A Holy Waste of Time...

I grew up in a small town in Ireland

and I had never before seen people

treat each other the way they did…

My friend asked me today how I was doing with my social media “fast” and I was quick to point out that it was not a fast, but a change in lifestyle…. but really it has ties to what is understood as a fast in the Church.

We are called to fast from things that get between us and our intimacy with The Trinity. In this sense I abandoned the digital life because the digital life is not neutral.

Another of my friends pointed this out to me yesterday… “this thing” he said as he placed his phone down on the table between us, “has only one purpose and that it to direct your attention”

So I have found that my attention is not as dull as it was. This should not surprise me. My mind is detoxing from information overload. There is actually a chemical change in my brain right now. Pretty cool.

So what am I doing with this heightened awareness and extra time? I am practicing the Presence of God in the present time and it is as refreshing as sweet cold watermelon on a hot summer’s day.

So as I walked into the building to hold the monthly service an incredibly delightful and light-full man met me and began to share his most amazing story of coming to America alone at 19, and soon after that heading the call the Uncle Sam needed him!

“So, here I was, as lad from a small village in Ireland who had never seen the world before, and off I go to Texas to be trained in the Artillery! Well, we were right on the border of Mexico there, so I went with a group of lads and I’ll tell you, my eyes were opened. I had never seen people treated so poorly because of the color of their skin.”….

and he shared more and more until I had to excuse myself to start the service…”Oh, that’s where I was headed!” and he let me go first, and he helped me set the table… all of 90 plus years old… and I was beaming with joy when his booklet dropped and I was able to get on my knees to pick it up for him

There are no wards of the state in heaven

I’ve been a ward of the state my whole life…

Here pastor, it’s all I can giver now…

I hadn’t seen my friend in months. I was hoping he was still alive..no one had seen him. He has had several bought of mental incidences that have placed him in facilities as an inpatient. I had been praying for this to be the case… and it was…

Where ya been? I’m so glad to see you!

I’ve been out of commission…

(that’s a way of him saying I had another episode and was in a facility getting help)

He joined us with his typical zeal for Jesus. He loves God deeply, so deeply in fact that nothing has been able to kill it yet. As we were wrapping up the day I noticed him sitting on the steps with his head in his hands. I had left him alone thinking he was in prayer but when he lifted his eyes they were rimmed with tears about to release.

Pastor, there are no medications in heaven, right? You don’t understand, I’ve been a ward of the state my whole life. It’s really hard and I’m tired….

One of our regular ladies who battles her own demons (literally) kept telling him to take his thoughts captive and rebuke the lies and speak Scripture into his mind…which is true… but at that moment my friend simply need to hear that his life does suck compared to others and that his pain and frustrations is real… and that on The New Earth he will not be a ward of the state, but will be seated at The Table with Jesus…

God sees our pain and keeps our tears in a bottle. So I reminded him…

our lives are hard, harder than others. Some of us are asked to show others how to hang on and endure in this world. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. We are here with you.

These are my people whom I love, whom God loves all the more.

Jesus Changes Everything

follow me

“…and they just picked up and moved to the next ridge 

and started digging…”

I was serving at a church in Connecticut for my field placement while in seminary. They hosted a man by the name of John Cutts who grew up the son of the first missionary to translate the Bible into one of the Moni, one of the 800 spoken languages in Oceania. His father had a degenerative disease that in the end left him with only one usable finger to complete the transcript… which he did.

The peoples gave him a name that translated to “weak thing”. Have you ever heard of a name so perfect for a disciple of Jesus?

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

John went on to share the story of completing a “test landing” on one of the many ridges in the land in an attempt to establish a medical outpost. The tribe had spent years digging out and flattening the area with their primitive stone and wood tools. When the pilot landed they all cheered wildly and then he gave them the news that the strip was too short for a landing with a plane full of supplies and that it would have to be restarted just a few yards away….

They picked up their tools, moved to the new spot and began digging.

Dumfounded, the pilot could not keep silent and asked them why they did not utter one word of complaint…

… if we do not build the strip the plane cannot land.

If the plan cannot land, we cannot take the medicines up the river to the next tribe in our canoes.

If we do not get they medicine to them, they will die without ever hearing about Jesus”….

… in disbelief the people replied that it would take years to make the new strip.

…if I die before it is completed, my children will continue digging… and he went back to work.

This dedication is not only for tribes in the jungle but for every follower of Jesus…. the West just is not willing to pay the cost…. and like the rich young man whom Jesus called out to Give up everything too… he went away empty… without salvation.

Your whole life must be given to Love.

If not, that person’s life before God adds up to zero.”

Gordon Fee

To this end, I have picked up my tools and walked away from the High Place of social media. I will only be writing here, in hopes that together, you and I aided by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, will be transformed by His power into the image of our beloved Lord who picked up a cross so that He might dig up our graves by his death

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Dawn Chorus

There is a phenomena with birds known as “the dawn chorus”…

They say it happens for a variety of reasons; singing warms the birds after a cold night, the air is still and thus mating songs travel father, the songs are territorial defense claims against other male birds…

Of course every theory is theory and only God knows fully why he did what he did….

I like to think that they are rising in the morning and simply singing out of joy and praise and thanksgiving. Maybe I am reading my life into them, but I have had many times in my life when I have come out of the dark night of the soul and burst into thanksgiving.

America’s “Star Spangled Banner” was such a bird song….

Our praise is proof through the night that we are still “there”. The Bible uses the phrase “the fourth watch” for this hour and it was the hardest watch after a long night and the most joyous because the people had survived the terrors of another night…

I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,

more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Psalm 130:6

What are you singing praises too?

“Gideon crept up just as a man was telling his companion about a dream. The man said, “I had this dream, and in my dream a loaf of barley bread came tumbling down into the Midianite camp. It hit a tent, turned it over, and knocked it flat!”

Judges 7:13

God is so very kind…. at one point in his life Gideon had. vast army, too big, so God took away his earthly power so that His (God’s) power could be manifested. But God knew Gideon’s heart, and gave him a gift to speak into his fears. A large loaf of bread…

Not more soldiers, but a manifestation into the dreams of Gideon’s enemies of a larger loaf of bread rolling through the camp and crushing them… and they were afraid, not of Gideon, but of God.

I need assurance of God’s protection in these uncertain times. I am growing weary of change honestly. I grew up not knowing what was going to happen and it seems to have continued. This is a time to trust, but it’s ok to ask for signs of provision. That is not a show of lack of faith, it is a testimony of our weak humanity and belief that God can save.

Today, I am asking for visions of bread… I can smell it, can you?

Will you find me here, Jesus?

I remember the first time I took my meds for depression. I was worried about so much with them, mainly that I would no longer be me… and that God would not be able to find “me” behind the “medicated me”…

So I prayed over them as I had taught so many others to do before they take their meds… but this, this was different. This was me and my meds.

Anti-depressants take awhile to build up yet many say there is a placebo effect when you begin your journey to healing.

I will go to my grave saying that God answered my prayer that day.

We went to church, and I remember sitting there when tears slowly came to eyes as I felt the presence of God. I whispered “you found me like you promised” to the air.

Why am I talking about my meds? Because I believe God will find behind the shadows. His intentions will be fulfilled less “without me” than within me.

This is the “dark night of the soul”, the place where evangelical sorts forgot to read the entire poem. It is the hidden place of intimate love. This is where I am going, where we are all called to go

“I continued in oblivion lost, My head was resting on my love;

Lost to all things and myself, And, amid the lilies forgotten,

Threw all my cares away.”

Dark Night of the Soul

St John of the Cross

negotiating the times

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

Matthew 5:19-21

The best laid plans of mice and men will never best silence and humility before the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the wold. The foolish things, He said, will shame the wise and cause the men to stumble.

Be still….

This is the place where God can finally speak to dis-intigration in our lives, the Deep State of our relationship to God… the only state that matters.

Here is where The Holy Spirit can reveal the “why”…. why do we bite and devour one another, why do these demons not come out, whey do I do the things I don’t want to do when I want to do the good…

Why to you tarry Lord? … So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.” Zach 4:6

praying old prayers from a warming shelter cot

I lie on my cot at night, and before I fall asleep I think about what I said and thought and to who.

I”m amazed at times of the things that came out of me! ME!

I ask God to show me where I messed up and ask for forgiveness

My friend shared these words with me as I was dropping him off at a warming shelter to spend yet another night there while he waits for an apartment to become available to him. I was taken back by his wording and had to repent that I was surprised that the Holy Spirit would gift this former addict and gang member the desire and verbiage to discuss the Ignatius practice of the Self-Examen.

We can profess all we want until the cows come home that we believe God can and does interact with, and speak through and to every condition of people. Yet, until that person is ridding shotgun in your truck, you really aren’t going to believe it…

Each night he lies on a cot in a room he is sharing with active crack addict. He closes his eyes to the ugly, and stops his ears to the lies and on a borrowed pillow enters into a deep and peaceful communion with the Lord God and asks him some simple and profound questions.

Those of us in recovery recognize that this is taking an assessment of our day and making amends with it, but for me and my friend it is more than that… God is meeting him in the Here and Now for There and Not Yet.

I am seeing a physical and emotional change in him, and it is transforming me too.

To the ends of the earth...

This past week I went with my wife to a Living Hope Deaf Church.

I love worshipping in a culture that is not my own. I love not fully understanding the language or the culture even though I have been around deafness for almost twenty five years.

Deaf culture is very nuanced and you can’t simply just walk into it. My friend who was preaching the day had befriended a deaf coworker many years ago and took it to heart to learn how to sign. He was the only person who ever learned to sign to him in all the twenty years he worked there.

This visit I was trying to be sensitive but I was amazed with these two… a deaf and blind man being told the sermon via another church member who was signing into his hand.

How badly this man wanted the word of God… oh, for his hunger!

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God?

Psalm 42:1-2

under my skin

I was reading Psalm 1 today while I strolled through the fall woods with my dog this morning…

It’s a psalm of “orientation”, and placed where it is at the beginning of the whole collection of psalms it serves let the reader know that an intimacy with God is attained when He becomes the object at the center of your thoughts and desires….

“But his (our) delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” (ps 1:2)… so I asked the Lord for wisdom here, did he mean Torah, the first five Books of Moses, or torah, the keeping of the law?… and it seemed to me we are called to what Torah and torah are to accomplish… the integration of the will and actions to God.

…and He showed me a tree as I thought, a very large tree, that had been destroyed by some very small beetles that had eaten through the bark…

When we meditate (think about) God day and night, he becomes our lens, and our hearts (interior life) is protected…. the only way into the human heart is to allow things to enter…

and the more we think about God, he honors the intentionality my showing us more and more. He is good like that.

Vision Correction

God changed my Dream-Vision...

... for many years I would close my eyes and see a vision of an ink line drawing of a bird sitting on a wire above a city scape...old-school antenna poking up above rooftops.

Then muffled words would float up, and the bird would cock it's head like a robin listening for worms. He would bounce three times and then tuck it's wings in like a falcon racing towards the noise.

As it got closer to the ground, the blurred words came into focus, and faces began to appear, twisted, with mouths open...and the muffled call became a clear plea for help. As the very last moment, wings would open and a rush of wind would explode from silent feathers and the cries for help would turn to shouts of praise and the black and white canvas would erupt in color.

I used to think that bird was "the church"... but as I awoke today I finally started to see I perhaps I believed it was me, not in a boastful, imperialistic, "mighty-whitey-savior" way...

but it was me in my own power rushing into the pain and suffering I grew up with and saw all around me. Broken families, addiction, anger, violence, weapons of hate, sadness, isolation.

When Jesus claimed my life, I had a bucket of Living Water that I would try and throw on the raging wildfires around me..and my bucket ran dry and I found a hole in my bucket and my ax was too dull, dear Liza, dear Liza... and I could not cut the straw to mend the hole the bucket... so the fire almost burned killed me.

So I sat down beside the waters of Babylon and tried to sing songs of heaven in this foreign land and I heard Jesus singing over me...

...and I am a happy man that my bucket has a Holy Thorn prick and I am convinced it came from The King's Crown as He held me tight.

and now, each week, I simply drive a rented van to a place that has welcomed me as a friend. They wait for me to pull up and then walk over and we take our little boxes out of the van and build a Kingdom that has no walls where Jesus presides over-and-with-us and we worship and eat and cloth each other.

Yesterday I got to watch mom's with kids in their arms and wrapped around their legs hand the Bread of Life to beaming faces, smiley face stickers placed on street-worn jackets produced hymns of laughter and thanks, folks living with section 8 caring for those still waiting...

I preached on the Eucharist..."thanksgiving" as it is translated... and we all came to the Table together and busted out in praise.

I don't mind waiting, take your time

“I don’t mind waiting, take all the time you need….”

Whenever I say that to folks who are helping me anywhere there is always an exhale, a look-up-and-smile, and lifted eyebrows. It’s very uncommon to not be in a rush.

“I’m not the typical American. I’ve done lots of work in many places where it’s a miracle if you get three things done in a day….then we start talking. Like today…

I went in to get new glasses today and I asked the woman helping me about her name.

“It’s Polish” she told me, “I was born in Poland” So I gossiped about my trips to Warsaw working with Ukrainian refugees, and my trip inside Ukraine, and the bomb craters and machine gun trenches and the people and the air raids sirens.

Then I took out my phone and showed her a picture of me and a giant pirogue and both cracked up, then it got solemn again, and we spoke of Jesus and the church and that God is the only hope for the Nations.

Next I rambled off to Costco to give them our money for a couple of thousand hand and toe warmers we will be giving out to our friends downtown this winter… “boy, you sure are planning on a cold winter”…

No, I replied, and started to share with a man who was in the Farmington Fire Department. And I spun tales of people we’ve met and healings we’ve seen and the God-who-saves orchestrating in all.

no, I don’t mind waiting. no, I don’t mind you asking questions. I will gossip about my Jesus anywhere

“I don’t mind waiting, take all the time you need….”

gossiping about Jesus

here is the space I am landing for now… thanks for finding me…and us.

I often hear “we will miss your posts or we will miss you voice. I am not dead, I have just left the room. It’s not you, really, it’s me.

There are too many competing voices in the world, and for a guy like me it’s really difficult at times to be still but I am at a place now where I value stillness and the Voice of The Lamb over all things.

I pray you will join me here, far from the maddening crowd and the echo chamber… or the whirlwind, the fire, and the earthquake….

I’ll be sharing my thoughts and insights and by God’s grace I pray they speak to you.

Removing logs

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' while the log is in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,

and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." (Matthew 7:3-5).

…yesterday I spent a bunch of hours in First Aid training as part of my volunteer work for the town where I live. I’ve been through some very advanced training back in the day so much of it was review but the Holy Spirit was speaking around the instructor…

When you are dealing with a puncture wound and the object is sill embedded in the patient, don’t attempt to remove it as that may cause more damage. Pack around the wound, the object, and transport to ALS (advanced life support)

Jesus isn’t telling us to just yank the sin out of our lives… it will simply come back. He is asking us to listen to his diagnosis…we are blinded by our our ambition and addiction to “being right”..

Come to me, he says, and show me my our wounds. Don’t be afraid, look, here are mine… when we confess our logs John tells us in his first letter (1 John 1:8-9) the Great Ophthalmologist can remove them.

..so that we can see clearly not “their faults” but who God really is and who we really are…

You can’t see how beautiful God is when you have logs in your eye, nor the image and struggles of the one in front of you… God is more concerned in our blindness…do you see?

clearly that we have a bigger problem than the person are judging, that we are blind and cannot see even our own faults, that we cannot take the log out of ourselves.

As part of my own logging, I’m shifting out of social media onto this forum… I get too distracted by specks.