Category Archives: spiritual exercise

Name That Commandment

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Our confirmation students had a written test in which they wrote about the commandment that was most challenging to them.  Two commandments were frequently cited:  the second and tenth commandments.  Both are worthy of further reflection.   I will start with the second commandment and post on the tenth tomorrow.

The second commandment, “you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” reflects the power of words.  What we say matters.   God has given us a tremendous gift in being able to call out to him in prayer, praise and thanksgiving at anytime and in any situation.  God is like a mother who walks through a crowded noisy mall, hears a child’s cry and knows the child is her daughter or son.  God knows and responds to the cry of our hearts when we sing with joy or shout in terror.  What a privilege to be able to call upon the creator of the universe!

With this privilege in mind, we see how disrespectful it is to use God’s name to curse others, to inflict harm upon others.  Yes, we are creatures with powerful emotions like anger and rage.  Yes, we can be provoked by the actions of others to say things we wish we hadn’t. Yes, cursing has become more pervasive, even acceptable in our culture. Still we are not ruled by our emotions nor by cultural norms, but have the capacity to choose how to respond to our emotional stirrings.  Jesus calls us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44).  We need to pray for God’s help to keep his name holy.

One confirmation student did have a valid observation.  He observed people being very cavalier, or bored, in worship as they mumbled God’s praise.  Can our worship become so casual that we begin to take God’s name in vain?  Can we be disrespecting God because we are daydreaming instead of truly praising his Holy name?  I appreciate how confirmation student can sometimes help me see the God’s truth in a new light.

Lord Jesus, thank you for the gift of your name.  Help me to cherish it always.

Organizational Care

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Seth Godin, wrote an intriguing post recently about caring and organizations:

No organization cares about you. Organizations aren’t capable of this.

Your bank, certainly, doesn’t care. Neither does your HMO or even your car dealer. It’s amazing to me that people are surprised to discover this fact.

People, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of caring. It’s part of being a human. It’s only when organizational demands and regulations get in the way that the caring fades.

If you want to build a caring organization, you need to fill it with caring people and then get out of their way. When your organization punishes people for caring, don’t be surprised when people stop caring.

I began to wonder if that is true of a congregation.  Certainly one of the confessed values of a Christian congregation is to care, to love, to be like Jesus. But what does care look like?  Here leadership is essential. Leadership within the congregation can promote a culture of care, can model what caring looks like, and how collectively and individually we care.

Pentecost by artist Jean Sader

This Sunday is Pentecost, the church holiday in which we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to ignite the birth of the church. Fifty days after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the first disciples remained huddled in a room in Jerusalem.  As described in Acts 2, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was dramatic: a mighty rush of wind, tongues of fire on people’s heads, and multiple languages suddenly heard.  A huge crowd gathered outside the room, amazed, perplexed, confused.  What was this?

Here is where caring leadership stepped up.

 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd. Act 2:14

Peter took the leadership role and modeled how this new community would express itself.  He cared for the assembled crowd by telling them the story of Jesus Christ and how his life, death and resurrection had changed the world.  His words were tough at time, reminding the people of their participation in Jesus’ crucifixion.  Yet Peter, with the support of the eleven, did the most loving thing possible: he called people to trust in Jesus.  At Resurrection, we would say Peter “called all people to a vibrant life of faith in Christ.”

How does the church promote or restrict caring?

Lord Jesus, teach me to care as you cared for others.

Ups and Downs with Voyage of the DT

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Eustace from Voyage of the Dawn Treader

This week-end I watched the movie The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which is adapted from the third book in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicle of Narnia series. I was disappointed, even though I think the producers and screenwriters were faithful to the story. Since Lewis’ story is episodic, a string of small encounters, the movie tries to tie the episodes all together by introducing an “evil mist” that must be destroyed.

I struggled with the “evil mist” because for C. S. Lewis, evil was not some nameless vague mist, but actual angelic powers and individuals. Satan and his minions are accountable to God. There was no central person/being/intelligence in the movie’s mist to be held responsible. It was some vague power invading Narnian space, like an environmental contagion.

My real disappointment was the transformation of Eustace Scrubb. In the book this is a pivotal moment when Aslan the Lion encountered Eustace as the dragon. First Eustace tried to cut away the dragon skin and failed after several attempts. Only after the failure did Aslan release him out with one lash of his claw. Finally the restored Eustace is cleansed in the pool of water. The whole scene is a powerful description of baptism. The movie’s version did not fulfill my expectations for the scene and my baptismal perspective. Plus it came so late in the movie, we are unable to witness any transformation in the Eustace’s human character.

Still I enjoyed how the movie captured much of the joy, wonder and strangeness of Narnia. The character development in Edmund, Lucy, Caspian and Eustice was worth seeing as were the majestic sea scenes. It made me want to get my father’s tiny sail boat out and brave the waves of the Puget Sound. But that is a different post.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:3-4

How has a movie or story helped you understand a Christian concept or doctrine?

Lord Jesus, thank you for being my savior and rescuing me from sin and death.

Marketer for the Ages

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Seth Godin is a marketing author whose blog I read regularly.  Today he wrote regarding worldviews:

In All Marketers Tell Stories, I argue that most organizations shouldn’t try to change the worldview of the audience they’re marketing to.

Worldview is a term popularized by George Lakoff. It’s the set of expectations and biases that color the way each of us see the world (before the marketer ever arrives on the scene). The worldview of a 45 year old wine-loving investment banker is very different from that of a fraternity brother. One might see a $100 bottle of burgundy as both a bargain and a must-have, while the other might see the very same bottle of wine as an insane waste of money.

It’s extremely expensive, time consuming and difficult to change someone’s worldview. The guys at Opus One shouldn’t spend a lot of time marketing expensive wine to fraternities because it’s not efficient. Sell nuts to squirrels, don’t try to persuade dolphins that nuts are delicious.

There’s an exception to this rule, and that’s the necessity of changing worldviews if you want to become a giant brand, a world changer, a marketer for the ages. Starbucks changed the way a significant part of the world thought about spending $4 for a cup of coffee.

Another exception is Jesus Christ.  He came to transform the way we look at and live in the world.  Sometimes our problem is that we want to fit Jesus into some niche in our lives, “Jesus, just fix this problem I have and then leave me alone.”  We want Jesus to rescue us from a difficult circumstance and then quietly step back from the foreground, but he comes to the Lord and Master of our house.   Jesus truly came to  be the “marketer for the ages” that changes the story by which we live. 

 Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed – that exhilarating finish in and with God – he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. ( Hebrews 12:2 The Message)

How have you tried to adapt Jesus to your life rather than allowing him to rule?

Lord Jesus, be LORD today in my life.

A Locked Door in Grief

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On this Memorial Day week-end, I have been reflecting on my last post and how C. S. Lewis was so joyous in his description of heaven in The Last Battle. However his writing took a very different tone a few years later when Lewis described his own grief. In A Grief Observed, Lewis held back nothing as he wrestled with his faith in God after the death of his beloved wife, Joy.

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms.

 But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows.  What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?” p.4

Later in the book he comes to some reconciliation with his grief and unanswered prayers

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’ p.80

This is one reason why in caring for a grieving friend it is better to be a silent companion rather than a “glib answer man.” Lewis, ever the philosopher, has one more observation that gave me a smile as I think about my attempts to ask the great theological questions.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unaswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask – half our great theological and metaphysical problems – are like that. p.81

How have you experienced grief and what support helped you the most?

Lord Jesus, grant us hope in the midst of whatever questions we may ask of you.

Deep Gladness and Deep Hunger

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The Wonderous Joy of Graduation

Yesterday Resurrection Lutheran honored our high school seniors who will soon be graduates. There are seventeen seniors in our congregation who now embark on a new section of their life journey. For many of them the journey includes further education or training before embracing a vocation or career. Rarely will that choice be a life-long decision in which they work at one setting all their lives.

I have posted before on Martin Luther’s perspective on God’s role in our vocation or calling. Yesterday with the seniors I quoted from author Frederick Buechner,

Vocation comes from the Latin vocare, “to call” and means the work a person is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you are bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. (F. Buechner, Beyond Words, p. 404-405)

Buechner’s words ring true for me. I have discovered great joy as I grow into my calling as pastor of Resurrection. I see it in my family as my daughter prepares again to be a pastry chef for the summer and as my son works to start a new business. Each of us is doing something we love and in a setting that will benefit others.

How have you heard God’s calling in your life?

Lord Jesus, show me how I can best love my neighbor through my vocation.

Screwtape Letters I

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The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is my current read (more accurately, my commuting audio-book). This book launched Lewis as a popular Christian author in 1942 and is a series of letters written by a senior devil, named Screwtape, to his nephew and junior tempter, Wormwood, instructing him on how to lead a young British man (call the patient) towards damnation and hell. These clever letters give the reader a humorous, yet wise perspective on the temptations to pride, lust, greed, gluttony, and self-righteousness.

Lewis’ insights still speak truth today. For example in letter eight, Screwtape writes regarding the natural ebbs and flows, (the undulation) of human emotions, even for Christians.

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. . . As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirits can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

If you had watched your patient carefully you would have noticed this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth, periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship.

Lewis goes on to write that the trough of spiritual dryness and dull heart can be the true place of spiritual growth, because in these valleys we learn to walk with God out of obedience and trust, and not simply because we feel some good pleasure in it. As a moody Scandinavian I often wrestle with my darker emotions. The tempter wants me to see the dark valley as God’s abandonment; God wants me to see the valley as a training ground for deeper faith and commitment.   As Lewis writes,

Hence prayers offered in the state of dryness are those that please Him (God) best.

How do you understand your emotional, spiritual, and physical ebb and flow?

Lord Jesus, teach me to be faithful, especially at my low points.

Bicycling Together

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At times I look as stiff as this sculpture

This week it seems as if someone has hit a button and Minnesota has shifted from winter to summer.  Thunderstorms, hail and tornado warnings have replace snow and windchill as topics of conversation.   With this shift in weather, I have been able to use my new bicycle, but I still need to check the radar before changing to bike shorts.

Bicycling is a new sport for me.  I still do not know all the nuts and bolts of my bike.  Someone recently asked what shoes and clipless pedals I had.  I had no idea.  I still awkward each time I start out for a ride.  I am thankful for my friend, Tim Torgerson,  who mentors me in the fine art of a group ride.

It reminds me when I first started serious running twelve years ago, training for my first marathon.  Being a newbie is awkward.   I remember the first time I went on a ten-mile run with the group in the spring.  I wore a cotton t-shirt and paid the price when the sweat-soaked shirt chaffed my skin.   By the end of that run I had blood streaks on the shirt from chaffed nipples.  Not a pretty sight.

Yet even after that embarrassment, I came back to run with the group, because they gave me so many rewarding training runs.  I remember especially some of the long training runs around White Bear Lake or out through Stillwater and back along the Gateway Trail.   The camaraderie of a good training group gave me confidence to set high goals and to work hard to achieve them. 

The spiritual life of a Christian can have similar moments of awkward beginnings.  We may not know where to find a book in the Bible or how to pray out loud with others.  We’re not sure what words are correct or how to express our feelings.  Yet to maximize the vibrant life with Christ, we need to be in fellowship/training with other Christians.  We need other followers of Christ to help us grow in the study of God’s Word, in the art of caring for one another, and in the discipline of prayer.   Hopefully we will remember our own awkward beginnings and with patience mentor each other to grow more Christ-like.

Who has been a mentor to you in your Christian life? How have you mentored others?

Lord Jesus, show me the path to true Christian community.

Acts 2:42 part 1

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Studying the Apostle's Teachings

Life in the early church may sound strange to our contemporary ears. The description of miracles and healings, the passionate letters of Paul, and the missionary zeal of the apostles can appear to be other-worldly.  Our lifestyle, political systems, technologies and economic complexities can seem distant from the stories of the Bible. Perhaps that is why I value Acts 2:42 so much.

Acts 2:42 describes the life of the early church in Jerusalem, shortly after Peter preached his first sermon and several thousand people placed their trust in Jesus as their Savior and Lord.

They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. (Acts 2:42)

Their four signs of devotion are still practiced by followers of Jesus today:
1. Apostle’s Teachings
2. Fellowship
3. Breaking of Bread
4. Prayers

Followers of Jesus continue to study the “apostle’s teaching:” Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the Book of Acts, the Epistles of Paul, John and Peter.   The apostle’s teachings became our New Testament. We study them to understand who Jesus is and what his life, death and resurrection mean for us.

As we study together we continue to create fellowship, because we discover how the teachings impact our shared lives.  We listen to each other’s joys and sorrows.  We care for one other during times of illness, stress or hardship.  Fellowship is more than a shared cup of coffee after worship; fellowship is the shared cup of blessing and generosity through all of life.

One of my deepest tastes of apostle’s teaching and fellowship came in college when I participated in the Haverford-Bryn Mawr Christian Fellowship.  Every Friday evening twenty to forty college students would gather to study God’s Word and to reflect together how it impacted our lives.  It created a missionary zeal in many of us.  We did not want to simply survive college with our faith intact. We felt a calling to bear witness to Jesus Christ in an often academically hostile environment.   The study and fellowship gave us the courage and compassion to speak.  The ancient devotions brought us life.

How has the study of the apostle’s teaching affected your fellowship?

Tomorrow, reflections on the breaking of bread and prayers.

 Prayer: Lord Jesus, teach me to be devoted to your ways.

Remembering God’s Way

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Eustace and Jill from Silver Chair by Dunechaser on Flickr

I am on a C. S. Lewis binge, rereading his Chronicles of Narnia.   The Silver Chair is this week’s read, in which Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole are given the mission of rescuing the Narnia Prince Rilian.  Near the beginning of the story, King Aslan gives to Jill four signs that will aid in their mission.  She is instructed to remember the signs by repeating them every day, telling them to Eustace and later their companion, Puddleglum. The discipline of the repetition will allow them to recognize the signs when she, Eustace or Puddleglum encounter them.  In the hardship of her journey she neglects the repetition and therefore they must face unnecessary challenges.

This act of remembering echoes God’s words to the Israelites while they were wandering in the wilderness, prior to entering the promise land.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:5-9)

The act of daily devotions can at time feel like a chore or empty ritual.  Yet to neglect the ritual is to open oneself to other, less healthy, less meaningful influences.  To read a passage of scripture, to pray the Lord’s Prayer, or to confess the Apostle’s Creed aides one in reorienting oneself to God’s mission and path. I confess I can easily be distracted from the main tasks of the day.  Asking for God’s guidance, courage and strength helps me stay true to my mission to trust, live and serve.  

How has daily time with God enhanced your life of faith?

Prayer: Lord God, only you know what is ahead for me today.  I ask you to guide my thoughts, words and deeds, that they might bring honor to you.