Category: Blog

We recently bought a water table for the kids. We had noticed that while Emmaline loves creating tea parties, Charlie really just likes pouring the water and making a mess. Maybe that is a boy and girl thing, or maybe it is a 4-year-old and 2-year-old thing, or maybe it is just us. But we live in a beautiful state and the late afternoons here are great times to be outside. One thing you need to know about me is that I LOVE surprises. In my family growing up, we did scavenger hunts to find our surprise gift at Christmas and on our birthdays, so I was excited to incorporate the build-up to a surprise for the next generation. The water table arrived Friday afternoon and Ryan put it together, and then we worked on creating a scavenger hunt. Our children can’t read yet, so we drew pictures of places in our home that they would recognize and placed the clues there. There was one on the piano, one in the play tent, one in Emmaline’s princess castle and the last one leading them outside. Of course, we took pictures of them “reading” the cues and figuring out where to go and Emmaline, who was totally invested in this entire process, would drag Charlie from room to room with growing excitement.

They finally finished the scavenger hunt and arrived outside to see their new Water Table and they were thrilled! It was a great surprise, but the build-up was better. In only the last five days, that little water table has gotten a lot of use, and I am thankful for the means of being able to buy gifts like this for my children that are both mentally stimulating and just plain fun. But how many good and wonderful gifts does our Heavenly Father lavish on us that we finally see revealed after a really long scavenger hunt? How does our walk of faith sometimes feel like guesswork as we move from clue to clue and finally see the big reveal? What do you remember receiving or seeing that felt like the prize at the end of a long journey?

As people of faith, we have a great prize at the end. If your first thought was heaven, let me remind you that life WITH God is the prize. We don’t follow the clues (walk this journey of faith) all of our life only enjoy the prize at the end, but to live into the journey and the build-up which is almost as much fun. While life WITH God is better than any amateur scavenger hunt, sometimes when we focus on the prize, we forget the journey. We forget how God is even a little more revealed with each clue along the way. Maybe God is revealed in the healing of cancer or diagnosis that has plagued you or someone you love and through the process of that illness, you learned to lean more on God’s strength than on your own. Maybe God was revealed in that hard conversation with a partner or friend or child that lead eventually to more health and wholeness deep down. Maybe God has been revealed to you in this new time of social distancing and isolation in such a way that you more fully appreciate the connections you do have and your priorities have shifted accordingly.

Does Scripture promise the prize of Heaven to those that love God through faith in Jesus Christ, yes, absolutely it does. But the Bible promises us a lot more than eternal communion with the Triune God. Scripture promises over and over again to teach us new and amazing things on this journey of faith and to let that journey teach and shape us while more and more of God is revealed.

I love this version of the well-known text in Romans, chapter 5 which talks about how we grow our endurance through our suffering, and as that grows so does out character and our hope. Said another way:

“We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide-open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.

There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”

Romans 5:2-5 The Message

There is more to come friends! Not just when we die and take our final breath. But in every breath as we look for God and walk WITH God and take seriously the clues that reveal more of who God is along the way. May God increase your hope and open your eyes to all that God is doing and may God use you to be a clue to someone else so that you might reveal the love and grace of Jesus to them when they need to hope and when they need the assurance that there is in fact, much more to come!

• Upcoming training event will be offered once we are able to gather in person again, be on the look out.
• The two books that I referenced and submit as the definitive tomes on the best-practices of church missions work are When Helping Hurts (Corbett/Fikkert) and Toxic Charity (Lupton). I know many of you have read one or both of these books.
• “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” -James 1:27 (NIV)
• “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” -James 2:17 (NIV)

“I once was lost, but now I am found.”

I love this hymn, and lately, I have been reminded over and over again about lostness. Our daughter Emmaline has a doll named Jo-Jo that she takes everywhere (except into her classroom) and she loves that doll, but man, oh man does she leave it EVERYWHERE. For as passionate as she is about this doll, she loses it about 20 times a day; and guess who has to find it…yep, you guessed correctly, we do. We have been trying to teach Emmaline about responsibility and holding on to important things, like Jo-Jo, but we still have a long way to go.

All of us have lost something of value. Maybe we eventually found it, but maybe we didn’t and it was gone forever. I remember losing my retainer on the first day of 9^th grade. I had just gotten my braces off and I was so proud of my shiny, straight teeth. I had a red retainer and I took good care of it, until my first lunch hour on my first day of high school. I went to Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach, FL and I was a nervous freshman. I had survived the first two academic blocks and had found an inconspicuous spot to quickly eat my lunch with a few friends. When the third block bell rang, I was so nervous about finding my Biology class on time that I forgot to grab my shiny new red retainer from the bottom of my disposable lunch bag and promptly threw it away in a nearby trash can. While sitting in the opening class of Biology and learning about cellular makeup, I realized my grave mistake. I knew I couldn’t come home without my expensive new red retainer, and so I did what any good oldest daughter (who is trying to set a good example for her younger sisters would do), and I asked to be excused early from that class so I could dig through the trash can and retrieve my lost item (Gross, I know)If you could have seen the look on the faces of those that watched me dig through the trash that day, it really was embarrassing. Quite a way to start high school, wouldn’t you agree?! But I found it, which is the lesson of the story, right? Or is it?

I have been studying Luke chapter 15 over the last week, and in this chapter, you read three stories about lostness. First is the story of the Lost Sheep, second is the story of the Lost Coin, and third, is the story of the Prodigal Son, or another way of translating it, the Lost Son. I referenced this parable in my sermon on Sunday and then we talked about it again with my Staff Book Study Group on Tuesday morning. But the more I thought about these parables, the more questions I had. I had a companion book to read along with this study which has helped. Some of you have read it, Short Stories by Jesus by Dr. Amy-Jill Levine and it is rich. As a Jewish woman who is also a New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School, she brings in the first-century Jewish world context in such a way, that every chapter seems to contain many, “a-ha!” moments for me.

As you re-read this 15^th chapter of Luke, and I encourage you to do so, there is the rule of three, just like you will find in the story of the folklore favorite, The Three Little Pigs where of course the first and second are the same, but lead to a difference in the third. In the first two parables, the lost sheep and the lost coin; these first two models set up the third. The shepherd in the first parable leaves all 99 other sheep to find the one that is lost and in the second, the woman searches diligently until finding the lost silver coin.  But in the third parable, the Prodigal Son is not searched for. Yes, the Father figure “sees him from far off and runs to embrace him” but the Father did not go in search for the youngest son. Could it have been because he had an estate to manage, or a reputation whose honor was violated by the sudden exit from his youngest son, or is it because he could not travel? We don’t know, but we know that we have heard this parable over and over again as we grew up in the church. And this story matters in how we see the Father, the two sons, how we understand lostness and repentance.

It is safe to say that all of these parables would have been heard through the ears of a 1st-century Jewish audience and that audience would have known that the main characters in each of these stories were in fact wealthy. No regular person would have had 100 sheep, maybe 5 or 6, but not 100. This large number of sheep communicates that this person comes from means. The same is said about the woman with 10 silver coins, one could also argue that she too is wealthy or has a wealthy family. And then the father in the Prodigal Son story has an estate with servants and helpers, which points also to a person of wealthy means. To lose one sheep amongst 100, doesn’t seem like much of a blow. To lose one silver coin out of 10, while the stakes are higher, is not a life or death situation. But losing one son, when you have only two, is the worst thing in the world. And so why wasn’t the Father actively looking, day and night for his lost son? Why didn’t he refuse to sleep or rest until his lost son was found? If the Father in this parable is in fact supposed to represent for us God, our Father, why didn’t he do more?

It might be because, the Father thought that it was the youngest son that was lost, but he was wrong. The youngest son came home and was reconciled to the Father and his household. But, sadly the oldest son, was lost and remained lost because even after attempts were made to bring the older son back into the fold and to reconcile the relationship, the story ends without any sort of resolution. Because sometimes, the things we think are lost for good, are only lost for a time. And in our focus on that lost thing, we forget what we really treasure and maybe, unwittingly, we take for granted all we already have.

I don’t know if you have ever lost something of deep value to you. In this story, the Father lost both sons. The youngest to his reckless living and the oldest to his own jealousy, anger, and feelings of alienation. When the rest of the neighbors and friends were celebrating the youngest son’s return with a party and good food, the Father had to go outside to find his oldest son; the one who was really lost. Levine writes, “The father did not know until this moment that the elder was the son who was truly “lost” to him. Once the recognition comes, he does what the shepherd and the woman do: realizing his loss, his lost son, the son whom he loves, he seeks to make his family whole.” (Short Stories of Jesus; pg. 68).

Jesus is using each of us to help make the family of God whole. Don’t ever assume someone is lost for good, nor should we ever assume that someone is found for good. Finding the lost, whether they are sheep, or coins, or people, takes a lot of work. We have been blessed with so much, especially during this time when so many others go without. When we have so much around us; our health, our financial security, a clean place to live, a healthy marriage; we forget what we treasure and if we aren’t careful, we can make the mistake of forgetting that all people matter; those lost and those found. I invite you to pray with me today a prayer of unveiling so that whatever relationship, or situation or circumstance that may seem lost or gone to you, may, through the power of the Holy Spirit come home again, join the party and we reconciled and whole again.

Seeing God…

Today, on my early morning walk, I saw an Azalea blooming, quietly hidden low in a bush, soft, yet striking red. “An Azalea blooming in August?”,  I wondered.

Following several afternoons of heavy rainfall, in the garden of my patio, a tiny, pink Rain Lily bloomed…delicate and lovely… a welcomed surprise!

Colorful red, soft pink, gentle while Penta; gracious flowering Begonia; varigated Jasmin spreading its colorful vines; purple Bellflower; graceful pink Caladium; gentle Rabbit Foot Fern swaying in a pot; tiny purple blossoms bursting from Peacock Ginger…

A Hydrangea Bush, recently moved to a sunnier location, is beginning to perk up!

Cuttings from Impatiens, overgrown and tenderly watered daily, planted in a quiet corner of my patio, are also perking up!

Angel Wing Begonia, drooping with lovely pink blossoms, bring smiles and joy!

Often, in my search for God, I look no further than my tiny patio. There is God in the beauty of flowers.

Thanks be to God for His creation!

“… you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Deuteronomy 4:29

Show Notes:

• If you want to read a little more here are the links to the wiki pages for the Patristics more broadly, Gregory of Nyssa more specifically, and the Historical-Critical method of studying scripture. As always if you have any follow up questions, or would like to discuss, let me know, I would love to connect!