life in the blood

I am no Hot Yoga expert. I’ve been to class about six or seven times. The philosophy, as I understand it, is to compress areas of the body to deprive them of oxygen. Then as you re-open those areas, oxygen-rich blood flows to them and with it healing. 

Healing is in the blood.

Yesterday in my spiritual direction group, we talked about an image I had drawn in my journal on April 14. I am aware that God is drawing me closer and asking me to trust more in Him. To trust the ways He has carried me. To trust His provision. To trust His plan. 

I drew this “trust cup” weeping out the trust I continue to deposit in it. I put some trust in, but it just leaks out. To be sure, the cup has less holes today than it did six months ago and a lot less than it did ten years ago!

My spiritual director said, “Just sit with Jesus and ask Him about the cup.”

I love it when she says that.

This morning I flipped through a book I am reading about Lent called Bread and Wine. An excerpt called “Life in the Blood” caught my eye. It was written in 1935 by Toyohiko Kagawa. I read the following:

It is like saying that because God is love, when you put water into a bag with a hole in it, the hole in the bag won’t matter! You must close up the hole!

You can’t reveal the glory of God if you have a hole in your heart, no matter how much of God’s glory you receive. It is Christ who fills up that egregious hole. 

I felt like Jesus sat down at the table to have a cup of coffee with me.

I read on...

Blood circulation has the power to heal wounds.

Love creates the same pattern anew. It redeems the place that was lost. To the measure of its depths, the love of God can perfectly heal the holes of the past, and all its sins. It does not merely repair the damages of sin, but even transforms that which has been broken into perfect health, perfect working capacity.

Really? Transforms the broken parts? Perfect working capacity?

Love is endowed with the power to redeem and heal throughout the past, present and future, every part of the whole The supreme manifestation of that love is the blood which Christ shed on the cross. This love enables us to believe in the forgiveness of past sins and the healing of past offenses. 

I think the holes represent my unbelief. Maybe my job is to name the unbelief. Jesus repairs the holes. I wonder if perhaps He repairs them from the bottom up. As I name them, bring them to Him, He repairs. With each patch, trust grows deeper.

And so goes the Good Friday - Easter rhythm. The stretch and expend energy, then rest rhythm. The desolation where-is-God, then oh-there-You-are rhythm. Today on Good Friday, I name the holes of my unbelief. 

Can I trust a Man who gave His very Life for me? 

it's easier to bolt

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked his disciples to watch and pray three times. Three times, they snoozed. 

I am reminded of how easy it is just to bolt. Staying present is hard work. And, frankly, I can’t do it all the time. I can’t do it very well. To me, this is the purpose of Lent: to become aware of my weakness and know that I desperately need the grace of God. 

Monday evening I was busily cleaning out my closet (a chore I loathe), when Matt’s voice boomed from above: YOUR GROUP! It was like the voice from Heaven calling me out of my slumber. Quickly my eyes read the clock: 7:22 p.m. My group starts at 7:00. I spent the next 7 minutes agonizing over whether to drive the two miles to my group and interrupt them. 

It’s one thing to zone out and forget a commitment. But this was my SECOND week to completely space and forget my listening group. 

On Monday evenings, we gather to share what we are hearing from God. We receive one or two pages of insights and a few passages of Scripture for the coming week. Each of us shares what we see in the passage and how God is forming our souls through His Word.

I find it humorous that the passage with most punch for me this week was the one in which the disciples slept while Jesus suffered. Humorous because God gave me an object lesson in my own forgetfulness or lack of awareness. He reminded me of the difficulty in staying awake. He reminded me that I need Him.

In the end, I drove the distance over the speed limit. I rushed into the group. “Perfect timing,” someone said. They welcomed me like a community of grace would welcome a stray lamb. 

I am praying to be more present this week and to remain awake as we await the resurrection celebration on Sunday. And I am applying GRACE when I slumber.

Even so, today I celebrate this stupefying fact:

God has set EVERYTHING right between him and me. Romans 10:10

watch and pray

Today we enter Holy Week. In Honduras, no greater holiday exists. La Semana Santa far outshines Christmas. Stores shut down. Most people, even the poorer families, find their way to the beach. 

In downtown Tegucigalpa, artists craft carpets of painted sawdust covering the narrow streets. Curators walk the streets with spray bottles sprinkling water so that the sawdust won’t blow away in the dry wind. On Holy Sunday, a priest and some men in white robes will walk the carpet and stop at each station of the cross. A mass is held at the end of that procession in a small cathedral nearby.

I am pondering the moment when Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane and asks his disciples to watch and pray. He says he is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. His disciples snoozed. 

When he returns, he says: “Stay alert; be in prayer so you don't wander into temptation without even knowing you're in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there's another part that's as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire."

This lenten season has been long. Amen, anybody? While I wait for spring, I am craning my neck to see the Resurrection just around the corner. It’s hard for us Protestants to stay in this death watch. Historically, I have paid little attention to this week. Living in Honduras changed me in a number of ways.

This week, I heed the words of Jesus: WATCH AND PRAY. The Spirit is willing but the body is weak. 

I want to learn to pray the words Jesus prayed. And mean it.

"My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way."

poor in spirit

Lately I have had a lot of chances to say “you are right” and “that was my fault.” And I’m not talking about a co-dependent whiney sort of victim line. I mean to speak the truth and mean it. 

It is somewhat difficult. Try it right now if you dare. Say: “I could be wrong.” Try: “That was my fault.”

It kinda gets stuck in your craw, doesn’t it? That’s southern-girl talk for hung up in your throat.

Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” The phrase “poor in spirit” is only used once in the Bible, here in the beatitudes found in Matthew 5. 

Poor means reduced to beggary; destitute of wealth, influence, position, honor; lowly; afflicted; helpless; powerless to accomplish an end; needy. If we apply this definition to the spirit, we can see that “poor in spirit” means to be a beggar. It puts us in the position of begging mercy from our God. I like this definition from a commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, Brown, “those who in their deepest consciousness realize their entire need.”

Living in Williamson County can skew your view of affluence. With soccer moms driving Hummers, it can prove difficult to think of yourself as rich when you drive used minivan. However, the fact that I own a car places me in a category of being richer than 84% of the world. This means I have a harder time seeing my need, my poverty, my poverty of spirit. 

When Jesus spoke these words, I don’t think he meant money. But I do think when you have money, you have a harder time with the concept of poor in spirit.

I was born naked and I will return to God naked. Needy. Nothing in my hands. Nothing covering my body. Today I want to realize my poverty of spirit, to know that my only hope for Heaven is Jesus Christ. 

So much of my life I have depended on performing well to get somewhere. To accept the gift of Jesus, this perfectionism has to die. I can glory in my weakness because He says to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  

With Paul I proclaim, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.

-Dorothy Day