Category: Community

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Pharaoh Pharaoh – oh Baby – let my people go

I must admit to you all (all 5 of you who read this blog) that I have been holding back on you.  For the last few weeks my brain and life have been consumed by one particular topic, one massively intrusive and mind altering topic and I have kept you all in the dark.  Mostly because that topic has been the theme that we are embarking on at church, and until our fall kick-off yesterday, we were keeping it a secret.  So all the things that I’ve been thinking and struggling through, are now coming to light to our congregation and I can now talk through them on here.  Hallelujah.
We are spending the next year at church immersed in the book of Exodus.  We are attempting to Discover God’s Story through one of the most well known and possibly least known/understood stories of the Old Testament.  I only say this because as our staff has spent the summer poring over the words of Moses, we always come up with more questions than answers.  We always end our time together having learned or discovered something new about this so famous story.  It’s mind blowing.
And I’m realizing that the themes of Exodus are EVERYWHERE within the Christian faith.  Everywhere I turn I am bombarded with varying thoughts and perspectives on the Exodus story.  It’s fascinating to me.
So all of that to say, I hope you understand that from here on out, you may read this blog and frequently find the story of Exodus in the topic.  I hope it stimulates your thoughts the way it has mine.  For now, I will leave you with one quote, setting the stage for this shift in blog material… this is from one of my worship class books by a woman named Constance Cherry:

After the death of Pharaoh who favored Joseph and his clan, the people of Israel found themselves in bondage and fragmented in purpose and vision.  At just the right time from God’s point of view, he intervened with a might saving act that defined Israel’s history.

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ten thousand reasons for my heart to find

The chorus of the song “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)” has been on repeat in my head (and my house) for the last week or so.  Mostly because Little Buddy came back from Sweden with two favorite songs: 10,000 Reasons and What Makes You Beautiful.  Both are adorable when sung by a four year old, but to be honest, 10,000 Reasons has a certain moment of tenderness when sung by a 4 year old boy at the beginning of his faith journey.
So for that reason, when the opening chords of this song were played this Sunday at church, a smile crept onto my face as I remembered the various sweet moments shared at home singing this song with Little Buddy.  But then the words of the first verse drew me in in a whole new way.
the sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning
it’s time to sing your song again
whatever may pass and whatever lies before me
let me be singing when the evening comes
You see, I’m in a new season of life.  A season that requires me to get up a whole lot earlier than I would ever have imagined.  This new lifestyle is a choice that I made and will effect me this whole year.  I have to be up and out of the house by 6:30 almost every day (if not earlier).  And let’s just be honest, I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.  Although, I am realizing slowly that these morning times have been the most tender, real parts of my days the last couple of weeks.  They have been the moments when I have felt most connected to God and have allowed me to start my day in a more collected put together way.  And for that I am very much thankful.
Life is lived in seasons.  This new season of mine is exciting for all the things that I get to do with my day.  I am truly living the dream over here and I finally feel like everything in my life is starting to feel aligned.  Today was my first day of having to leave super early and I thought for sure that I would be dragging by the time I got to work this afternoon, but on the contrary… I felt more blessed and thankful for my life than I have in a really long time.
So today I get to say that I truly lived out this verse in my life.  I was singing songs of praise to my King even after a long long day.

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you can move everything

So I’ve been spending some time rereading Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller.  I’m in the middle of a chapter where their van breaks down (yet again) and they are searching for the much needed little piece of plastic to fix their shifter in order to continue their trip.  There stand Paul and Don, staring at two vans in a junkyard that are completely picked over, shells of what they used to be.  Paul turns to walk away from the vans, without looking for the piece.  Don mumbles that they should look, Paul says he doesn’t want to look and asks if Don wants to look.  Don’s response is, “I don’t want to look, I just want to stand here and live in this sliver of hope.”  
Sometimes we stand on the outside and look at what seems like a hopeless situation.  So hopeless that we just want to walk away without even trying.  It’s in those moments that I believe we are standing in a sliver of hope.  We want to just live in what “could be” and not be bothered to look and see what is actually there.  If we never look we can’t be disappointed.  We can dwell in the sliver of hope forever.  But when we step out and act from that sliver of hope, I believe it is in that moment that God honors our search and blesses us.
Not that those are the only kinds of situations that God honors and redeems, but that is definitely the kinds of situations where God shows up provides for those faithful enough to act on even a sliver of hope.

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if this waiting lasts forever

I have a friend that for the purpose of this blog we’ll call Arkansas.  He’d understand why.  Anyway, he’s in youth ministry and there was a time in which we were in youth ministry together.  Then I went off to Seminary and he got his first full time gig as a youth pastor.  He’s starting seminary this fall and wrote this blog about why he is going to seminary.  As I read it, it resonated a lot with me.
It doesn’t surprise me that Arkansas and I have similar reasons for being in this thing called Seminary, or that we both struggle with the question of what we come out the other side with – a Masters, a better knowledge of all things biblical, a job (hopefully).  It also doesn’t surprise me that Arkansas found a way to articulate these things more eloquently before even taking his first class than I can even after two years.  He’s always had a way with words.
This morning I sat across te table from a woman in our congregation and got to hear all about her life.  We sat there and got to know each other over breakfast and unlimited refills.  It was a slow and easy conversation about the places God has entered and guided our lives.  After I left breakfast, I drove over to the church and caught up on some emails, chatted with my coworkers and helped to set up a worship station for service on Sunday.  As I drove away from church I thought to myself, this is what my life will look like from now on.
Ministry is a fickle creation.  It’s got it’s ups and downs like any other job.  I’m not trying to paint a romantic picture of it, it has it’s struggles.  And sometimes those struggles hurt more deeply than we could imagine.
But then there’s those moments when it’s all worth it.  When you get to sit across from someone and hear how God is working in their life.  You get to enter into life with people and dwell in the grace of God alongside of them.  It’s magical.
I was asked this morning if I had always planned on going to Seminary.  I did my usual laugh and “Oh, no.  I never planned on Seminary, in fact I planned on NOT going to Seminary.” Which made me realize, that without Seminary I would not be sitting across from this woman in this particular breakfast place.  I wouldn’t be the person who was sitting across from her.
I’m not saying that the girl that worked alongside Arkansas wasn’t good at ministry.  Or that the woman graduating from Seminary will be completely ready for anything ministry will throw towards her.  All I know is that this road of Seminary was a much needed detour in my life.  One that has and will continue to add color to the tapestry that God is creating from my life.

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happy is the heart that still feels pain

I realize that I have done a lot of responding on this blog lately.  Responding to various quotes or passages that I’ve been reading lately.  But this quote that I found this morning on the MMQB requires a response, especially by me, especially because I am finishing my chaplaincy this week.  It just seems to be a timely insert into my life in so many ways.
This quote was Peter King’s Quote of the week in response to the terrible tragedy hitting the Eagles this week.  The Eagle’s head coach Andy Reid’s son was found Sunday morning in his campus dorm room where the Eagles are holding training camp.  This quote is from the Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie on Sunday afternoon.  I think it displays a kind of wisdom that comes from moments like these in life:

I’ve watched Andy [Reid] try so hard with his family over the years.  He cares so much about his family that it’s a hard one.  You see a man that really cares, and sometimes what happens happens in life, and, you know, as he and I discussed, it’s like life throws you curveballs.  The thing to do, and I’ve always felt this and I think Andy feels the same way, is you gain from loss, you gain from tragedy.  I always think that there’s no way today I would own an NFL team if I hadn’t lost my dad when I was nine and it was shocking.  It made me stronger.  There’s choices to be made when tragedy happens.  You can become stronger and even more focused and learn from it and treat life as a challenge, or you can bow down.  And Andy is somebody … He said to me, ‘I’m going to hit that curveball and hit it out of the park’ on the field and off the field.  That’s the message he wanted me to have.

While, as a Christian, I think that this quote is missing a few key aspects, I also recognize the truth found in these words.  Tragedy is exactly that .. tragic.  It’s not something we plan or expect.  It comes out of nowhere and gut checks us.  But it also is a defining moment in our lives.  We have to helps us to figure out the kind of person we have, the kind of faith we have and what that faith is in.
A few times this summer I’ve been placed in rooms with families dealing with tragedy, crying out to God and asking why.  Struggling for anything to hold on to, for something to be right in what feels like a world of wrong.  And I’ve found myself speechless in all these times.  Partially because I don’t know what to say, partially because what I want to say sounds so harsh in that moment – “The only way to get through it is to get through it.”
But honestly because the part of me that doesn’t know what to say is that in that moment in my life, it didn’t matter what anyone said to me.  It was wrong.  No matter what anyone who didn’t deeply know my heart said to me – it was wrong.  The shock of tragedy does that to us, it makes us draw close to those who know us best and try and deal.  To struggle through the mess of what just happened with people who are struggling alongside of us.  Not that the cards and prayers from others didn’t matter – they did and they always will.  But in that tragic moment the strength that I needed came from my family – good or bad.
And I think that moment changed me.  The shift that Jeffrey Lurie is talking about happened in me.  I wouldn’t be where I am today, be the person I am today without the tragedy of losing my dad.  And I think that the only thing we can do when someone we love is going through this terrible pain of tragedy is to love them through it.  To help then along that road to the choice of being stronger or bowing down.  To help them stop blaming and start asking how God is going to redeem this.  Because He will.  We will never be the same because God promises we will be made new.  Tragedy doesn’t leave God dumbfounded, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t see us any more – it just gives Him a new way to grow us into the people He is creating us to be.

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I still need you and you still need me

“You know this feeling, don’t you?”  Something inside of me turned fierce.  “How you laugh that way.  Why you love us all.  This is what you live by, isn’t it?” … Pain and sorrow never end.  Nothing we do is enough.  It’s always been this way.  “But joy,” I whispered to Irwin.  “This joy.  It’s boundless too, and endless.  So hold on.  This isn’t theirs to knock out of you.  It’s not yours to lose.  It’s not mine either.  But it’s making the trip.  It’s coming.  So please.  Just hold on.”  – The Brothers K David James Duncan

I just finished this book.  I’m not going to give you too much context behind this quote but just know that it comes from a place in the book where the narrator (Kade) is sitting in the bathroom whispering a conversation to his brother Irwin.
One of my seminary friends suggested that I read this book at the beginning of the summer.  He leant it to me promising me that I would love it.  And I’ll be really honest … I wasn’t sure I was going to like it.  But I decided to give it a try and low and behold – I loved it.
While I’ve been reading, I have had several people ask me what the book is about.  I have a hard time responding.  Sometimes I say it’s about a family of boys and baseball.  Other times I just say it’s about baseball.  Still other times I say it’s a coming of age story set in the 60s in the midst of the Vietnam war.  Still other times I’ve said it’s about a family coming to terms with growing up and growing apart.  It wasn’t until I read the last words of the book that I realized just what the book was about –
It’s about life.  It’s about love, heartbreak, growing up, values, faith, family.  It’s about the life of a family.  A family with four boys, two girls and two parents.  A family with varying faith stories.  A family who fought and loved.
It’s a beautiful story of a family’s life.
You should probably run out and get yourself a copy and read it.  Although only if you like completely genuine stories that struggle through big life questions in one chapter and then make you spit water out your nose in the next because of the completely realistic brotherly fights.

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I've got a story and I'm trying to live it right

I was recently referred to this ted talk by The Pastor.  It is a fascinating talk by Brene Brown.  I don’t really want to do her an injustice by trying to sum up her talk so do me a favor… go take 20 minutes to listen to her talk.  Or just read the rest of this post and become intrigued and then go listen to her talk.  It’s fabulous.  I promise.  If you and I get along, you will like it or at least have some things to mull over if you watch it.
She had a lot of really great quotes, one of them that seriously struck me was this definition of courage: “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”  In light of some of the other things she talks about in this talk, it makes more sense (I’m telling you…go watch it).  But even without knowing what she has to say about the power of vulnerability, this sentence kind of makes me ponder a little bit.
To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.  What does she mean by with our whole hearts?  I think she means the good, the bad and the ugly.  With every emotion that comes with every situation.  To have joy, pain, suffering, depression, anger, frustration, love, beauty and whatever else may come from your heart.  To tell the story of who you are and how you became that person with your entire heart.  To be in a place emotionally to be able to tell your story, live your story without repression of the parts that may be hard to show.
Another great quote she had was after talking about how babies, when born, were wired for struggle.  She says that the job of a parent is to say, “you’re imperfect and you are wired for struggle but you are worthy of love and belonging.”  She then quips, “Show me a generation of children raised like that and let’s see what the world is like.”
This idea, of recognizing that we are imperfect and that imperfection makes us wired for struggle, for hard ship, but that we are worthy of love and belonging.  It’s a beautiful thought.  When a child comes into this world, they seem so perfect and innocent.  I halfway understand parents trying to shelter their children as long as possible.  But at some point, they enter into this imperfect world full of hardships and have to struggle through it, just like the rest of us.  But the job that parents have is to instill in their children that despite of the hardships, they are worthy of love and belonging.
Once we accept that we are worthy of love and belonging, we are more able to have the courage to tell our story with our whole heart.  To not make apologies for the places in our lives that we aren’t proud of whether because of our actions or others’ actions.  To share in the joys of others and to be whole heartedly enthusiastically story tellers.
Now, I have no idea what Brene Brown’s faith tradition is, if she has one.  But I’d like to think this translates into the church.  How do we mak the church a place where people are encouraged in this challenge because of the love of Christ in their lives?  How do I as a pastor create a space where anyone in any season of the heart can find a place to call home?  How do we live out the truce sense of the bible, sufferings and joys hand in hand.
How do we give into the power of vulnerability?  Because I am with Brene Brown, I think it has a distinct power to show us the way to happiness.

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in my love – be lifted high

I know I’ve been pretty quiet on here.  But to be honest, I’ve been entirely too busy and to be more honest – there’s not a lot going on in my life that I feel like I can write about.  Let me expand…
A few weeks ago I started a summer CPE program that is required for my degree.  This program involves my working in a hospital as a chaplain (intern) and basically my days involve wandering the hospital (trying not to get lost) visiting patients and offering prayer or just to listen to them.  While it has been an extremely difficult journey thus far, it’s also been really good for me and really honoring for me.  But within CPE, there is a lot of confidentiality issues and to be honest, I just can’t really write on here what has been going on with me and the things in which I’ve been processing.
However, I’ve had some thoughts today that need out and only some of them have to do with CPE so I’m going to write them out anyway.
There is something deeply profound about walking into a hospital room and introducing yourself to a complete stranger and then sitting down to hear their life story.  It’s really honoring to be able to be in this space with this person or family.  I mean to be honest, I am walking into their room at what is quite possibly one of the worst days of their lives.  They are in crisis, something major has happened to them, and here I come with my little three ring binder and an assigned list of patients offering a chance to chat or pray.  In all honesty, I’m surprised that I’m not refused more.
But for whatever, in this place of extreme vulnerability – they open up.  They tell me things they haven’t told their family or their own pastor.  I get to experience this place of extreme suffering with them.
There are so many moments in my days at the hospital that I think to myself, “What qualifies me to be in this place?”  And I’m not sure that I have the answer.  But then again, what qualified Moses to deliver the Israelites?  What qualified any person in scripture to do the things they did?  Now – I’m not saying I’m a biblical character … but still.  What qualifies any of us to do the things we do in the name of the Lord?
NOTHING.
Nothing qualifies us.  I mean yes, at the end of this school year I will have an MDiv, and that probably technically qualifies me.  But most of the time I am still at awe at the fact that this dream of mine – to do ministry – is actually coming true.  I have a hard time believing that I am really trying to represent God in any way, shape or form.
And I’m not sure I will ever truly come to terms with that.  But at the same time, I think it’s that dependence on God that makes it okay.  I know I will never do a perfect job.  I know that I will mess up from time to time.  But as long as I keep in mind that it is holy ground I’m standing on at any moment when I’m trying to be like Jesus, I think that maybe, just maybe – I’ll do alright.
If I strive for my whole life, my whole world and all my love to lift the name of the Lord higher, then I think I will do alright.  For without Him – there is nothing left for me.

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may your past be the sound of your feet upon the ground

Transition. It’s an inevitable part of life. It’s going to happen to us several times in life. I am fueled by it in a lot of ways. My life has changed so many time and in so many ways, I often find myself waiting for transitions, big changes. I can handle new, I love new. I love new challenges, the discovering of new places, making new friends, being in new situations. I love it.
What I don’t love, is the times that come right before the big change. The months/weeks/days that come right before the big change. When you already know what’s coming but you just aren’t there yet. You are in the holding pattern
As if right on time, I heard a sermon on this very topic this past Sunday. On living in the in between. It was funny to sit and listen to because honestly, I didn’t really feel it on Sunday. And now, now I’m sitting here, working on my last two things of the semester, about to watch Roomsmate graduate and move out of our little home, about to start CPE, about to move onto another phase of life. Everything is on the brink of changing. It hasn’t really changed yet but it’s about to.
And in this moment I have no choices. I can’t hold on to the past to make it stay the same. I can’t rush the future to happen faster. I just stand here knowing fully that everything is about to change.
So I wait. I try to be faithful in the in between times. I try not to let my excitement of what’s to come blur my current reality. I will try my best to enjoy these last moments of this part of my life. I will try to live in the silence. I will live in the tension between what was and what is to become.

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we laugh a little too loud

The end is nearing.  I have been in the midst of craziness of school for the last week, extending into the next week.  My load is lesser this semester than it has been in the past.  Meaning, unlike most semesters when I had 2 or 3 15 page papers due I only have a handful of shorter papers due.  It’s still a lot of work, but not nearly as much as I’ve had in the past.
Also in the midst of preparing for this week of finals coming up, I realized that this weekend is my last weekend with my beloved Roomsmate.  She graduates in a week and two hours from this moment.  Her whole family comes in this weekend so this time we have right now is our last weekend in this apartment.
Because of the nature of Seminary, we tend to not realize at the end of our years that as we rapidly approach finals and being done, we also rapidly approach our entire community changing.  People graduate, leave for internship, come back from internship and these bonds that we have built over the year are about to change and be tested.  A lot of people in this community are not from here and we all have the tendency to scatter pretty quickly after the semester is over.
Last year at this time I was in the middle of a couple of big papers and preparing for a couple of big finals and didn’t realize that I was not relishing the time I had with my peers and then I blinked (figuratively) and I was suddenly at home on my couch in Colorado and all my friends were scattered around the country.  I had let the tasks get in the way of people that I loved and then they were gone.  Not gone forever but that season ended and I wasn’t prepared for that.
I refuse to let that happen this semester.  I think that’s the wisdom that comes with second year, the knowledge that it will all get done, the knowledge that people mean something too and grades aren’t everything.  I know that I will do the best I can on my papers and finals, but I also know I want to be fully invested in the people around me.  So completely giving up a social life for this task work shouldn’t be the case.
So this morning, I played hookie from my paper and went to see the Avengers with the Roomsmate and some friends.  And last night I watched Captain America with Roomsmate and another friend because I wanted to spend some time with her before she moves back to California.  Did I still get my paper done? Yes.  Is she still going to get her paper done? Probably.  Just kidding, she will.
I’m not saying that life is all fun and not working, I’m staying life is about working smart and enjoying the time we have while we have it.  There’s something so beautiful about being silly for a few moments before we hunker down and get the work done.