God With Us

Wednesday 1/9/2013 6:24 AM

My psalm for the week is Psalm 24 and each time I read the first verse I think back to a visit I had to Rod and Kathy’s in Tucson.  I was running cross-country and I went to the top of a hill overlooking Tucson.  As I neared the summit the Spirit of God instructed me to shout Psalm 24:1 at the top of my lungs, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”  I did so and, when I looked over the city to the horizon, the images of the run down part of the city through which I had driven the previous day and the scarred earth caused by strip mining met my eyes.  I began to weep, wondering what God must think when he looks down upon his world and its inhabitants.

This morning I read Isaiah 6 in which Isaiah has a vision of the Lord with the train of his robe filling the temple.  After crying out because of his own sin and the sin of his people, an angel touches his mouth with a live coal, which atones for his sin.  Isaiah then hears the Lord asking who could be sent to the people on his behalf and Isaiah volunteers.  God tells him the message he is to bring and Isaiah asks how long he must bring the message.  God responds with the words of verses 11-12, “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.”  I wonder if Isaiah would have volunteered if he knew that the message he would bring to the people would go unheeded and he had to keep bringing the message until the bitter end, when all was lost or destroyed.

Of course, God doesn’t leave Isaiah in that kind of hopeless situation.  In the next chapter there is the promise of Immanuel, God with us.  When I wept over the city of Tucson God was standing next to me, weeping with me.  When my heart breaks because of the brokenness in my students’ lives, God’s heart is breaking too.  God calls me to proclaim the good news that God is reconciling a broken world and broken individuals to himself.  He is not aloof and unconcerned; he is with us, in the form of me and the rest of his people.  I pray that we, the people of God, will live in such a way.

Singing Angels

Sunday 1/6/2013 7:19 AM

It seems that the older I get the more difficult my faith becomes.  I’m not sure if it is because I try to analyze and rationalize everything or what, but things I used to accept without a second thought now trouble me.

An example of this type of analyzing behavior is how it relates to my view of the universe.  Earlier in my life, when I thought about the Big Bang, I imagined God saying, “Let there be light,” and suddenly the entire expanding universe is born in a brilliant, cataclysmic explosion.  He then separates light from darkness, creates planets, separates land from water, and creates living things that slowly evolve to man.  It is as if God were an artist painting on a canvas, having a broad idea of what he wanted to do but adding smaller and smaller details as he goes along.  Lately I’ve been reading about superstring theory, physicists’ and mathematicians’ latest idea in their attempt to find a unifying theory for the four fundamental forces that define and describe our universe.  These attempts seem to take a colorful, creative process and reduce it to a colorless, mechanical process that can be described by mathematical equations, complicated, elegant and beautiful in their own right though they be.

I am a math teacher and I believe teaching is an art, with the teacher as the artist.  At the beginning of a class I have the big picture of what the students need to know and I lay a foundation with big, sweeping strokes.  As the semester goes on there are smaller details that need to be fleshed out and I do so using varied methods, depending upon the class and the individual students within it.  Politicians, and other critics of education, take the colorful, creative art of teaching and try to reduce it to a colorless, mechanical process whose effectiveness can be assessed by applying a rubric to a standardized test.  When this is how my students are evaluated and how I am evaluated as a teacher I am less willing to try new, creative ways of teaching, opting instead for what I know will allow my students to meet the standard.  Meanwhile the beauty and patterns inherent in mathematics are lost and students view it only as a bunch of formulas that need to be memorized for success.

In his book Deep Is the Hunger, Howard Thurman describes the life of faith in this way.  “There must be always remaining in every man’s life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and, by an inherent prerogative, throws all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning–then passes.  The commonplace is shot through with new glory; old burdens become lighter; deep and ancient wounds lose much of the old, old hurting.  A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear.  Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.”  I think my faith life has been hijacked by the crassness, hardness and the harsh discords of life I experience and see in the world around me.  I want the world to fit neatly into the little boxes I have constructed using the formulas of my faith.  What I really need is the singing of angels.

Stop, Look and Listen

Friday 1/4/2013 6:36 AM

My psalm for the week is Psalm 46, perhaps best known for verse 10, “He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’”  Yesterday I wrote about the busyness of life that often precludes a healthy relationship with God.  This verse reminds me to slow down, to rest, to listen.

When I look back upon my life it seems that the times I felt closest to God were times in my life when I was experiencing trying circumstances.  The circumstances drove me to God because there seemed to be no other option.  There was nothing I could do to remedy the situation.  I long for that same kind of intimacy but I don’t really want the dire circumstances that so often accompany it.

In his book Man’s Quest for God, Abraham Joshua Heschel suggests an alternative path.  “But there is a wider voluntary entrance to prayer than sorrow and despair–the opening of our thoughts to God.  We cannot make him visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to him.  So we open our thoughts to him–feeble our tongues, but sensitive our hearts. … Mindfulness of God arises slowly, a thought at a time.  Suddenly we are there.  Or is he here, at the margin of our soul?  When we begin to feel a qualm of diffidence lest we hurt what is holy, lest we break what is whole, then we discover that he is not austere.  He answers with love our trembling awe.  Repentant of forgetting him even for a while, we become sharers of gentle joy; we would like to dedicate ourselves forever to the unfoldment of his final order.”  I feel as if I have forgotten God for a while and I long for that gentle joy I once had.

I have a tendency to look at life cerebrally, analyzing things rationally, trying to understand how and why things are the way they are.  The joy for which I long is not something that can be analyzed or explained; it can only be experienced.  Kallistos Ware describes this in his book The Orthodox Way, “…Christianity is more than a theory about the universe, more than teachings written down on paper; it is a path along which we journey–in the deepest and richest sense, the way of life.”  I need to think less and enjoy the journey.

A Hallelujah Life

Wednesday 12/26/2012 6:25 AM

Yesterday Jaci and I went on our annual Christmas Day motorcycle ride through Turnbull Canyon in the late afternoon.  As we crested the top of the hill the setting sun cast a red hue over the LA basin.  We continued down the east side of the hill and as we came south on the pass on Colima Road the entire southern sky was a brilliant red, reflecting a radiant red pillar of cloud illuminated by the setting sun.  It was quite a display of the beauty of nature.

Since it was Christmas day I also spent some time reflecting on the mystery of God becoming man, entering our sin-scarred world to redeem it and reconcile it to himself.  As I ran this morning the song What Can I Do by Paul Baloche played on my phone.  “When I see the beauty of a sunset's glory, amazing artistry across the evening sky.  When I feel the mystery of a distant galaxy it awes and humbles me to be loved by a God so high.  When I hear the story of a God of mercy who shared humanity and suffered by our side, of the cross they nailed you to that could not hold you, now you’re making all things new by the power of your risen life.  What can I do but thank you, what can I do but give my life to you.  Hallelujah, hallelujah!  What can I do but praise you, everyday make everything I do a hallelujah, a hallelujah.  Hallelujah!”  What a perfect song to cap my day yesterday.  I pray that my life will be an offering of praise and thanks like that.

Footings of Righteousness and Justice

Monday 12/24/2012 5:37 AM

My psalm for the new week is Psalm 89.  It begins with these words, “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.  I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.”  The psalm then goes on to describe the covenant God made with David and the awesome power available to God to keep that covenant.  As I continued reading verse 14 caught my attention, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.  Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord.  They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness.”

My New Testament reading for the day is from John 15, Jesus words to his disciples the night before he died.  He said, “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”  I thought about many of my students whose lives are not joyful in the least, marred by dysfunctional relationships and desperate circumstances.  Many times I think how their lives could be so different if they knew the love of God and lived their lives accordingly.  The words of Macrina Wiederkehr in her book A Tree Full of Angels describe my feelings well, “Every time I say no to the birthing and dying that is set before me at the table of daily life, I seem to hear the echo of Jesus’ words to the woman at the well, ‘If you but knew the gift of God…’  Whether God weeps at the beauty and potential of our lives at birth or the lost potential of graced moments along the way, I hear that voice urging us to claim our splendor and our glory, ‘If you but knew the gift of God…’”

As I contemplated this I decided to return to Psalm 89 and I hit the back key on my Kindle.  When it returned to Psalm 89 the first part of verse 14 was highlighted and written in a larger font like this: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.  I thought about the world in which I live and the lack of righteousness and justice that seems so prevalent.  Many of the desperate circumstances in which my students are embroiled are brought about because of unrighteousness and injustice that is endemic in society at large.  The loving faithfulness of God that brings the joy to which Jesus refers when speaking with his disciples must have righteousness and justice as its foundation.  As Christians we often bemoan the lack of morals and ethics in our society.  We rant and rave about how prayer and religion have been removed from the public arena and blame all of society’s woes on that fact.  Instead we should be striving for justice and righteousness in our personal dealings, our governmental agencies and from our elected officials.  Too often decisions are made in favor of large corporations or other lobbyists who line the pockets of elected officials to receive governmental largesse.  Meanwhile those without means are ignored and exploited.  Until Christians demand that righteousness and justice become the foundation of the church and the foundation of our society the love and faithfulness that bring joy and fulfillment to our relationships will remain elusive.