holy & human

The Divine wrapped on flesh and entered our world. We celebrate this mammoth event with Christmas. We acknowledge the waiting with Advent. 

I’ve been musing the incarnation. 

As I talked about it with friends, I realized that even the term “incarnation” should be reserved for the event when the seed of God entered a woman and produced Jesus. It is holy. That holy. But what’s got me going is that God’s spirit dwells in me... a sort of little “i” incarnation. Or, let’s don’t call it that, it’s something else. What do we call it? 

In the timeline, after Jesus ministered here on earth, he ascended into Heaven. He said he would not leave us as orphans and he sent the Holy Spirit a little while later. That Holy Spirit indwells me. That’s what it is... an indwelling.

His Spirit communes with my spirit. The spark of life. The holy in the human. 

This morning before dawn, I lit the Winter Forrest candle and turned on the Christmas tree lights. My hands smelled like OxyClean from the t-shirts I soaked in the sink just before I sat down with my Advent book. And I began to read about Zechariah, a herald of Advent. 

The laughter bubbled up from deep within me as I pictured him gesturing wildly to the breathless audience outside the Holy of Holies. You know he went in there at risk to his own life. They put a bell on his robe and a rope around his leg so they could pull him out if he keeled over. He must have jumped so at the sight of Gabriel there by the alter that he almost burned his robe with the incense. Gabriel announced that old man Zechariah would have a son, John the Baptist. Ole Zech didn’t believe. He said, “How can I know this is true?” Gabriel struck him mute because he did not believe. And out Zech goes to try to tell the audience why he can’t speak and why he is wild with anticipation and why his robe is smoldering.

I’m so thankful Zechariah is included in this story and his unbelief is no stumbling block for the gospel. Zechariah is a herald of Advent to us. And if Advent is nothing else, it is the celebration of the collision of the holy and the human.

broken angel

Things break.

Here on earth, everything breaks, wears out, corrodes. This morning I found this favored angel from the nativity scene with his wings discarded nearby. Sam owned up to wrestling with Gabriel. A new Christmas scene is written in the McMurray house. 

Last month goes down in history as one of the most horrible in my life. My mother landed in the hospital with a life-threatening MRSA infection. A situation with a family member sat in my gut and my mind constantly replayed the scene. What if I had said that? What if I had pointed out this? Friends in crisis. Conflicts. Disease. Death. Dreary grey weather. November had it all.

Through all of this, God called my heart heavenward. Confident of his presence with me, I breathed prayers like the Jesus one. Inhale and say, “Jesus Christ, son of God.” Exhale and say,  “have mercy on me a sinner.” One day as I ran to my car late to meet someone, a rainbow appeared through the gray dreary clouds. I gasped aloud. Awe. 

On the same day, I drove down a gorgeous Tennessee back road and something at the tree-line caught my eye. A horse? No. I saw the antlers. It was the biggest buck I have ever seen majestically ruling ore the plain. I pulled over and watched it from a distance. Awe.

To see something extraordinary and to try to put words around it is to muse.

Awe is the first step to worship. If I understand something, I will never think myself smaller than it. I am learning that life is hard and there is good in the hard and hard in the good. 

The angel proclaimed peace (wholeness) on earth, good news to men. His wings dazzled the shepherds. They fell on their faces in worship. 

Things may break here on earth but there will come a day when it will all be new.

The star

As December goes by in a blur, I'm taking some time to look for the holy. As often happens, the first Sunday of Advent blew past me. I counted Christmas Sunday and therefore miscalculated the first day of the season. My church has chosen not to light the candles on the Advent wreath so I sat through the service none the wiser. It was Wednesday before I picked up my Advent book and realized my error.

In this season, I need a yellow light to slow me down... Even a red light to stop me. A busy, fast life swirled around a cold, damp stable as the King of Wonder entered his human tent. Why should I be surprised if it is the same for me today?

Yesterday Skip, my dog, and I took a hike by the river. Several times I stopped in my tracks as the beauty of heaven and nature singing took my breath away.

NO ROOM, was the Innkeeper's response.

I want to make space for God-child today in my heart.

joy & pain

In August I visited my friend Val and her mother, Cheryl. This post is dedicated to them.The thing about joy is that it is compatible with pain. 

This past Thursday, the earthly army of believers lost a valiant warrior. Cheryl Mong, mother of my dear friend Val Schubert, went home to the arms of her Savior. She battled fiercely for the Kingdom, for her family, and finally against breast cancer. We surely feel the loss. I would like to dedicate this post to her. She lived a life worthy of the gospel. Her life testified to the fact that pain and joy can reside in the same tabernacle. 

I am aware that a great many in the body are hurting, suffering. I have to suppress a cringe when I hear some good-natured Christian exclaim “it was so God!” when something turned out exactly right for her. Haven’t we all had seasons where things didn’t “work out” as we had planned? And can’t we say that God’s grace was upon us during it?

I went through just such a season of unraveling after our return from Honduras.

Often I felt that my brokenness was not welcome in church. In all fairness, our pastors teach correctly on brokenness and pain. We do not hear a prosperity gospel. Nonetheless, I perceived that “there was no room in the Inn” for my suffering and pain. I watched video stories touting larger than life images of lives given away, healed from bondage, stretched and molded.  God had come through for them.

Yet I could not reconcile that with my experience of giving my life away and finding myself beaten up and mauled. Nobody wanted to see my story on the 40x40 video screen. I know other stories of heartbreak. I will share a few. A young man goes to Mexico to be a missionary and becomes so distraught with the suffering of children that he begins to starve himself to death surviving on one tomato a day. He loses his faith and to this day is an atheist. A missionary couple leaves medical practices and head to South America. They decide to return home because their children are not doing well. Thirty days later he walks away from his family and his faith. Another couple prays for years about adoption and decides God has called them to it. They invest over $25,000 to rescue a baby from an overseas orphanage. The government shuts down the adoption program for no good reason. They never see their money again or the baby God seemingly had called them to. It happens. People walk into situations/ministries that they believe God has called them into and the house falls in around them. Marriages over. Friendships destroyed. Children abused or abandoned. Ministries lost. Lives changed often appearing to be ruined.

Lest we feel like square pegs in round holes, look at Hebrews.  Our forefathers “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:35-38.

Lewis Smedes said something like this: The true test of joy’s integrity is this: is it compatible with pain? Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy. 

Sometimes pain invades our lives and takes our breath away. We don’t often talk about it at church, that life often doesn’t work out as planned - the elephant in the sanctuary. There are times when this Christian life does not look so great. In fact, life sucks. This colloquialism is biblically accurate. 

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16:33. 

I just want to admit that often my life does not follow the four point plan I had. Whose does? Babies die. Father’s get colon cancer. Marriages fail. Children are sexually abused. Tribulation. Hell yeah, and how. When he says, “take heart!” It’s not take two verses and call me in the morning. It is this: take courage, be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. He has won! 

My cheer comes from knowing that one day - like Cheryl - I will see Him face to face. He is far, far angrier about evil than I am. He will end it one day in a lake of burning sulfur.  He will wipe every one of my tears away! He is my shield and my very great reward. 

And yet it may happen in these the most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred hand clutching ours. The tragedy radically alters the direction of our lives, but in our vulnerability and defenselessness we experience the power of Jesus in His present risenness. 

Apart from the risen Christ we live in a world without meaning, a world of shifting phenomena, a world of death, danger, and darkness. A world of inexplicable futility. Nothing is interconnected. Nothing is worth doing for nothing endures. It is all sound and fury with no ultimate significance.

The dark riddle of life is illuminated in Jesus; the meaning, purpose, and goal of everything that happens to us, and the way to make it all count can be learned only from the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

Living in the awareness of the risen Christ is not a trivial pursuit for the bored and lonely or a defense mechanism enabling us to cope with the stress and sorrow of life. It is the key that unlocks the door to grasping the meaning of existence. All day and every day we are being reshaped into the image of Christ. Everything that happens to us is designed to this end.  - Brennan Manning

become small

D sat before me an incredibly beautiful 40 something year old woman with track marks littering her arms. She had come into the clinic to be followed for a hepatitis C infection she contracted while shooting up heroin. She said she knew something was wrong because she no longer felt the effects of her pain meds. See, she has chronic pain. The damage to her liver prevented her pain killers from having an effect anymore. She said to me, “Have you ever known something in your gut yet you didn’t want to know the truth?” Her eyes, dim and tired, bore straight through me. “Yes,” I answered. Yes I have.

On Sunday we (at Fellowship Bible Church) looked at a beautiful passage of Scripture, Luke 9:37-50. This tale takes us from the Transfiguration where Jesus is seen by James, John and Peter chatting it up with Moses and Elijah and spits us out at an argument among the disciples about who is the greatest. In the middle of this saga, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to be betrayed. They don’t want to know the truth. They can’t handle the truth as Jack Nickolson so eloquently shouted in the courtroom during the movie A Few Good Men.

One of the ways the disciples avoid the truth is by comparing and arguing about who is the greatest. Wow. Toddler-like. And yet, I am like Peter. I just want to build a shelter on the mountain and stay there. But we must come down to the reality of this fallen world. This is where it gets hard. Can I stay present? 

I would judge D with her scarred and hardened veins except for the fact that I get what she has done. In fact, I have done it myself. I have not shot up heroin. But I have used the Word of God - I have used religion - as so much heroin. I have split theological hairs to avoid the darkness of my own heart. I have spouted verses like quick fixes. I have used the Bible as a self-help manual instead of a collection of stories to lead me into the Throne Room of the Present.

How does Jesus handle his disciples, his friends? How does He handle D with her broken liver? How does He handle me with my “big religion?” By bringing a child to His side and saying, “Whoever accepts this child as if the child were me, accepts me. And whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me. You become great by accepting, not asserting. Your spirit, not your size, makes the difference.” (Luke 9:48)

See, he knew the disciples puffed up because they were feeling rather small and afraid. And he wanted them to know that it’s ok to feel small, vulnerable. In fact, that is where life is at: remaining vulnerable and undefended in this present fallen world and letting God take up our defense. He hung out with drunks, prostitutes and gluttons because they knew they were broken. The Pharisees hid their brokenness. He called them “white-washed tombs.” 

I don’t have to assert myself and become puffed up and big because the Greatest Man in the Universe became small and died so that I might live. Jesus says, “Become more by becoming less. Accept the least of these and accept Me.”

I only have access to the Spirit in This Present Moment. Can I be aware instead of asserting myself? Can I accept the least of these? Can I understand that the least of these lives in me? When I accept her, I can give grace more freely and genuinely to others.

Recently I have had to look at an argumentative side of me. I had to accept that I still carry around quite a bit of guilt. As I lay the guilt down and acknowledge my powerlessness, God’s Spirit rests on my spirit. I can accept my smallness and know that He is Big Enough. I can be generous in spirit. 

I don’t have to assert, just accept.

I’m so grateful the Word of God includes stories of confused and hardened men who brushed shoulders with Jesus and had their shells blown off. I can hardly follow this story with all its twists and turns! But this I can get...

Treasure and ponder these words! (Luke 9:44)

I will treasure them. I will muse.