Of Picky Little Differences, Thin Ice, and the Power of Positive Thinking

Generally speaking, I am not a nit-picker. Yes, it's true that sometimes tiny details matter, like minus signs in algebra problems and decimal points in my bank balance. But whenever possible, and especially in matters of communication, I prefer let picky little differences go. Even if we don't have every tiny bit of grammar or nuance of vocabulary perfectly right, I trust that we can all understand each others' intentions and make meaning of what we are trying to say.

So when I read this devotion the other night, I was immediately put off.

In a nutshell, the writer suggests that in our prayers, rather than asking God for things, we should instead believe that He has already given those things to us, and simply thank him for what we have received.

Here's an excerpt to show exactly what she means:

State your prayers as affirmations:

• God is my Light and my Salvation (rather than “Be my light …”).
• The Lord of life walks with me (rather than “Please walk with me”).
• Healing Presence, you bring me strength (rather than “Please bring me strength”).
• I am a channel of God’s loving-kindness (rather than “Help me be a channel …”).

Hmm. Yeah. At first, the whole idea just sounded like a picky little point of semantics to me. At first.

But the idea intrigued me enough that I decided to give it a try. Really, what could it hurt me to try, right?

BAM. I noticed a difference immediately.

Suddenly, my usual prayer requests for what God might do:

please help this person,
please give that person your peace,
please bring your healing to this person,
please give that person your strength and protection

were transformed into prayer certainties and thank-yous for what God is already doing:

thank you for helping that person
thank you for giving that person your peace,
thank you for bringing your healing to this person,
thank you for giving that person your strength and protection.

This was not some silly exercise in semantics. This was a bold theological move that changes the way I see God's work in the world and the power of my prayers.

And now when I pray, I no longer feel like I am carefully sliding my feet out onto the thin ice of a frozen lake, unsure of whether God will support my hopes and dreams, or if His plans for the world will cause the fragile ice of my requests to crack under my feet.

Now I am sweetly reminded by my own words and prayerful thoughts that God is wayyyyy out ahead of me, and I can be sure that every step I take is strongly grounded in His love.

Of Feelings, Principles, and Train Cars

Two little digital tidbits crossed my path today, and they both tap into the root of an idea that has been growing in my brain for several weeks now.

First, I ran across this quote in my Facebook feed:

“Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.” - David R. Hawkins


Literally, two minutes later, I found this video in my email and watched it. Check it out...I promise it's an interesting little story.

And thirdly, here is what has been on my mind lately:


Our feelings, valid though they might be, are not the most important things in life. 


Despite what our culture and our stubborn little hearts might have us believe, making choices in life based our feelings is not a good idea. As our feelings may change from week to week, day to day, even sometimes minute to minute, they do not provide a stable foundation for our lives. Feelings are the fluttering leaves that grow and change, fail and fall, catching breezes and laying still, responsive to whatever winds may blow.

Yvonne Seiwell

Jennifer Berkenbosch

Principles matter more than emotions. 

Representing our own sense of truth and morality, whether taught to us by our elders or divined from within our own minds, principles are solid and unchanging. No matter what our momentary feelings or mood of the day, our principles hold us firmly in place as the turbulent winds of life swirl and blow around us. Principles are the deep underground roots that anchor and give strength to the tree of our lives.

Tom Brown

Angela Vandenbogaard

Bringing all three of these trains of thought together (and promptly switching metaphors), I hooked them up and here is what I got:

Chuckman

Two of the most universally valued feelings in the range of human emotions, love and forgiveness, are actually not feelings at all. They are principles.

David Hawkins makes it pretty clear that love is not the fluttery rush you feel in your stomach when you meet your beloved at the altar, nor is it the blinding adoration and grizzly-level protectiveness you feel for your precious newborn. Trust me, those feeling will fade. Your spouse may leave wet towels on the bathroom floor every day of your married life, and that sweet infant may some day glare at you, mutter unpleasant things under his breath and stomp out of the house. The truth is that love is needed most at the times when we honestly don't feel like loving. That's the whole point of love - to hold us in relationship with others, even when we don't feel like it. To endure, love must be based on principles rather than emotions.

As for forgiveness, Miroslav Volf's poignant story makes it clear that genuine forgiveness is not about sweetly accepting an apology when someone breaks your teacup or misses a lunch date. Full-blown, gut-wrenching forgiveness, the kind that is needed when your drug-addicted parents abandon you to be raised by grandparents, or your child is accidentally killed by some kind-hearted soldiers, is not a feeling. In fact, forgiveness is needed most at the times when we honestly don't feel like forgiving. That's the whole point of forgiveness - to hold us in relationship to others, even when we don't feel like it. To heal us, forgiveness must be based on principles rather than emotions.

If it feels good, do it. 

Remember who you are and what you stand for. 

Of Donkeys and Palm Branches

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the day that marks the opening chapter of Holy Week, the Christian story of Jesus' death and resurrection. The adventure starts out like this:

After three years of ministry that changed lives and astonished many, Jesus returned to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. He was given a hero's welcome by the throngs of people who met him as he rode into town.

{Each of the four Gospels mentions this event, which is significant because it is rare for all four writers to mention the same event in Jesus' life and to describe it the same way.}


{A gospel is any account of Jesus's life on earth. The most widely known Gospels are found in four books of the Christian bible, called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.}

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Three interesting tidbits about Palm Sunday:

1. Jesus rode a donkey as he made his way into town. In that time and place, the donkey was a symbol of peace. Jesus' choice to ride that animal, rather than a horse which was viewed as an animal of war, may tell us something about his mindset and gentle intentions.

2. The people of Jerusalem lined the streets to welcome him, laying their cloaks and palm or rush leaves on the road ahead of Jesus. It was customary in those times to cover the path of a person of great honor, so this may tell us something about the crowd's respect and desire to honor him.

3. In Christian churches today, including mine, it's tradition to pass out real palm leaves to all the worshipers on Palm Sunday, so that we can share in the sense of celebration and praise. Like the people of Jerusalem, we wave our palm leaves and call out, "Hosannah!"

{"Hosannah" means "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." It's from Psalm 118.}

This year, for a variety of complicated reasons, my family and I are celebrating Holy Week at home. On Palm Sunday, my daughter found these daylily leaves to stand in for our palm branches, and they worked out quite nicely.

Hosannah!

Of Desert Cliffs, Temptation and Money

Today I was challenged to think about temptation. Recalling the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness, wrestling with his own demons, Lent is a time for Christians to sort through their lives and look clearly at the places where temptations lie. 

My goal was to draw a picture that shows what tempts me most. I had a couple thoughts in mind about my inner temptations, but I decided to focus first on setting the scene. I used most of my page to draw a golden cliff (with purple shadows along its flank) rising up out of a flat red desert.That dark blue speck on the edge of the cliff is me. As I was working along, I drew the bubble that would eventually show my greatest temptation, but I purposely left it blank till the very end. 

When the rest of the drawing was complete, I grabbed a pencil and quickly drew in the first thing that came to mind in the temptation category.

Money.

Interesting.

I think of myself as a person who normally does not worry too much about money. It has a way of coming and going all on its own, and I have learned to trust it to work itself out.

And I think of myself as a person who can live quite happily without any major extravagances. We all need a little money, but I don't think that I need a lot.

So I was surprised that when I thought about temptation, money leaped into my mind.

Maybe it's because I am at a turning point in my life where money is at a minimum and opportunity is at a maximum.  Part of me is tempted to worry about money and to limit my dreams accordingly, but another voice urges me to push on and never let money (or the lack thereof) hold me back.

Right now, I'm not sure which is the wiser voice. But I think I better pay close attention to how money, and the temptation of money, is working in my life.

Of Monkeys, Grace and the Hunger Games

On Thursday, I woke up thinking about grace.

To be honest, I had a dream about it. And I would like to tell you about the dream. But isn't that one of the most frustrating and annoying experiences in life - to listen to someone going on about something they dreamed??

"Well, it was LIKE my old grade school but inside it was more like a shopping mall. And my kindergarten crush was there, but he had a beard and a pet monkey. He asked me, 'Why are you wearing pajamas to school?' I looked down and realized he was right!! I was wearing one-piece footie Barney pajamas at school...so embarrassing! I tried to run away from him but it was like my feet were buried in wet cement. I couldn't move so I just stood there and cried. Then his monkey offered me a Kleenex." 

You can find pictures of ANYTHING on the internet. It fascinates me beyond words. 
Photo by Indiadee in Happy in Hampi

So I promise to leave out all the wonky bits and just cut to the point.

First, the back story:

The past few days, I've been dealing with some frustrating situations. These are not life and death problems; honestly, there have been no serious offenses and no big harm done. No need for apologies or heavy duty forgiveness.

The best way I can describe these situations is that they make me feel like someone is taking a giant piece of sandpaper and slowly, even somewhat gently, rubbing it over me. I'm irritated. I feel scratchy and annoyed and really fed up.

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Now here's where the dream comes in.


In my dream, I was talking to one of my sandpaper-y people. And sure enough, I was getting that scratchy, uncomfortable feeling that I have been suffering in real life. But in the dream, as I listened to this person, it slowly dawned on me that all the annoying and irritating words coming out of her mouth have also bounced around in my brain. Word for word. She was quoting my own thoughts, and in doing so, reminding me that I am no different from the people who annoy me.


Which means...I am annoying too.


Wow. Good solid slap across the face.


And when I woke up, I realized what I need to feel better. 

Grace. 

To me, grace is that tender quality of seeing the best in others and choosing to believe it, no matter what. It's that gentle, kind feeling that we all crave, that tells us that everything is going to be alright. 

But here is the slippery thing about grace: we all want it. But we can't get it. We can only give it.

In his fine book, Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner says it like this: 

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. there's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about you own birth.

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And this quote nails it too:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -Philo

I hunger for grace for my own life. 


And on this day before the movie premiere of The Hunger Games, I found myself thinking a lot about hunger. In this red hot book-turned-movie, hunger refers to the literal lack of food suffered by most citizens of the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem. Chosen teens, known as 'tributes' are selected from every food-deprived distitrict of the country, and forced to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. While this annual last-man-standing competition provides an extra measure of food for the victor's home district, it mostly serves to amuses the citizens of the capital and reminds everyone of who's in charge.  Our hero, young Katniss, boldly takes on the challenge and eventually satisfies her hunger for food as well as justice.

It's a really solid story. 

And while the word 'hunger' in the title may be a reference to our need for food, on this day, it reminded me over and over that in this life, we hunger for much more than food. 

We hunger for love.

We hunger for acceptance. 

We hunger, maybe most of all, for grace. 

But we can't reach out and take it. We can only offer it to others and trust that they will offer it back to us.


Amen.

On Apples, God and the Question of How Much Slices Change Things

"Hmm,but 0f what I kn0w between christian n islam is n0,we're n0t the same g0d, christian believe in 3 g0d n muslim is 0nly 1 allah/g0d.. S0, that's n0t the same kak diane:-)"

Well, now I was in a pickle, wasn't I. In the midst of a pleasant conversation with my Muslim friend, Spidey, about our shared love of the one true God/Allah, he had raised up the mysterious Christian concept of the Holy Trinity. 

This idea is central to Christian beliefs, but it's also notoriously difficult to grasp. It's challenging enough for adults to wrap their minds around the idea that God is three distinct persons in one, but I've also had the honor and bewildering problem of trying to explain this notion to children. After multiple goes and a lot of trial and error, I've hit upon the following metaphor which works about as well as anything. 

Imagine you have two red apples in front of you. They both look quite the same. 

Now imagine taking a knife and cutting one of those apples in half, from top to bottom. What you see now is still an apple, but it looks a bit different. Looking at this cut side of the apple, you can see the tiny edge of the red outer layer, and you can also see all the white crispy part. At the very center, you can see the seeds too.

Is this apple now three different things? No. It is one thing with three distinct parts.

Is it fundamentally different from an uncut apple? Nope - even though it's been cut in two, it's still an apple, just as it was before.

So. In simplest terms, Christians see God as a cut apple. Muslims see him as Allah, the uncut apple.

How much does one single slice change our God?

In my heart and in my mind, this is what I believe: an apple is an apple. Let's live in peace.

Of Father Abraham's Many Sons

Father Abraham had many sons

And many sons had Father Abraham
And I am one of them
And so are you
So let's all praise the Lord.


This cute little song has been rattling through my head lately. Coupled with a set of increasingly kooky body movements, it has captured the imagination of Christian Sunday School children for generations. Besides being a lot of crazy physical fun, it conveys a spiritual sense of "we're all in this together" that builds Christian brotherhood and sisterhood among baby believers. 


Which is good and proper.


But in truth, that song isn't just about Christians. 


Father Abraham's sons include the brotherhood and sisterhood of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We are all Father Abraham's children. 

Sacrifice of Isaac by his Father Abraham. Yikes.

That innocent little song reminds us that God's plan is for us to live in peace.


Yes, I know there are differences between these three faiths. Some are small, some are huge and seemingly insurmountable differences.  And generally speaking, our respective cultures reinforce those mutually exclusive differences and admonish its followers to remember that everyone cannot be right.


I acknowledge and respect those differences. And only God knows the truth about His plan for His creation.  But I'm much more interested in what brings us together. 


As Jew, Muslim or Christian, we all love the one and only true God, who goes by many names but cares for each of us with a deep abiding love, and has a plan for our salvation.


In response to that love, we all express our faith and share our lives with other believers by: 

• gathering together
• praising God
• reading sacred texts
• encouraging each other 
• praying together
• offering gifts
• fasting for deepened spirituality
• caring for the poor
• building community together.

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All three faiths love the same God.  The God of Abraham.

All three faiths believe in one true God. 
All three faiths trust in this loving, wise, constant God to guide us and help us live our lives according to His wisdom.


These common bonds matter to me.  Although I practice my Christian faith with a full heart, and understand God's love for us through the image of the cross, I appreciate the fact that had I been born to a different family, in another part of the world, I might be keeping kosher or wearing hijab at this very moment.  Accepting other people's way of expressing faith in our shared God does not mean I compromise my own principles;  it means that I am trying to love as God does.


So I choose to love all of Abraham's children. 
And I am one of them. And so are you. So let's all praise the Lord.  



{It's with a certain sense of irony that I offer this video of the Father Abraham song being sung by United States Marines. I'm not making a statement about Christian domination, military control over religion, or American colonialism. I just think it's a really fun version of the song.}

Of Identity Theft, Patterns of Grammatical Mistakes, and Prayer

Twenty four hours ago, I wrote this post and told you about how I recently met a man from Uganda on Facebook. In light of the recent public discourse about Joseph Kony and his crimes against the Ugandan people, I found this an amazing bit of synchronicity, and asked my new friend's permission to write about him and use his photo. He told me without hesitation to go ahead and use whatever I needed.

An hour ago, I received what I expected to be another typically friendly message from this same person. However, he had a big surprise for me:

excuse me mom,am sorry i dont knw you and i dont know who really invited you but it wasnt me at all but i think its been my cousin brother i work with here,i have to first confirm from him becouse i have been sick for two weeks and he is the one who knows my password for both email and facebook. [am sorry am not intrested in the people i dont know plus your stories at all, i cant even allow you to post my picture or to use it in any way even if your paying me i dont need ,but i shouldnt blame you,i should blame my cousin and if i confirm its him,i will give you his "facebook names" you ask him why he did it to me.

please mom,i cant even dare talk of politics and yet my foto is here and am not intrested in it personally [i dont know you at all ,i thinkits a revenge from my cousin brother of the girlfriend]


mom just help me you delete me out from your programs

• • 
    

So I was the victim of a vengeful cousin's prank? Hmm. Okay, I suppose it is always a possiblity that an online contact pretends to be someone who they are not. It makes one feel a bit gullible and overly trusting (why yes, I will admit to having those tendencies) but it's not that big of a deal. Whoever this person really might be, I deleted his photo and name from yesterday's post and went on with my evening. 

But my mind kept drifting back to the situation. And questions, one after the other, popped into my brain:

• Isn't it a little odd for a grown man to share his Facebook and email password with his cousin? 
• And even if he did, wouldn't it occur to him to change the passwords after he cheated with the cousin's girlfriend?
• Who is so sick that they don't even check their Facebook or email for two whole weeks?
• If this person really wanted to severe all ties to me, wouldn't it be easier to just delete me as a friend, delete the pic I posted from his photo album, and possibly even change his Facebook name? Why would he waste his time talking to me?
• If you were the angry cousin who wanted to get even for the stolen girlfriend, would you sign on to the evildoer's Facebook, add random people, and then strike up very respectful and pleasant conversations with at least one of these new friends? Seems like an odd way to extract revenge.
• Could I really have been so blind as to miss the cues of deception throughout not one or two, but four lengthy and fairly deep conversations with this person? It's not like me to misread a person so drastically.

As I pondered these questions, I remembered something else. In our last chat, after I posted the blog with his photo and name, our conversation had turned to some of the deeper issues of Joseph Kony's crimes and my friend turned markedly reticent. He asked that we move our conversation over to email, for fear that the Ugandan government may be tracking his communications.

In our email chat, he asked me several times to prove my identity, so he could be sure that he was talking to me, and not someone pretending to be me. 

He also asked me how he could be sure I was not a spy for the Ugandan government.

Remembering his guarded demeanor and suspicions about true identities gave me chills. Now I was really beginning to wonder what was going on. 

So, little criminologist that I am, I compared the spelling and grammatical style of the most recent messages to those I supposedly received from the "cousin brother." And here is what I found:

• Both persons type in all lower case letters.
• Both persons frequently use parenthetical inserts, but always use [brackets] instead of the more conventional (parentheses).
• Both persons consistently misspell the word 'because' as 'becouse.'
• Both persons use two incorrect spacing patterns with commas, either skipping spaces both before and after the comma, such as "excuse me mom,am sorry i dont knw you" or inserting a space before the comma and skippping the space that belongs after the comma, such as " i dont need ,but i shouldnt blame you."

Interesting.


Of course, none of this really proves anything. I certainly may have been duped by a friendly but revengeful cousin. 

But the more I think about it, the more I believe that I met a person who is afraid of what an innocent friendship with a talkative American might look like to his corrupt and restrictive government; who fears what they might do to him or his family; who trusts no one to be who they say they are.

That makes me really sad. All I can do at this point is pray for him. 

If you'd like to pray as well, I'd appreciate it.

Of Ugandans, Malaysians and the Importance of Watering Your Flowers

Invisible Children

Does it seem a little odd that within an hour after viewing the KONY 2012 video, which opened my heart and mind to the agony of the Ugandan people, I met a new friend on Facebook who happened to be from....Uganda?

{What is KONY 2012? Long story short, it's a film and campaign by a U.S. NGO called Invisible Children that aims to make Ugandan terrorist Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. Watch the 30 minute video here and read my blog post about it here.}

I don't have any other friends from Uganda. This man added me randomly a couple weeks ago. I added him back but we had never talked before. Since my Facebook wall was groaning under the weight of links, images and status updates about the KONY 2012 campaign, he began by asking me about my interest in Joseph Kony. When I explained how the video was going viral, and how my heart and mind had been opened to this tragedy, he seemed quite surprised and genuinely touched that people in America would care about people in Uganda.

Edit: Please refer to this post for an update on my Ugandan friend.

After our conversation ended, I fell deep into thought about the way Facebook has brought people from all over the world into my life, changing me and the way I see myself and the world. I thought, for the billionth time, about my Malaysian friends and how another chance meeting has taken my life down a path that I never dreamed of. And I wondered, as I often do, if there is a deeper purpose to my Malaysian connection,  or if this sort of thing is just a lovely serendipity of postmodern life.

This is Amy and Pjoe. They are from Malaysia and I met them on Facebook too. 

With my mind jumbled full of such thoughts, I decided to chill a bit by spending some time on Pinterest. Most evenings, I wind down by just randomly scrolling through feeds of interesting images, without any focused plan or goal in mind. But this time, within the first few minutes of my session, I suddenly felt an impulse to start a new board of all things floral. Although I love flowers in the garden, when it comes to design issues, I'm not really a 'floral' person. But for some reason, I was compelled, and in less than an hour's time, I had over 60 new pins of floral fabric, floral art, floral arrangements, floral cupcakes, floral furniture, floral clothing, floral DIY projects...you name it. Thoughts of my Ugandan and Malaysian friends were still floating through my head, but after filling my eyes with dozens of beautiful flower-y images, I felt calmed and grounded . I was ready to finish off the day by reading my favorite online daily devotion from the Upper Room.

Big Pop Floral I by Ricki Mountain

Verdant Acres by Anthropologie

Wallflowers from Mathews Family Happenings

Onesie dress from Barefoot in the Kitchen

Children's art from Multiples and More

So, does it seem weird to you that as I opened the devotion on my phone, the first word I saw was...  "Malaysia?" Backing up, I read the whole sentence:


"In East Malaysia, volunteers are currently working to develop an Iban language audio format of The Upper Room in an effort to make the devotional guide available for those who do not know how to read."


I felt a rush of wordless emotion that resurfaced all my ponderings about the connection I feel to this country, and the unformed idea that maybe, like these volunteers, I have something to contribute to the people there. Or maybe to the Ugandans. And maybe..no, quite possibly, they have important things to teach me in return.

And maybe I'm stretching here, but as I went on to read the main article of the devotion, the topic was...flowers. Yes, flowers. The author wrote about her patio full of flowers that droop and sag when unwatered, but grow full and lush when given a drink each day. She used this truth as a metaphor for our need for daily prayer, suggesting that our spirits needed the same daily 'watering' to thrive and grow.

Daily habits matter.

So let me recap:

• A Ugandan friend pops into my life just as the Kony story breaks wide open. 
• A report about volunteers in Malaysia echoes my thoughts about how I might be involved with that country.
• A sudden preoccupation with flowers is followed by a blog post that uses the image of flowers to underscore the need for daily prayer. 

Three striking coincidences drop into my life over the course of maybe three hours. Were these patterns the work of my overactive imagination, or maybe just the result of cosmic rolls of the dice?

Or was God once again using synchronicity to wake me up and show me something important.

I don't know. But he sure has got my attention.

Of Roots and Shadows

Roots by Elena Nazarro

If Lent is a time of returning to the roots of faith, and reminding ourselves of what we believe and why, then this post from my favorite faith blog gave me a perfect seasonal smack-upside-the-head. I'll link you to the original post here but it's so good that I want to put the words right in front of you:

JESUS RECEIVED, BLESSED, ate with, and even commended many of these sinners [tax collectors, the religiously unobservant, prostitutes, and other "obvious" sinners] against the “upstanding” of the day. He touched, healed, and raised many of the unclean. In sum, he was Light to those who dwelled in the shadows of societal isolation. He regarded those on society’s margins as persons and treated them as God’s own children. 

During Lent we may vow to identify and repent of the ways we have helped deepen the shadows — or just hidden our faces from those who dwell there. We may determine to search the dark corners of our families, workplaces, churches, and towns, in hopes of bringing light, revealing the faces of those easily ignored. We may seek ways to go to the margins to find some more of the ones he loved so much — and if we do, we may find Jesus there with them. 

If we make such courageous gestures we will be strengthened and guided by remembering the time and ways in which we ourselves, in dark and lonely times, were graciously sought and found by Jesus. His continual coming to us is our abiding invitation to be agents of his merciful seeking in the world. 

-Thomas R. Steagald
Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn

Love lives in shadows too. 

Here is what I take from this:

1. God loves the blatant sinners of this world just as much as anyone else. Maybe even more so.

2. He requires me not to reach out to them through pity or a smug sense of superiority that I am 'ministering" to them in their broken condition. He expects me to truly love and respect them as equals.

3. My efforts to be 'good' and 'holy' do not make me a better person in God's eyes. Quite the opposite. He wants me to stop drawing lines between 'good' and 'bad,' and simply love people.

4. I may not be a pimp or child molester, but I'm no angel myself. God comes to all sinners in their brokenness just as he comes to me in mine.

The roots of my faith remind me that I stand in the shadows too. My job, as always, is to love.

Of New Beginnings and Garden Hoses

Here we are, once again, at the beginning of Lent.

Well, technically, Lent started a few days ago, on Ash Wednesday. But I was busy with a family birthday so the day blew by me awfully quickly. This is the first Sunday of Lent so I will call it a good day to begin.

{If you're interested in facts, I'll remind you that the season of Lent is about 40 days long, measured in the weeks  before Easter. In the Lutheran church, where I roll, it's traditionally a time of reflection for believers who want to prepare their hearts for the joy of Easter.} 

{And Easter is the day when Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead to claim eternal life for himself and all who believe in him.}

Many Christians choose to give something up for Lent, like chocolate or Facebook, as a form of fasting or penitence. Nothing wrong with that.

But I like the idea of Lent as a time of digger deeper in my own heart and mind, to think about my faith and what God means to me. And to write about it here.

I hope you will follow along.

I have come to think of Lent as a series of images. And the first image is always water.

source

To me, water symbolizes life, survival, refreshment, cleansing, satisfaction, fresh starts, and since our bodies are mostly water, it symbolizes me. Only water can satisfy our physical thirst just as only God can satisfy our longing for love.

To Christians, water also symbolizes baptism. Baptism is the point at which we invite God into our hearts and our lives, not because we deserve him but because He already loves us. 

You know how sometimes you turn on a garden hose, and the water starts blasting out, and no matter which way you turn the faucet handle, you can't turn it off? I think of God's love as that same kind of uncontrollable, fast-flowing outpouring of goodness.

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Baptism is not what turns the hose on. God's love for you started flowing from the moment he formed you in your mother's womb. He has always loved you and will always love you, no matter what you do or don't do.

Baptism is the moment when you put your parched, aching mouth to that hose of free-flowing love from God and begin to drink.

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Of Youth and Chivalry

I am very fond of children. I love kids of all ages, from babies on up. I enjoy playing and talking with them, I marvel at what they share with me and I genuinely appreciate their company. To be honest, I think that children are often closer to God than the rest of us; maybe because they have so recently left heaven to come to earth, they remember more of him than those of us who have been here a while.

Rest on Flight to Egypt (detail) by Caravaggio, 1596-1597

So I sense a special joy when I am with little ones, but I also feel a certain responsibility to them, especially to adolescents, teens and emerging adults. Young people look to the established adults in their world not to boss them around but to gently guide them into their own adulthood. It's a very delicate thing to walk alongside these 12-and-ups and earn their trust so that they will let their walls down and speak to you about the truth of their lives. Yet I seem to find natural bonds with people of this age and I've been honored to earn their trust.

Of course, parents and other family members are naturally positioned to nurture their maturing children. That is unquestionably good and true. But at least in contemporary American culture, parents need back-up. The challenges of raising up a young person to maturity are so many, the risks so huge, and the nature of the parent-teen relationship is often so heated that it's very important for young people to have other adults in their lives as well.

Jacob Blessing the Children of Joseph by Rembrandt, 1656

After much consideration and some trial and error, I've come to the conclusion that the best place for these types of secondary relationships to spring is from within the church (or temple or mosque). I've been involved in youth ministry (translation: hanging out with teens and young adults and talking about faith) for quite a few years. And I've thought a lot about what exactly it is that we are trying to teach them. 

In a nutshell, I'd say that youth ministry is about guiding young people to live as children of God, secure in his love and eager to share that love with others.

That's easy to say, but it's a whole 'nother thing to make that statement tangible and real to a bunch of hormone-crazed, know-it-all teens.

unknown title by John William Waterhouse

For a number of years, I've been looking for a story, a metaphor, a simple set of images that can easily take up residence in a young person's brain and guide them through life's challenges, like the North Star or a beacon in a lighthouse.

Last November, I attended a high school youth event and heard a man named Pastor Dave speak. Too bad I don't recall his full name but I remember pretty much every other word he spoke. Because he laid out that story, that narrative that I had been seeking and I think he totally nailed it. I'll share it with you now.

{There were about 40 kids in a big empty hotel banquet room, along with Pastor Dave, a hulking, no-nonsense 30-something who looked and acted like a former linebacker. The kids had been running around the room for about a half hour, playing a variety of crazy games. With no fuss, Dave asked them to sit on the floor in a circle, girls on one side, boys on the other, and give him their undivided attention for ten minutes. Then he began to speak.}

"First," he said, "I want to speak to all the young women. Ladies, our culture is cruel to you. No matter how you look, or how you dress, or what you eat, or how much you weigh, it's never good enough. You are constantly judged by your outward appearance, and each and every one of you know how much it hurts when you are told that you don't measure up. You look in the mirror and you start to believe what our culture tells you. You doubt your own worth, and you lower your standards - with grades, with sports, with your friends, with guys, with your aspirations for the future -  because you stop believing in yourself.

"But I want to tell you what God sees when he looks at you. He sees a beautiful, perfect princess of God. He sees the kindness of your soul, the beauty of your spirit, the deep, tender feelings of love in your heart, and he cherishes you more than you can ever know. Remember, God is the king of all creation, so if you are his princess, then that means he is your father. And he loves you with all the tenderness and protection that a perfect father gives to his daughter. No matter what our culture tries to tell you, it doesn't matter. You are a holy, beautiful, cherished princess of God, your father the king, and he will treasure you and protect you and believe in your worth forever." 

Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez, 1656

{At this point, most of the girls were visibly shaken and wiping away tears. The emotion from their side of the room was tangible. The boys were stunned into silence.}

"Now, as for you men," he said, turning to face the boys, "our culture tells you that you are just a bunch of doofuses. All anyone expects of you is that you will play meaningless video games, watch sports, eat junk food to your heart's content, and then make some fart jokes. Watch PG-13 movies and the beer commercials during NFL games; they'll tell you that's what it takes to be a man. Act stupid, laze around with your buddies, get some laughs, sleep it off and start again the next day. And after a while, you'll look in the mirror and that is what you'll see - a goofy, unmotivated slacker who cares more for his own amusement and comfort than anything else. And you will stop believing that you are capable of being anything more.

"But that is not God's plan for your life. He created you to be his knight, to defend his honor and his majesty to the world. He has given you gifts of strength, courage, valor and cleverness and he asks - no, he expects - that you will use those gifts on his behalf, because he is your king. Notice that I have not called you a prince of God; that's because princes don't earn their relationship with the king, they are simply born to it. But you, great knights of God, you don't want anything handed to you. You accept your role as God's knight, and God the King grants you your knighthood, because you both know that you are worthy of that great task. 

"And by the way, God also expects you to honor, protect, and defend his daughters, the princesses. Unless your motivations to be close to them will meet with God's high standards for his priceless treasures, you had best respectfully keep your distance." 

Saint George and the Dragon by Raphael

As Pastor Dave finished speaking, the whole room was electrified. Even Pastor Dave, who had certainly given this talk many times before, was obviously touched. His voice shook, he wiped at his sweaty forehead, and he quickly moved us to a closing prayer. 

But I knew, looking at the faces of those kids, that this story of knights and princesses, of the chivalry of God, would stay in their hearts for a long, long time. It certainly has stayed in mine.