Here’s the deal.  I’m not a morning person at all.  I don’t like getting up any earlier than I have to.  I don’t think very clearly in the morning either.  I’ve tried prayer journals and devotional books.  They’re OK, but I still need a lot of discipline and a measure of focus.  I’ve tried the “read the Bible in 365 days” plan too.  It’s great, but my brain doesn’t want to digest that much so early in the morning.

I’ve used devotional books too, including My Utmost for His Highest (Oswald Chambers), Morning and Evening (Charles Spurgeon) and These Days (various authors).  They’re inspirational, but there’s not a lot of Bible or prayer in there – mostly reflection.

What I really need is a prayer leader – my own private prayer service each morning.  So here’s what I’m doing.  Each morning, I’m praying along with a “morning prayer” podcast.  It’s based on the Episcopal Church’s daily office book so it had a Psalm and two Bible readings along with a prayer of confession, a creed, a chance to pray for others, the Lord’s Prayer and a blessing.  It’s also set to music – just the thing for me.  As a good Presbyterian, I pause during the prayer of confession to get a little extra confessing time.  I usually pause during the intercession time too.

It takes me 15-20 minutes for that.  On the good days I can pray and read more as I feel led.  On the bad days, at least I’ve started with prayer!

There are several audio resources available for prayer time with a computer or MP3 player.  Try them and see what works best for you:

Listen or subscribe to the Morning Prayer podcast from the Episcopal Church in Garrett County: www.episcopalchurchingarrettcounty.org/churchonthewebpage.htm

For a reading and reflection Monday through Friday, check out www.pray-as-you-go.org

For a weekly dose of scripture, prayer, music and contemplation, try the Taizé podcast www.taize.fr/podcast

There’s also an audiobook version of Eugene Peterson’s The Message that divides the Bible up into daily doses (with a day off for reflection and catch-up each week): www.amazon.com/Daily-Message-Complete-Bible/dp/1598594575

I hope one of these will help my fellow morning-prayer-challenged night people out there as much as this has helped me.  May God bless you on your journey!

Edith Whitney at 102

My grandmother died almost two weeks ago now at 102, and I now have the bittersweet task of officiating at her memorial service.  My grandmother didn’t have an easy life.  As a polio survivor, her reaction time was slow and her sense of balance was unreliable.  She lived with a lot of pain at various points in her life.  But her faith kept her going.

Sometimes as a pastor, I find myself trying to package the good news of the gospel in ways that people can hear it.  So many words we use have been co-opted or redefined in ways that turn them into bad news.  But the truth can be so very simple.  My grandmother made it simple.  In a journal my sister gave her there was a place to fill in “something I would like you to know about me.”  Here’s what she led with:

I found Jesus.  Without Him, life would have no meaning.  Someday He will come for me and I will go to my real home.  Don’t grieve for me, but rejoice for I will now be happy. No more pain, tears nor handicaps.

It was so simple for her.  She never doubted that she would step out of this life and into the waiting arms of the Lord when her day came.  Now it has come.  We will shed our tears because there is a hole now in the place she held in our lives.  But she is now free.  Her pain is gone.  Her tears have been wiped away.  I can be happy for her and miss her terribly at the same time.

Please pray for me as I lead the memorial service this Saturday.  It is an honor but also a difficult task.

Right now in our church, we have people hurting, someone dying, people grieving (including me and my family for the loss of my grandma), people struggling to make it financially, people in difficult relationships, people with ongoing health problems and pain…  Lots of stuff.  And I’m finding it harder to handle than it ws five years ago.  The thing is that these aren’t just “people I know.”  They’re friends and part of my church family.  When your family is suffering, you hurt too.

Now the trick to dealing with all of this is to realize that I am not really the shepherd.  I can reach out, but I can’t heal people’s pain.  Only the real shepherd, Jesus himself, can do that.  I try to offer my hurting friends and family to Jesus for his care.  But he hasn’t made me of stone so it hurts along the way.

Even Jesus himself cried, so I know that I’m not doing it wrong.  People teach “detachment” and “strong boundaries,” but if they keep us from loving and connecting with people, they’re not from God.  Still, even Jesus had to face situations in which people he loved wouldn’t receive him (e.g., Mark 10:17-22)

I’m hurting right now, but only because I’ve allowed myself to care about people.  I do not believe that a life free of pain because it’s free of caring is worthy of a Christian – particularly a pastor.  Pain comes with the job and so does joy, in its season.

My Dad suggested taking a trip to the channel at the end of the lake – maybe a mile.  There’s a state park there and we could row into it.  That sounded like fun so after dinner one night, we went out.  We started out playfully, following the shoreline around to the channel, but it took longer than I expected, and night was falling.  Stubborn Determined person that I am, I decided to go all the way anyway.  So we went all the way.

By the time I started back, the sun was behind the mountains and a wind had come up.  I didn’t want to be out on the lake at night without a light – invisible to the motor boats on the lake so I had to get back.  I decided it would be faster to head straight across the width of the lake rather than follow the shore, and I began to row as fast as I could.

In the middle of the lake, the waves were significantly bigger, and for a moment, I was concerned that my foolish plan had endangered my boys.  But they were never worried because Daddy was in the boat with them.  Fortunately, we made it back to the dock in plenty of time and without any incidents.

I found myself thinking about Jesus’ disciples going for a similar boat ride with him (See Mark 8:23-27.)  A storm came up and the disciples got scared.  I think I would have also.  Jesus was sleeping, not rowing.  But I believe that the point of the story was that if Jesus is in the boat with you, you don’t have to be afraid, as my sons were unafraid to be in the boat with me.  The good news is that the one in the boat with us isn’t just a decent kayaker, he’s the one who has the power to calm the seas!

I sure understand that.  I don’t know what it is about me that makes me struggle against what God wants for me.  I will have a sense that God is leading me in a particular direction and there’s a part of me that will immediately go the other direction.  I did it in a big way when I was running away from the call to vocational ministry.  Now I do it in smaller ways.

The common thread is that whatever God is calling me to is always better than the alternative plan I have in mind.  Once I finally give up on fighting God, once I agree with or submit to or am reconciled withGod, there is peace.  It always works out better too.  Even when I can’t figured out how it could possibly work out beforehand.

Maybe you can be wiser than I am: ”Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way good will come to you.”

One of this year’s speakers was Brennan Manning, author of The Ragamuffin Gospel.  After sharing his rough, broken story and sharing God’s love with us, he gave us homework.  I’d like to challenge you to try it.

The Challenge:

Take 20-30 minutes to pray over the following four Bible passages.  Be sure to read them enough times, to let them soak in, and to see how God speaks to your heart…

• Isaiah 43:1-5
• Hebrews 4:14-16
• 1 John 4:16-19
• Psalm 103 (in this one, note that the Hebrew meaning of “fearing” God means to stand in awe of God’s power, goodness, and incredible love)

I found the experience very powerful.  See what you experience and share it in a comment if you want to.

Now, that isn’t a license to do whatever you want and to run rough-shod over people. What I believe he meant was that a pastor is called on to do what’s right and what God calls him/her to do, and that sometimes isn’t popular.

What the people wants isn’t always what God wants. The Bible is full of stories about how God spoke to one person or a small group and then did things that nobody thought were possible.

What brought this up for me tonight is that Tom Smith – our Wednesday ministry speaker – was talking about Moses receiving the Law up on Mount Sinai and what was happening below. While Moses was up getting the rules God wanted the people to live by during their time in the wilderness, the people – including their high priest – were making and worshiping a golden calf.

Moses was furious! Why did Moses’ brother Aaron make a golden calf for the people to worship?

“Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” Exodus 32:22-24

The people asked him to so he did. Is that a good reason? Is that the right way to do ministry? No way.

We always struggle with the gift issue.  Eleanor wants to have a “no gifts” party, and I imagine what that would feel like for the kids.  They bring presents to all of their friends’ parties.  Is it fair for them not to get any?

But the kids always behave a bit worse after the deluge of new toys.  It doesn’t take them long to start acting spoiled.  How much is enough?

The culture we live in says that there’s no such thing as “enough.”  More is always better.  But the Good $ense budget class that we offer a couple of times a year at the church suggests that we should “drive a stake in the ground” and decide that enough is enough.

The Bible comes out on the Good $ense side:  2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

Next year we may make the party “gifts optional” in hopes of reducing the number without completely cheating the kids.

Now we’re not one of those churches were everything is polished and perfect, but even we are not accustomed to the sheer number of small things that went wrong, from people being out sick to sound system glitches to bulletin information being wrong.  And you know what?  God showed up anyway!  It was a bit like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”  God came even without many of the things that we seem to feel are so necessary.  God worked in people’s hearts even though the praise team’s monitors weren’t working right.  God showed up in the Lord’s Supper even though we weren’t singing the song that was planned.

There’s a lesson in there.  We seem to think that we’re in control of life and that God can only do anything there if we get everything lined up and straightened out.  Well, it seems that more often than not, God does the best work when everything that we rely on is messed up.

I hope that gives you hope.  Because in both worship and in life, when the night is darkest and the mess is biggest, God is most likely to do something extraordinary.

“No Johnny,” I replied, “It’s Jesus’ church.  And he’s my boss.”

Without skipping a beat, Johnny responded, “He’s everyone’s boss.”

Then my three-year-old, Joshua, started pointing to everyone in the Carl’s Jr. restaurant saying, “Jesus is their boss and their boss and their boss…”

I guess my boys understand discipleship pretty well!

I guess it’s not too surprising that injecting a neurotoxin into your body might not be a good idea, but that tells you something about the culture that we live in. We idolize youth and beauty. We’re willing to poison ourselves to achieve it! That tells you something about the depth of hunger for acceptance in our culture. Everywhere we look, we hear this “gospel” – look good and collect enough stuff and you’ll be happy.

But God has a different plan. God calls us to look beneath the surface. God tells us that appearance isn’t what matters. Instead, Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:15-18 that you can identify what kind of person someone is by their actions, – by how they treat others – not by their appearance. There are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” out there. Jesus is writing about prophets, but I think the principle is more generally applicable. A focus on creating an appearance that we think will please others or hiding our age isn’t what Jesus calls us to. He calls us to bear fruit. Loving and serving others may not make our foreheads look better, but that just poisons us. Loving and serving others builds up our spirit, connects us with God, and helps us to grow into the image of Jesus. We find true acceptance not by looking right by by loving and serving, which, it turns out, is much more attractive than an expensive, expressionless face!

Well, it’s not over.  Since I’m a white man, people sometimes think its safe to make racist comments to me. The vast majority of people don’t, but every so often someone does. And that means we haven’t arrived yet.

As a pastor, I am acutely aware of the cultural divisions in our society and how they affect the church. The old saying is that Sunday morning at 11:00 is the most segregated hour of the week. That’s not 100% true, but the effort to build multicultural churches isn’t an easy one. It’s much easier to gather around people who have as many things in common with us as possible. For example, many new “start-up” churches are built around that concept – build community around middle class parents between 25 and 45 with children between 1 and 10 – usually without a lot of cultural diversity. The families all share a very similar context so it’s easy for them to understand each other, make connections, and form community.

The problem is that the Body of Christ is made up of many different parts. Where do older people fit in? Or young adults? Or unmarried people? Or people struggling financially? Or people from other cultures?

I firmly believe that the church is at its strongest when it embraces diversity. Our Christian faith is enough to unite us. And when more voices are present in the conversation, we can challenge each other. We can challenge stereotypes and assumptions about who “the others” are.

And there’s a strictly practical reason too. Increasingly, American families are mixed. My wife is Mexican-American and my kids all have the middle name “Mendoza.” Our church is drawing more and more couples of mixed racial-ethnic backgrounds. Are we going to create a separate church for 50-50 European and Mexican background families like mine? Obviously that makes no sense. It’s impossible!

But becoming multicultural means giving up some amount of comfort. You don’t have “instant community.” Sometimes we have to work at it. For example, it’s not possible for every part of worship to speak equally to every person. Sometimes, something will be in a language that we don’t understand. Or a tradition will be unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable. But we can learn from each other! And over time, we find the beauty in traditions that others bring.

Trinity’s church board has made a commitment to becoming a multicultural church. It won’t be easy. But it wasn’t easy to get from where we were 50 years ago to where we are today. Dr. King and those who worked with him were able to see a possible future that didn’t yet exist, and many paid a high price for that vision. The price to continue their work today is much lower because of the strides that have already been made, and the potential payoff is great.

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12

I look forward to seeing Christ’s Church lead the way in bringing people together to become the very different, equally necessary, parts of the body of Christ.

Well someone asked him about that.  Do we have to do it under our own strength?  ‘Cause I don’t think I have it in me!

He responded with a story from the chapter 20 of the book of Second Chronicles – not one of the ones I read often, I have to admit.

You see, the enemies of King Jehosophat had gathered considerable forces to take him on – far more than Jehosophat had on his side.  It was going to be a very short, one-sided battle.  Jehosophat was getting pretty scared so he decided to pray, asking for God’s help.  In fact, he had the whole country fast and pray for God’s help.

God told them that they had to go and fight…  BUT, this was going to be God’s fight, not theirs:

This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the LORD will be with you.    – 2 Chronicles 20:17

Ever feel outmatched by the challenges of life?  These words apply to us too.  God asks us to show up, but doesn’t ask us to do it all under our own power.  In many cases, all we have to do is show up, stand still, and let God handle it.

That sounds like good news, doesn’t it?

Isn’t everything better when we’re not alone? It sure is for me.

As Dr. Edwards put it, those four words, I am with you, have the power to transform despair into courage.

If you’ve heard me preach or have come to my Bible studies, you know that being real is a biggie for me. I think that one of the biggest problems that the Christian Church faces is that people aren’t real… Some people have secret lives, but even more people just hide their imperfections or struggles. That means when someone shows up at the church, one of two things happens

1) They believe the act and think that everyone in the church “has it all together.” Since the person checking out the church knows the problems and challenges in their own life, they figure this isn’t for them.

OR

2) They see through the act or figure it’s impossible that these folks are perfect. That makes us a bunch of phonies.

The antidote is being real. If you don’t feel like smiling today, don’t smile until you actually feel it. If you have a problem, find someone to share it with. We can help each other. If you need to cry, do it. If you feel angry, maybe have someone pray with you. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask for help! Then when we see you smiling, it will be real. Yea!

That’s what God wants from us anyway:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” – Galatians 6:2

It’s good to see pastors being real, it’s certainly how I try to be, and I believe our church is becoming more and more authentic each day. It’s sure a better witness to the world. We may be just as messed up as everyone else, but we have help!

Of course coming to Jesus doesn’t really work that way – at least not in the 21st century.  Whe faced with the error of our ways, we prefer to make excuses and justify our actions…  Even we pastors do this!  Yesterday’s entry in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, a daily devotional book, spoke of coming to Jesus (read the October 8 entry here).  Here’s part of what Mr. Chambers wrote:

Isn’t it humiliating to be told that we must come to Jesus! Think of the things about which we will not come to Jesus Christ. If you want to know how real you are, test yourself by these words— “Come to Me . . . .”

He goes on to speak of the need for the Holy Spirit to uproot in us the things that keep us from coming to Jesus.

I’ve been feeling the pressure of a number of things in my life – the pressure of what I must do for them to work out OK.  But the good news of the gospel is that God doesn’t depend on my efforts or my strength to accomplish His will.  God will use me if I am willing to come to Jesus first.  Otherwise, I am likely to get in the way.

Lord, help me to come to you.  Help me to bring all areas of my life and work into your presence to be transformed.  Help me to accept your offer of embrace, laying down the things I have filled my arms with so that I can hug you back.

At four-and-a-half years old, my son Johnny has reached the stage in his development where he works furiously to create indestructible sandcastles.  he had a great one going one afternoon.

“The water wins all battles,” I told Johnny.  “We can delay it for a while, but eventually the water wins.”

Johnny didn’t believe it.  He put a tree branch in place and dug a moat to catch the water- pretty good civil engineering for someone who isn’t five yet.  And it looked pretty good.

When we returned the next morning, some of the castle was still there!  But we happened to witness the moment when the waves wiped out the castle.  Because we had talked about it, it wasn’t crushing to Johnny.  He seemed to have a moment of enlightenment…

Johnny’s predicament came to me when I was thinking about my own situation.  God has been inviting me to trust and encouraging me to spend more time in prayer.  But something inside me resists.  I know that I can trust God, and I make decisions according to that belief, but I still feel the stress.  It occurred to me that I am expending huge amounts of energy to hold God back – just like Johnny’s engineering efforts to keep the water away from his castle.  For some reason, I am working hard to reinforce my castle’s defenses.

God really does win all battles.  All I can do is resist in a futile effort to keep God from redecorating the beach.  What would it be like to trust so completely that if God wanted to wipe out a sandcastle in my life, I would be OK with it?  I can imagine it – and sometimes, I can live it – but much of the time, I cause myself unnecessary hardship by resisting God.  What a waste of energy and what needless wear and tear on my body and mind!  All you can do trying to stop God is hurt yourself.

I am going to work on letting go…  on allowing God to redesign the landscape as He sees fit and save my energy for more important things like ministry and spending time with my wife and kids.

Want to join me?  Leave a comment.

Anyway, the property question that I was talking about in my last entry here was pretty much resolved – until Wednesday.  Our presbytery (the regional group of churches) was going to buy the piece of property we had been considering, giving Trinity the option of picking it up in two years.  That was pretty much ideal.  The opportunity would not be lost, but the church didn’t have to be ready this second.

But Wednesday, when the seller was supposed to sign the papers, he received another offer for significantly more money.  The land would no longer be a church, but the selling church would be able to do some nice things with it.  Still, that piece of land – so close to the new housing – would never be a church.

God told me not to worry about it this morning.  “It’s not your problem,” he assured me.  But not worrying isn’t my strongest suit.  I prefer to be at least partly in control of situations, and I like to have a plan for the future.  Without this land, we don’t have a plan right now.  I know that God can still do something, but I don’t know what it will be.

Then I realized that I had met with a church member this morning and the raced to the gym so I hadn’t done my morning prayer time today.  So I planned to get my devotional book when I realized that we have a Bible passage on our church website.  (This has happened before.)  What do you suppose it said?

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”             Philippians 4:6-7

The prospect of losing this property after months of work is nasty.  But here are God’s words to me.  So I need to hand it over.

Is there somewhere that God is asking you to hand over today?