How to eat and elephant (2): Pray for a miracle

I recently talked to a friend about his experience moving to live among the urban poor. And he said, "When I got here, the [veteran minister] said, 'It's two steps forward, three steps back, and you pray for a miracle.' and I thought that was a bit cynical. But the longer I'm here, more more I see that it is two steps forward, three steps back and you pray for a miracle. But you know what? Miracles happen."

When Moses was born, Pharaoh had ordered all the young Hebrew babies to be killed. Well, his mother didn't obey that order. Instead she hid him for three months. And then she put him in a basket on a river. A pastor once commented that we needed to heed Moses' mother's example and ask God to show us what was our part and when it was time to leave things to God.

So a few weeks ago, I wrote about how to eat an elephant and said, "One bite at a time." As I've been thinking about that, I think that's only half the answer. All we are able to do is one bite at a time. So that's what we offer to the process. But to be honest, we can't finish the elephant before it rots or we explode. So we need a miracle. Thankfully, God is in the business of miracles.

What's it like to live "one bite at a time, expecting miracles"? Well, I can't speak from a lot of personal experience, but this seems to be a freeing way to live--doing what we are able, in a measured way, then leaving the rest to the miracle-working God.

We've had a couple things come up in our lives recently that have thrown me on the hamster wheel of anxiety. There are many questions about future outcomes, most of which we have no direct control over, no matter how much we wish differently. There are a few things we can do faithfully, our one-bite-at-a-times, but the rest is up to God and well out of our hands.

I wonder if needing to remember that God works miracles is why the Old Testament stories repeatedly include reminders of God's miraculous deliverance of the Isrealites from Egypt. Maybe I'm not the only one that forgets that impossible miracles are not impossible for God. The ten plagues? The parting of the Red Sea? Manna from heaven? Water from a rock? Hugely impossible things for the Isrealites, they could never conjure those happenings, but God could and did, out of his power, out of his love.

So how do you eat an elephant? One bite at the time and pray for a miracle.

Holding onto treasure

This week in Calm my Anxious Heart, we're reading about letting go of What ifs and entrusting our future to God. This is a powerful vision: What if I could let go of my What ifs and let God take care of the future? I mean, I think for most people, that would be a life changing gift to be able to let go of anxiety about what might happen. So how do we get there?

Scripture memory is a discipline that helps us trust God, but everyone (including me) wants to skip it because its corny or hard. This is unfortunate. When I think about pivotal times of deep emotional stress, it helped to have a truth from scripture to hold up to the lies I wanted to believe. It's not that I didn't wander off into dark places, but when I got there, I had light.

I believe that we should treat God's word like treasure. When it comes to treasure, people have given their lives hunting for treasure, searching for gold, searching for oil. But followers of Jesus are told that:

[The decrees of the Lord] are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
~Psalm 19:10

This is a guarantee. The word of God is freely available to us in the Bible, and its value is beyond measure. The question is not, "Is the Bible worth hanging onto?" The question is, "How to I keep this?"

The Navigators have an illustration, which I've replicated at the top of this post, that describes five ways of holding onto the Bible: hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating. Notice that the two fingers most important for gripping, the index finger and thumb, are memorizing and meditating.

You can get a long way to hanging onto your treasure by memorizing and meditating on God's word. Worry is simply mediating on an undesired outcome. Holy meditation is "worrying" on God's goodness and promises. Having scripture already memorized helps. I mean, nobody sits there and writes out their worry list for the day. The worries are already there. So if we're going to "worry" on scripture, it helps if it's already in our minds.

Here are a few verses that have been helpful for me, (and were part of the Topical Memory System that I learned in 1998.)

Isaiah 41:10 – “ So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous hand.”

Isaiah 26:3 – “ You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.”

Luke 9:23 – “Then he said to them all,” If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up the cross daily and follow me.”

Mark 10:45 – “ For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as ransom for many.”

John 13:34-35 – “ A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love on another.”

Galatians 6:9-10 – “ Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who
belong to the family of believers.”

Hang on to your treasure. "Worry" on the word of God. 

Invitation to beauty

-Sky Rift by Nicholas A. Tonelli

Over the past week, I've been buffeted by this idea that NOT complaining is a part of gospel living. We've been trained to think that sharing the gospel is about telling people about creation, the fall, and redemption through Jesus.

But I was reading a book with some friends, and the author pointed out that after the Apostle Paul, writer of many New Testament books while sitting in a drafty prison, says, "Do everything without complaining or arguing," [WHAT!!] Paul explains the reason this way:

 "so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. (From Paul's letter to his friends in Philippi, chpt 2)"

First of all, I get that "good" people, "nice" people should not complain or argue. I just don't always want to be good or nice. But Paul claims that this not complaining, not arguing does two things: 1) It shapes who we become. 2) It attracts people to the word of life.

Just as pianists practice scales in becoming pianists, children of God who are blameless and pure, or innocent as one translation puts it, train for it by practicing not complaining or arguing. When we choose this path, we are changed.

This change is beautiful. Think about the night sky with the stars twinkling out of the darkness. On a warm summer night, it's a wonder to behold. As the practice of not complaining or arguing takes hold, our lives light up with beauty like the night sky, and this is an offering of the word of life.

A friend recently blogged this : "There’s a mother of two I’ve gotten to know, and for a long time I felt like something was weird about her until I realized that I’ve never heard her complain. About her kids. About anything." You don't have to wear a sign that says, "I've given up complaining." People will notice because it is attractive, because it is light in a world of darkness, because it is life in the midst of death.

But let's say you don't care. You don't care about other people, you don't care to become an innocent child of God. Fine. How about this: Complaining and arguing are making you miserable.  Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a therapist lays out the 14 habits of highly miserable people.  Stuff like, "Be critical. Make sure to have an endless list of dislikes and voice them often, whether or not your opinion is solicited." or "Pick fights. This is an excellent way of ruining a relationship with a romantic partner. Once in a while, unpredictably, pick a fight or have a crying spell over something trivial and make unwarranted accusations. The interaction should last for at least 15 minutes and ideally occur in public."

The church women's study this semester is reading through Calm my Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. The first couple chapters go back to Paul's letter to his friends in Philippi. From prison, he tells them that he's learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. Who doesn't want that? I think about my life; I think about the lives of my friends; I want peace, contentment for all of us. And I think many of us, if we were promised eternal peace and contentment at the top of a mountain, we would climb and drag ourselves up the mountain, we would walk over broken glass, we would give up our last cup of water.

After Paul says that he's learned contentment whether hungry or full, rich or poor, then he says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." The miracle that Jesus did for Paul, that He can do for us, is that He can train us in the practice of not complaining or arguing. It will take a miracle. Thankfully, Jesus is in the miracle business. Let us join Him in His work.

Pulling it together

Well, I have to say that I am very thankful for my husband and friends who have been a great help and encouragement as I figure stuff out.

Logistics were wrapped up by the end of Wednesday. Instead of my father-in-law coming to help after my surgery my mother-in-law will be coming.

So the "Who is going to take care of the kids while I'm in surgery?" question fizzled out quickly, but it's a different thing getting ready for a father-in-law than a mother-in-law. So it took me another day or two to get myself ready for that notion.

As far as my dad being sick, that is its own very weird situation. For all intents and purposes, my dad feels like a really healthy guy, no different from last week. But preliminary tests say he's got a rare cancer. At this point, if he feels sick it's going to be because of the chemo. There's one more round of tests this week and then my parents get to survey their options and choose their next steps.

A sustaining idea in this time has been what Brennan Manning calls the "present risenness" of Jesus. Present meaning both now and near and risenness meaning having defeated death and fully alive. So while I was feeling crushed by stress, I had this beckoning sense that Jesus was near and trying to push through the anxiety. I could see light creeping around the edges of the folds of darkness. This idea that the loving creator of the universe stands near me with such power that death was broken has been a lifeline of hope when the worst of myself cries out to be believed.

Fasting this Lent

Lent is about to draw to an end. It's the 5th week and Palm Sunday is coming up.

This year I gave up "meat" except for the Sunday feast days, "meat" in the Catholic sense where fish isn't meat. Given that I rarely eat meat except for at dinner, and I'm Chinese, and I like fish, this has not been nearly as burdensome, as say, the first time I gave up news and politics. When I have fasted from food, there has been visceral craving, emptiness, and a need for immediate comfort. I have not experienced that at all.

Instead, this year, since not eating meat is different but not wholly painful, the experience has been very different. What I've found is that I just generally long for Easter to arrive. There's a bit of a quickening in my chest, a little bit of tightness, low level anticipation. Part of me just wants to get back to my usual routine, be able to cook more meals that both my husband and I can eat, not worry about meeting up with other people and so on. That part says, "Let Easter come for my convenience and food reasons." That doesn't feel that holy at all. But part of me wants to embrace all the flavors that are out there, to savor steak the way I savored it a couple weeks ago on a Sunday feast day, to not take such moments for granted. That part says, "Let Easter come so we can celebrate Jesus and the new dawning he brought, the freedom, the grace, the wide open wonder." That feels expansively glorious.

Raised in the American Evangelical culture, Easter can feel very plastic in a wash of limp pastels. But the celebration of the resurrection should be the biggest event of every year marking the biggest event in human history. This is where divinity intersected humanity and love triumphed over death in the gory, most real, most definitely not-a-Hollywood-romance-or-Mel-Gibson-Passion-of-Christ way. I have to admit that Easter still does not outrank Christmas or March Madness on my anxiously-gripping-my-seat meter. But with every year, with every observation of the Lenten season, I find myself ever more drawn into the drama of Holy Week and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

At least their name isn't Nimrod

On gratitude:

Last weekend, a bunch of us grad students were talking about weird names so of course the names got weirder and weirder. But at some point, someone said, "At least their name isn't Nimrod." To which someone responded, "Um, you know your name is pretty bad when the only name worse is Nimrod." And that's definitely one way to look at things, but I'm wondering if gratitude hanging even on the slimmest of slivers is worth having.

The past few weeks I've been really stressed out, at an anxiety level that I haven't been in for a long time. Life just seemed like a noose getting tighter and tighter. I was juggling more than I knew how to handle when I was thrown a lifeline in this reminder:

Gratitude is attentive. When we are inwardly dissipated through busyness, obsession, addiction, mindlessness, and preoccupation with television, sports, gossip, movies and shallow reading, and so forth, we cannot be attentive to the gifts that arrive each day.
~ Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

When I am stressed, I self-medicate by surfing the web to the point where I've read everything and I don't know what else to read. It's like a merry-go-round I don't know how to get off of. Manning suggests that gratitude is what throws the switch.

Honestly, I do have a lot on my plate. I do have to prepare for a conference in Denmark, but that conference is being funded by departments and divisions in a time of budget cuts. And I get to go with friends I like. Yes, I do have to edit my book chapters, but hey I have book chapters that are going to be in press and on shelves in a year. And yes, I am doing "spring" cleaning, but it's because I live in a world of plenty and have a vibrant life of the mind that spawns paper like magic dust bunnies. There are many, many uncertainties about the future, but I get to face them with a really great husband.

So for all my myopic moping of the last few weeks, I don't even have to resort to a comparative "At least my name isn't Nimrod." There's a wealth of wonder here already if I'd only pull my head out of my butt.