Loving All of God

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

God is love.

God is justice.

God is tender and merciful and He is sharp and condemning.

To love God is to love everything about Him. Even the parts we don’t understand. Even the pieces we wish were different.

To wish that God were only comfort and healing is to wish away judgement for those who abuse children, rape women, sell humans. It is to wish away the cross, and this diminishes Christ’s sacrifice.

When we wish for God only to be mercy and grace, we wish away His sharpness, and it is His sharpness that prunes and perfects us.

Christ’s love is not the soft love of human emotion, but a burning fire that cleanses and sears. It is a love that demands self-sacrifice. ~ J. Heinrich Arnold in The Center

And sacrifice is the only way to conquer death, defeat Satan, rescue the world.

So we come full circle.

To love the saving, forgiving piece of God is to love the judging, condemning part of God.

These pieces which come together in the Christ who hangs on the cross.

On this Good Friday, look up at His bloody form and love Him.

All of Him.

He Has Made Promises

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Elizabeth

I lost a friend this week.

In high school, she was one of my best friends. We played and sang together. We did show choir and musicals together. We volunteered together. We even had secret names for each other. (Yes, we still did that in high school. We were nerds.) I got to be a part of her life when she was baptized. We lost touch over the years, but I still loved her.

I’ve lost three friends over the past year and a half. This weighs heavy on me.

There is nothing that makes this okay. Jesus Himself wept at the death of His friend.

Death and pain, sorrow and grief. These are not how life was created to be.

There is nothing that makes this okay. Only one thing makes this bearable.

Our God.

He has made promises to us that He will make it turn out all right in the end. He has made promises to us that when we see Him face to face, all the horror that came before will seem as insubstantial as a morning mist blown away by the rising sun. He has made promises to us that He will remain with us and in us until that beautiful day arrives.

How do I know He will keep His promises?

I know because God loves us enough to put on skin and come down to live with us, to suffer for us, to die for us. I know because God has enough power to rise from the dead and conquer death for all time.

He loves us enough and He has power enough.

I don’t know why God didn’t put it all right from the beginning. I don’t begin to understand why He places so much importance on human freedom of choice or why our sin and redemption are so closely intertwined with creation itself.

But I know He keeps His promises and I know that His promises are beautiful beyond imagining.

And for that I will trust Him.

This one’s for you, Jenna. Until we meet again.

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Breath

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Elizabeth

All of creation waits with inhaled breath.

We wait as in the space before the upraised baton falls in the darkened symphony hall.

We wait as in the space before stepping over the threshold of home.

We wait as in the space before the first glimmer of dawn sparks into the darkest part of the night.

We wait with inhaled breath for the breath of God to arrive.

For the breath of God to arrive and breathe in the air of this world and breathe out the grace of heaven.

As we bundle ourselves against the cold and breathe out frost into the air, so we can’t help but breathe in a breath of hope even as we bundle our hearts against disappointment.

But God is a God of hope, so we can breathe easy and unbundle our hearts to the warmth of His love.

He did, after all, come once before and draw our air into His lungs and in so doing, foreshadowed the way He will come once again and exhale perfection into the very breath of the fabric of our world.

And so, as we wait with inhaled breath, we breathe out love and grace to those we see around us so that they, too, can breathe in a breath of hope

and wait for the breath of God to arrive in our world once more.

The Absurdity of Jesus

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Elizabeth

Once upon a time, there was an American who took a hike in the Smoky Mountains.

He was a couple of days down the trail when he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a State governor came along the trail, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.

So likewise, a conservative talk show host happened upon the American as he walked down the trail, and he too passed by on the other side.

Also a local pastor, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a middle-eastern man, dressed in military fatigues and carrying a sub-machine gun, looking much like the pictures of ISIS soldiers, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds…

Much of what Jesus says is ridiculous. Completely unreasonable and absurd. Crazy, even.

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and to the evil.

Then the King will say…, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father…For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a refugee and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

It doesn’t make sense and it is uncomfortable and it is hard. It is so very hard.

The idea of praying for those who want to bomb me is ludicrous. The thought of welcoming people who might be preparing to hurt my children is absurd. It makes my heart freeze and my stomach hurt.

I am frightened and I want to obey Jesus only when I can see the outcome, only when I know that I will be blessed, not blown to smithereens, in return.

There are so many commands of Jesus that I skip right over. I look at them, read them, and decide that they are not for me. Following Jesus is hard, and I am a coward.

Which means, if I am honest with myself, that I am no better than those I am frightened of.

…while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…

And God reached down to earth for me. He became a refugee, a stranger, for my sake, to bring me back to Him.

God, help me.

Give me courage, give me strength. Give me faith to trust that in Your ridiculousness, You know what You are talking about.

Help me to love You enough to obey You. To obey all that You command.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever.

Help those who do not love You, including myself who does not love You enough.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, help me. Help your Church.

Art Credits for Good Samaritan paintings in order: David Teniers the younger; Maximilien Luce; Russian icon; Pelegrín Clavé y Roqué; Rvalette; Domenico Fetti; All Saints Church wall painting

Go Act Like It

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Elizabeth

Sometimes, when I forget who our King is, this world makes me want to run away and hide.

In a week when refugees number in the millions,

In a week when a friend, a friend with a wife and three small children, dies much too soon,

In a week when fellow believers choose to scream about gay marriage across the country rather than to do something about the poor on the other side of town,

It is easy to believe the lie that I can do nothing against the darkness of this world.

It is easy to believe that the darkness is too strong.

It is easy to believe that ISIS wins, that cancer wins, that politicism wins.

In a week like this, I want to give in to despair. To give up. To gather my babies around me and sit and wait for Jesus to come back and make all of this right again.

And then I remember.

I remember that Jesus calls us to fight. He calls us to be a royal priesthood. A people who rule on His behalf and a people who represent Him to the world around them.

If we hide from the darkness, the darkness will certainly overcome. At least, it will overcome those to whom God asked us to be the light. Perhaps it will overcome us as well.

God is light and He has commissioned us to bring that light to the world.

I often tell my children:

You are beautiful. You are loving.

Now act like it.

So now I tell myself and I tell you:

We are royal. We are priests.

We should act like it.

Go dish out food at a soup kitchen.

Go babysit the children of a parent who has lost someone they love.

Go take a meal to an elderly friend who broke their hip.

Go have patience with that tantrum-throwing child one more time.

Go bake some cookies and take them to the gay couple down the street. Without a note that tells them how wrong they are.

Go find out how to help those refugee children who are lost and hungry and afraid (here’s a good place to start: http://wewelcomerefugees.com/).

We are royal. We are priests.

Act like it.

Be the light that overcomes the darkness.

And take heart; Jesus has overcome the world.

Hijacked Truth and Futile Character

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Elizabeth

Character is vital to our society. It is important to people as individuals and it is important to society in its entirety. I wrote long ago about how we form character and why character matters, and I re-post this particular essay today because of the lack of character that I see all around us these days.

When we can cheat and lie “just a little bit” and still think highly of ourselves, when we show our kids that it’s okay to do little wrong things to get by, when it is more wrong to judge evil than to do evil, then we are in trouble. For our society to function, we need people of character in leadership positions from teachers and managers to mayors and governors.

Why has this happened? Why do ordinary people care so little about acting in moral ways?

Much of this dearth of character, this dearth of virtue, comes from the rejection of the idea of truth.

If truth is, at best, all relative and just a matter of perspective and, at worst, a social construct and simply whatever we make it to be, then why should anyone work hard to develop a character that may or may not be valid to those around us?

If there is no truth that we can deliberate and discover together as a society (whatever that truth may be and wherever it may come from), we are left with “power and propaganda and grievance and anger and caucuses and anti-caucuses and special interest groups and victims and vengeance.” ~ Richard John Neuhaus, a Christian cleric and writer

There is an assumption in much of society, in many of our universities especially, that we cannot keep society and relationships moving forward if we talk about truth because truth brings only conflict. Truth has gained a negative connotation, one that assumes that anything so divisive has no appropriate role in public life.

How did this happen? How did truth get hijacked and associated with the negative? How did truth become linked with religious totalitarianism and Osama bin Laden? How did it become shameful to declare a belief in truth, even simply the idea of truth, regardless of what that truth is?

Part of the answer, I’m afraid, is due to the Church. We have a history of wielding the truth as divisively as possible, of tearing down and even destroying rather than creating and building up. We have used truth as an excuse for starting wars and we have used truth as an excuse to look down on our neighbor.

Richard John Neuhaus says that it is now the Church’s task to learn how to assert truth in public “persuasively and winsomely and in a manner that does not violate but strengthens the bonds of civility”. He challenges that it is our duty not to just tolerate those with whom we disagree but to eagerly engage them in love.

How? How do we declare truth without being divisive and unpleasant, causing strife, conflict and wars?

By remembering grace.

By remembering that we can’t even live up to our own standards and yet we are loved.

When we despise anyone or feel superior to anyone, we are living by moral performance rather than grace. And living by moral performance is what brings divisiveness to the truth.

By the way we live, by living a life of loving and caring for others, we can show truth and speak truth with no divisiveness at all.

This is what the early Christians did when they loved the poor, empowered women, and brought together the races and classes. This is how the early Church overran the Roman Empire when it wasn’t even attempting to gain political power.

This. This is the truth we need.

Because this truth is

a God Who became weak, Who loved and died for the people Who opposed Him, forgiving them. ~ Tim Keller

Will you speak and live this kind of truth to your world? Our world desperately needs Him.

art credits: Medieval image of Peter the Hermit leading the Crusades; Christ Crucified by Diego Velazquez; engraving of the Hotel Dieu; photograph of Christ on the Cross by Asta Rastauskiene

We Are All Lizzy

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Elizabeth

Trying something new. Needs a little work. That’s what practice is for, right?

It was a dark, closed-in space, dank and dingy, and Lizzy wasn’t at all sure how she had ended up there.

It had started with a teensy spot of envy – wishing that she owned what someone else had – and had ended up with robbery and murder when the owner had walked in on her.

She stared at the wall, hardly able to comprehend why she had done what she had done. She wasn’t a bad person. Sure, she could be prideful and sometimes got angry when she shouldn’t, but there were lots of people who were worse than she.

The door clanged open and she was led down the hall to the courtroom in chains. Chains.

It was humiliating to stand there in that orange suit, shackles on her wrists and ankles, knowing that she deserved to be there and hating that now everyone else knew she deserved it too.

The judge came in and sat, looking at her for a long time.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzy saw another figure in the same orange jumpsuit, with the same shackles, shuffle up and stand next to her. She turned and saw it was a man. A plain, rough-hewn sort of man. He glanced down at her and gave a small smile. She turned away, embarrassed.

She looked back at the judge who had begun to speak.

“Lizzy.”

There was disappointment in the voice, but there was kindness too.

“You have been found guilty of robbery and of murder. Your sentence is death.”

Lizzy lowered her eyes and felt the breath explode out of her. She knew she deserved it. She waited to be led out again, back to her cell, but the judge kept speaking.

“Lizzy. You will now be released.”

Lizzy’s eyes shot up again, widened in disbelief. That didn’t make sense!

“My son has volunteered to take your place. He will die and you will be released.”

It happened so quickly that Lizzy hardly understood. Her chains were taken off and that man who had stood beside her was led away to be put to death. With dizzying speed, she found herself outside the courthouse – free.

As she stood there, dumbfounded and bewildered, breathing the fresh, clean air of the outdoors, a voice said her name.

“Lizzy.”

She looked up and saw the judge standing beside her.

“You must be hungry. I know that it all happened very quickly. Will you come to my house for supper?”

She stared into the somber, kind eyes of the judge and, despite herself, despite her embarrassment and bafflement, found herself nodding yes.

After a meal of the most delicious food she had ever tasted and the most absorbing conversation she’d ever taken part of, the judge looked at her with a look of the most raw and naked love she had ever seen.

“Lizzy. I love you. I love you with all that I am. I want to adopt you as my own child. I want to be your Father, your Daddy. Everything I have will be yours. I want to give you a home, give you my name, give you my love. Will you have me?”

The judge who had delivered the just sentence of death for her crimes, the judge who gave up his son to take her place, that very same judge now also wanted to adopt her and give her all of him?

Lizzy could do nothing but fall to her knees with her face to the floor and weep.

Choosing Our Activities

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Elizabeth

Our world is a busy place.

There is a lot of pressure on young families (very likely on those in other seasons of life as well – I can only speak to what I know) to keep our children as busy as possible. We are presented with a myriad of activities for our kids and are given the impression that we deprive our children if we choose to opt out.

Your kids won’t be well-rounded! They will fall behind their friends! They won’t learn as much, be as good, become as successful!

Whether the reference is to sports, the arts, languages or STEM, the implication is that if we love our children, we will give them as much chance for success in their later life as we possibly can.

If God is in all things and in Him all things hold together, if we are to view all pieces of our lives through a Christian lens, if there is no separation between sacred and secular, then even the activities we choose for our children should be considered carefully in light of our faith.

I have heard much lamenting from Christians recently about the busyness of our families, about how we should spend time together in our homes building character into our children rather than ferrying them around from activity to activity.

The argument is that it is much more important for our kids to know and love Jesus than to become successful in the eyes of our culture.

I don’t disagree at all with the impetus behind the lament. I fully believe that to know and love Jesus is the most important thing we can teach our children.

I also believe that it is important to teach our children to show Jesus to the people in their circle of influence.

And there is my dilemma. If the people who see us view us as failures, can they be receptive to what we have to say about Christ?

If God created arts, if philosophy and math are ways of looking at the world He created, shouldn’t we be helping our children to become well versed in such things?

For people who do not know God to respect what we have to say about God, they must also respect us. Yes, much of that will occur when they see how well we love them and each other. But some of that also comes with how successful we are in whatever tasks we set ourselves to accomplish.

So what do we do? What is most important?

Do we keep our families at home, focusing completely on helping them to love God and each other?

Do we sign our kids up for multiple activities, helping them to become successful and thus securing a foundation for their future witness to those around them?

Perhaps the answer lies in a balance between the two. This is often the case in our lives in Christ. We are not often asked to do solely one to the exclusion of the other; maybe that is true here as well.

If we are deliberate about carving out time to spend together as a family, being sure to be intentional in how we teach our children in that time, and also are intentionally wise in choosing a few activities for our children, being sure to consider the God-given passions of each child, then we should be able to fulfill both tasks set before us.

We should be able to help our children both to love God and those around them, and to gain the respect of their future friends and colleagues, laying the foundation of their ability to show Jesus to those around them.

Will you take a turn and share with me? What ideas do you have for not staying too busy as a family and yet at the same time helping your children to succeed?

To Know Jesus

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Elizabeth

I am a learner by nature.

I love to read, to study, to delve deeply into what interests me.

My current confession is that the knowledge I have about God, about the Bible, can make me prideful at times. I went to a Christian elementary school and a Christian college. I’ve taken the Bible classes (including Jimmy Allen’s Romans class which has been around so long that my parents took his class when they went through school!), studied the texts, aced the tests.

For someone who never sought after a degree in ministry, I certainly know a lot about Jesus. Knowing Jesus Himself, however, is another matter altogether.

I have to be careful. I too often read books about Jesus rather than reading His Words. I too often would rather have deep theological discussions about Jesus than talk directly to Him. I too often prefer to listen to a speaker expound on the life of Christ than listen to Jesus Himself.

I could tell whether I know about Jesus, at least when I was in school, by how well I did on tests. How can we tell whether we know Jesus?

Jesus told His disciples that His sheep know His voice, that they can follow Him because they are able to recognize His voice.

I sometimes think I only recognize His voice because it is that part inside of me telling me to do something I really don’t want to do!

David, the one God called a man after His heart, gives us a clue to this in how he spoke with God in the Psalms. Perhaps one of the reasons he knew God so well is because he spoke to God about everything…happiness, sorrow, anger, joy, jealousy, revenge…truly everything.

Perhaps just being in the habit of speaking with Jesus about everything throughout every day is what brings us closer to Him. Perhaps just practicing His presence is what helps us to truly know Jesus. Brother Lawrence, a 17th century monk, showed us how to do this as he went about his daily work in the kitchen of his monastery.

Brother Lawrence spoke of conversing with God as much when he was washing dishes as when he was kneeling in the chapel.

We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him. And when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.

Like many things, it seems to be a matter of training our minds to continually return to God.

I think I can end no better than with Brother Lawrence’s words, words that I need to hear as I strive to know Jesus in more intimate ways than simply knowing about Him:

You need not cry very loud. He is nearer to us than we are aware. Every one is capable of such familiar conversation with God; some more, some less. He knows what we can do. Let us begin then. Perhaps He expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage.

Have courage and begin.

Art credits: The Good Shepherd by James Tissot; Anointing of David by Alexandr Ivanov; Brother Lawrence in the Kitchen in a book published by Fleming Revell Co.

This is Easter

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Elizabeth

Easter.

Spring.

New life.

It is an inevitable part of life that monochromatic winter begins to melt into spaces of bright color. Snow gives way to tulips and crocuses. Perhaps it is our necessary reminder that death is followed by new life. Our reminder of Easter.

It was our first Easter without Kristina.

On Easter morning, my eldest ran into the living room where we had left the figure of Jesus on the cross the night before, eyes wide with hope of resurrection. “Daddy, look! Jesus left us flowers that God made!”

Hope and joy at the end of sorrow and pain. This is Easter.

On Easter morning, gathered with our Family, we sang, “The greatest day in history, Death is beaten, You have rescued me. Sing it out, Jesus is alive! Endless joy, perfect peace, Earthly pain finally will cease. Celebrate Jesus is alive! Oh, happy day, happy day…”

During a celebration after tragedy, hearts swell and overflow with emotions that at first glance seem to be at odds. We feel both joy and gratitude, sorrow and longing.

On Easter morning, the joy is easy. Jesus is alive!

Sorrow and longing, though, those are things that are more difficult. Yet they are real and, although hard, they are what should be.

We all suffer. We all love and therefore all suffer because in our broken world, love means suffering. Those who do not love much do not suffer much. I would not grieve so deeply had I not loved Kristina so much. God loves our world and therefore God Himself suffers.

Such sorrow was felt over our first Easter without Kristina.

We acknowledge that all of this, this pain and death and sadness, is not how it was supposed to be. None of this existed before we rebelled against God.

And so we sorrow.

Our longing is for that day of redemption and transformation. The day when earthly pain will cease and death will be banished for all time. We desperately wish to be gathered into Jesus’ arms and told that all is now well.

And so we long.

Sorrow and longing.

At second look, we are reassured that these are what we should feel. After all,

Our kind, heavenly Father has provided many wonderful inns for us along our journey, but He takes special care to see that we never mistake any of them for home. ~ C.S. Lewis

At the end of it all, however, our hearts must return again to gratitude.

On that Easter morning, as we worshiped together, we sang, “You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of us.”

Just as we did in the middle of our ugly places, our hearts cry out “Why?” Yet this time, it is a vastly different sort of why.

This time we ask, why do You love me that much?

You went to the cross to allow us to become children of God. Wasn’t that more than enough? Why would You now also work so very hard to make beautiful things out of the dust that we are? Why would You pour so much into molding us into people who look like You?

Let us fall on our knees in joy and with gratitude for such lavish love.

On Easter morning and beyond, let our hearts swell with both sorrow and longing, joy and gratitude, knowing that Jesus is truly alive, knowing that He has defeated death.

edited from the archives

art credit: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise by Benjamin West; heaven picture; cross picture by Asta Rastauskiene

God is love.

God is justice.

God is tender and merciful and He is sharp and condemning.

To love God is to love everything about Him. Even the parts we don’t understand. Even the pieces we wish were different.

To wish that God were only comfort and healing is to wish away judgement for those who abuse children, rape women, sell humans. It is to wish away the cross, and this diminishes Christ’s sacrifice.

When we wish for God only to be mercy and grace, we wish away His sharpness, and it is His sharpness that prunes and perfects us.

Christ’s love is not the soft love of human emotion, but a burning fire that cleanses and sears. It is a love that demands self-sacrifice. ~ J. Heinrich Arnold in The Center

And sacrifice is the only way to conquer death, defeat Satan, rescue the world.

So we come full circle.

To love the saving, forgiving piece of God is to love the judging, condemning part of God.

These pieces which come together in the Christ who hangs on the cross.

On this Good Friday, look up at His bloody form and love Him.

All of Him.

I lost a friend this week.

I’ve lost three friends over the past year and a half. This weighs heavy on me.

There is nothing that makes this okay. Jesus Himself wept at the death of His friend.

Death and pain, sorrow and grief. These are not how life was created to be.

There is nothing that makes this okay. Only one thing makes this bearable.

Our God.

How do I know He will keep His promises?

I know because God loves us enough to put on skin and come down to live with us, to suffer for us, to die for us. I know because God has enough power to rise from the dead and conquer death for all time.

He loves us enough and He has power enough.

I don’t know why God didn’t put it all right from the beginning. I don’t begin to understand why He places so much importance on human freedom of choice or why our sin and redemption are so closely intertwined with creation itself.

But I know He keeps His promises and I know that His promises are beautiful beyond imagining.

And for that I will trust Him.

This one’s for you, Jenna. Until we meet again.

All of creation waits with inhaled breath.

We wait as in the space before the upraised baton falls in the darkened symphony hall.

We wait as in the space before stepping over the threshold of home.

We wait as in the space before the first glimmer of dawn sparks into the darkest part of the night.

We wait with inhaled breath for the breath of God to arrive.

For the breath of God to arrive and breathe in the air of this world and breathe out the grace of heaven.

As we bundle ourselves against the cold and breathe out frost into the air, so we can’t help but breathe in a breath of hope even as we bundle our hearts against disappointment.

But God is a God of hope, so we can breathe easy and unbundle our hearts to the warmth of His love.

He did, after all, come once before and draw our air into His lungs and in so doing, foreshadowed the way He will come once again and exhale perfection into the very breath of the fabric of our world.

And so, as we wait with inhaled breath, we breathe out love and grace to those we see around us so that they, too, can breathe in a breath of hope

and wait for the breath of God to arrive in our world once more.

Once upon a time, there was an American who took a hike in the Smoky Mountains.

He was a couple of days down the trail when he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a State governor came along the trail, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.

So likewise, a conservative talk show host happened upon the American as he walked down the trail, and he too passed by on the other side.

Also a local pastor, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a middle-eastern man, dressed in military fatigues and carrying a sub-machine gun, looking much like the pictures of ISIS soldiers, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds…

Much of what Jesus says is ridiculous. Completely unreasonable and absurd. Crazy, even.

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and to the evil.

Then the King will say…, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father…For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a refugee and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

It doesn’t make sense and it is uncomfortable and it is hard. It is so very hard.

The idea of praying for those who want to bomb me is ludicrous. The thought of welcoming people who might be preparing to hurt my children is absurd. It makes my heart freeze and my stomach hurt.

I am frightened and I want to obey Jesus only when I can see the outcome, only when I know that I will be blessed, not blown to smithereens, in return.

There are so many commands of Jesus that I skip right over. I look at them, read them, and decide that they are not for me. Following Jesus is hard, and I am a coward.

Which means, if I am honest with myself, that I am no better than those I am frightened of.

…while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…

And God reached down to earth for me. He became a refugee, a stranger, for my sake, to bring me back to Him.

God, help me.

Give me courage, give me strength. Give me faith to trust that in Your ridiculousness, You know what You are talking about.

Help me to love You enough to obey You. To obey all that You command.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever.

Help those who do not love You, including myself who does not love You enough.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, help me. Help your Church.

Sometimes, when I forget who our King is, this world makes me want to run away and hide.

In a week when refugees number in the millions,

In a week when a friend, a friend with a wife and three small children, dies much too soon,

In a week when fellow believers choose to scream about gay marriage across the country rather than to do something about the poor on the other side of town,

It is easy to believe the lie that I can do nothing against the darkness of this world.

It is easy to believe that the darkness is too strong.

It is easy to believe that ISIS wins, that cancer wins, that politicism wins.

In a week like this, I want to give in to despair. To give up. To gather my babies around me and sit and wait for Jesus to come back and make all of this right again.

And then I remember.

I remember that Jesus calls us to fight. He calls us to be a royal priesthood. A people who rule on His behalf and a people who represent Him to the world around them.

If we hide from the darkness, the darkness will certainly overcome. At least, it will overcome those to whom God asked us to be the light. Perhaps it will overcome us as well.

God is light and He has commissioned us to bring that light to the world.

I often tell my children:

You are beautiful. You are loving.

Now act like it.

So now I tell myself and I tell you:

We are royal. We are priests.

We should act like it.

Go dish out food at a soup kitchen.

Go babysit the children of a parent who has lost someone they love.