My Confession and Repentance

Posted on November 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.

I am prejudiced.

Perhaps not overtly. I am not prejudiced in a way that anyone outside of my head would notice. I don’t consciously try to think poorly about those who are different than me or treat them badly.

The judgments, the assumptions, are there, though.

My own prejudice is not related to race. I am grateful to have had many friendships with people of other races. These friendships allow me to see similar people I do not know through the eyes of those friendships.

My particular prejudice is related to economic and educational status.

What is yours?

When I see someone who speaks or writes as though they have not even made it through high school, I don’t treat them poorly, but I make assumptions. I make assumptions about their character, about the way they think, and therefore assumptions about what their future actions might be.

Some of the time I catch myself. I give myself a mental shake and try to see the person for who they really are.

I don’t always catch myself.

For this I repent.

I will take responsibility for my own failings and take the first step towards making the Church a safer place for those who are not like me.

Repentance involves change. It is not simply apologizing and then continuing on. One must go in a different direction.

And so I repent.

I repent for making assumptions about people based on their appearance.

I repent for judging people’s character based on the way they speak.

I repent for thinking myself better than someone who has not had as much education.

For truly? Truly, I am ashamed for valuing knowledge more than kindness. I sorrow over my valuing learning more than gentleness. I lament over my valuing schooling more than servanthood.

I confess and I repent.

Will you join me?

May God have mercy and heal me of such things.

May Christ have mercy and heal the Church.

May the Spirit have mercy and heal our world.

What I Saw

Posted on November 18, 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.

Let me tell you what I saw on Sunday.

Let me tell you what I saw as I sat on stage with the worship band at church.

I saw a miracle. A miracle of hope.

I saw a parade of different, a line of people as disparate as could be walk to the front of our church and choose Jesus.

This week the internet has been crammed full of articles and blog posts that tell me that within our church, which identifies as evangelical, the people should be sharply divided. That the white men should be seated on one side and all the rest of us should be seated on the other side, both groups shooting looks of anger and disappointment toward the other.

That’s not what I saw.

I saw, instead, person after person, so many people, walk to the front to be baptized.

I saw Caucasian American, African American, Asian American, Latino American, old, young, men and women all die to their old life and begin their new life in Christ.

And I saw Caucasian American, African American, Asian American, Latino American, old, young, men and women all come to their feet and clap and cheer and whoop and holler for them.

I wept.

All while trying to play a complicated part on a B-3 organ. Not the best plan for playing well.

Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off that baptistry.

Because what I saw on Sunday?

What I saw was hope.

Not perfection. Until Jesus comes back, there will never be perfection here on this earth.

The Church has been responsible for so many atrocious acts over the centuries. Nothing has changed. We are all still human and I know there was still a lot of pain and grief inside of the people in our church. We will still hurt each other and have to apologize and forgive. But there was also a lot of healing.

I saw people set aside, just for that moment, how differently they viewed the world and instead choose to cheer each other on toward Jesus.

I know we often do a horrible job of loving people, but every once in a while we get it right.

This Sunday, I saw us get it right.

I saw that parade of different and I saw the Church urging them on. I saw people focused on Jesus. I saw a miracle of hope.

So don’t give up on the Church.

Take a step back for a moment if you need to and take a deep breath.

But don’t give up on her. She is still the Body of Christ.

She needs us. She needs us to keep reminding her how to love those who are different.

Keep praying for her. Keep standing up against her when she becomes hurtful and standing up for her when others try to hurt her. Keep serving and worshiping with her. As a part of her.

Just keep taking one step at a time, one more step alongside this Church that is loved by Jesus.

After all, if Jesus hasn’t given up on us yet, perhaps we shouldn’t give up on each other either.

House of Cards

Posted on November 11, 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.

Why are we so defensive on God’s behalf?

Why do we become so frightened of hard questions?

Do we think the Bible asks us to defend God’s character, or is it deeper than that?

Not all of the time, but all of us do harbor a bit of the recurring agnostic inside. A tiny voice that says, what if it isn’t true?

What will become of me if it isn’t true?

This flicker of fear lingers so insidiously that when someone asks a questions to which we don’t know the answer, when someone expresses a doubt we ourselves have thought, we tend to lash out, to push away, to shame.

If this piece of what I believe turns out not to be true, perhaps none of it is true.

Is God so fragile?

Is the God who flung the stars into space, who has the power to overcome sin and death so uncertain that one piece of the puzzle can bring the entire edifice crashing down?

Is our God a house of cards?

If your God is a house of cards, you need a new God.

You need a God who is big enough to cradle all our questions, deep enough to hold all our doubts.

You need the God who shows His power through the universe we see, who reveals Himself through His Son in Scripture, who speaks to us through His Spirit within us.

When you know this God, you can let go of your need to defend. You can rest easy with, even welcome the doubts and questions of others.

When you are safe and secure in the LORD Almighty, you become a place for others to find rest. You become a safe place where people can sit with their questions and doubts without feeling shamed or guilty.

What if we as a Church became a place where people could question and yet trust, where people could doubt and yet worship, where people could wonder and yet love.

What if we welcomed the not-so-sure rather than driving them away?

What if we could be comfortable with the hard spaces, acknowledging that not everything has an answer we can know right now?

It starts with you and with me. Can we let go of our fear and trust that our faith is not a house of cards?

Imagine a church where people could worship even when they don’t have it all figured out.

Imagine a church where people could love and serve even in the times when they aren’t quite sure about it all.

Imagine a church full of people like…

Well, full of people like us.

This One Is for the Ugly Days

Posted on November 4, 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.

There are some days when it is easy to love.

I am able to surrender to the Spirit which causes peace to fill me up and overflow into the hearts of my daughters, my husband. I have the supernatural strength to stay calm in the midst of tantrums, kind in the midst of misunderstandings, and joyful in the midst of hurt.

Then there are days like today.

Days when something ugly wells up inside of me. Days when I want to be mean. Days when I feel resentful towards those I love best.

I hate these days.

What is this darkness, this nastiness that overwhelms me and threatens to spill out into the hearts of those I love?

My daughters cry to be held, fuss about wearing clothes, throw tantrums because school is hard, and my desire is not to comfort them but to scream like a crazed woman with fire in my eyes.

My husband makes an innocent comment and my desire is not to hear his loving intentions but to deliberately misunderstand and hiss a disparaging remark.

I intentionally fight against the changing of my mood. I want to savor, to wallow in my blackness.

I hate these days.

I get so tired of fighting this battle within me. I get so weary of fighting my very self. I long for the day when I finally look like Jesus, when my desire is to love rather than hate, when my heart is all light with no shadow at all.

As ugly as my heart can be, I am grateful that God refuses to give up on me. I am thankful that He does not save me and then leave me as I am. I am astounded that He is filling me up with Himself, crowding out the ugliness until there is nothing left but Beauty.

I try not to feel impatient.

Yet I know. I know. I know that I belong to Jesus. He gave Himself for me and therefore sin has lost its hold on me. I can hold on to that knowing even when I cannot feel it. Little by little, sin’s grasp is slipping away because Love has taken hold and nothing dark can hold on in the light of this fiercest Love.

As the recent hymn, In Christ Alone, says, “No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from His hand; ‘till He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”

No scheme of man. Not even my own schemes. Nothing can separate me from Love Himself.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Amen.

edited from the archives