6/30/2020 0 Comments JuneteenthWell today's run is in the middle of a weather delay. I will run in virtually anything here in virtual Tennessee - but not real lightning.
In run part 1, I spent some time pondering this Juneteenth holiday that's allowed me to have this day off and spend some time running. In many ways, this holiday is very symbolic of the struggles of black people in America. Juneteenth recognizes the day Union soldiers arrived in Texas to let slaves there know they were free. Mind you - this was 2 1/2 years AFTER slavery had ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. In a very real way, for slaves in Texas, slavery had been over - but not really. And for many black people today, slavery is over, but not really. I do a lot of work in trauma. There are two types of trauma. The trauma associated with bad things that happen to people that make it hard for them to have a good life. And the trauma associated with people not getting enough of the good things they need in life to have a good life. Running today, it occurred to me that slavery was that first kind of trauma. A really bad thing happening to people for years that made it impossible for them to have a good life. I think many times we think, hey, slavery is over, so why aren't we all just moving on? Well, it's that second kind of trauma. It's that Juneteenth trauma. The trauma associated with slavery being over but the impacts of it lingering and keeping black people from many of the good things they need to have a good life. I think sometimes we forget how long it took for blacks to be allowed to attend college or to vote or to sit where they want on a bus or to go to the bathroom where they want - even though slavery had ended. Many black people still have to fight for those things. For runners, just imagine everyone having a 5k head start in every 10k race you run...... I think I and maybe we have been prone to minimizing the impact that the head start white people got in life has had on black peoples' opportunities to have the kind of jobs I've had, and the healthcare I've had, and the neighborhoods I've been able to live in. That impact is a deep and generational trauma in many ways. The question is how many more generations? One of the challenges black people faced in Texas with the arrival of Juneteenth was where do we go now - there was no such thing as a black community. For them, there was no such thing as home. Can you imagine that? Being set free, yet having no concept of home? Can you imagine being enslaved your entire life only to find out when you are finally set free in Texas, you have no idea where you belong? Sadly, I think many blacks still have to wonder that over 150 years later. Too many, I think, still are forced to wonder - where do we belong? The responsibility of that answer is on many of us who have long avoided that question. Now rain rain go away.... many miles left to run here in virtual Tennessee.
0 Comments
6/28/2020 0 Comments how joyful is it when you're dancing with someone you've longed to dance with your whole life?When you think of heaven, what do you think of? Seriously - I'd love to know.
I think for a long time I thought heaven would be a place where I'd receive all the things I'd longed for in life but never had. Like I'd walk through a gate and someone would wave a magic wand and I'd suddenly be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. For a long time, the way I thought of heaven was probably the biggest sign of my emotional and spiritual immaturity. I was letting my worldly desires and emotions drive the way I saw life, what I wanted from life and how I responded to the events of life. As Christians, I suppose one of the things we wonder about most is heaven and eternal life. Did you know Jesus defined eternal life for us? In the book of John 17:3 - Jesus says: And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. It's important to know, in the bible, most of the time when it is talking about "knowing" someone, it's not talking about an intellectual knowledge about someone but rather a deep and meaningful relationship with them. That is certainly what Jesus is talking about here. He's not saying eternal life is memorizing our bible, he's saying it's becoming intimately connected to the God and Jesus who are in it. What Jesus is also saying is eternal life isn't a future event. It's a here and now opportunity. If we think of eternal life as a future cure for all that ails us now, we're going to miss the very present joy eternal life is meant to offer. There was a point in my life when I thought "salvation" was knowing Jesus died for my sins and life was suddenly about hanging on and battling my worldly emotions and desires - with a little extra heavenly help - until the day heaven arrived. And you know, that kind of thinking left me as stuck as I was before I found "salvation." I had a friend who once who told me the first thing she wanted to do when she got to heaven was dance with Jesus. She didn't describe that as a high school prom type dance, but more a dance of gratitude. She described it as a chance to be close enough to thank Jesus for all he'd done in her life, for always being there with buckets full of grace. That image of heaven has never escaped me. Often, most of us, me included, when we think of heaven we think of gold paved streets or all of our hurts instantly being swept away or various other voids in our earthly lives being mysteriously vanished by the mere presence of heaven. Not often, sadly, do I think of heaven as merely being in the presence of the God who has invited me there. With shame, I'll say many times that doesn't seem like enough. The thing my friend made me wonder is, what if it is all about that dance with Jesus? What if the joy of eternal life is spending our days imagining that dance and what we'd say as our eyes first locked with Jesus? What if it's not about the welcoming gifts we'll get before the dance ever starts? What if those words in John are right, "this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." What if heaven doesn't seem like enough because I don't spend enough time imagining that dance? It's made me wonder about this: how awkward is it to dance with a total stranger. Someone we've never thought about dancing with, someone we barely know. For me - very awkward. And how much more joy is there when you're dancing with someone you've longed to dance with your whole life? There's one more thing to this. Jesus has told us that when we dance with the people around us, especially those who have no one to dance with, we ARE dancing with him. Jesus has said when we dance with the least of these - we ARE getting to "know" him. Oh how beautiful that scene becomes, that first dance with Jesus - and maybe it won't be us who speaks first - but him. Maybe it will be Jesus filled with gratitude, thanking us for dancing with those who have always meant so much to him. Maybe as our eyes lock, it will be our eyes that fill with tears as we see just how much Jesus appreciates that we lived eternally long before eternal came. How we think about heaven changes a lot. If heaven is tomorrow - it's something we can afford to wait for. If heaven is today, then it means we need to start dreaming of that dance today. It means we need to start dancing today. I told someone yesterday that I'm not as hopeful as other people are that our country is about to experience a seismic shift toward treating one another better. That's because, I said, treating one another better requires us to be good at relationships. And frankly, I think that's something we struggle with.
I think for a long time, as a culture, we've built and collected relationships that help us avoid the storms in life instead of surrounding ourselves with people who will help us navigate them. We've built relationships on the idea that I need people in my life who give me the best chance of a drama-free life and not the best chance at fearlessly navigating the drama that's impossible to avoid. At a time in our culture when I think it's more important than ever that we are able to talk to one another about our deepest struggles in life, that becomes a call for us to do something we have very little practice at. In terms of life skills, it may be our least developed. In his devotional this morning, Goff says: "The shallow end isn't always as safe as it looks. We can skate through life without having many vulnerable conversations, and our flaws will remain unexposed. If we're never willing to get real, we'll never really be known, and if we're never known, it's hard to feel truly loved for who we actually are. Try anything you want, but being vulnerable is the only pathway to true connection." You know, in the bible I think back to Genesis and where it all started to fall apart. There was God and Adam and Eve and they could share anything with one another. It was the perfect attachment God had created for them all. Humans and God sharing in one common attachment. Then Adam and Eve started listening to the serpent. They started experiencing temptation and struggle they couldn't talk to God about it. They started having a relationship with someone who offered them a shortcut in life to avoid struggles instead of talking to God about the struggle they were in. And we are living the "now you know the rest of the story." We talk about that Genesis story as the "original sin" and the "fall of man" - but what it really began was a disconnect from God and from one another. I don't believe those two things are mutually exclusive. I believe the more vulnerable we are with one another, the more likely it is we are open and vulnerable with God. Because my guess is, for many of us, our conversations with God look a lot like our conversations with one another. My guess is many of us are hiding from God. And God - like in Genesis - is calling out, "where are you?" And also, like in Genesis, many of us are saying “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” We don't like to be seen for who we truly are, so we surround ourselves with people who make it easier to not be seen so naked. I think we inherited from Adam and Eve a predisposition to hide from one another, and to hide from God. And what we need right now is just the opposite. Today just ask yourself - how many people do I have in my life with whom I can talk about the storms in my life - the very real struggles - and not people who want to simply talk about the weather. And even more - when you're in prayer - when your talking to God - how many of those conversations don't openly talk about the storms and struggles in your life - your failings and temptations - maybe hoping God won't notice them - and how many of those conversations are simply about the weather. The answers will probably tell you how connected you are in life. And it might help you understand why so many of us feel an overwhelming sense of disconnection. It's not because we don't want connection - it's just something we've never been very good at. In the bible you are left to wonder about a lot. The bible says a lot, but there is often a lot that is left unsaid as well.
In the book of Matthew, there is a fast-paced series of events captured with just a couple of hundred words. Jesus is baptized, and shortly after - at least in terms of Matthew's narrative - Jesus is in the middle of the wilderness being tempted by the devil. At the end of that period of temptation, the bible says in chapter 4: Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. That's it. That is all it says. The angels came and attended him. Like, what did they do or say to him? I have no idea, but shortly after the visit from the angels, we read this: As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. After reading that, I'm left wondering if the angels didn't tell Jesus, "you might think about doing this preaching thing with a bus and not a unicycle." I mean, can't you picture the modern day version of this story? I can picture Jesus pulling up next to the lake in this giant yellow school bus and yelling, "hey, come on, get in - let's go love on some people." Then with that loud roar of a bus accelerating away, followed shortly by that screeching sound of brakes, he'd stop and call for James and John to join Peter and Andrew on the bus. They race up the steps of the bus - give Jesus a wild high five - then the bus would pull away. James and John are hanging out the window waving at their dad Zebedee, who is waving back, proudly, as his sons head off to bigger things. It's a great question to ask today. Am I going through this world on a unicycle, or am I driving a bus? Is my day centered on how to somehow get myself through this day, or is it about making stops along the way and collecting people to love, and to help me go love on others. I'm wondering this morning if when we die, and when we then travel to go meet God, if maybe he won't be somewhere in the distance, excited and anticipating our arrival, looking through some heavenly strong binoculars, and maybe he is looking and wondering - is Keith showing up here riding a unicycle, or will he be driving a bus full of people waving out the windows? Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, "follow me and I will send you out to fish for people." Those two dudes dropped everything - like EVERYTHING in life - and got on that bus. We don't get to know what all Jesus said to them that made them ultimately get on that bus. We just know Jesus showed up and off they went. Maybe to a degree that is the point. We don't need to know what all was said. Maybe we just need to know that if we claim to - like Peter and Andrew did - to have jumped on that bus with Jesus, and knowing that when Jesus left we all sort of inherited that bus, we need to ask ourselves if somewhere along the way we might have traded that bus in for a unicycle. Today I'm just hearing Jesus say, "I left you a bus - who's getting on it?" Today I'm left wondering, take the bus to work, or the unicycle? 6/25/2020 0 Comments We grow where we are lovedWe grow where we are loved.
Did you know that isn't just a cool quote, but science? When we have a loving attachment with someone, the patterns and sequences of our brains actually start to match the person on the other side of that attachment. We literally start responding to life the same way that person does. Not because we want to be like them, but because we've become wired like them. That process begins in childhood. It continues as we grow and mature across our lifespan. Our character doesn't develop and change by reading a book or joining a group or even going to church. It develops out of the loving attachments we have with other people. You know, I always heard growing up and I still hear it said to young people today - "think before you act." Did you know, though, that we are actually wired to act before we think? For the most part, we are reactionary creatures. I remember several years ago we had an earthquake here in Virginia. I'd never felt one before. I was sitting in the living room of our house. I was all alone. The house suddenly started shaking quite violently. The next thing I knew I was standing in our front yard staring back at the house. I wasn't sitting in the living room thinking through my next steps. I reacted. Some time later I heard on the news I'd fled from an earthquake. (The house was fine by the way 😀). We do that with much smaller things as well. If someone cuts us off in traffic, we don't go through a thought process of, hmm, what is the appropriate response here. When we lose someone close to us, we don't think through how we are supposed to grieve that - the emotions just take over. In many ways we are automated creatures. We were created and wired to become automated. Because the reality is, if we're left to our own thinking, most of the time we'll come up with some really bad responses. How we automatically respond to situations is our character. Our integrity. Those automatic responses will often look like the people we love deepest. It will be a reflection of the people who love us back. If we stop and think about that a minute, I think most of us will believe that. I think we'll see that who we are has been largely shaped by who we think with, not who we think about. I believe we've been wired that way to help us understand - see evidence of - why it's so important to think with God and not think about him. Believing in God is never going to change our automated responses to the world. We are not going to love an enemy because God said it's the right thing to do. We will love an enemy because we have a character in us that automatically responds to every person with love. That's why it is so important to know that God is a God who lives inside us and not in some distant heaven. We have a God who is going through every second of every day saying "think with me on this a second" and not "why don't we talk about this later during your evening prayers." We all know the story of Peter walking on water toward Jesus. When he was walking toward Jesus, when it was all about his connection to Him - when he was thinking with Jesus and not about Jesus - Peter was walking on water like it was a neighborhood sidewalk. But then Peter started thinking about the wind and the waves and the storm. His steady walk became a sinking ship crying out for help. He started thinking about the storm and not thinking with Jesus during the storm. Don't get me wrong, what we read and what we learn is definitely critical to the attachments we have. I read my bible to know Jesus better. Reading my bible, however, is never going to change me. My attachment to the Jesus I read about will. If I want the best predictor of my future, it comes in looking at the people I have loving attachments to. My future is not going to be shaped by who and what I think about, it will be shaped by who I think with. I was reading yesterday that a University of Chicago survey recently found only 14% of Americans report they currently feel "very happy." The General Social Survey has asked that same question every year since 1972 on their own survey. The lowest percentage of "very happy" people they've ever found is 29%.
I don't suppose you're any more surprised by that number than me. We have a lot going on. There are endless reasons for people to be struggling these days. I've come to believe lately that the biggest consequence of our own unhappiness is it often blinds us to the unhappiness of others. And if you believe what I believe, that our greatest joy comes from helping others, well, I think we are falling deeper and deeper into an unhappy spin cycle, and I'm not sure how to reverse that. Henri Nouwen says that compassion is hard work. He says: "Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it." I don't need much science to believe that one. I have spent a great deal of my life running from my own suffering, and God knows I've sure experimented with plenty of quick cures for it. I suppose the greatest gift from that is I now know I can't outrun suffering, and I sure can't cure it. I've also come to understand a lot of my suffering was based on a misguided idea of what it means to be "very happy." When Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount, he told us who was going to be happy. He gave us a list of who was going to be "blessed" - which in this sermon he used the Greek word for happy or blissful. Here is who Jesus said would be happy: The poor in spirit. Those who mourn. The meek. Those who hunger for what is right. The merciful. The pure in heart. The peacemakers. Those who are persecuted for doing what is right. I read through that and Jesus is really saying happiness is about what we give to others and not about what life gives to us. I mean, Jesus spent every waking hour instinctively drawn to the broken and vulnerable and weak. Did he live that way to teach us how to be miserable, or "very happy?" Nouwen would go on to say about compassion: "Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears of grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break though paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken." If anything describes Jesus, I think it is his willingness to break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of new fellowship. Jesus was all about showing us our "very happy" is found in the fellowship of the broken. I guess when we read that statistic - that only 14% of us are "very happy," we can read that as an opportunity to commiserate with so many others. Or, maybe, we can hear it as a call to break through some paralyzing boundaries. Maybe more than unhappy, people feel paralyzed. Maybe they need the hand of someone who understands that they are broken. Maybe they need the hand of someone willing to say I am broken too. Many mornings here, I process some thoughts on the Bob Goff devotional I read to start my day. This week, I've spent time processing an Andy Stanley sermon on racial tensions he preached last Sunday. As a result, I haven't read my Bob Goff devotional lately.
It's funny - or not - when I went to today's devotional in that book, I found the perfect words to wrap up my thoughts for the week. Goff says, "the hidden cost of our faith is that everything doesn't get to be about us anymore." Goff goes on to say, "being like Jesus means giving up our comfort and security so we can widen the circle to include more people." I've done a lot of soul searching the last couple of weeks. Much of it out loud and with many of you right here. And here is what I would conclude about my own racism at this point in the searching: I am not a racist because I hate black people. I am a racist because I love me way too much. There is a story in the bible in chapter 14 of the book of Luke. It goes like this: ————-- Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ ————-- I have realized the last couple of weeks just how much I have abandoned the tower I started in my life. I have deeply loved everything Jesus has done in my life the last few decades, thanked him and proclaimed him, all the while ignoring the hard and uncomfortable things Jesus has commanded me to do in everyone else's lives. As Christians, when it comes to marginalized and oppressed and harassed people groups, as a group we are being ridiculed. As a group, the world is wondering why we have left our towers unfinished after putting so much work into their foundations. As long as there is systemic racism and poverty and marginalized people groups in this world, we can come up with all the good reasons to explain it we want. But let's be clear, Jesus' reason for that is we haven't finished the towers we started. I am reminded this week just how radical the Christian faith is. When Jesus talks to us about carrying other people's burdens, he didn't mean carry them when we weren't busy carrying our own burdens or when our calendar becomes sufficiently clear. He meant ALL the time. Our lives were to be consumed with carrying other people's burdens. I mean, when the dude says you are to hate your family in comparison to the love I want you pouring out on other people, he's not just using 'carry your cross' as some cool metaphor in a novel. He means following me is hard work. He means please don't call yourself my disciple if you aren't up for the hard and endless work of finishing your tower. As people committed to building towers, I think we forget the story of this bible we cling to some days. Jesus didn't die on a cross and take on all of our burdens so Christians would be a burden-free people group, he did it so we'd have more room in our hearts and minds and souls to carry other people's burdens. I mean, I see Christians like myself quoting many scriptures. You want to know one I just don't see quoted very often. It's this: Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Cannot be.... That is not might not be. That is not I'll have to get with the "following me" committee to see if they'll make an exception this time. Jesus said if you cannot leave behind everything that makes you comfortable and follow me into the lives of people who have been left to die in eternal discomfort, you cannot be my disciple. That is a real conversation.That is a real conversation between me and Jesus.And that is a hard conversation to hear, frankly. That is Jesus saying, Keith, you are not racist because you hate black people. That is Jesus saying, Keith, you are racist because you've been unwilling to bear the cross of following me into the possibility that some of my brothers and sisters have been left behind. You know, in some ways the conversation would be easier to have with Jesus if I DID hate black people. In many ways, then, the conversation would be all about THEM. But it's pretty clear in Luke, Jesus is saying, no, this conversation isn't about any THEM in this world, this conversation is all about YOU. The Christian faith is radical. If we go through the day and feel like somehow we aren't carrying a cross, if we aren't feeling burdened, that's probably a sign we aren't being disciples. If we aren't having hard conversations and living our lives deep within people's lives who make us feel burdened, then we probably aren't following his lead. We are probably following our own lead. We are probably fighting the idea that life doesn't get to be about us anymore. And trust me, I completely feel the angst of that fight. One of the things I've been reflecting on a lot lately is 'how' Jesus loves me. As a Christian, I think I've long understood this very broad concept that Jesus loves me and that Jesus loves everyone and that Jesus expects me to love everyone just as he does.
But love, especially in our world, can be reduced to this rare emotion we feel instead of this really difficult assignment he has given us to do. The more I understand love, the more I understand just how difficult it is. The more I understand how difficult it is, the more I try to read and understand just how Jesus did it. There is a story in the book of John that goes like this:______ At dawn he (Jesus) appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”_______ One of the questions I want to ask Jesus one day - I'm sure it will be a popular question so maybe he'll do a heavenly zoom meeting on it - what were you writing on the ground, Jesus? I wonder if he was writing "we'll know we're growing in our faith when our love for people dwarfs our opinions of them." Because these Pharisees had caught this woman committing adultery, they had opinions of her that dwarfed their desire to love her. Jesus, on the other hand, was so driven to love this woman that he drove the Pharisees off and encouraged them to take their hypocritical opinions with them. Lately, I hear Jesus telling me 'you're letting your opinions of people stand in your way of loving them.' That is a difficult hurdle to love to overcome. Our brains are wired to have opinions. They are wired to have opinions that circumvent our heart's desire to love. Loving like Jesus requires us to do some serious re-wiring of ourselves. It takes discipline and a whole lot of prayer to stop ourselves in the middle of our opinions and consider our obligation to love. I think one of the things I'm going to try is when I feel my opinions beginning to take over, I'm going to imagine Jesus writing on the ground. I'm going to imagine him writing, "Keith, you'll know you're growing in your faith when your love for that person dwarfs your opinion of them." Maybe there is a reason we weren't told what he was writing on the ground.... A few days ago, I shared the sermon Andy Stanley delivered to North Point Community Church Sunday. I said it was the most powerful sermon I'd ever heard. I'll include a link to it below. I'm spending this week processing some of the things Andy said.
In the sermon, Stanley said, "proximity is not friendship." He would go on to say, "facts don't change our minds, friendships do." In the image above, I'm running with my friend Solomon. We've run some miles together. I won't suggest we are best friends in the world. But we are good friends. We've spent time chatting about life, running through life, and checking on each other when we know life is challenging the other. After the Ahmaud Arbery tragedy, Solomon posted these words: I have a lot of anger, rage and negativity in my heart. Throughout my life, I’ve dealt with my fair share of racism. I can remember back to my senior prom and not being able to pick my girlfriend up in a limo because her parents didn’t want the neighbors as well as themselves having a black person come to their house. I can remember back at my high school graduation having to pretend I didn’t know my girlfriend for fear of embarrassment that I would cause to her and all her family. I can recall countless times of girls that wouldn’t date me because their parents would not approve simply because of the way I looked. Even now, my wife’s father will have nothing to do with her and that is large in part because her husband is black and not white. When I read those words, they struck my heart. Not because they reminded me that racism is alive and thriving in our country, but because a friend's life was being impacted by it. For the past several months, social media has been a "facts" factory. It mass produces memes and newspaper headlines and statistics and machine gun finger pointing. Almost all of it intending to change someone's mind about something. Almost none of it doing so outside the context of friendship. No statistics are alarming or heartbreaking if you don't deeply know a heart that is suffering because of them. Very few of us knew Ahmaud Arbery or George Floyd well enough to let the facts of their stories change us. But their stories, coupled with the facts of my friend's story, well that stirs my heart to want to be better. First for him, and then by extension, for all the people the facts say suffer through very similar stories. I had proximity with Arbery and Floyd through the television. I have done life with my friend Solomon. In the bible, Jesus worked some miracles from a distance. But not many. He spent an overwhelming amount of his time in ministry going into people's lives. Purposeful and with unwavering intent, he just kept moving into relationship after relationship with the people who needed him. To help him, he chose a diverse group of apostles to travel with him. He didn't pull together a group of seasoned pastors with well-practice sermons, he pulled together a group of people who all, one way or another said, "wait a minute, you want ME to be your friend?" These days, I think Jesus is shaking his head and wondering how we overlooked that detail of his ministry. I think maybe he wonders if he shouldn't have spent a little more time driving home the fact that this isn't as much about changing lives as it is about entering into people's lives. The entering IS the change, he'd probably like to remind us. Or scream at us. I've been reminded the last few months how easy it is to post a meme or a scripture that says "love your neighbor." I've been reminded how easy it is to say "we were all created equal." You know what is hard? Going into people's lives who don't look like us and loving them long enough and hard enough to fully understand they rightfully don't feel so equal. Jesus spent his whole ministry going into people's lives who didn't feel equal reminding them that they are. And when he left us, he said you all take the ministry from here. And oh by the way, he didn't call that a good idea. He called it a commandment. (You can watch the Andy Stanley sermon here: https://northpoint.org/messages/this-human-race) A few days ago, I shared the sermon Andy Stanley delivered to North Point Community Church Sunday. I said it was the most powerful sermon I'd ever heard.
In his sermon, Andy said the law of Christ is to love one another. He then used scriptures to define love as carrying one another's burdens. That definition is hard to argue from a Christian faith perspective; Christ died on a cross to share the loving message that we no longer have to carry our burdens. I'll take those burdens off your hands, he said. Sometimes love can seem very abstract. It can come across as an emotion that is hard to measure. But the good news for Christians who know that love is defined by how willingly and how obediently we carry our neighbor's burdens, we absolutely can measure that. Or is that such good news? Because this morning, as I'm sitting here reflecting on that, I know if I can take an accounting of my love, so can the God who said this is my ultimate just go ahead and forget about the rest of them command. When I ask myself the question I'm asking myself this morning, I have to wonder if God is in the background, or maybe he is right smack dab in the middle of my soul, asking the same question: how much of my time and energy this week will I spend fighting with my own burdens, and how much will be spent carrying someone else's? Let's just say the answer - with no small amount of shame - is a ratio that leans heavily toward looking out for myself. The reality is many of us lean heavily towards looking out for ourselves. We're wired that way. As part of that wiring, we can start to see "others" as a hurdle to dealing with our burdens and not an ally. Either we see them working against us - they are the enemy - or we begin to see our dealing with their burdens as something that sucks away the time and energy I need to deal with my own. Either way, the answer does nothing to encourage love for one another. Quite the opposite really. Our culture has become divided into groups that mistakenly think they are aligned to help each other best solve and prevent the burdens in their lives. The first strategy of almost all of these groups is to decide who the enemies are - who is the cause of our burdens and how do we extinguish or minimize the burden they add to our lives. These are groups that believe going to war with others is the best way to ease the burdens of our selves. The group I see this displayed most prominently in? The church. The church first divides itself among Christians and non-Christians. Those demonic non-Christians are standing in the way of us dealing with our burdens as Christ followers. And then the church further divides itself and starts eating its own. Those crazy Catholics are standing in the way of us Baptists dealing with our burdens. And we all end up on this crazy hamster wheel of trying to avoid and eliminate burdens in our lives by keeping the people out we think are adding to the burdens in our lives all while the burdens in our lives keep adding up and adding up and adding up. Yet, we just stay so busy turning that wheel to even notice it. It's insanity. I'm sorry, but it just is. Christ chose to die on a cross as the loudest and clearest way possible to say I'll carry your burdens. He was driving home the message that the best way for him to carry our burden was to understand our burden. I'm dying a painful death, he said, to be certain that you know I understand your pain. I can feel it. Christ didn't model running off to selfishly deal with his own burdens to love us. He modeled diving head first into a grave to do it. Christ was saying life is not a race to outrun the individual burdens in our lives. Life is a be still and listen to one another's burdens journey. Christ was telling us the best way to be at odds with one another - the best way to stay divided - is to run from the burdens in our lives. He was telling us the best way to unite - in love - is to see burdens as the most common ground we all have. We all have burdens. We all will ALWAYS have burdens. We aren't outrunning them. So instead of fighting against each other to avoid unavoidable burdens, why don't we join hands and say let's journey through the burdens of life together. Instead of seeing individual burdens as a need to declare war, why can't we embrace on another's burdens as the first cries for a peace treaty. I have to ask myself this morning, am I declaring war on love, or looking for peace. It's a question that actually can be answered. It's not rhetorical. The answer is found in looking at how much of my time and my energy today and tomorrow and the next day will be spent dealing with my own burdens. How much will be spent trying to hear and understand and help someone else with theirs? The answer is a measure of love. In my case, the answer identifies how much I need to - and how I can - love better. |
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
February 2025
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |