Blessed Are... Blessed Are... Blessed Are...

Sometimes it takes a couple of days to sink in…

As we move toward ascension, I have a lot of feelings, but the most prominent one, year after year, is that of the abandonment that comes from grief.  I have blogged about it in the past and was honored to flesh it out a little more in a commentary for this week at A Plain Account, found here. 

The daily office, however, keeps leading me back to passages of comfort and blessing, and although the beatitudes do not make an appearance, I could not help but think of them.  But you know who’s comforted?  Those who mourn.  And let’s be real.  I don’t want that part.  You don’t want that part.  We don’t want that part.

Most of this is coming in fits and starts for me.

Matthew 5:

“Blessed are… blessed are… blessed are…”

Numbers 6:24-26, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

Psalm 80:18-19, “We will never turn back from you; give us life and we will call on your name.  Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

Matthew 13:16, “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”

Those two men in white in the ascension story want the apostles to stop looking up into the sky.  We always assume they are helpful to the narrative (and I suppose they probably are), but this has me thinking about something I say to my children when I want to know they are definitely listening to me, that they really hear me.  I say, “Look at my face.”

Ascension is difficult, because we mourn and grieve as we lose sight of Jesus’ face.  Blessing generally comes with his face toward ours and our faces fixed on his, and we understand that kind of blessing.  As I write about it, today, I can feel it in the pit of my stomach.  It is the kind of blessing that makes us forget about everything that surrounds us, because our eyes are fixed on just one thing.  Our ears are fixed on just one thing, and it is so good.

But that other kind of blessing…  the one that only comes when we have mourned, when comfort becomes valuable to us…  it’s harder to swallow.  Could we not just skip the part that hurts?  And what of the heartrending moments in which we cannot see Jesus, at all? 

Perhaps we might pray:

II Timothy 2:2b, “… that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

Sometimes blessings are hard earned and the furthest thing from what we ever wanted.  That’s probably when we need to be blessed the very most.

L.

Blessings

I think we might have it all wrong…

I was recently reading about Jacob and Esau.  Jacob is generally considered a hero of the faith, and we all kind of turn our noses up at his hairy, Neanderthal-like brother.  OK, I don’t know if that’s really how everyone sees him, but as a kid that’s surely how I imagined Esau, and the image stuck.  There are many things that could be said about the relationship between these two, but there’s an angle I’m not sure we often consider.  Jacob was willing to do anything, to step on anyone, to push and push and push until he got what he wanted.  And it wasn’t just a onetime deal.  He displays this character again in the Leah and Rachel debacle.  But I don’t have time to get into all that, today.

What struck me anew was the interaction between Esau and his father, Isaac.  Upon learning that his birthright had been stolen, Esau pleads,       

“Do you have only one blessing, my father?  Bless me, too…” (Genesis 27:38, NIV).

Isaac doesn’t have another blessing.  Or, at least, so it seems.  Interestingly, though, Isaac has blessed Esau with his presence for Esau’s entire life—a presence Jacob did not experience.  I think that has to count for something, but, as human beings, we often don’t count things that aren’t quantitative.   

Later in Scripture, David (with whom you may recall I have a love/hate relationship) says,

“Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence” (Psalm 21:6, NIV).

He’s talking about himself.  ‘Unending blessing.’  That’s a huge declaration coming from someone who has had so much strife and devastation, but that’s not his focus at all (at least, not in this passage).  No… Here it comes again… David is focused on presence.

Well, interestingly, I just picked up a book called, Presence and Encounter.  I probably have close to 200 books on my Amazon wish list, but this is the one that jumped out at me when I had $7.00 to spend on my ever increasing, overrunning my home library.  It’s like there’s a theme or something!   At any rate, this statement jumped off a page: “The simple truth of our being gets lost in the metanarratives we spin.  We become the fictions we live.”[i] I wonder if Jacob got lost in his metanarrative.  I wonder if Esau got lost in his metanarrative.  I wonder if I got lost in my metanarrative.

As is typical, this got me thinking about all kinds of things that may or may not relate, but as I considered Jacob’s persistence, even at the expense of others, I remembered this quote, which I have used before:

“I’m not interested in competing with anyone.  I hope we all make it” –Erica Cook   

I wonder how Esau’s life would have been different if this was Jacob’s philosophy.  I could stop to wonder how Jacob’s life would have been different, too, and it’s a valid question, but it’s easier to discern how compassion and unity affect the weak, the marginalized, and the slighted. 

My reading, today, brought this full circle for me.

Ephesians 4:1-16…  Just… All of it…

Perhaps if we focused more on who we were created to be than on how we might get ahead of others, we would sense the presence of God, filling us every step of the way.  That’s blessing.  God is near, wherever we are.  God is near, whoever we are.  Breathe it in.  Breathe it out.  Repeat.

L. 

---

[i] Benner, David G., Presence and Encounter (Brazos Press: Grand Rapids, 2014), 7.

Boys are Gross

Wednesday Weekly Via Illuminate Update: Downtown Peru, Episode 1

Earlier this week, I read, "When we reject that with which we cannot become intimate, our lives are diminished" (Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, Page 91).  I think this is true, but I'm struggling with the word cannot.  I tend to be fairly adamant about pushing back when anyone tells me that something is impossible.  I think our ability to intimately relate with others is only limited by how far we are willing to go.  If we're willing to give up everything we have to live like the poor and experience poverty, then we can, indeed, relate intimately to the impoverished.  I recognize that this is not a popular thought or way of living, but that doesn't make it any less true.  As an example from Scripture, Christians tend to be pretty hard on the rich young ruler when Jesus instructs him to, "go and sell all you possess and give to the poor," (see Mark 10:21, NASB) and he doesn't do it (at least according to the general consensus of people who have studied this passage—I might beg to differ).  And yet, how many of us are willing to do just that?  If I'm honest, I'm not.  I'm willing to give up a lot, but I have never been asked to sell every possession, to leave everything familiar, in order to follow.  Sometimes we talk big, and although our family is very serious about the need to live in solidarity with the least of these, the truth is that we have been spoiled...  rotten...

Every once in awhile, I like to stop to take stock of our material blessings.  Honestly, we have so much stuff at this point that it feels like something of a curse.  I think I started to feel this way when we downsized our living space by half almost three years ago.  But this week marked a new adventure for us that is sort of blowing my mind.

As we transition to more time in Peru, we needed somewhere to stay, several days every week, until we close on the church building and make the necessary remediation to call it "livable."  We're not being picky.  It's just that we have a family that suffers from severe allergies and asthma, so there are some things that simply must be done before we can survive in the building... literally. 

There have been delays leading up to the closing.  I am so thankful that the delays have not been on our part, but I'm ready to close.  Go ahead and imagine me repeating over and over, to myself, "Patience is a virtue..."  Occasionally, I think being virtuous is overrated...

But even without our building, my job in Peru started this week, so we had to go...

Now, let me be very clear that my sweet friend and mentor has us set up in a downtown apartment, and... seriously friends... I have always wanted to live in a downtown apartment!  In my younger years, I was thinking maybe NYC, but Peru will have to do!  Our family knows what it is to be briefly homeless, because we have been there... twice... over the past fifteen years.  Our current living arrangement does not, in any way, begin to compare to the desperate housing (or lack thereof) conditions that the least of these here in the United States (or certainly around the world) are subjected to, often for their entire lives.  But let me return just a moment to the spoiled rotten thing...

I've had a master bathroom for years.  The last time I did not have a master bathroom, it was 2005 and I had three really little people who needed help in the bathroom most of the time, anyway!  Sharing made sense. 

But yesterday?  Oh friends, yesterday I both stepped in and sat in pee!  Are you kidding me?  But it gets worse...  Upon washing my hands, I turned to dry them on my own personal hand towel and found that it was covered in snot!  Boys are gross!  Is it shameful that I am questioning whether or not I can scale back and live even a touch closer to the least of these, because I don't want to share my bathroom with my children?  Yes.  It's shameful.  True, but shameful.

We had a lovely two days in Peru.  I taught five early childhood music classes and was incredibly blessed to meet new people and to reconnect with old friends.  There was so much hugging and catching up and talking about my new love of coffee.  And singing.  And dancing.  And helping a college student with a research paper.  And thinking about how I should probably pack pots and pans for next week.  And picking kids up.  And dropping kids off.  And working.  And reading.  And sleeping.  And praying.  And driving.  And stuff.

We have needs.  I took one of those silly FB tests that analyzes your profile, the other day, and it told me that my greatest needs included a massage, a vacation, Sara C. (well, duh... always), lots of sleep, and 24 hours with nothing to do. While all of those would be fabulous, I think my number one need, right now, is to recognize how very blessed we are and to give more.

However, if you're looking for a tangible way to help us get started in Peru, we do, indeed, have a Via Illuminate wish list at Amazon (linked here).  Did you know you can purchase a urinal for $140...  Oh wait, that's not on the list...

L. 

Palm Sunday

Luke 19:28-40, "After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 'Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.  If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' say, 'The Lord needs it.'

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, 'Why are you untying the colt?'

They replied, 'The Lord needs it.'

They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!'

'Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!'

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, 'Teacher, rebuke your disciples!'

'I tell you,' he replied, 'if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out'" (NIV).

Palm Sunday sort of breaks my heart.  I know that doesn't make any sense.  Not really.  If you're reading the gospel narrative for the first time, it appears to finally be the culmination of events.  I can only imagine what those who were actually living this story must have thought.  There have been ups and downs, to be sure, but finally... mercifully... Jesus is identified as who he really is.  It's not how they thought it would be... a colt and some cloaks spread out on the road.  But that's OK.  The time has come.  The king is here!  I don't think it was quiet... subdued.... submissive.  The Pharisees sure didn't think so!  This is a celebration... a celebration so relentless that if the people stop shouting, the rocks will start!  It's like the part of a movie when you hope the credits will roll, but you know not quite enough time has passed.  It's like the part of a book when you are ready to close it for the last time and then realize there are still too many pages to turn.  We want this to be the resolution, and we don't quite grasp that we have not even reached the climax...

"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord"

Oh... in all of our enthusiasm, we have forgotten what Jesus says it means to be blessed...

While, "The Lord needs it," is reason enough to sacrifice anything on this celebratory day; in a matter of mere hours, so many people will turn their backs, shut their eyes, close their hearts.  Those palm branches that are wildly waving in the air?  They will be good as nothing but ash to remind us of these events at another time... in another year...

Perhaps our perspective is clouded, because we know the events that are to come.  We have heard the passion story so many times.  I know it's difficult for me to resist the temptation to jump ahead to the last supper... to the crucifixion... to the resurrection...  to the 50% off Easter candy sales... to the morning when whatever we gave up for lent is fair game again... to life without fasting and sacrifice and remembering...

Let's not rush that this year.  And, believe me, I'm talking to myself as much as anyone else (maybe more).  It seems that in the regular rhythms of life, celebration gives way to pain and heartbreak, which gives way to celebration, and so on.  That's alright.  Take it all in.  Even embrace it.  This is life...

L.