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…Opening To…

For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation, thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation; thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, for my salvation. Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee, I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee, think on thy pity and thy love unswerving, not my deserving. (Johann Heermann, from The Hymnal 1982)

…Listening In…

But I am like a green olive tree in God’s house; I trust in God’s faithful love forever and always. I will give thanks to you, God, forever, because you have acted. In the presence of your faithful people, I will hope in your name because it’s so good. (Psalm 52:8-9; context)

…Filling Up…

This Lent, we are exploring our faith by running through the alphabet. Today, “T” is for trust. In how many different pieces of our experience do we encounter this word? Of the top of my, I can think of a couple. It’s on American money: “In God we trust.” Disney’s Aladdin says it to Jasmine when they are running from the guards and again when she is hesitant to get on the magic carpet: “Do you trust me?” It’s the first part of the first trait mentioned in the Boy Scout law: “A scout is trustworthy…” It’s used in banking – one can set up a “trust,” which gives rise to the caricature of the spoiled “trust fund baby.”

In our society, the word “trust” runs the gamut. But what does it really mean, and what does it mean in the context of following Jesus Christ?” Trust is the closest synonym for “faith” that the English language can provide. “Confidence” is a close second. Trust happens when you jump into your father’s arms from the top bunk. Trust happens when you let go of the steadying shoulder the first time you venture into the deep end. Trust happens when you give your keys to your teenager for the first time.

There are no guarantees with trust. Trust happens in the absence of guarantees. Rather, trust is the name for the energy and the courage necessary to believe. I believe that God will never betray my trust. I believe that God is trustworthy. And I also believe that God helps me have trust – that is, faith – precisely because God trusts me. God trusts me to be the person God made me to be, a person who struggles to believe, but in the struggle finds belief. Finds trust. Finds faith.

And in trusting God, we can love God. And in loving God, we can serve.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you have never broken your trust and I believe you never will. Help me to live my life with the confidence that comes from knowing that you are trustworthy. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, counting myself blessed that you would choose to make me the person I am and love me into the person I am becoming.

…Opening To…

The glory of these forty days we celebrate with songs of praise; for Christ, through whom all things were made, himself has fasted and has prayed. (Hymn from the 6^th century; trans. Maurice F. Bell)

…Listening In…

Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me! Please don’t throw me out of your presence; please don’t take your holy spirit away from me. Return the joy of your salvation to me and sustain me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:10-12; context)

…Filling Up…

“Lent” is an old translation of the Latin word quadragesima, which simply means “forty days.” Forty days is a significant period of time in the Bible: Noah, Moses, and Elijah all had forty days of something –flooding, fasting, sitting around with God on the mountaintop. Jesus spent forty days in the desert, during which Satan tempted him. Beginning tomorrow (on the fast the church names “Ash Wednesday”) Lent continues until the day before Easter. Historically, the season of Lent was the period of time that people used to prepare for baptism, which took place at the Great Vigil of Easter on Easter Eve.

During these forty days that bring us to Easter, we examine our lives and discern how attuned to God’s movement we are. We pray for God to create in us clean hearts and renew right spirits within us, as Psalm 51 says. We rededicate ourselves to following Christ and wonder how last year’s dedication faded away. We slow down and turn our thoughts inward. How have my actions and inactions contributed to the brokenness in the world? To what have I enslaved myself? Where is my joy and freedom? Do I really want to follow Christ?

When we enter this period of self-reflection, when we honestly answer questions such as these, it often becomes apparent just how skin deep and results-oriented we’ve become. The season of Lent helps us see the error in statements such as “It’s only cheating if you get caught” and “The ends justify the means.” Living a full life – not a half-life of results only – means valuing the moral fortitude that counters wanton opportunism and caring about how things are accomplished, not just that they are. Observing Lent means taking a hard look at ourselves and borrowing enough strength from God to be capable of seeing those festering things that we usually ignore. Then we borrow enough faith from God to know that God will help us change and will reawaken within us those faculties of hope and love that have long lay dormant.

I invite you to turn your gaze inward during this season of Lent and discover the true joy that comes from a full life lived in the love of God.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are the source of all joy throughout your creation. Help me to live my life fully in your love so that I may follow you throughout my journey, meeting you all along the way to the destination. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad that you have given me the strength and the will to reflect on my journey with you.

…Opening To…

The glory of these forty days we celebrate with songs of praise; for Christ, through whom all things were made, himself has fasted and has prayed. (Hymn from the 6^th century; trans. Maurice F. Bell)

…Listening In…

Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion! Wash me completely clean of my guilt; purify me from my sin! (Psalm 51:1-2; context)

…Filling Up…

With another Lenten Alphabet just around the corner beginning on devotiONEighty on Wednesday, today and tomorrow will be a pair of devos rather than the start of a weeklong set. Lent begins Wednesday, so we’ll take the next two days to talk about why Lent is so important. But first, a reminder about we modern Americans.

Americans are rarely a self-reflective people. We have eyes only for result and effect, caring little for process and cause. We seek to assign blame, caring little for our own culpability. We repeat the mistakes of the past, caring little for the lessons those mistakes teach. Never look back. Never let ‘em see you bleed. Never stop to think or the world will pass you by.

Living in this results-driven world is, at the same time, both exceedingly difficult and quite easy. It’s difficult because true joy, the fuel for any fruitful life, is a scarce commodity. Joy happens during not after, and in a results-oriented society, the during is dismissed as superfluous. But this dismissal is why the results-driven life is also quite easy. You crop half of life away. The journey becomes unimportant: only the destination matters. How easy would a test be if you only had to score a 50% to pass?

Self-reflection makes life hard, but it also allows us to recognize that joy abounds, poised to infuse our lives with meaning. Because we are such poor practitioners of self-reflection and because our culture tells us not to take time for such a revealingly honest enterprise, we need a swift kick in the trousers to boot us from the grasping current of the results-driven half-life.

In the Church, this swift-kick-in-the-trousers is called the season of Lent. And we’ll talk more about it tomorrow.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are the source of all joy throughout your creation. Help me to live my life fully in your love so that I may follow you throughout my journey, meeting you all along the way to the destination. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, glad that you have given me the strength and the will to reflect on my journey with you.

…Opening To…

The Bible is a harp with a thousand strings. Play on one to the exclusion of its relationship to the others, and you will develop discord. Play on all of them, keeping them in their places in the divine scale, and you will hear heavenly music all the time. (William P. White)

…Listening In…

I will open my mouth with a proverb. I’ll declare riddles from days long gone—ones that we’ve heard and learned about, ones that our ancestors told us. We won’t hide them from their descendants; we’ll tell the next generation all about the praise due the LORD and his strength—the wondrous works God has done.  (Psalm 78:2-4; context)

…Filling Up…

Last year at the end of January and beginning of February, devotiONEighty looked at certain topics having to do with the Bible – five things you shouldn’t do when you read it, five things you should do, and five words that often get misinterpreted. This year, we are going to have a few more weeks of Bible study on devotiONEighty, starting today with the beginning of “Five things about the Old Testament.” (You can probably guess what next week will be.)

Our first thing about the Old Testament is the fact that “Old Testament” is not really the best name we could be using for this set of books that makes up the majority of our Bibles. Saying “Old” puts it in direct comparison with the part of the Bible we call “New.” Now, of course, when we say “New,” most of us mean “more recent.” This is a fact. The books and letters that make up the “New Testament” were written more recently than those in the “Old Testament” that came before it. But when we say “Old” and “New,” what we hear (and what some folks think) is “Obsolete” and “Current.”

But the truth is, both the Old and New Testaments make up our Bibles. One is not better or more important than the other. Indeed, the “More Recent” Testament developed from and built on the “Less Recent Testament.” So, if you retain the phrase “Old Testament,” make sure the word “Old” doesn’t carry the baggage of obsolescence. I tend to use the name “Hebrew Scriptures” because it says what they are, but doesn’t set them up to lose to the New Testament.

Stayed tuned tomorrow when we delve into this, the bulk of our scriptures, on what I will henceforth call “Five things about the Hebrew Scriptures.”

…Praying For…

Dear God, you were a guiding presence for so many of my spiritual ancestors, who wrote about you in the Bible. Help me to see your presence as clearly as they did and to follow your Word with all my heart. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, grateful for your presence throughout time and space, as recorded in the Bible and lived in my life.

…Opening To…

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence. (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)

…Listening In…

You changed my mourning into dancing. You took off my funeral clothes and dressed me up in joy so that my whole being might sing praises to you and never stop. LORD, my God, I will give thanks to you forever. (Psalm 30:11-12; context)

…Filling Up…

Whereas desolation makes the soul a wasteland, consolation makes the soul a garden in full bloom. In consolation, the roots of our souls grow deep in the rich soil of God’s presence. We are aware of the persistent activity of creation, and we revel in the joys that life has to offer.

Sometimes, our determination brings consolation to us: a young girl is told she’ll never become a concert pianist. Her hands are too small, her technique mediocre, pedestrian. But she practices and practices and practices. Her joy is in the vibration of hammer on string buzzing up through her fingertips, in the notes transferred from black dots and squiggles to tones of weight and beauty. She may never play at Carnegie Hall, but the music is inside her soul.

Sometimes, as with desolation, external events bring consolation to us: the city-dweller finds himself in rural woodland at night. The sky is clear, the moon a sliver. He lies on his back and gazes up at the stars. He didn’t know there were so many. The subtle band of the Milky Way brings shape to the clutter. The innumerable points of light in the darkness bring light to his soul.

More often than not, consolation happens when we gather together all of the small blessings in our lives. A good night’s sleep leads to energy and cheerfulness. An unexpected phone call comes from an old friend. The house is warm. Chicken for dinner again! Each blessing enriches the soil, in which our souls thrive, and our gardens bloom with unrestrained life.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you have given me a heart that beats in time with the rhythm of your grace. Help me to live everyday feeling the joy that rhythm. In Jesus Christ’s name Pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, and wherever I am – whether in the garden or the wasteland – I pray that you help me see your presence in my life.

…Opening To…

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence. (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)

…Listening In…

I have sunk into deep mud. My feet can’t touch the bottom! I have entered deep water; the flood has swept me up. I am tired of crying. My throat is hoarse. My eyes are exhausted with waiting for my God. (Psalm 69:2-3; context)

…Filling Up…

Usually, people want the bad news first, so we’ll begin with the emptiness of desolation. Desolation is the nuclear winter of the soul. Desolation makes the soul a wasteland – arid, parched, rendered uninhabitable by events in the life of the very person who must inhabit the internal desert.

Sometimes, we bring desolation on ourselves: a man cheats on his wife, and she doesn’t even catch him. He expects to feel the thrill of adventure, of subterfuge. Instead, he feels the pain of a broken promise. He doesn’t realize he is a moral person until he fails to live up to his own unexamined values. And his failure eats away at his soul.

Sometimes, external events bring desolation upon us: the pregnancy has been difficult, but the doctors have managed to stay positive. If she can hold on just a few more weeks…but the contractions start, and she delivers a tiny life. The infant’s underdeveloped lungs struggle for breath. He lives for four days, and her soul dies with him.

Sometimes, desolation happens not in these large events but in the accumulation of small frustrations and disappointments. They hired the other guy. The repair cost more than the estimate. Another D-minus. Chicken for dinner – again. Each frustration erodes the soil of the soul, nutrients leach out, and eventually only the wasteland remains.

In these times of desolation, we do not look for the presence of God because we think God can’t possibly be there. We abandon ourselves to despair, so we expect that God has abandoned us too. We may even stop believing in God, while paradoxically blaming God for our situations. When we are desolate, we don’t live: we merely subsist. And we fail to realize that our very ability to survive through the torment of despair is a manifestation of God’s awesome power and love.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are near me even when I am far from you. Help me never to forget that, even when I can no longer see your presence. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, and wherever I am – whether in the garden or the wasteland – I pray that you help me see your presence in my life.

…Opening To…

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence. (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)

…Listening In…

Look at me! Answer me, LORD my God! Restore sight to my eyes! Otherwise, I’ll sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, “I won!” My foes will rejoice over my downfall. But I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your salvation. (Psalm 13:3-5; context)

…Filling Up…

They say that every therapist should be in therapy. Likewise, every priest should participate in spiritual direction. Without trained professionals helping us priests notice God’s movement in our lives, one of two things happens. We either forget to rely on God, thus emptying ourselves of all nourishment even though a feast is perpetually spread before us. Or we decide we don’t need to rely on God, because we are doing just fine on our own (thank you very much!) and the same starvation results. We priests are a rather thick bunch, usually quite stubborn when faced with the Almighty, because the Creator-of-All-That-Is rarely seems to fit the predictions of our seminary studies.

When I was in seminary, my spiritual director, who is now my boss (funny how life works out sometimes!), diagnosed my particular case as a combination of failing to notice God’s presence and deciding I didn’t need God anyway. I’m glad I could offer her such a potent mixture of blindness and stupidity. Needless to say, our sessions were never boring. Over our two years together, she taught me many things, but one stands above the rest. You can basically separate the events of your life into two categories, she said. There are moments of consolation, and there are moments of desolation. Both will happen and ignoring one will make the other that much harder to define. This week, we are going to look at these two categories and see how we can follow Christ more closely if we keep stock of where we are on this spectrum.

There’s the good news of consolation and the bad news of desolation. We’ll start with the bad news first. But that will be tomorrow.

…Praying For…

Dear God, my life is a canvas upon which you are painting. Help me to live out every line, every shade, that I may live to the fullest the life you would have me live. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, and wherever I am – whether in the garden or the wasteland – I pray that you help me see your presence in my life.

…Opening To…

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

…Listening In…

Let me hear what the LORD God says, because he speaks peace to his people and to his faithful ones. Don’t let them return to foolish ways. (Psalm 85:8; context)

…Filling Up…

Like the sense of sight, hearing can be tricky. As a sense, hearing consists of vibrations hitting special parts of our ears and then our brains organizing those vibrations into intelligible sounds. Now, I suppose I could have started each day this week with a scientific explanation of the sense, but since I’m neither a scientist nor a Time Lord (Doctor Who reference – check it out, seriously), we’ll just have to make do. Anyway, the sense of hearing is all about making intelligent guesses about the vibrations bombarding us. How does this jive with our exploration of God’s presence? I’m glad you asked.

“No one has ever seen God,” claims the prologue to the Gospel according to John. But throughout the Bible, people certainly hear God. There are three kinds of people who hear God. First, there are the prophet-type people who are so in tune with God that they know God’s words as their own, like Isaiah or Amos. Second, there are the people who would never have expected to hear God because of some perceived impediment, like Moses or Jeremiah. Third, there are the people who are going against God and need a shout (such as the kind your dad gave when you wandered into the street), like Saul who becomes Paul.

In each case, these folks’ hearing of God’s message goes much beyond mere receiving of the verbal stimuli. The sense of hearing translates into the act of listening, which is another way of saying they obeyed. You’ll notice if you look in a mirror that God designed us humans a certain way where hearing is involved. It’s easy to close our eyes, but difficult to close our ears. We have to ram our hands over our ears and press as hard as we can to stop the sound from coming in. Notice also that if you turn around so your eyes are looking the other way, your ears haven’t changed place. God designed us this way on purpose, I think. God is still continuing to speak creation into being, and God has given us the biological reminder that we can always remain open to hearing and then listening to God’s voice.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you have given me the sense of hearing to experience more fully the ways you communicate your creation into being. Help me to listen and obey you when I hear your voice guiding my life. In Jesus Christ’s name pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, ready to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your presence, that I may be more aware of your movement in my life.

…Opening To…

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

…Listening In…

Your word is so pleasing to my taste buds—it’s sweeter than honey in my mouth! (Psalm 119:103; context)

…Filling Up…

Scripture is filled with images of tasting, which is our third of the five senses for this week of devotions. Both Ezekiel and John of Patmos eat scrolls with words from God written on them. They taste like honey. Actually, tasting like honey is a big deal in the Bible. In Psalm 19, the Lord’s judgments taste like honey, as does the Lord’s word in Psalm 119. In Exodus, the manna that the Israelites eat in the wilderness tastes like honey as well.

Pair these descriptions with the notion of tasting of God. Psalm 34 invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” 1 Peter assumes we have already done so and reached the same conclusion about God’s savory quality. Honey does, indeed, taste good. I put it in tea to sweeten up the Earl Grey.

But think about the claim we are making whenever we reference these pieces of the Bible. We say that tasting the Lord is good. Therefore, the claim we make is that the Lord is like food, and not just any food, but food that tastes as good as honey. We really should eat food every day to stay healthy; sadly, not everyone in the world has that opportunity. When we don’t eat, we become malnourished. The same is true when we fail to taste of God. We become malnourished spiritually and forget what it is like to be full of the Lord, to have the honey of God’s word dripping from our lips.

But remember that God tastes good. God makes it desirable for us to come to the table for our meal. There’s no wonder that Holy Communion is a feast that we do often – we physically taste of the bread and spiritually taste of the binding and weaving movement of God. (Now I know many of us use the thin, disc-like wafers that don’t taste like much of anything at all, but just go with me here.) So taste and see that the Lord is good. Fill your belly with the word of God that tastes sweeter than honey dripping from the comb.

You may develop a sweet tooth, but it’s a sweet tooth for God, so your dentist won’t complain.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you have given me a sense of taste to experience more fully those good things that nourish my body. Help me to savor your word as I would savor my favorite food. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, ready to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your presence, that I may be more aware of your movement in my life.

…Opening To…

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

…Listening In…

Let my prayer stand before you like incense; let my uplifted hands be like the evening offering. (Psalm 141:2; context)

…Filling Up…

Yesterday, we began a week of devotions based on the senses. When I got to the point of writing the “Sending Out” section for the week, I listed the five senses, finished the sentence, and then read back over it. Next I laughed out loud. What does the sense of smell really have to do with noticing God’s presence?

So let’s go ahead and tackle “smell” today and then move on tomorrow with a sense that seems to fit better with finding God’s presence. Not so fast, you might say. Perhaps “smell” has more to show us than you, Adam, originally thought. Maybe you’re right. Let’s see. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought to myself, “Wow, that smells like the presence of God.” Incense during church services (if you’re into that kind of thing) might give you a fragrant association with the holy, but that’s all I can come up with.

But here’s where the sense of smell has something to offer. Of the five senses, the sense of smell is the one most strongly associated with memory. Perhaps when you smell chocolate chip cookies in the oven, you are suddenly seven years old again and sitting at your grandmother’s kitchen table with your legs dangling over the side of your chair. Perhaps when you smell your gym bag, you are suddenly back on the field at the end of the big game.

What association, smell or otherwise, brings you more fully into God’s presence? Is it opening your Bible? Or stepping into church? Or smelling the incense? If you are finding it difficult to train yourself to notice God’s movement, try associating it with a memory or a smell. If I thought of God every time I smelled chocolate chip cookies, I think I would be quite excited indeed.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you have given me a sense of smell to experience more fully the world you have created. Help me to seek your presence with all my senses and to associate you with all that is good in my life. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, ready to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your presence, that I may be more aware of your movement in my life.