Returning to the Light

If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

1 John 1:6-10

Sin can be so easy to name in other people, but we rarely pay attention to sin in ourselves until we have done something hard to ignore. We might not have the nerve to say we are without sin, but we rarely take a hard look at our sinfulness.

Sin starts small. We aren’t so much in the darkness as in the shade. “Shady” sins are often what are sometimes called “sins of omission,” not bad things we do but opportunities to do good that we ignore. We may not notice that we are turning away from God when we ignore an opportunity to be kind to someone or to put ourselves in God’s presence. After all, we are busy.

The shade can become comfortable, but ignoring opportunities to do good weakens our will to follow Christ. We get out of practice reaching outside ourselves toward God and other people. The shade deepens. Soon doing small bad things and then bigger ones doesn’t feel so bad. We slip further and further into darkness without noticing the loss of light.

1 John has an unpalatable antidote – confessing our sins. In order to confess them, we have to name them, and to name them we have to shine a bright light into our hearts and onto our actions. Classic spirituality calls this an “examination of conscience” – a thorough search for what we have done wrong, trying not to let things slip past us.

Confession is powerful . We are “forgiven and cleansed from all unrighteousness.” We can walk in the light of Christ’s presence again. Like most antidotes, it only feels good afterward, when we remember who were are and how good walking in the light feels.

God’s peace,

Katie

Comfortable Darkness

Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.

1 John 2:9-11

By this time, we are not as impressed with some of the people we were excited to meet in August. A brilliant professor isn’t clear about expectations. A roommate has revealed some annoying habits. An organization’s leader doesn’t follow through. (Of course, it is possible that the professor has become disappointed with a student or two, that we also have annoying habits, and that the leader thought we would take more initiative.)

Annoyance can give birth to anger and anger to feelings of superiority, jealousy and resentment. We don’t hate the person, but we are cultivating seeds of that darkest of feelings. The more we focus on another’s negatives, the less we can see his or her gifts. It doesn’t take long before we are too blind to see the person as, first and foremost, a child of God.

When the darkness becomes a comfortable place where we are right and others are wrong, it is hard to pray for light, but it is the time we most need to. Be a light in our darkness, O Lord, and deliver us from the seeds of hatred.

God’s peace,

Katie

Walking Attentively

                  Whoever says, “I abide in Christ,” ought to walk just as he walked.
                                                                                                                  1 John 2:6

How did Christ “walk,” that is, live his life? Certainly he was obedient to his Father’s will and offered himself for others to the point of death on a cross. But I am also impressed that Jesus lived a life of attentiveness. He focused on his mission in whatever form it took at the time. 

Tired from travel and in the noonday heat, he went out of his way to speak with a woman who had come to a well to draw water. Her life was changed when she recognized him as the Messiah. (John 4) While he was traveling through Jericho surrounded by a large crowd, a blind beggar on the side of the road cried out, and scripture records, “Jesus stood still.” He then called the man to come to him, healed him, and the man followed Jesus. (Mark 10) When a woman crept up to him in a crowd to touch the hem of his garment, sure that she would be healed, he was attentive enough to notice that healing power had gone out from him. He called to woman to him and blessed her. (Mark 5) A centurion who came to ask healing for his servant (Matthew 8) and countless others each received individual, undivided attention. 

Many people came to Jesus seeking many things, but he did not “multi-task.” He attended fully to one person or situation at a time. As we seek to abide in Christ, what would it mean for us to live lives of prayerful attentiveness to each person, task or opportunity God places in front of us?

God's peace,

Katie

Holy

1 Peter 1:13, 15-16 Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. . . . As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

1 Peter 1:13, 14-15

When we look in the mirror, we rarely, if ever, expect to see someone holy looking back at us. Yet scripture tells us that “holy” is both what we are and what we are to become. We have been claimed by God in Christ and set apart to be holy as God is holy.

We can “do the right thing,” maybe even most of the time, without being holy. We often do so grudgingly. We are made holy by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We become the holy people God has made us to be when we welcome the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. John Wesley called early Methodists to “holiness of heart and life.” As we surrender our lives to God, right deeds flow out of changed hearts, not grudgingly but naturally.

How do we surrender ourselves? By “preparing our minds for action,” “disciplining ourselves,” and “setting all our hope” on God’s grace. While it may seem strange to think of becoming holy as a discipline, generations of Christian heroes have understood it that way. We apply our minds to holiness as a goal and identify aspects of our lives we need to offer to God. Then we put our whole confidence in God’s grace to transform us.

Who is that person in the mirror? Someone God seeks to make holy. What blemish or scar do you see that God wants to transform?

God's peace,

Katie

Change of Plans?

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:11-13

Jeremiah wrote these promises to people who were devastated physically and spiritually. After repeated warnings by prophets to turn from their sins and return to God, Israel had been crushed militarily by Babylon. The people who heard his words had been taken as captive exiles to a strange country. If God had let them lose the land given to them as a sign of their divine covenant with their Lord, had God abandoned them? Had they run out of chances to make a new beginning?

No, the prophet assures them, they will be in captivity for the foreseeable future, but God will bring their nation into a good future. God’s plan for Israel to be the divine instrument to reconcile all the peoples of the world to God remains. God is with them in their exile, hearing them and speaking through prophets to remind them of God’s faithfulness and love.

Sometimes as we pursue what we understand as God’s will for our lives – a career, a field of study or a significant relationship – something closes down that path. Or the path may be right, but it is far harder than we expected. We may feel exiled from the life we expected. Then this Word of God from Jeremiah speaks to us as well. God’s plan to use us in the world remains, perhaps on the same path, perhaps on a new one. When we search after God, the path will become clearer. God hears the prayers of our hearts and is at work, even now, to bring a good future. 

God's peace,

Katie

Memories of Conquerors

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.                                                                                                                              Romans 8:35, 37-39

The Sunday after the terrorist attacks twelve years ago today, my church posted in the entryway notes and art children’s had produced in response. One of the most moving showed the Risen Christ over the Twin Towers as they were attacked.

We were struggling to grasp the fact that so many people had spent literally years planning and preparing to do such evil to people they didn’t know. Yet this drawing proclaimed that their murderous hatred could not separate us from Christ. Christ was there. His face was seen in those who laid down their lives for others, countless others who worked tirelessly searching through the wreckage and the untold numbers who sheltered and fed them, not for days but for weeks.

Only rarely did vengeful hatred find a voice to remind us that, while nothing outside us can separate us from the love of Christ, we can separate ourselves when we let anger, no matter how seemingly justifiable, take root within us. John’s first letter, 4:16, reminds us, “God is love, and those who abide in God abide in God, and God abides in them.” Memories of those who offered themselves for others remind us that it is through letting Christ’s love empower us that we are “more than conquerors.”

God's peace,

Katie

No Worries?

Matthew 6:25 - 26 Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Taken on their own, these words can seem a command by Jesus to relax and pay no attention to such everyday concerns as lunch, laundry, a bank account that needs an infusion, or a project that is 20% of a grade. But aren’t these things to which we must attend?

Jesus’ opening word, “Therefore,” points us back to the preceding verse, where he says, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

When we center our lives on our material wants (as opposed to needs) or getting ahead to gain the security of more possessions in the future, those desires take over our minds and lives. Worry about them can so consume us that we forget our fundamental identity as children of God – people who, as Jesus says, are of great value to our heavenly Father. Living day-by-day in relationship with God allows us to attend to our responsibilities – in school, at work, in friendships or as we tend to our day-to-day needs – in the peace and joy that are gifts from God.

We cannot serve two masters; therefore Jesus calls us to entrust our lives daily to him.

God's peace,

Katie

Christ's Peace

John 14:26 - 27 The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. 

A new beginning, any change really, troubles our hearts and gives fear an entryway. What if this happens or that doesn’t happen? What if I can’t meet someone else’s standards or my own?

When changes challenge us, the world offers ways to respond – fear, defensiveness, anger, shame and surrender among them. Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will remind us of all Christ has said to us, including a pledge that we will have peace as we let the Spirit move in us.

This Peace of Christ is not just the absence of struggle or upset. Christ’s Peace, if we will receive it, calms our hearts and replaces fear with hope for what God will bring forth. A few verses later, Jesus tells those who follow him, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.” 

Attentive Waiters

Isaiah 40:28 - 31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Recently at a special celebration dinner, we had an ace waiter. When we said we were not in a hurry, he heard us and didn’t rush. But he paid such close attention that he seemed to appear just at the moments we were ready to order a new course or make some other request.

A skilled waiter may show us what scripture means by “waiting upon the Lord.” We often wait passively for God to “do something” so clear that we can’t miss it. We may periodically offer prayers reminding God of our difficulties. What if, instead, we waited as attentively as a skilled restaurant waiter, listening for what God is saying in scripture, in the voices of wise people and as we pray, and looking for ways God is at work to open up new possibilities?

Beginning a new journey can be exhilarating and draining at the same time. Isaiah’s prescription for exhaustion is to “wait upon the Lord.” If we wait attentively, we may hear God’s Word of peace, blessing us for how hard we have tried, or a Word of healing. We may feel God’s strength and peace flowing into us. God promises to renew and revive us to continue our journeys if we are attentive “waiters.”