The moments we actually grasp the meaning of the unconditional love of God “have a shelf life of about eight to ten seconds.” We should “savor those moments when” such grace appears. So says David Roche, the pastor of the Church of 80% Sincerity (Anne Lamott, Plan B). I agree. For me, holding onto grace is like grasping the proverbial greased pig.
After chasing it around in something I’m writing or singing, in a field of Pacific-blue spring flowers or in a church full of fellow greased-pig-chasers, I find myself making a diving catch. Once in a slippery while, I think I’ve finally got it! I latch onto the thought that God really loves me, just like I am. Sure enough, in about eight to ten seconds, the grace moment slips away and I’m left to wallow in the self-made slop I can make of life when I think it’s all up to me.
Someone has said that the significance of life is not measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath. A few years ago, I had one of those moments. The entrance to the pastor’s study was just off of Sunset Avenue in Dallas. Our preschoolers released some pigeons one of the teachers had raised. I was invited to share in the moment. With diaper-stuffed britches, the children stood there with their faces full of expectation turned toward the morning sky. The pigeons were pulled from their cages, held between gentle palms and then released upward to the morning sky. In just eight to ten seconds, they’d been freed from their cages on Sunset, then circled back east toward the sun still rising. I stood there transfixed, savoring the moment while it lasted, about eight to ten seconds.
In those few seconds before the pigeons disappeared from sight, I saw the meaning of grace. Grace is not mine to capture and hold. It has captured me. Grace has held me close in gentle palms and, in Jesus, set me free to soar on wings lifted strong by hope in a sky full of mercy. It’s amazing what you can see, in just eight to ten seconds.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Sangre de Christo
If you drive north on highway 287 out of Amarillo toward the northeast corner of New Mexico, you will cross over the Canadian River though, most of the year, you probably won’t know it. At that particular point, eighty-five percent of the Canadian runs underground. Unless it’s just rained, all you will actually see is a dry riverbed. You won’t actually see a river.
The river is born in northern New Mexico at some 9,600 feet high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It runs for almost 800 miles before pouring itself out into the Arkansas River and, eventually, the Mississippi. As it resurfaces in eastern Oklahoma, it is dammed, creating the spectacularly beautiful Lake Eufaula, with 600 miles of shoreline and over 100,000 surface acres of water. If you ever see that lake, it’s almost impossible to believe that it was created by a river you can’t even see, hundreds of miles away.
I’m not a specialist in the physics of water. What I have observed, however, is that whatever is forced underground almost always finds a way of resurfacing. The only question is whether that resurfacing will be well-managed, so that it creates a source of new life, or it is allowed to run its own natural, ravaging course. Whether it’s water, or anger or sadness or hatred, what goes down must, and will, come up.
It’s also been my experience that one of the primary culprits in forcing destructive currents underground is the church. Though we are promised healing in our confession (James 5:16), sad as it is, too often at church we are made to feel that, if we confess those things which are destroying us, we will be judged as less valuable by those with whom we are supposedly worshipping. Or, we legitimately fear that we’ll be ostracized by those who assume that human frailty is some kind of lethal contagion.
Fear forces our sin underground instead of out into the light where the warm embrace of God’s grace can destroy what is destroying us, creating pools of mercy from which others can draw new life. The only people who have ever helped me change the course of my life’s current are those to whom I could make my confession in the confidence that I would not be judged or ostracized.
I’m praying that, as I go to Grace Fellowship, I’ll help create the kind of community where people find healing through confession. Where people can know that, as they allow their pain to resurface, they will do so within a family of hope. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing church, if all we do is participate in forcing sin underground?
Wherever there is a human soul, a river runs through it. The church should be the place where those souls are reborn as rivers of hope, in the Sangre de Christo, the redeeming flood of God’s grace, the blood that flows from Christ.
The river is born in northern New Mexico at some 9,600 feet high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It runs for almost 800 miles before pouring itself out into the Arkansas River and, eventually, the Mississippi. As it resurfaces in eastern Oklahoma, it is dammed, creating the spectacularly beautiful Lake Eufaula, with 600 miles of shoreline and over 100,000 surface acres of water. If you ever see that lake, it’s almost impossible to believe that it was created by a river you can’t even see, hundreds of miles away.
I’m not a specialist in the physics of water. What I have observed, however, is that whatever is forced underground almost always finds a way of resurfacing. The only question is whether that resurfacing will be well-managed, so that it creates a source of new life, or it is allowed to run its own natural, ravaging course. Whether it’s water, or anger or sadness or hatred, what goes down must, and will, come up.
It’s also been my experience that one of the primary culprits in forcing destructive currents underground is the church. Though we are promised healing in our confession (James 5:16), sad as it is, too often at church we are made to feel that, if we confess those things which are destroying us, we will be judged as less valuable by those with whom we are supposedly worshipping. Or, we legitimately fear that we’ll be ostracized by those who assume that human frailty is some kind of lethal contagion.
Fear forces our sin underground instead of out into the light where the warm embrace of God’s grace can destroy what is destroying us, creating pools of mercy from which others can draw new life. The only people who have ever helped me change the course of my life’s current are those to whom I could make my confession in the confidence that I would not be judged or ostracized.
I’m praying that, as I go to Grace Fellowship, I’ll help create the kind of community where people find healing through confession. Where people can know that, as they allow their pain to resurface, they will do so within a family of hope. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing church, if all we do is participate in forcing sin underground?
Wherever there is a human soul, a river runs through it. The church should be the place where those souls are reborn as rivers of hope, in the Sangre de Christo, the redeeming flood of God’s grace, the blood that flows from Christ.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Squirrel
Everything I’m about to describe actually happened in the brief span of maybe three seconds. The consequences ended a life unnecessarily.
I was driving home just the other day on a residential street not far from the house when a squirrel ran out in front of my car. It couldn’t have been more than two or three car lengths in front of me. I was traveling, I’m sure, at the posted speed of 30. Everything was fine until, for some squirrelly reason, the tree rodent decided to change his course. Then, just as he cleared my path, he decided to go back where he came from. (I will assume it was a “he” squirrel and not a “she” squirrel only because someone would accuse me of chauvinism for assuming otherwise). Making a U-turn in less space than it takes to write that word, the squirrel reversed course on the razor’s edge of its claws and started back, it’s huge, furry tail whiplashing with every turn. My heart stopped.
I know people who brag about hitting squirrels, or other living things. I’m just not a hunter. I shot a rabbit once, about twenty years ago. I grieved for a week and took that as a clear sign that hunting was simply not in me. I can’t shoot anything that can look back at me with its own eyes. When the squirrel cleared my lane, I felt instant relief about being able to keep my private vow not to take a life.
Then, for yet another squirrelly reason, the varmint did the same thing all over. It made another U-turn and then another. In the one or two seconds it took my car to close the distance, the squirrel was basically standing in the same place making one U-turn after another, like a drunk square dancer who’d lost his partner on the dance floor. Another car was too close behind me to slam on the brakes. The next thing I heard was a thump. I looked up quickly enough to watch in my rearview mirror as the now flatter squirrel went for a long roll behind me. Why did the squirrel cross the road? That’s one question for philosophical pondering. The more important question might be, why didn’t the squirrel just go ahead and cross the road?
I didn’t mean to kill the squirrel. He’d be leaping through the branches on this beautiful Fall afternoon or squirreling away nuts for the winter if he’d just made up his mind and stayed the course, one way or the other. An ancient scripture records something about “choosing this day whom we will serve.” Make a choice and stay the course. Stop making U-turns. Unless you can actually see a reason why moving in a certain direction is otherwise destructive, more likely than not, you’ll put more at risk by turning back than by moving forward.
There is a time for repentance, for changing the course of our life’s direction because of a higher call from a holy voice. Time and again, however, it’s not the sins we leave behind that finally catch up with us. It’s the sins to which we return over and over. As long as we are seeking Truth and honestly searching for God, there is very little out in front of us that is as threatening as the stuff behind us.
In my experience, even God can only do so much for someone who keeps looking back over his shoulder and going back because they really believe the good days are the old ones behind, not the new ones ahead. The apostle Peter was less tactful, describing such navigational folly as the equivalent of “a dog (that) returns to its vomit” or a “sow that is washed (and then returns) to wallowing in the mud” (2 Peter 2:22). What it is that is so appealing about vomit or mud that it would lure us back rather than urge us forward is truly one of the greatest mysteries of my own life, and human experience in general as I observe it.
The poor squirrel couldn’t make up his mind and the rest is road kill history. Life is in front of us, not behind us. The sooner we make the choice of which way to go and stay the course, the sooner we’ll make progress toward our true calling and avoid living a very miserable life, no matter how long it lasts.
I was driving home just the other day on a residential street not far from the house when a squirrel ran out in front of my car. It couldn’t have been more than two or three car lengths in front of me. I was traveling, I’m sure, at the posted speed of 30. Everything was fine until, for some squirrelly reason, the tree rodent decided to change his course. Then, just as he cleared my path, he decided to go back where he came from. (I will assume it was a “he” squirrel and not a “she” squirrel only because someone would accuse me of chauvinism for assuming otherwise). Making a U-turn in less space than it takes to write that word, the squirrel reversed course on the razor’s edge of its claws and started back, it’s huge, furry tail whiplashing with every turn. My heart stopped.
I know people who brag about hitting squirrels, or other living things. I’m just not a hunter. I shot a rabbit once, about twenty years ago. I grieved for a week and took that as a clear sign that hunting was simply not in me. I can’t shoot anything that can look back at me with its own eyes. When the squirrel cleared my lane, I felt instant relief about being able to keep my private vow not to take a life.
Then, for yet another squirrelly reason, the varmint did the same thing all over. It made another U-turn and then another. In the one or two seconds it took my car to close the distance, the squirrel was basically standing in the same place making one U-turn after another, like a drunk square dancer who’d lost his partner on the dance floor. Another car was too close behind me to slam on the brakes. The next thing I heard was a thump. I looked up quickly enough to watch in my rearview mirror as the now flatter squirrel went for a long roll behind me. Why did the squirrel cross the road? That’s one question for philosophical pondering. The more important question might be, why didn’t the squirrel just go ahead and cross the road?
I didn’t mean to kill the squirrel. He’d be leaping through the branches on this beautiful Fall afternoon or squirreling away nuts for the winter if he’d just made up his mind and stayed the course, one way or the other. An ancient scripture records something about “choosing this day whom we will serve.” Make a choice and stay the course. Stop making U-turns. Unless you can actually see a reason why moving in a certain direction is otherwise destructive, more likely than not, you’ll put more at risk by turning back than by moving forward.
There is a time for repentance, for changing the course of our life’s direction because of a higher call from a holy voice. Time and again, however, it’s not the sins we leave behind that finally catch up with us. It’s the sins to which we return over and over. As long as we are seeking Truth and honestly searching for God, there is very little out in front of us that is as threatening as the stuff behind us.
In my experience, even God can only do so much for someone who keeps looking back over his shoulder and going back because they really believe the good days are the old ones behind, not the new ones ahead. The apostle Peter was less tactful, describing such navigational folly as the equivalent of “a dog (that) returns to its vomit” or a “sow that is washed (and then returns) to wallowing in the mud” (2 Peter 2:22). What it is that is so appealing about vomit or mud that it would lure us back rather than urge us forward is truly one of the greatest mysteries of my own life, and human experience in general as I observe it.
The poor squirrel couldn’t make up his mind and the rest is road kill history. Life is in front of us, not behind us. The sooner we make the choice of which way to go and stay the course, the sooner we’ll make progress toward our true calling and avoid living a very miserable life, no matter how long it lasts.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
In Control
Saturday morning I took Sam for a walk. Sam is our ten-month-old seventy-five pound Golden Retriever. To say I took him for a walk is actually a tongue-in-cheek way of describing what actually happens when we go walking.
Sure enough, we were rounding the last corner, just yards from the house, when we encountered some doggie traffic coming the other direction. A lady was walking her yippy little pup, maybe five pounds wet. Sam doesn’t know his own strength. He may be one dog but he pulls with the strength of more than one horse. Nothing gets him in a playful mood more quickly than seeing another dog. I could see it coming.
I pulled the leash up tight, moving Sam off of the sidewalk. I was hoping the lady would take the cue from all the barking and just keep on walking her terrified terrier on down the road. For some incredibly mysterious reason beyond belief, she stopped, parking her paws just feet from Sam’s lurching! Sam didn’t want to hurt anyone; he just wanted to play. This just wasn’t a match. It was an overweight professional middle linebacker trying to wrestle a seventh grade volleyball player, not quite through puberty. It was a mess.
Before I knew it, Sam had stretched the leash free of my grip. I still had hold, I just didn’t have any say in what was about to happen. In the blink of eye, he bolted around the lady, going for her excuse for canine company. I was yelling at Sam, Sam was yelling at his new friend’s fast-retreating butt and the lady was screaming something in Spanish that I don’t think was complimentary of my dog’s butt or mine.
Sam went 360 degrees around the lady then, following the puppy’s lead, snapped right back toward me, instantly clipping the lady’s knees right out from under her like he was a free safety and she was going up for the pass. She kind of fell and rolled at the same time, scraping a pretty good piece of fresh meat off of her elbow. By now, I’m apologizing profusely in English and the lady is yelling louder in Spanish and Sam’s just having a great time.
A man stopped his car at the corner stop sign and looked sympathetically over at the lady, like I’d accosted her or something. I wasn’t enough of a coward to blame it on my dog. I said my last apology and then scampered away like I was as afraid a of lawsuit, which I was.
I really felt sorry for the lady. but, either I didn’t speak her language or she didn’t care. She never looked me in the eye. We both kept our dogs and I learned one valuable lesson.
Just because you’re bigger and stronger and smarter and just because you have something on a long leash doesn’t mean you’re in control.
Sure enough, we were rounding the last corner, just yards from the house, when we encountered some doggie traffic coming the other direction. A lady was walking her yippy little pup, maybe five pounds wet. Sam doesn’t know his own strength. He may be one dog but he pulls with the strength of more than one horse. Nothing gets him in a playful mood more quickly than seeing another dog. I could see it coming.
I pulled the leash up tight, moving Sam off of the sidewalk. I was hoping the lady would take the cue from all the barking and just keep on walking her terrified terrier on down the road. For some incredibly mysterious reason beyond belief, she stopped, parking her paws just feet from Sam’s lurching! Sam didn’t want to hurt anyone; he just wanted to play. This just wasn’t a match. It was an overweight professional middle linebacker trying to wrestle a seventh grade volleyball player, not quite through puberty. It was a mess.
Before I knew it, Sam had stretched the leash free of my grip. I still had hold, I just didn’t have any say in what was about to happen. In the blink of eye, he bolted around the lady, going for her excuse for canine company. I was yelling at Sam, Sam was yelling at his new friend’s fast-retreating butt and the lady was screaming something in Spanish that I don’t think was complimentary of my dog’s butt or mine.
Sam went 360 degrees around the lady then, following the puppy’s lead, snapped right back toward me, instantly clipping the lady’s knees right out from under her like he was a free safety and she was going up for the pass. She kind of fell and rolled at the same time, scraping a pretty good piece of fresh meat off of her elbow. By now, I’m apologizing profusely in English and the lady is yelling louder in Spanish and Sam’s just having a great time.
A man stopped his car at the corner stop sign and looked sympathetically over at the lady, like I’d accosted her or something. I wasn’t enough of a coward to blame it on my dog. I said my last apology and then scampered away like I was as afraid a of lawsuit, which I was.
I really felt sorry for the lady. but, either I didn’t speak her language or she didn’t care. She never looked me in the eye. We both kept our dogs and I learned one valuable lesson.
Just because you’re bigger and stronger and smarter and just because you have something on a long leash doesn’t mean you’re in control.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
No Questions Asked
Having just returned from a long weekend, I had to make a grocery run. Making a run means that you want 7-11 speed with major grocery store selection. I figured fifteen minutes total from start to finish. What are the odds? As luck would have it, everyone else made their run at the same time. As luck would also have it, I found myself standing in line behind a woman with a basket full of groceries. It’s one of my life’s greatest unsolved mysteries, how I can pick the one line, at the bank or the grocery store, that always moves the slowest.
Sure enough, after the checker finished totaling up her purchase, the woman slid her debit card through the reader and it was rejected. The checker suggested she do it again, which she did, with the same result. She fumbled through her purse looking for cash or whatever. Finally, the checker suggested she take her card to the customer service desk and see if they could use her debit card to get cash. When she moved out of the lane, to my impatient relief, the checker started in on my basket.
Just as the checker finished with my purchase and I was pocketing the receipt, the debit card lady returned to announce that she’d had no luck getting cash. “I guess that deposit I made yesterday just hasn’t posted, yet,” she told the checker who then, very unsympathetically, helped her begin unloading her food. I couldn’t help but wonder how embarrassing all of this had been for the woman, knowing that several people saw and heard the whole ordeal.
By this time, my impatience had turned to pity. I remembered the times my mother, long before debit cards, wrote checks for groceries just hoping to beat the check to the bank the next day. I remembered the times when I was still in Jr. High mowing lawns for spending money that mom would borrow money from me just to buy groceries, making me promise I wouldn’t tell my dad. She always paid me back. It’s not the money that kills families, it’s those family secrets. They really suck, don’t they? Mom and dad both went to their graves without my breaking the private vow.
So, I’m standing behind this lady, about my age. No wedding ring on her finger and a basket full of single-serving meals. She had no credit card when the debit card didn’t work. Not enough cash to pay the balance. Never married? Divorced? Children? Who knows? It wasn’t mine to ask. I was pushing my cart away from the counter when something (or Someone) stopped me cold in my tracks. I looked back at the lady and wondered. I didn’t know her story, whether she was deserving of help or not. Then again, when the Prodigal came home, his Dad just doled out the grace freely, no questions asked.
Walking three steps back I asked the lady if she’d let me buy her groceries that day. You see, I remembered my mom and how sad I still feel for her. I still wonder how many humiliations she encountered at the grocery counter. I also remembered that we’d just gotten back from a weekend in South Texas where people hadn’t asked questions, they’d just doled out grace freely, generously, beyond belief. My heart was so full of unearned grace.
I honestly believe if I hadn’t given something of it to someone else, my soul would have burst from overflow. The lady tried to say “No,” graciously. But, it looked like she knew she needed to say, “Yes.” I didn’t and still don’t know her name, much less her story. She came and stood by me while the checker rang it all up. “I hope this makes you feel as good as it does me,” she said. “It does,” I said squeamishly. I could feel myself blushing; I felt embarrassed for being thanked for something I really needed to do. I didn’t have time to tell her the story of my sadness for mom or the unbelievable grace I had just experienced and how giving to her was both a healing experience for me and a liberating one.
“I’ll let you pay if you’ll give me your name and address,” she said. As I walked away with my basket full and my heart bursting at the seams, I shook her hand and said, “Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t a loan. It was a gift.
It would be hard to describe how I felt while walking to my car. It was a rush like I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Giving, just for the fun of it! Wow! How do you describe that? I walked away, as though floating on white puffy cumulus clouds carried by the winds of the Spirit, having been reminded that grace isn’t really grace until it’s received and then given away. When we accept grace without giving it, our souls become Dead Seas of sad, dark, lifeless narcissism. We know that the Truth is setting us free when grace completes the circle and we give to others what Someone else gave us, no questions asked.
Sure enough, after the checker finished totaling up her purchase, the woman slid her debit card through the reader and it was rejected. The checker suggested she do it again, which she did, with the same result. She fumbled through her purse looking for cash or whatever. Finally, the checker suggested she take her card to the customer service desk and see if they could use her debit card to get cash. When she moved out of the lane, to my impatient relief, the checker started in on my basket.
Just as the checker finished with my purchase and I was pocketing the receipt, the debit card lady returned to announce that she’d had no luck getting cash. “I guess that deposit I made yesterday just hasn’t posted, yet,” she told the checker who then, very unsympathetically, helped her begin unloading her food. I couldn’t help but wonder how embarrassing all of this had been for the woman, knowing that several people saw and heard the whole ordeal.
By this time, my impatience had turned to pity. I remembered the times my mother, long before debit cards, wrote checks for groceries just hoping to beat the check to the bank the next day. I remembered the times when I was still in Jr. High mowing lawns for spending money that mom would borrow money from me just to buy groceries, making me promise I wouldn’t tell my dad. She always paid me back. It’s not the money that kills families, it’s those family secrets. They really suck, don’t they? Mom and dad both went to their graves without my breaking the private vow.
So, I’m standing behind this lady, about my age. No wedding ring on her finger and a basket full of single-serving meals. She had no credit card when the debit card didn’t work. Not enough cash to pay the balance. Never married? Divorced? Children? Who knows? It wasn’t mine to ask. I was pushing my cart away from the counter when something (or Someone) stopped me cold in my tracks. I looked back at the lady and wondered. I didn’t know her story, whether she was deserving of help or not. Then again, when the Prodigal came home, his Dad just doled out the grace freely, no questions asked.
Walking three steps back I asked the lady if she’d let me buy her groceries that day. You see, I remembered my mom and how sad I still feel for her. I still wonder how many humiliations she encountered at the grocery counter. I also remembered that we’d just gotten back from a weekend in South Texas where people hadn’t asked questions, they’d just doled out grace freely, generously, beyond belief. My heart was so full of unearned grace.
I honestly believe if I hadn’t given something of it to someone else, my soul would have burst from overflow. The lady tried to say “No,” graciously. But, it looked like she knew she needed to say, “Yes.” I didn’t and still don’t know her name, much less her story. She came and stood by me while the checker rang it all up. “I hope this makes you feel as good as it does me,” she said. “It does,” I said squeamishly. I could feel myself blushing; I felt embarrassed for being thanked for something I really needed to do. I didn’t have time to tell her the story of my sadness for mom or the unbelievable grace I had just experienced and how giving to her was both a healing experience for me and a liberating one.
“I’ll let you pay if you’ll give me your name and address,” she said. As I walked away with my basket full and my heart bursting at the seams, I shook her hand and said, “Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t a loan. It was a gift.
It would be hard to describe how I felt while walking to my car. It was a rush like I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Giving, just for the fun of it! Wow! How do you describe that? I walked away, as though floating on white puffy cumulus clouds carried by the winds of the Spirit, having been reminded that grace isn’t really grace until it’s received and then given away. When we accept grace without giving it, our souls become Dead Seas of sad, dark, lifeless narcissism. We know that the Truth is setting us free when grace completes the circle and we give to others what Someone else gave us, no questions asked.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Stillness
A friend’s mother was gracious enough to tell me part of her story the other day. It was priceless. There is nothing more beautiful or unique than the stories of other people’s lives. Nothing more humbling than for someone to open up the treasure trove of their life’s story and share just a little of it with you personally.
Amos Whitlock, her dad, was born in 1895 in Commanche County, Texas. He never had a chance for an education, just the opportunity to scratch a living out of the dirt with his family. Then, along came WWI. Amos went to the train station with a whole slew of other Commanche County boys and shipped off into a world they’d never seen. To leave a North Central Texas farm and end up in combat somewhere in France must have felt like being transported to another world altogether. Maybe it was.
Amos was there, in the trenches, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when hostilities formally ended. November 11 would later be designated Armistace Day and eventually Veteran’s Day. His daughter says that, the rest of his life, November 11 was his favorite day of the year.
Like most people who have personally witnessed combat, Amos rarely spoke about what he saw or what he did, even to his family. When he did, he reflected on how it sounded to him the day the guns fell silent. At one exact moment, all those years of war just stopped, at the very same exact moment, all along the front. After all the shooting stooped and the bombing ceased, Amos said, “the stillness was deafening.”
The other morning in Fair Oaks Ranch, I was watching the sun come up. In just a few hours, I would be formally accepting the call as pastor of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, a decision that looks like a long-awaited chance to begin life again, at least in another world. I have to tell you, after nearly dying last summer and then dealing with issues for several months afterward that made death seem appealing, the other morning, the stillness was deafening.
It was so quiet, even in my soul, I think I almost heard the roar of the sun’s blaze. It’s amazing how loud the stillness can be. It felt like – well – like a long-awaited and desperately needed God-from-heaven-sent peace. Have you ever heard stillness like that? I have. It’s truly amazing, how deafening the stillness can be.
Amos Whitlock, her dad, was born in 1895 in Commanche County, Texas. He never had a chance for an education, just the opportunity to scratch a living out of the dirt with his family. Then, along came WWI. Amos went to the train station with a whole slew of other Commanche County boys and shipped off into a world they’d never seen. To leave a North Central Texas farm and end up in combat somewhere in France must have felt like being transported to another world altogether. Maybe it was.
Amos was there, in the trenches, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when hostilities formally ended. November 11 would later be designated Armistace Day and eventually Veteran’s Day. His daughter says that, the rest of his life, November 11 was his favorite day of the year.
Like most people who have personally witnessed combat, Amos rarely spoke about what he saw or what he did, even to his family. When he did, he reflected on how it sounded to him the day the guns fell silent. At one exact moment, all those years of war just stopped, at the very same exact moment, all along the front. After all the shooting stooped and the bombing ceased, Amos said, “the stillness was deafening.”
The other morning in Fair Oaks Ranch, I was watching the sun come up. In just a few hours, I would be formally accepting the call as pastor of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, a decision that looks like a long-awaited chance to begin life again, at least in another world. I have to tell you, after nearly dying last summer and then dealing with issues for several months afterward that made death seem appealing, the other morning, the stillness was deafening.
It was so quiet, even in my soul, I think I almost heard the roar of the sun’s blaze. It’s amazing how loud the stillness can be. It felt like – well – like a long-awaited and desperately needed God-from-heaven-sent peace. Have you ever heard stillness like that? I have. It’s truly amazing, how deafening the stillness can be.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Vocation
Grace comes in different ways. Sometimes we experience it as forgiveness, from God and others. Sometimes we experience it as receiving a gift we didn’t deserve from someone we didn’t even know cared. Sometimes, grace comes to us in the form of a new opportunity. That grace of a new opportunity means all the more when it helps reawaken your personal sense of calling in life, your true vocation.
Yesterday, Sunday, August 24, I accepted the invitation to become the pastor of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas. Fair Oaks Ranch is a community in the Texas Hill Country, just northwest of San Antonio, not far from Boerne. Grace Fellowship is a new church, with about 30 active members. They are affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Most importantly to us, they have extended a real, genuine grace to us.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back into the pastorate after my last experience. One or two churches sniffed around. Having been out of a job for six months, that wasn’t particularly encouraging. Yet, I never could get excited about anything they were doing. I hadn’t gotten desperate – yet. It never occurred to me that I would ever want to be involved in leading a new church, at my age. I never dreamed a new church would be interested in me. Sometimes, grace surprises us. Some of the kids took to calling me “Papa Schmuck” over the weekend. For the first time in my life, it felt like affection and not purely an age reference. I will confess that it was strange to join a church and, at the same time, become the sum total of their Senior Adult Sunday School.
The paradigm out of which most of us preachers live out our entire careers usually has something to do with hop-scotching from one church to the next largest church. Even in seminary, the model we were given for success had more to do with the size of one’s congregation than almost anything else. Forget vocation, just grow that church at all costs, even that of staying true to yourself. Not surprisingly, in my last experience, there were those who could not even see the remarkable ways in which we were touching the community because they could not look past the size of the congregation, which has been slowly shrinking since 1938, sixteen years before I was even born. A very noisy few found very creative ways of projecting their sense of failure onto me, because I couldn’t make that church bigger. The only way I could pull the plug on the projectors was to put distance between myself and them. I was very close to letting them hijack my sense of calling.
On the way to San Antonio, I decided to re-read Parker Palmer’s wonderful little book, “Let Your Life Speak.” Its size belies its potency. I’m so glad some editor didn’t decide it wasn’t big enough to publish. This one passage reaffirmed the decision I was making about Grace Fellowship as the right one. “From our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from the people and powers around us. Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. ”
Grace surprised us over the weekend. It seemed that saying no would have been a choice not to listen to my (even our) vocation, an unwillingness to accept the grace gift extended to us. So, we said, “Yes.” Already, I’m feeling true to myself again, as much as to the God who gave my self to me.
With no face further than ten feet away when I preached yesterday, I could see every smile, every tear. It felt like family. It felt like grace. It sounded like vocation.
Yesterday, Sunday, August 24, I accepted the invitation to become the pastor of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas. Fair Oaks Ranch is a community in the Texas Hill Country, just northwest of San Antonio, not far from Boerne. Grace Fellowship is a new church, with about 30 active members. They are affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Most importantly to us, they have extended a real, genuine grace to us.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back into the pastorate after my last experience. One or two churches sniffed around. Having been out of a job for six months, that wasn’t particularly encouraging. Yet, I never could get excited about anything they were doing. I hadn’t gotten desperate – yet. It never occurred to me that I would ever want to be involved in leading a new church, at my age. I never dreamed a new church would be interested in me. Sometimes, grace surprises us. Some of the kids took to calling me “Papa Schmuck” over the weekend. For the first time in my life, it felt like affection and not purely an age reference. I will confess that it was strange to join a church and, at the same time, become the sum total of their Senior Adult Sunday School.
The paradigm out of which most of us preachers live out our entire careers usually has something to do with hop-scotching from one church to the next largest church. Even in seminary, the model we were given for success had more to do with the size of one’s congregation than almost anything else. Forget vocation, just grow that church at all costs, even that of staying true to yourself. Not surprisingly, in my last experience, there were those who could not even see the remarkable ways in which we were touching the community because they could not look past the size of the congregation, which has been slowly shrinking since 1938, sixteen years before I was even born. A very noisy few found very creative ways of projecting their sense of failure onto me, because I couldn’t make that church bigger. The only way I could pull the plug on the projectors was to put distance between myself and them. I was very close to letting them hijack my sense of calling.
On the way to San Antonio, I decided to re-read Parker Palmer’s wonderful little book, “Let Your Life Speak.” Its size belies its potency. I’m so glad some editor didn’t decide it wasn’t big enough to publish. This one passage reaffirmed the decision I was making about Grace Fellowship as the right one. “From our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from the people and powers around us. Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. ”
Grace surprised us over the weekend. It seemed that saying no would have been a choice not to listen to my (even our) vocation, an unwillingness to accept the grace gift extended to us. So, we said, “Yes.” Already, I’m feeling true to myself again, as much as to the God who gave my self to me.
With no face further than ten feet away when I preached yesterday, I could see every smile, every tear. It felt like family. It felt like grace. It sounded like vocation.
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