Working or Feasting?

I'm writing here at the dining room table these days, having been displaced by remote learning.  And the truth is, I like it.

Here, I am surrounded by: 

Candlesticks from my grandmother.

China from my husband's great-grandmother.

A pomegranate-embroidered table runner I bought in Jerusalem's Old City with family.

A coffee mug connecting me to a very dear friend. 

A chandelier, hung by my handy husband. 

Wedgwood wall plaques from my father-in-law's parents. 

The table itself, a gift from my very special aunt-in-law. 

And the bible given to me by my "adoptive spiritual parents."

I no longer feel displaced. I feel like I am at home. Feasting on God's Word at a table set by love. 

 

My Challah Fail

No pretty picture of a golden, braided challah. No delivery of warm loaves to friends. No handfuls of soft, pillowy goodness at sundown.

Here's the "after" photo of this week's challah fail...

Nope. Friday's challah was a fail. Not just a "looks lumpy and weird" fail.  Not a "baked too long and burnt on the bottom" fail.  No. Those are all salvageable fails. This was not. And the reason is that it wasn't really a challah fail at all.  

It was a sabbath fail. 

The reason I started making challah every Friday back in the pre-pandemic spring was to incorporate a ritual of rest and worship.  To really sabbath.

But this past Friday, my challah fail revealed a deeper problem: making the challah had become routine and religious, not restful and reverent.

I am no longer making challah in the wee hours of the morning, when all is still. I am no longer reading scripture and praying in the dark while the dough does its rising. 

Instead, I've been snatching an extra bit of sleep and then squeezing in the baking process later in the day. Which is like playing Jenga, really:  timing the mixing and rising and kneading and braiding and rising and baking in between running and shopping and cleaning and laundering and virtual-school-assisting and dog-momming and also {hopefully} writing. Hoping it doesn't all topple over. It's dizzying just reading it, let alone living it.

So this past Friday, when the timer on my wrist let me know the rise was done, I distractedly dismissed it while finishing a chore. And completely forgot to turn out the dough for punching and kneading and braiding. For a very long time. When I finally dashed into the kitchen, the dough was bubbly and fermenting. And not in a good, Prosecco kind of way.

I decided to bake it just for grins - heat fixes all sorts of things, right? Wrong. Even my always-affirming husband, who gives me great latitude in my cooking {because I'm notorious for burning things}, took one bite of the warm, mangled mess and said, "Nope." 

And so, as I texted my friends to let them know their personal bread delivery was canceled due to unforeseen circumstances, I realized that the circumstances should have been foreseen.  I realized that we - I - are all in danger of turning the most worshipful of rituals into rote routine. That we - I - are all at risk of transforming what is meant to be restorative into something that is depleting.

What is your challah? What practice do you practice that is now just practice - or performance - instead of worship? 

But I do have something against you! And it is this: You don't have as much love as you used to. Think about where you have fallen from, and then turn back and do as you did at first.  Revelation 2:4-5a CEV

I encourage you to return to your first love, to rediscover the joy and passion and worship and rest that prompted that practice in the first place. To reignite it. Fan it into faith-full flames with a tender heart to receive God in the way you used to. 

Or even better than you used to, knowing that His love has never grown rote, that He continues to call you to His bountiful table, no matter how burnt or mangled or unappetizing you've made the offering. 

After all, the Bread of Heaven can, and does, make all things new... 

The Fab Five (a/k/a Love as a Witness to a Watching World)

People love to hear about the supernatural moment of my testimony. The moment God broke through and spoke to me. They weep. Heck, I weep. Every. single. time.

The room where "it" happened. Haden Chapel (Palmyra, Virginia)
Photo from Charlottesville District UMC website

But the quiet preface to that moment is just as powerful. It's what God used to prepare me. To physically get me into Trevon's one-room church. And to pre-assemble a support group to help me through the fraught family fallout in the days that followed.

And now, thirty years later, during the summer of 2020, I can't stop thinking about it. Well, about them.

I fondly call them the Fab Five of my testimony. Five fellow college students that grew from complete strangers to close friends during that fateful summer in Charlottesville.

Three guys, two girls. Very different backgrounds, personalities, and politics. Different tastes in everything from clothes to music. Leaders in different student organizations. Who didn't really run in the same friend groups, but who were spending the whole summer together - along with me and about fifteen others - for required leadership training. At the time, I couldn't see a single thing that united them. 

The rooms where it happened...

And yet. They treated each other with a kindness and respect I'd never seen before in people my age. Certainly not in my party crowd that I called friends. Or even among most of the highly opinionated adults in my life. 

The Fab Five laughed together - sometimes at each other. But in a sibling kind of way. They debated, but with respect. They listened, with full attention. Sometimes they rolled their eyes at each other, but always ended with a wink and a chuckle.  

I didn't get it. But I liked it. I was drawn to it. Such acceptance and kindness filled a void I didn't know I had. Provided a safe place I never imagined to exist. And they included me in every bit of life that summer. We ate, we played, we simply did life together. We were friends.

Eventually I learned that one of the guys was one of those "born-again Christians." But he never pushed his religion on me, so it didn't make me feel uncomfortable or like an outsider. What he - and the others - did push was inclusion and kindness. Toward me, and toward each other. Which didn't make a lot of sense to me. But I was just enamored by this group. Who really were - and are - fab.

Later in the summer, when I heard God's voice on that fateful day, I knew exactly who I could talk to. I figured the "born again guy” was the only person who wouldn't think I was totally nuts. But as I snuck downstairs to his suite that afternoon to confess my revelation, I ran into another one of the five, who wondered why I was in such a rush to talk with TJ. I sheepishly told her. Lo, and behold! Donna was a believer, too. Over the next few days, I learned that so was Travis. And Jack. And Jenny.  

Now I understood why the Five was so Fab. 

"For when you demonstrate the same love I have for you by loving one another, everyone will know that you’re my true followers.”  John 13:35 TPT

God did the supernatural work. These believers did the daily work of submission. Of loving their faith siblings as Jesus loved them. Day in and day out. Were they perfect? No. But they strove to love each other well in the midst of a watching world. And they drew me in with this radical love. Love with their hearts (kindness) and their minds (respect) and their strength (weekly softball). 

Today, as I sit here outside a coffee shop in Raleigh,* I am wondering if I would have been willing to step inside that little church - so very far outside of my comfort and culture zone - if the Five had been feuding about politics all summer. I wonder if I would have entrusted myself to their care during the difficult days ahead if they had been mocking each other's views behind their backs or on social media.

And so these days I also wonder, as I scroll Facebook and Twitter, and as I overhear heightened voices in open spaces, how many people out there are tuning out Christians in the news or in their feed or in their lives because angry, mocking, polarizing words communicate that Christian community is not a safe place. And that, by extension, the Cross is not a safe place either.

Oh, please, please let it not be so.

*Traveled the two hours with my daughter so she could have a picnic with her boyfriend {yes, major mom points today}

United in the Mystery

I'm happy. 

Emerald Isle Sunset 2020
Photo by Tammy. Beauty by God.

After months of frustration and lamenting and anger and anxiety (cue the shingles), I'm feeling something I haven't felt in awhile. I'm genuinely happy today.

I'm sitting on the beach, with my husband and my children, socially distanced from the people and the news feed that surround us. We are playing in the water. We are eating popsicles. We are blasting tunes under a rusted beach umbrella.

Blasting Needtobreathe. Van Halen. Miles Davis. Sting (my disc jockey husband explains to the kids that this is especially for me).

But I decide to leave my Englishman in New York, because it's sweltering and the ocean is calling. And I realize, after taking just a few steps toward the water, that Sting's voice is gone. Not quieter. Just gone. Vanished. Stolen by the ocean wind without warning.

I don't give it much thought, and I keep moving toward the water's edge, passing a group of teenage girls blaring their own music. By the time I recognize Carrie Underwood's voice, I am a few steps past them. And just like Sting's walking cane, Carrie's Louisville Slugger has vanished into thin air.  

For a moment, I marvel that music playing loud enough to drown out my thoughts could be silenced so quickly. But the moment washes away with the waves until I make my way back to our chairs an hour later.

And then I notice. 

I notice that, no matter where I'm walking or sitting, there is one thing I can hear loud and clear above everything else. No matter how loudly anyone's music is playing.  

It is the ocean itself. The rhythmic crash and spray and soft ripple up the shore before sliding back into the deep. 

And I'm struck by the fact that no matter what music my tribe plays, or what sound the groups up and down the beach prefer, we are all united by the overarching soundtrack of the ocean.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters. Psalm 29:3 NIV

And then it occurs to me that this is what the church is supposed to look like. Both the church universal and the church local. 

Whether...

Catholic or Protestant

immersed or sprinkled

pre-trib or post-trib

free-willed or predestined 

quiet reverence or raised hands 

wingtips or flip-flops

Democrat or Republican

English speaking or Spanish

Darker or lighter 

 

...we are all seeking to listen to the same mysterious God. The one God who washes over us all with the truth of His sacrifice and resurrection. Who is revealed in part and concealed in part. 

In this season of unrest, can we please stop drowning each other with words of division? Can we please remember, instead, that we are washed together into the wide ocean of the Messiah's living water? United in the mystery that is Christ.

And HE IS before all things and in and through Him the universe is a harmonious whole. Colossians 1:17 WNT

Lord, thank you for creating us with such diversity. Sometimes it's hard for us to love each other well. Help us to learn from and appreciate each other as different parts singing together, so that others can hear the beautiful, "harmonious whole" of your salvation song. 

The Cry of the Oppressed

In our childhood days, we sat criss-cross applesauce in Sunday School while listening to exciting accounts of God rescuing oppressed people.  As adults, we underline our Bibles and share pretty social media images about God's deliverance from suffering.

We love that Pharoah's daughter defied her father's murderous edict against God's people. 

We love that Moses triumphantly led God's people out from under the weight of Egyptian slavery. 

We love that Esther and Mordechai caught Haman in his own web and saved all of God's people from genocide in Persia.

We love it when God rescues the oppressed.  We proclaim it in countless hymns and worship songs.  But I'm afraid - after scrolling social media this week - that a lot of us don't love it or proclaim it when the oppression doesn't oppress us personally.  I'm afraid that when people are being victimized who don't look like us - like me - then we dismiss the very word. Explain it away.

And if this is the case, we should be very troubled.  Not about anyone out there.  But about the person in here.  Me.  You.  Our own selfish, wayward, blame-shifting hearts.

Consider these sacred words:

"Justice, justice you shall pursue..." Deuteronomy 16:20

"...what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"  Micah 6:8

We love these verses until they make us uncomfortable.  But that's exactly what these verses are about.   The fact that God has to command us to do justice means that it doesn't always come naturally.  That sometimes we need to stop and look around and discover oppression in our midst that affects our neighbor. Open our eyes to things we’d never considered before. 

And then we must do something about it. Pursuing justice means that it takes work. That it will cost us something.  That it may {indeed, should} upend our own view of circumstances and replace it with His. 

"Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharoah hardened their hearts?"  1 Samuel 6:6

A gospel-driven pursuit of justice must push us to uncouple from the political pundits of our day and cleave only to our justice-loving, grace-overflowing, merciful, eternal God and to our fellow image bearers.