the faintest instinctually cries out.