Ever Changing…Yet Unchanging

Yes, there is something rather contradictory about such a title, but I have come to find this seeming paradox quite true.  In our culture at large, we come to value the unchanging, the steady, the constant.  I have heard someone say of another, “Oh, Mr. So-in-So…he is as steady as they come; you count on him like you can the sunrise.”  That’s a pretty high complement…one I’ve often wished to overhear being said about me…but probably never will.  That’s because I’m not in the ‘steady’ or ‘constant’ crowd.  I’m more likely to hear something like, “Oh, Jon…there he goes again…so fickle...chasing another dream….”

I am a human…alive...and that means change.  Yet, in the midst of change, there ARE some constants.  For example, one unchanging aspect of my life is the love I have for my wife.  But, how I EXPRESS that love is ever changing.  At times, this love is expressed in a very physical way, through a closeness that I experience with no one else in this world.  At other times, this love is expressed through a glance, a quick look filled with meaning and depth that brings a subtle smile.  We have “off” days, bad days.  On those days, my love for her may be expressed by silence…by saying nothing…by taking three hours at the local library or coffee shop to give her (or me) needed space.  Yet, underneath the surface of multifaceted expression, the love remains…unchanging. 

Another unchanging aspect of my life is my faith in God.  As with my love for my wife, my faith in God is expressed in many different ways.  On Sunday mornings, I gather with ‘Jesus people’ in a large group where I sing loudly and passionately…where I sway a bit to the music…where I join in group study and reflection on the Christian Scriptures.  During the week, I don’t do those things too much.  (I think my office mates are glad I don’t.  I believe if I did that, I’d probably be fired.)  So, my faith—though unchanging—will be lived out and expressed in different ways depending on the situation, the context.  Some days I identify with the 1^st Century Christians as I read the letters of Paul to those early groups of ‘Jesus people.’  Some days, I identify with the Desert Fathers of the 3^rd Century…or with the Celtic Christians of the 6^th Century…with the Reformers of the 16^th Century…then with the new ‘radicals’ of the 21^st Century.  At times my faith has me focused on our Creator God…at times on God the Son…and at other times on the Spirit of God.  I’m all over the place—in my expression, identifications, and foci.  But, the underlying faith is unchanging.

One of the tenets of the Christian faith is the unchanging God, yet God is always changing.  In Scripture, we find God changing His mind, changing His plans—just read the powerful, emotion-packed interchanges between God and Moses…or read through the Psalms.  Then, 2000 years ago, God changed—God experienced something that He had never before experienced.  The Creator became creation; God became human. (Think of it this way:  The man who makes the oak rocking chairs somehow becomes one of those rocking chairs—that is almost mind-blowing!)  Yet, our God is unchanging as well—forever Creator and Sustainer of all things; forever Author of love and of our salvation; forever Emmanuel—God with us.  But, how God interacts with us may change and does change.  How God reveals Himself to us may vary from day to day, and certainly from culture to culture—He meets us through a song, in a reading, in a sunset, in a stranger, in silence.  So, WHO God is never changes.  God is “the same yesterday, today and forever.”

And me?  I’ll still chase dreams.  I’ll have my ups and downs.  But, below the multiple layers of expression and the swirl of human emotions, yes—I find a solid, unchanging core…and that unchanging aspect—I must believe—is directly related to my faith in and the presence of the Unchanging One.  I’m ever changing…yet unchanging.

Still Constructing “Babel”

The story of the “Tower of Babel” is well stamped in my mind.  When I was a child, my parents gave me The Children’s Living Bible…a delightful rendering of the Scriptures, complete with full color, impressionistic-sort-of illustrations.  As a child, I didn’t pay much attention to the sermons from the pulpit—I looked through my Bible at the illustrations, wondering what life would have been like in that Biblical world.  The Tower of Babel was right there…one of the first two or three pages of illustrations—a tall ziggurat, climbing into the clouds…abandoned.

As I got older, I actually read the story from Scripture…how in the early days of humanity, men and women came together to construct a tower to reach the heavens…to reach God.  This is when God ‘confused their tongues’—created languages.  The project screeched to a halt…and humanity divvied up and went their way, everyone according to their own language groups.  The Tower was stopped and humanity never reached God.

Many years later, I realize that we are still striving to build that tower.  Babel is a human construct—a way of putting things—reality—together in our own way.  The tower is our insistence on doing things our way, on creating our own world, of making our own way to God…of reaching the heavens.  The Tower of Babel is about living in a human-made reality in place of the God-made reality. The Tower is about living in our own creation rather than in God's creation. We insist on living in a world of our own making. 

Our creations are supposed to be steps forward as we reach for the heavens.  Our human technology has produced a plethora of ‘labor-saving devices'.  But, there’s a problem—with all of these labor-saving devices, we should be the best-rested creatures on the planet, but what we find are the ‘tiredest,’ longest-working, least-vacationing people in the world.  We work and work to build this grand Tower, to create our ‘amazing’ reality…but we are no closer to God or the heavens than were the mono-lingual people of the young earth.

Likewise, we’re trying to build our own forms of community—virtual ones.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn—I’m a part of them all.  Yet, they all leave me wanting.  In the end, I feel that all that happens in these ‘communities’ IS babble.  I have two Facebook accounts—one for our ‘missions’ side…and then a personal one for ‘Jon.’  I find that I have two personas—or at least I did until today.  Finally, I’ve come to realize that those FB accounts were places where I tried to create a comfortable reality, where I made my own realities that were convenient to my own ends or to the perceived expectations of my readers.  What’s missing here in all this paragraph??  God.  I was wrapped up in my own reality rather than living in God’s reality.

This immersion in our self-created worlds is part of our difficulty in connecting with our Creator.  So, how do we escape this massive human construction project?  How do we connect with our Creator?  In some way, to come degree, we have to walk away from the Tower.  Some how, we have got to move towards God’s reality, God’s creation, God’s rhythms.  Perhaps that is what Paul means when he writes about “walking in the Spirit”.  Perhaps that is why Jesus was off in the ‘wilderness’ to pray and spend time with the Father.  Perhaps that is why we find so many of the “leaders” in the Scripture out in God’s reality—creation—to recharge their batteries, to commune with God.  Babel may be under construction again, but we don’t have to join the project.  Perhaps today is the day to lay down the hammer…and seek a living God in His living Creation in community with living people. 

What I'm Reading....

Reading, reading, reading!  Can't stop...won't stop--got to keep learning and keep the mind active.
My present intellectual diet:

Under the Unpredictable Plant - Eugene Peterson
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast of the 21st Century - George Friedman
Brother Roger of Taize: Essential Writings
Experiences in Translation - Umberto Eco

I hope that you are reading also.  If you've found a really good book, share the title with us in the comments below.

Hoping you all are off to a good New Year!

~Jon~

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!  I hope that you are as happy to see this year beginning as I am.  2012 was a pretty good year…but this year will be even better!

I wish you and yours the very best in the days, weeks, and months to come.  May we live well, live to the full, and live lives that impact others.

More to come…!

Feliz año!!  Espero que también estás muy contento ver el inicio de este año como yo.  El año 2012 fue bueno…pero este año será aun mejor!

Les deseo lo mejor por los días, semanas y meses por venir.  Que vivemos bien, que vivemos con abundancia, y que vivemos en una manera para impactar las vidas de la gente alrededor.

Hasta pronto…!

Listening to the Wind....

As I sat on the patio out front of our house, the fussy southeast wind tossed the trees all around...bending the palms in our neighbor's yard, swishing the leaves of our live oak. While I sat there, I began to hear more...the 'little' sounds that the wind was bringing. The laughter of a child three houses up floated down to me. The rattly 'clunk-clunk' of a discarded beer crossing the street came to me. Across the street, a bit of loose Christmas decoration flapped in the wind. In the distance, the siren of first responders rose and fell with the intensity of the wind.

Wind is air moving...and it moves in a particular direction. As I sat there listening to the sounds on the wind, I realized that I was uniquely placed to hear what the wind brought me that evening. The lady who lives on the street behind us heard none of these things. Oh, she heard the wind in the trees—the BIG noise, but I was the one who heard the laughter of that child . The couple who lives six houses east of us would not have heard the can skitter across the asphalt—they were up-wind. The old fellow who always sits out in his carport watching the world go by, some five houses west of us, would not have heard the flapping decoration that caught my ear even though he was down-wind—the noises just weren't loud enough for him to hear. Yes, the wind brought these sounds to me...and I had to hear, reflect and/or act on them....

Jesus teaches us that God's Spirit is a wind...or maybe he was teaching that God's Wind is the Spirit? “Wind” and “Spirit” are the same word in Jesus' Aramaic and the Gospel-writer's Greek. Perhaps God's Spirit-Wind brings 'little' sounds just for you and just for me. Where we stand in life may position us to hear something that no one else is going to hear. Maybe the cry of that child (or teenager or adult) comes only to your ears...maybe that irritating 'flapping' or 'clunk-clunk' of something out of place, of something not right, of something calling for rightness or justice comes only to your ears.... And, you—the only one who hears these small sounds in our roaring world—you are the one who must act.

If the Spirit indeed works this way, much would be explained. How many times has someone—after hearing a sermon or reading a Scripture passage—come away having heard or read something that completely eluded us? Could it be that a particular breeze was blowing in their direction?

This calls me to realize that God's Spirit may speak to us in a way that no one around us hears. When I sit in worship and the pastor calls on the congregation to help feed a village in Malawi, I can no longer say, “Oh, there are plenty of other people 'hearing' this—they'll give.” No, now I realize that God may be blowing a message, a call that only I can hear, that only resonates in my heart. Now I realize that a song that fills me with joy can bring another to broken tears; a sermon that grabs my heart my leave others only curiously interested; the images of a child in Ecuador may call me to open my hands generously but may call a young couple on the next pew to sell it all and move to South America.

Finally, to hear the 'little' sounds in the wind, we have to be in the wind. If I stay in my home with the windows closed up tight and the TV on, the sounds on the wind would pass my by...along with the opportunities to respond. To hear the small sounds, we have to be in the wind...and listening. Even if I sit in a house of worship, I may only hear about the wind or only hear what others have heard...and not really hear the wind for myself. Yes, I need to get outside, sit in the wind, let it surround and caress me...and open my ears to hear what sounds of life and need and opportunity and possibility and purpose are being brought to me, in my particular place and time.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit....

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit....

~Jon~

I Got a Feelin'...NOT!

I often find myself sitting to write when God has revealed something new to me, when the Spirit has helped me through a hard time, or after I have come to new understanding of an old truth.  Not so today.  I write today because I feel that God is far from me.  The metaphor of the desert—of being in a ‘dry and thirsty land’—is more real to me now than it has been in a long time.

When I pray, I feel I am talking to myself.  When I read the Scriptures, I feel completely disconnected from that world.  When I attend worship, I feel like an outsider.  I hope beyond hope that I’m not the only Christian to feel this way.  And, as I intimated above, it’s not the first time….

But wait.  There IS good news in all of this.  How?  Well, it all comes down to the “I feel…” element of my confessions.  I have often told my students that we simply cannot trust our feelings…that our feelings change more frequently than the weather.  (Oh, feelings aren’t bad; we just tend to put too much emphasis on them.)   How often have we gotten out of bed smiling in the morning, glad for a new day…but leave the house or apartment scowling just an hour later as we head to work?  Or, how often have we been feeling down, beat-up, worn…and a phone call comes—from ‘him’ or ‘her’…and suddenly we’re all happy and smiles and “all is well with the world”?  Fickle—that’s what feelings are. 

How many times have I heard people say upon leaving a worship service, “Well, I just didn’t feel the Spirit there today….”  I’ve heard supposedly “mature” Christians (I’m beginning to think that means they’ve lost their ‘child-like’ faith!) talk about how they “feel the Lord moving them” in this direction or that.  Feelings--don’t trust ‘em. 

I learned long ago not to rely on feelings…and at the same time, I learned the importance of spiritual discipline.  In one of our classes in the seminary in Mexico, my students and I decided to develop a practical, imaginative definition of ‘spiritual discipline,’ and here is what we came up with:  Spiritual discipline is the constant preparation of the spiritual soil—weeding, plowing and hoeing in expectation of the coming rains; it’s putting one’s self in that path or road that Jesus usually walks so as to increase the likelihood of an encounter.  The spiritual disciplines of prayer, Scripture reading, worship, fasting and the like involve doing what is good and right and necessary to prepare the soil of our lives, to put us in that spiritual place to receive God, to hear God…even to be Christ for others in their moment of need.  It means praying, reading, worshiping, singing, listening—whether we feel like it or not. 

Whether I “feel” God hears me or not, I pray—I speak the words of thanksgiving, of care, of need.  Whether I “feel” a part of the Biblical conversation, I read—I open myself to words of life, words of hope, words of grace and guidance.  Whether I “feel” the Spirit or God’s Presence, or not, I gather with other Christians for worship—I receive communion, I sing the songs (sometimes only softly, under my breath!), I hear the Word read and proclaimed.  And I may walk away from all of these feeling unheard, disconnected or empty.  But, my life of faith is not based on feelings; it is based on what I know.  I have the promises:  And we know that He hears us…I will never leave you or forsake you…I am with you always, to the end of the age…[nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus….

Meanwhile, I tend the soil…I go through the motions…I do what I know is good and right, I put myself in God-pleasing places—and I await the encounter that will refresh me and perhaps even bring feelings to life again within me. 

~Jon~

(Note:  Attesting to the power and effect of writing…the act of writing, I have found a new sense of faith and purpose for having written this piece!  So, when something troubles you, write about it…and see what happens.)

People of the Book...the Address Book!

In the last few days, I’ve been organizing the address book for our e-mail account.  As I engaged in that tedious project, I came to an interesting realization.  Too often, we are on the receiving end e-mails, and we don’t really realize what we may be a part of....

In our address book, I find friends from high school, college, grad school, seminary and beyond; I find men and women and teenagers and even children.

There are people who live in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, Texas, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and…Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Ghana, England, Kazakhstan, China, Egypt, Grenada, Dubai and more!

A lot of the folks are Methodists…but there are also Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Quakers…and certainly agnostics (of which a few might even claim to be atheists!) 

Some of the folks in that address book are people I worked with in school…others in churches…still others as part of mission teams. 

There are family members there—parents, siblings, children, cousins, aunts and uncles…and then some. 

Some of the email addresses belong to the very wealthy…and some to the very poor…and many to that broad group called ‘middle class.’

Some are Republicans...some are Democrats...some are Independents...some are other lands and the parties there...and some are "I-don't-know-and-don't-care's!

Some of the people there I have known for over 40 years…some I’ve met only recently, in the last few months. 

Some have helped us by supporting our work in Venezuela and Mexico by sending money…some have helped by sending us encouraging emails…some have helped by praying for us…and some have helped by doing nothing and not saying anything!

The wonderful and amazing thing is that we really do know almost every single one of you who are in our address book.  We’ve met you and know you and you know us.  When I see that there are some 800 names in my address book, I realize that we are truly blessed…and we thank you for keeping up with us, for supporting us in various ways, for tolerating too few or too many e-mails!

When you receive that e-mail from us next time, realize that you are part of a huge, beautiful, multifaceted, international, group of people that somehow share at least one commonality--probably more--and that we are so grateful for you!