My word for 2024 is behold. It's a word that challenges me to take in as much beauty as possible, to put myself in the path of oncoming beauty as frequently as I can, with anticipation that each moment of beauty is only the beginning of the story.
It's based on God, and his frequent call in the bible for us to behold. Behold as an invitation to discover the beauty beyond the beauty. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid! For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: Today in the city of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord! And this will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”… Behold. As I prepare for the week ahead, I am struck that this time last weekend my the world was busy preparing for a solar eclipse. People were traveling across the country, arranging watch parties, scrambling to snag the last pairs of glasses. News channels racing to claim their spots in the path of totality. My world was preparing itself to behold something spectacular. And they did. It was a beautiful thing. Curt Thompson described what I witnessed eloquently. He said: "The eclipse, with its stunning display of cosmic alignment, served as a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural world. It transcended geographical boundaries and cultural differences, uniting people from all walks of life in a shared moment of wonder and awe. In witnessing this celestial spectacle, we were reminded of the inherent beauty that exists in moments of collective appreciation and unity." A collective appreciation and unity. A beholding. But here I am, not even six full days removed from the event, and it's gone. There is no more talking about it. No more pictures shared. It feels like the awe has faded into a distant memory. To be truthful, it doesn't feel like a memory at all. The eclipse and the unity it encouraged feels more like a moment now and not an invitation. It feels like something we watched together while missing the invitation into togetherness. Like many who observed the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, I wonder if we saw the beauty, but missed the sign? It is not too late. Life is constantly calling us into moments of collective appreciation and unity. We simply have to be more committed to holding on to the moments that we behold together. We have to imagine them as something larger than an eclipse, something more meaningful than a baby. We have to see the eclipse as ours. The ocean and the mountains and the streams as ours. We have to hear the birds as our birds and see the dolphins emerge from the ocean as our fish. We have to see the sun and the moon as our day and our night. Our. Because behold, that is what the eclipse was asking us to feel in accepting the invitation to experience total darkness in broad daylight. It was always something bigger than that. Behold, we are all in this together. It's only been six days. We still have time to hold on to what we beheld. We still have time to discover the beauty beyond the beauty. Unity. It's ours.
0 Comments
My prayer life has had several iterations over the years.
I was introduced to prayer as words we memorize and recite to God. I was always good at the memorizing and reciting. I'm not sure I ever got good at the 'to God' part, though. Then I went through a period of life where I hid from prayer, for fear God might actually show up in the middle of one. At some point prayer turned to save me. Not so much save me from my sins but save me from myself. Come to find out those two aren't really so different. I suppose prayer began its healthy iteration in my life when I was 42 years old. My firstborn was born with not much of a heartbeat. There was a lot of concern among the doctors he wouldn't stay born at all. I said to God, I have no idea what to say here, but I trust you know what needs to be said. Turns out that was quite biblical. Romans 8:26 says, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans (The Message). I was sure full of wordless sighs that day. Today, I'm better at putting words to my sighs. Not great, but better. I've come to realize I was never good at putting words to sighs with anyone, which makes it really difficult to do it with God. I think that stands in the way of a lot of us having a meaningful prayer life. We have a hard time sharing our feelings and emotions in the presence of one another, so we're really not well practiced at doing that in the presence of God. Or trusting that it's even a good idea. We don't often let out our most challenging insides, which makes it nearly impossible to lift them up. I've discovered that God doesn't much need me to lift them up. For me, I've come to feel, God's favorite prayer from me is "would you please just join me in this mess in my insides?" Turns out God isn't nearly as afraid of my hard stuff as I am. And over time he's good at making me less afraid of it. It's made it easier, to be honest, to invite others into the messiness of my life. Many days my writing here is prayer. It's me sitting here with God processing my life. With you. The words are never memorized before I pour them out. They rarely start with Dear God or end with Amen. But I do invite God into each moment I sit down here and write. Maybe it's God who adds amen. I don't know. But it does feel like the truest form of prayer I've ever experienced, this simple recognition of and leaning into God's presence. Into God's hug. It makes sense to me now. I mean, the greatest peace we can experience in life often comes from the peace we feel in the presence of another. Why would it be any different with the God who created us to find peace that way? In presence. If you run out of words to say to God today, or you don't have them quite memorized yet, maybe just simply say, thank you for being here God. Thank you for showing up. I don't think you'll have to say amen; I think God will have already said it. With a smile. In your presence. 4/8/2024 0 Comments April 08th, 2024Today's a big event. A total solar eclipse. They say the next widely visible event like this one won't occur until 2044.
Maybe I'll be here. Maybe I won't. Either way, the invitation to be a part of the one today is timely. So I think I'll accept it. An invitation? It is. At least to me. It's an amazing thing, this idea of a total solar eclipse. It's amazing because it makes me deeply wonder, how does the moon, 400 times smaller than the sun, ever stand a chance of blocking its all encompassing fire and flames and fury? How does something so big and so bright fall prey to the moon, who will momentarily send all in its path into darkness? It's the distance. This is possible because even though the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, the sun is also 400 times further away from us than the moon. It's blazing heat can often make it feel like it's closer than it is, but the reality is the sun is unimaginably far away. Unimaginable, that is, until the moon comes into the picture. Until the moon comes into the picture and reveals the power of proximity. This invitation I have today, it's from God. My God who wants me to know that some of the heat and stress I can feel under these days, most of those stressors feel so intense because I allow them to live much closer to me than they really need to be. Much closer to me than they really are. It's my God who wants me to know that it's me who sometimes turns away from the power and strength found in who is closest to me to focus on things distant that can feel like they are going to melt me into nothingness. This eclipse, it's an invitation from my God to see and feel the power of leaning into the relationships that are closest to me, to protect me from the things that at times can feel most destructive to me. The sun is 400 times bigger and 400,000 times brighter than the moon. Yet today, the moon will make both insignificant as it sends us into total darkness. How? Closeness. That's how. God is inviting me today to be reminded that the things that often feel the heaviest and most daunting and at times as if they can never be overcome, can indeed be overcome. If I will turn my attention to the one who is closest to me. The one who is closest to me and who will today draw the attention of millions to an invitation to be reminded of that. We often turn away from the one most interested in protecting and guiding us in life because he often feels so far away. Today I will be reminded that he is much closer than I think. And there is unimaginable power in closeness. Elliott taught me how to do long exposure photography yesterday. Well, actually, it's more transparent to say he taught me how to hit a button in the photos app on my iPhone.
Nonetheless, that button helped me create an amazing picture of a waterfall we found yesterday. So amazing, in fact, I had to do a little research to find out exactly what this long exposure photography is! Here is part of what I found, and most applicable to this photo: One of the primary reasons to use long exposure is to blur moving elements. This could be anything from waterfalls and rivers, which get a smooth, silky appearance, to clouds moving across the sky, which can create a dramatic and dynamic effect in the sky. As I reflected on that definition, and this image, I got to pondering how that effect might be useful in life. Blurring the moving objects to bring more intense focus to the still objects. To the stable and dependable and immovable objects in our lives. For me, prayer is like long exposure photography. It's that time in the morning when I sit and blur out all the noise in my life to bring focus to God. It's when I leave the lens of my life open long enough to let all the noise fade so that I can clearly see and feel and hear God sitting right there next to me. Right there next to me where he always is, but where I quite frequently lose sight of him while paying attention to all the moving objects in my life. The rushing water in a waterfall picture is beautiful. It can be mesmerizing. But the water in the image is fleeting. It's here and then quickly gone. But the rocks, the rocks never leave. Rain or snow or shine or flood or drought, the rocks remain. It's easy to lose sight of that when mesmerized by the water. Life is full of moving parts. Life is full of things that are here today and gone tomorrow. Life is full of things we can enjoy but not fully depend on. The key in life is to find your rock. To know where to stand in the midst of the swift and moving parts so as to never get swept away. The key is to every once in awhile hit that long exposure button. Hit it and have revealed for you in majestic ways, the Rock. The Rock, it's not trick photography, just a way of using photography to reveal the immovable parts in our life. Sort of like prayer. When Jesus was arrested, his disciples fled in fear for their lives. In fact, much of their time doing ministry with Jesus up to that point was marked by fear and uncertainty.
The resurrection changed them, though. The resurrection transformed them from fearful followers to bold proclaimers. After Jesus rose from the dead, he immediately visited his disciples. During that visit, the disciples inherited a newfound boldness. A boldness that would put their lives at greater risk than they'd ever been before. And yet, the disciples marched on, fearlessly. The resurrection transformed them from a group of disheartened followers into a group that would go on to be the foundational leaders of the Christian Church. Jesus delivered us many messages through his resurrection. Among them: The story is never over. I am who I have said I am. Today, you can all claim the promise to live with me in eternity. Those are all powerful messages. But maybe another powerful one, at least as powerful as those, is I have left an empty tomb behind for you all to go bury your fears in. Forever. The bible tells us, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. Too often, though, we dispute that claim when we feel fear. But what if our fear isn't a reflection of the spirit, but more of our unwillingness to exercise the power to bury our fears in the empty tomb? Did Jesus rise from the dead to send us a message that all is good now, or to help us understand that no matter how bad things get, there is no longer anything to fear? And this new new church the disciples went to building, is its foundation built on a place to go to escape fears, or to discover that we've never had anything to fear all along? I love that Easter offers me the promise of eternal life. I love that the promise comes from a man who went to great lengths, including death, to prove that he breaks no promises. I also know this. I'm surrounded by people in this world who can't begin to grab hold of a promise of eternal life when they are constantly fighting to find any source of life in THIS life. People who can't afford to have me walking around disheartened or uncertain or fearful about my own life. And I'm constantly feeling Jesus urge me, I can't afford to have you doing that either. It's why he left the tomb. It's why he left the stone quite visibly rolled away in front of it. Yes, so I'd know he left it like he said he would. Yes, so I'd know the tomb is a once upon a time story and not the end. But also yes, so I'd know the tomb is empty now but I'm not supposed to leave it that way. I'm to go there. Unload my fears. And roll that stone back in place so they never escape again. The resurrection transformed the disciples lives from fear and uncertainly to boldness. The resurrection offers me the same transformation. In fact, I think it demands it of me. Easter Sunday is a great day to visit the tomb. To be reminded of what walked out, and to be encouraged to leave something there in his place. In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion, his followers went into hiding. Many hid in fear of the rulers who'd just killed Jesus; others hid to be alone with the grief of losing the one they'd come to follow and deeply love.
Even though Jesus told them many times that he was going to rise from the dead, his followers either didn't get what he was saying, or they did and didn't believe it, but none of them were counting the moments until Jesus would reappear. They were all waiting, they just had no idea what they were waiting for, or maybe they didn't know they were waiting at all. Can any of us relate to that? Have any of us experienced an upending life event that leaves us feeling suddenly lost? We feel like we're waiting on something, maybe, but we just have no idea what it is. Well, we Christians, we DO know. We know that God comes through on his promise over and over again to work all things to the good of those he has called, to the good of those who love him. Sometimes we know exactly what we're waiting on. Sometimes we've been told of the beauty we can expect, like the disciples, but we don't believe it. And sometimes we have no idea what we're waiting on other than a general promise for goodness. Waiting is hard, but maybe it's only hard because we don't trust those truths in the waiting. We don't fully believe what we've been told; good will rise again in our lives. I don't know about you, but it is indeed the pattern of my life. Death and resurrection. Death and resurrection. It's why the Easter story is so easy for me to believe. To cling to. I confess, it's taken me a lot of Easters to get to this point in my faith. It's taken a lot of crucifixions in my life to fully come to trust that the stone will roll away, once again, and that beauty will once again emerge. How many times is God really willing to keep rolling away stones? But here I am again, in a Saturday of waiting, but the waiting is no longer hard. It's not, because I know. I know beyond a doubt that beauty will rise again. It always has. It always does. It always will. God never tires of rolling away stones. Life changed for the disciples when they discovered that empty tomb. It changed when Jesus showed up and made goodness out of fear and grief. It changed when the disciples discovered the beauty in the waiting. It changed how they lived; it changed what they shared with others. I want to share something with you. If you are in a period of waiting, knowing or unknowing, you can trust that beauty is on the way. The story of my life assures me of that in a way that I can confidently offer that assurance to you. The story of Easter assures me of that; Jesus died and rose to assure all of us of that. We are waiting, but waiting can be a beautiful thing. If you don't believe me, just wait until tomorrow. You'll see. You'll see Easter once again. To me, it's the most incomprehensibly loving conversation ever.
Jesus, the savior of the world, a man who'd spent his entire life healing and offering love and light on one side, and next to him a bandit, a man who had spent most of his life plundering victims, leaving behind a shadow of darkness everywhere he went. Two men, hanging side by side on crosses, both of them fighting for their last breaths, yet both willing to expend a portion of those breaths for one of the most loving conversations in history. For Jesus, it was the last of many he'd experienced in his life to this point. For the bandit, maybe it was the only loving conversation of his life? As Jesus is dying on the cross, the crowds are mocking him. The bandit and his criminal friend on the other side of Jesus are among the mockers. Maybe Jesus hears them loudest. But the bandit is the one among all of the mockers who stops and reverses course. Why? Why does he reverse course? I have no idea, really. Maybe he heard Jesus publicly ask God to forgive all of his killers and mockers. Maybe he saw the inscription above the cross declaring Jesus the king of Jews. Maybe he was simply overwhelmed by the humble innocence of a man dying between two notoriously loud mouth and evil criminals. I have no idea why, but the bandit did reverse course, he told his criminal friend to shut up, and then said to Jesus, "remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus replied, "I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise." Those are three powerful words in Jesus' response: I assure you. Are there three more loving words than: I assure you? Remember, this is a dying man fighting for the strength to offer any word at all. Yet, instead of simply saying you will be with me, he adds, I assure you. I think Jesus knew just how hard it would be for the bandit to believe anyone could ever love him. Especially the king. Maybe a simple king would have said, you will be with me. But it was the friend in Jesus, his loving nature, his empathetic heart, the savior that said, I assure you. For many, the cross signifies an answer: yes, death can be overcome. But maybe Jesus was also using the cross to ask me a question? Can you be a friend to the broken? Can you turn to the lost and the hurting and the incarcerated and those who may be mocking you at every turn. Can you turn to them when they come looking for hope, and point them to it? Can you be it? Can you climb up on a cross to be close enough to the broken for the simple chance to inspire the desire within them to reverse course? Was the most loving part of Jesus' conversation the lengths he was willing to go to have it? Was the conversation between Jesus and the bandit an answer to the bandit's prayer, yet at the same time an invitation for me to say one? Jesus was born among animals and died among criminals. In between he was always a friend of the broken. Am I? Good Friday opens the door to the greatest answer in this Christian's life beyond this world. But maybe Good Friday is also asking this Christian some very important questions about my life in this world. Good Friday answers a very important question about death. Maybe as important, though, it's inviting me to explore how I'm doing my living. I'm leading an experience this week during which we spend a lot of time processing the impacts of our pasts. For many, those pasts include regrets.
It wasn't lost on me yesterday that in the context of this Holy Week, yesterday marks one of the more heartbreaking regrets in human history. For yesterday, a couple of thousand years ago, Judas made an arrangement with the high priests to betray Jesus. A betrayal that ultimately led to Christ being crucified. But the bible tells us that shortly after that arrangement: Judas, the one who betrayed him, realized that Jesus was doomed. Overcome with remorse, he gave back the thirty silver coins to the high priests, saying, “I’ve sinned. I’ve betrayed an innocent man.” They said, “What do we care? That’s your problem!” Judas threw the silver coins into the Temple and left. Then he went out and hung himself. Yesterday, listening to others wrestle with some of the experiences of their past, I found my heart breaking for Judas. Because yesterday, as strongly as ever, I realized betrayal is never as simple as an evil act carried out in hatred or disregard for the people in our lives. Sometimes, betrayal involves confusion and wrestling with the unresolved stories of our pasts that sadly play out in dark ways toward people we actually love. It's often assumed that Judas loved Jesus less than the other disciples because he was the one who betrayed him and sent him to his death. Is it possible that Judas loved Jesus just as much as the other disciples - or more - but never quite understood it until looking at him through the dark shadows of betrayal? Does a man go off and hang himself because he simply made a choice he regrets. Or was that regret compounded by other challenging stories of his past. And was it intensified by a deep love for that man? I don't know, but I do wonder. What I do know is we can sometimes beat each other up for choices we make in life without ever knowing the stories beneath the choices. Knowing those stories doesn't make harmful choices less harmful but knowing them does open our hearts up to understanding. And compassion. Maybe even more destructive - we beat ourselves up over our choices without ever exploring the stories beneath them. Knowing those stories doesn't make our choices less destructive but knowing them opens us up to showing ourselves compassion. And grace. I feel incredibly blessed to spend time with folks walking them toward compassion for others and grace for themselves. I feel incredibly blessed that in that walk, I myself walk too. I walk toward grace. I walk toward healing. My heart breaks for people like Judas for whom the wrestling becomes too much. Because it doesn't have to be. Not ever. There are alternatives. Compassion. Grace. Healing. In a world often consumed with status, we Christians often overlook one of the greatest status symbols of all: a donkey.
Today, Palm Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week. The day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on his way to the cross. The cross that put him into the tomb he would walk out of on Easter Sunday. The Easter miracle that has become the foundation for our faith. But when it comes to the foundation of our faith, maybe we shouldn't so swiftly rush from Palm Sunday to Easter. Maybe we shouldn't focus so intently on the cross and the rolled away stone before spending some time reflecting on the donkey. For just as the scriptures predicted, Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Many in the crowds waiting on the arrival of the savior who would set them free from Roman oppression would have expected to see a king coming to town on a horse. The horse in those days was more typically associated with war and conquest far more than a donkey. But contrary to what many expected, Jesus wasn't coming into town to overthrow a worldly kingdom, Jesus was riding into town to introduce heavenly peace. A peace, that if you follow the story of Jesus, always starts with humility. It always starts with a donkey. By riding into town on a donkey, Jesus was telling the world that he is here for everyone, not just the elite and the powerful. By choosing to ride on a lowly donkey Jesus rejected pride and power and status. By riding into town on a donkey, without saying a word, Jesus made one of his finals sermons a message on inclusion. He wasn't there to save just those being oppressed by the Romans, he was there to save all who are oppressed. By riding into town on a donkey, Jesus demonstrated that Christian leadership and authority are rooted in service and humility, not domination and extravagance. By riding into town on a donkey, Jesus let us know he was here to fill the role of a spiritual king and not just another worldly leader who would soon come and go like all the others. By riding into town on a donkey, Jesus was inviting us to peacefully and humbly follow him to the cross and to the grave and to eternal life. Follow him, that is, on a donkey. Follow him by ditching our need for status symbols and embrace lives of simplicity and humility. Follow him by persistently proclaiming Jesus as a peaceful king for all people and not just a chosen few. Follow him by knowing our faith isn't something that comes to life when we rise from the grave, it's something that comes to life every single day when we live out the example of the king on a donkey. Humble. Peaceful. Accepting. Serving. Our graves, no matter how we get to them or rise from them, will do very little to point others to a more hopeful life. How we ride to our graves, on the other hand, has the potential to change people's lives in beautiful ways. I encourage us all to follow Jesus' example as he journeyed to his grave on Palm Sunday. I encourage us to do it on a donkey. I heard a pastor say something this week that has had me reflecting on the idea of evil.
Mark Moore said, "there's a lot of evil when bad people do bad things, but I wonder if there's even more evil when good people don't do good things?" The first thing his statement got me wondering was - what is evil? So, I asked my trustworthy AI friend that very question. What is evil? And AI said, "in everyday language, "evil" is often used to describe actions, intentions, or situations that result in harm, suffering, or injustice, particularly those that arise from malevolence or deliberate wrongdoing." That definition confirmed what I was pretty sure of. In our culture, evil is predominantly associated with people doing harmful things. The definition made me wonder even deeper, though. Can I cause harm and suffering and injustice by NOT doing something good? If an evil man is the one who does the bad he is clearly capable of doing to harm someone, am I an evil man for not doing the good I am clearly capable of doing to ease someone's harm? How big, really, is the gap on the evil scale between intentionally causing harm and intentionally neglecting an opportunity to ease harm? So much of our society, when it comes to evil, is built on addressing the bad things people do. We arrest them. We write headlines about them. We revoke their right to vote, among other privileges. We kick them out of school and out of jobs and even out of churches. In many ways, we are all in on accepting and addressing evil as the bad things people do. What if there was any remotely similar pressure on the people capable of doing good to do good. Which, by the way, is all of us. We are ALL capable of doing both good and bad. It's just in the culturally accepted context of evil, good is simply not doing bad. But what if evil was not doing good? What if I was arrested for eating at a fancy restaurant without paying a lick of attention to the homeless person I walked by on the way in? What if in the newspaper article about my latest offense, my rap sheet included all the times I could have helped someone in distress but didn't do it? What if that same didn't-do-good rap sheet prevented me from applying for certain jobs? What if I live my life never harming a soul in an evil way, but also never help the many thousands I could have? Does that make me anything like a serial killer? I don't know is the answer to all of that. I'm not suggesting anything as a result of all my thinking out loud thoughts. And in the grand scheme of things, I'm not even wondering about our world so much. But I am wondering more this week about God's view of evil. I am wondering when I get my chance to stand before God if he's going to be more interested in the horrible things I could have done and didn't do, or if he's going to be more heartbroken about all the beautiful things I could have done but simply chose not to. I am thinking about his son, Jesus. The stories we Christians tell about him as we hold him up as a model. Almost none of those stories are about the horrible things Jesus could have done to others but somehow resisted doing. To the contrary, the stories we tell of Jesus are about all the horrific things people were suffering that Jesus couldn't resist helping them through. I guess my takeaway is I want to keep becoming more and more aware of the good I am capable of. I want to be more and more grateful for the gifts I've been given and use them to heal as many people as possible who are hurting. And for me personally, I do want to consider more strongly that it's possible not doing so is in its own way evil. There's a lot of pressure in this world to refrain from evil. For me, I just don't want it to look like refraining from doing the good I'm capable of doing. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |