God Loves Me

This past Friday, I stepped outside to get pictures of the rain for my next book.  The heavier rain had tapered off to a simple drizzle and I was mesmerized, as I frequently am, by the little things, the ripples created by the raindrops in the puddles, the raindrops themselves suspended on blades of grass.  It was peaceful and a reminder of how important it is for my spiritual self, to get out in nature and feel God’s presence, even if I’m only a few steps from the backdoor.

I hadn’t brought my phone with me while I was outside, but I was close to my phone that when it rang, as it wound up doing that morning, my watch buzzed and chimed to let me know.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I was pretty sure who it was.  Every time I publish a book, I start getting spammed by scammers from overseas trying to get me to give them money to publish and market my book.  I ignore most of these calls, but occasionally, I feel in a good enough mood to answer the phone and warn them that they are breaking the law (I have no idea if that’s true) and that I will report them if they continue their harassment.  The last time I answered one of these calls a couple of months ago, I had the caller so frustrated with me getting him off his script that he hung up on me.

Once or twice I have thought about the fact that given all the books I write these days are about God, I should use these phone calls with scammers as a witnessing opportunity.

And when the phone rang this past Friday, when I was feeling calm and filled with God from my time outside, I decided to answer the phone, (or answer my watch in this case).  I didn’t know what I would say to caller, but I figured I would start by asking if they had read my book.  I mean why should I do business, I would ask them, if they hadn’t even read my book.

Because of the rain and because I was talking Dick Tracy-style on my watch, I was having a hard time hearing the man on the other end.  I had no idea which one of my books he was talking about and he wasn’t taking a breath to let me talk to him or even hang up semi-politely. 

I was just about ready to interject my question about whether or not he had read my book, when he said something that no one in the hundreds of calls like these that I had answered over the years had ever said to me.

“I read the synopsis of your book on Amazon,” he said to me.  “And the words ‘God loves me’ really spoke to me.”

Much as I suspected, he had not read the book, but no one had ever told me they had read what my book was about and no one had ever quoted me words from the book.

I now knew exactly what book he was talking about, my latest entitled, I Wrote These Words for You. 

“I’m glad they spoke to you,” I said, somewhat hesitantly.  Was he being real with me or was this just more of the scam?  He was very off-script either way.

“I just really needed to hear those words today, ‘God loves me’” he continued.  “I’m having a hard time at home and work.”

Again, I wasn’t quite ready to believe him, though I was getting more intrigued by the second.  “You should really read my book,” I told him.  “If those words meant something to you, you need to read the book.”

And then he said something—and I can’t quite remember how he worded it—but it was something along the lines of that he would have a hard time getting a copy of the book.

At that point, I was thinking, well he’s already on Amazon, just click on the “buy it now” button, but then I remembered that these calls were from overseas—I actually got a woman to admit to me once how they ping off of cellphone towers, preferably a tower close to where you are so that you are more likely to pick up the phone.

So he was most likely not calling me from inside the United States and it hit me right then that what he was doing right then, going off script, talking to me about God, might be very dangerous for him.

“Look,” I said to him, “I hope you’re being honest with me—I’m going to assume you’re being honest with me and I want you to know that I’m praying for you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Really,” I continued, “I am praying for you right now.  I am praying that God put His hand on you, that He fill you with His spirit, that when He does fill you with that spirit that He would lift you up and put you on the path He wants you on.”

As I was talking, I felt myself getting louder and louder because I was ready to fight for this man.

As I spoke, he sometimes broke in.  He told me how much the prayers meant to him and sometimes it seemed like he was trying to get back on the script he was supposed to be on.  Perhaps so that when his employers questioned him later, because I have no doubt they either listen in live or perhaps later, but he could create a plausible deniability and insist by going back to the script, he was just playing me.

All of it just made me pray harder.

Finally, I ended the call.  I told him I would keep praying for him.  I told him to take care.  And then I hung up.

Still outside, I noticed the rain had stopped.  The air smelled sweet.  The word for it is “petrichor.”  It’s that earthly, damp dirt smell we all are familiar with after the rain.

“God loves me.”

Three words.

Three words had changed the course of that man’s day and perhaps his life.

In today’s reading from John 6:1-15, we get the feeding of the 5,000 miracle, the fishes and loaves miracle.  But what I want to focus on specifically is the part after the feeding, when Jesus tells the disciples, “Gather up the fragments.”  Now those words have a deep meaning, especially when we are told those fragments filled twelve baskets.  Numbers always have meaning in the Bible and these are no different.

But rather than go into that, I want to just focus on those words, “Gather up the fragments.”

Get the crumbs.

Nothing goes to waste.

I remember how my depression-era grandparents would practically lick the plate clean at dinner, suck every ounce of chicken off the bone, because they knew how important those crumbs were.

And yet food waste in this country is astounding and I admit to being a large part of that.

But Jesus tells the disciples, “Gather up the fragments,” because nothing goes to waste.  Nothing, not one crumb, is unimportant.

This past Friday, God fed that man on the phone with me, with spiritual crumbs.

Three words.

Of course, I know and have come to terms with the fact that my books will never be bestsellers, but that doesn’t mean that God can’t use three words from one of those books to change a man’s life a half a world away.

I confessed last week that the thing I hate/dread the most about writing my books is having to write that back cover summary.  I never feel good about anything I write in those summaries.  The words feel weak and not a good representation of the book itself.

And yet, last Friday, it was the summary that reached that man.

And even less than that.

Three words.

God loves me.

How will God use your words to reach someone today?

Amen.

The God Who Sees Me

Back when I was living in Florida, I used to wake up every morning before sunrise and go for a walk.  I loved walking in the dark, in the silence, under the stars.  I loved the way the moon seemed to follow me as I walked.  I loved how God seemed to fill all the empty spaces, the spaces that normally get filled during the day with noise and clamor, with things that seem to assault our senses, rather than God and His presence which seem to fill our senses.

For those of you wondering if me walking in the dark was safe, I can say that mostly I walked laps around my gated condo complex.  It was a well-lit parking lot.  And on the occasions when I ventured out to the street beyond the condo, I took a large flashlight with me.  The scariest things I ran into were usually giant raccoons and fence-walking possums.

And the worst I was ever hurt was the time I stepped into a sewer grate in a particularly dark and unlit portion of the parking lot.

Some mornings, I started my walk later, closer to sunrise and usually made my way out to the supersized sidewalks, large enough to accommodate golf carts, by the street.  I loved watching the sunrise.  I loved watching the green herons and the great blue herons catching breakfast by the ponds and canals.  But venturing out closer to sunrise meant encountering more people on my walk.

And in my neighborhood, it was expected that you would say “good morning” to every single person you saw, though if you happened to lap back and come across them twice, it was okay to simply smile or wave the second time around, but you had to acknowledge everyone.

And, as an introvert who enjoys her morning silent meditation walks, I admit to turning around, or crossing the street just to avoid having to interact with someone.

I want you to keep my story in the back of your mind as we begin to explore today’s reading from John 4:1-26.  Jesus and his disciples are headed to Galilee and have stopped in the Samaritan town of Sychar.  Jesus is tired, we are told and decides to sit and rest at Jacob’s Well, while the disciples head out to find food.  It is around noon.

A short time later, a Samaritan woman approaches the well and here is where it gets interesting.  Though we are given so much context about Jesus and why he is at the well, the real question is why is the Samaritan woman there.

It’s noon.  It’s the hottest part of the day.  Why is she fetching water at that moment and not earlier in the day when it’s cooler?

Biblical scholars—of which I am NOT one—seem to agree that the woman has come to the well later in the day specifically to avoid people.  Having been married five times and currently living with a man who is not her husband, she has a reputation and is most likely tired of the looks and the whispers and the micro aggressions that count as bullying in Jesus’s time.

She’s coming to the well at noon with the hope that no one will be there.

And that part I can relate to.

And so maybe I’m projecting a little when I imagine her catching sight of the well and seeing that someone is there.  And not just any someone—a man, and not just any man but a Jewish man.

Perhaps for a second, she thinks about turning around, about coming back later, but she needs the water and so she takes a deep breath, straightens her back, squares her shoulders and heads to the well, hoping to get her water without incident.

Little does she know her life is about to change forever.

It is quite right that the man at the well is no ordinary man.  Jesus shows that immediately, when he dispenses with all small talk.  No hello.  No “Boy it’s hot, isn’t it?”  Instead, he asks—no not even asks—it’s not worded as a question.  He says to her, “Give me a drink.”

But the Samaritan woman is no push-over.  To have lived the life she has lived, she has had to be very tough and so she says to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

He says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

Jesus’s response is such that she should have had goosebumps popping out on her skin even though it was the hottest part of an already hot day.

Instead, it’s clear that she is only half listening, perhaps anxious to be on her way.  She practically scoffs at his answer of living water.

“You don’t even have a bucket,” she says to him, “and the well is deep.”

Jesus explains further.  “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Now she is starting to pay attention but still not quite getting it.  She asks him for the water so she can stop coming to the well.

And then Jesus, like any good teacher who knows it’s time to try something else, asks her about her husband, even though, as he later reveals, he knows she has no husband currently.

And this is what opens the Samaritan woman’s eyes.  Much like Hagar who in Genesis 16:13, on the run from Abram and Sarai, encounters God and names Him “the God who sees me,” the Samaritan woman encounters the same God, leaving behind her water pitcher and running back into the city to announce in verse 29, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

She has been seen.

She has encountered God, there at the well named for Abraham’s grandson Jacob.

She left her home that day, hoping to be left alone, and instead she found God.

Back when I was taking my early morning, still-dark, walks, I was paradoxically wanting to be alone and yet also wanting to experience God’s presence.

And as I think back on it, I can’t think of a single morning, when I didn’t feel God’s presence.

God was everywhere and in between.  He was in the chorus of frogs singing through the wet morning air from the shadows in the wetlands.  He was in the blazing arc of the rockets that split the black sky before dawn.

And when I stood there and looked up at that endless sky, I knew, without a doubt that I was seen.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

The Power of Your Story

One day, last week, the doorbell rang.  It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and my visitors were both a surprise and yet not entirely unexpected.  It was the same girl who has been to my door several times over the last few weeks, offering me a handmade bracelet for a buck, offering me a smells-good-stick for three bucks—she and other children in the neighborhood have been frequent visitors. 

I was a little surprised to see them in the afternoon.  Normally, they come much later, like when I am fast asleep on the couch or in the recliner.

But the other day, they came in the afternoon and the little girl, there with her two little brothers and an older girl who I think was just a friend, asked me if I had a stroller she could borrow so she could take her little sister out.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that every time this girl comes to my door I have about a dozen questions for her and this time was no different, though I kept the questions to myself.

Like, why don’t you have a stroller?  Where is your little sister now?  Who is watching her?  Who is watching you?  Are you going from house to house asking for a stroller?  What made you think I might have one?  Where are you taking your sister in this stroller?

But instead of asking these questions, I simply told the girl that I was sorry but I didn’t have a stroller.

“We’d bring it back,” the girl said, as if realizing her ask might be too much.  “We just need to borrow it.”

Again, the questions—I wanted so desperately to know what was going on and, while I repeated I didn’t have a stroller, I was stalling some, hoping she might tell me more of what was happening.

But she didn’t.  And she and the other children walked off.

And I was left to wonder.

I have always been fascinated by people’s stories.  Consequently, I get frustrated when people send me texts with no context, or when someone tells me something and when I have follow up questions, they have no answers.  I want the full picture.

This past Monday, I was at the tire store, getting four new tires—yay—except that I hadn’t planned on being there.  I had planned on just popping in for a quote and then setting up an appointment later in the week, but the quote they gave was good and they said they could put the new tires on right then—it would only take about two hours.

Well, why not? I said to myself.

So I sat down in the waiting area resigning myself to sit there for the next two hours inhaling tire fumes, but not only that—I hadn’t brought a book to read.  The tire place didn’t even have a TV on.  What in the world was I going to do for two hours?

I texted my dad, told him where I was and that I was bookless.  I mentioned maybe walking across the street to Target to buy a book and then said, surely I could handle sitting alone with my thoughts for the next two hours.

Haha.  Hahaha.

We, as humans, especially in this day and age, are not wired for alone time.  For silence.  For nothing but the company of our own thoughts.

Now, you might wonder why I couldn’t simply get on my phone for the next two hours, get on Facebook or go shopping on Amazon for more books—or why I simply couldn’t read a book on my phone.

And to that I say, I have a very tiny phone, with a tiny screen and I have bad eyes, so that in order to read a book on my phone, I would need to enlarge the font so that it was basically one word at a time.

Twas swipe the swipe night swipe before swipe Christmas swipe.

I tried to read on my phone.  I truly did.  But after a few minutes, I gave up.

And then it was just me and my thoughts in a waiting room with other people and their thoughts and their phones.

The boredom, the ennui, was crushing.

And then I started writing a story—in my head.  The man sitting across from me had a bandage on his arm, inside his elbow.  I started Sherlock Holmesian him.  He had had bloodwork.  What was the bloodwork for?  Was it routine?  Had he missed work?  How had he wound up here?  Were those Nikes he was wearing real or knock-offs?

Don’t tell me you’ve never made up stories about strangers you see in the doctor’s office or at the airport.

There is a reason that reading stories with children is so important—there are many reasons—but the most important reason is that reading stories with children builds empathy, that it is important for all of humanity to be exposed to other people’s stories from the very start of our lives so that we know that the world does not revolve around us, so that we know that while we are the main character in our own stories, there are millions of other stories out there most of which we won’t even grace the page as a background character.

Stories connect us to each other.

Stories help us be less self-centered and more world-centered.

This past Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he would not be running for re-election.  Joe Biden has been in politics for a very long time, longer than I have been alive.  My mom loved him—I never knew why but I think she was drawn, like so many, to his bumbling, goofy self.  Joe always had a story to tell.  Sometimes it wasn’t his story.  Sometimes he borrowed that story from someone else, but he was like that uncle we all had, that family member at the holidays that always had some whopper of a tale to tell that you knew was not remotely true, but couldn’t help yourself from being drawn in.

Part of the reason, President Biden lasted so long in politics was because of his ability to empathize with everyone.  He knew the power of a person’s story.  He knew the power of his story.

President Biden was elected to the senate at the age of 29—the youngest ever, and shortly after his wife and his children were in a horrible car accident that took the lives of his wife and daughter.

Jon Meacham, noted historian, speech-writer and fellow Episcopalian recently wrote of Biden, that after the death of his wife and daughter, Biden “endured, found purpose in his pain, became deeper, wiser, more empathetic.”

Stories, when we read them, help us find meaning in others’ pain.

Stories, when we write them, can help us find purpose in our own pain.

Suffering is universal.

Empathy, unfortunately, is not.

It’s a skill that needs to be learned and strengthened and renewed over time.

We should always, always strive to know people better, to understand them better, to recognize their pain in our own lives, to make that connection to them.

A few days after that little girl came by, asking if I had a stroller, I watched her and several other kids walking past my house.  The little girl was pushing a shopping cart.  One of her brothers was in the basket of the cart and, what I can only assume was her sister, was sitting in the child’s seat of the cart.

They had found their stroller.

And I had a dozen more unanswered questions.

I share the stories of these children with you because every time I do, I make them real to everyone who reads about them, to everyone who hears about them.  They are not statistics.  They are not numbers.  They are real, living and breathing human beings, who exist and love and hurt and laugh and together, with us, are all children of God.

Amen.

 

 

 

Always Remember

Some years ago, I was on the phone with my mom when her doorbell rang.  She put the phone down to answer the door and a minute later, came back.  I asked her who was at the door and without missing a beat, she said, “Jesus.”

As it turns out, the man was homeless and regularly came to her door asking if she had any work for him to do.  I don’t think she ever did, but she always gave him whatever cash she had on hand, usually just a few dollars.

I was thinking, of course, of this story when looking at today’s reading from Matthew 25:31-46 where we hear one of Jesus’s most famous lines that whatever you do for the least of His people, that you do unto Him.

And here like with many stories in the Bible, I like to sometimes imagine what happened next.  And I imagine that one of the disciples, taking careful notes, said something along the lines of, “Okay, Jesus so I got, hungry, thirsty, sick, naked, stranger—I guess you mean homeless here—but who else are the least of these?”

And I imagine Jesus looking at the disciple the same way He looked at the lawyer who asked Him “Who is my neighbor?” after which Jesus shared the Good Samaritan parable basically telling the lawyer—everyone, everyone is your neighbor.

I imagine Jesus looking at His disciple over the question of who are the “least” and saying directly to him, “Everyone.  Everyone is the least.”

Today’s reading is important because Jesus is asking His disciples to see Him, Jesus, in everyone they meet, and by doing so to treat everyone with Love and Kindness.

We are all suffering.  We can’t look at today’s reading and think that we are somehow better if we have food and a roof over our head.  We must understand that we are all suffering and in need.  And it is our responsibility to look after and care for and love one another.

We must see Jesus in everyone we meet in order to do this.

We must humble ourselves.

As you know, I have put a Little Free Library in my front yard for the children in the neighborhood.  I have done this because when they have knocked on my door, I have heard Jesus knocking.  I have done this because I want to saturate the ground surrounding my house with love.  I can hardly keep the books in my library.  As soon as I put a new book out, it is gone in a day or two, but my library is not a lending library, it’s a giving library and I am more than happy that the books never come back.  I want those books to find a new home.

The other night, while I was sleeping, two little girls came to my door.  I know this because my Ring doorbell recorded them.  They knew they were being recorded because they addressed me through the camera, telling me to check my mailbox and then I saw them slide a card into the mailbox.

As soon as I saw the video the next day, I hurried to the mailbox and found a card that read this: “Always remember: You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you know.”  And then on the other side, “Believe in love.  She believed she could so she did.”

I have never felt so loved.

That is Jesus love right there.

If you had asked me prior to that if I needed to hear those words, I would have said, “No, I’m good.  I know I’m loved.”

But when it’s two little girls leaving you the message, you realize just how much you needed to hear those words.

That’s the Jesus in them speaking to the Jesus in me.

We lift each other up.

Because we are all the same.

We are all in need.

Amen.

 

 

Smells Good Stick

I was doing my laundry at my dad and Barb’s house last week and we were all sitting in the kitchen.  I was at the kitchen table and they were both sitting at the counter.  We were chatting, but at some point my dad got tired of the fact that both Barb and I were on our phones, and he made like he was going to get up and leave.

“No, wait,” I said.  “I’m done.  I was just taking a picture of your lovely centerpiece,” and I waved my hand across the table.

Now I admit to exaggerating slightly, but both of them looked at me like I had lost my mind.

And for a second, I doubted myself.  Had I used the wrong word, centerpiece?

So, I pointed.  “You know your flower vase … sitting here … in the center of the table.”

“It’s a vase filled with fake dead flowers,” Barb said.

“If you think it’s ugly,” I argued, “why do you have it out?”

She shrugged.  “Something needed to go there.”

“Well let me explain what I saw.”

You see, it had been cloudy all morning and threatening rain, but for just a moment, the sun broke through the clouds and this one skinny beam of light appeared, first falling on the cat, curled up and sleeping under the window and then the kitchen table, hitting the flower vase, so that shadows of the flowers appeared on the table.  I took out my phone, set it to portrait mode because everything looks fancier in portrait mode as it blurs the background to create the illusion of depth of field, and I propped my phone up on the table so that it was level with the vase … and I took the picture.

I sent the picture then to both my dad and Barb to show them what I had seen, and they conceded that it did look nice. 

“Artsy,” my dad said, “still-life of flowers.”

I think one of the most important things we can do every day is find beauty in the ugly.

For the past few weeks, we have been following (in our Old Testament readings) the journey of the Israelites after leaving Egypt.  The Israelites are the heroes in the Bible.  We want to root for them, but, my goodness, they can be a difficult people to love.  They complain a lot.  They’re very immature.  And they are at times, what my southern grandmother would call, flat out ugly.  That’s an ugly on the inside.

And yet, God never abandons them.  There are times when you just know God is closing His eyes and counting to ten to keep Himself from losing it with them.

But He continues to fight for them.  Continues to protect them.  He does this out of love and because I believe that God looks at us all, even during our ugliest times and sees us as He made us, something that is beautiful beyond imagination.  He knows us not as what we could be, but what we already are, deep within our spirits.  We are creatures of love and beauty.  We are reflections of the most High.  We look our best when we stand in His light.  Like that flower vase my step-mother placed on the kitchen table.  We need a certain slant of light, as poet Emily Dickinson once wrote, to see things the way they truly are.

We need God’s light.

Last week, a little girl knocked on my door.

I opened it and she held up two sticks (one in each hand) to me. 

“Do you want a smells-good-stick?” she asked me. 

I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out just what she was offering.  Each stick had what appeared to be a chewed up wad of gum on the end or perhaps a sampling from the Horror movie “The Blob.”

“Three dollars,” the girl added.

She could tell she was having a hard time with the sell, so she offered me one of the sticks.  “Here smell.”

What else is there to do in this moment but smell the stick?  So, I did and that’s when I realized the glob at the end was neither chewing gum nor an alien blob.  It was some melted candle wax.  And honestly, the smell was not displeasing.  It reminded me of childhood.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the girl, “but I don’t have any money to give you.”

She smiled.  “That’s okay.  Just keep it.”

“Really?” I said, smiling myself.  “For free?”

She nodded.

“Thank you,” I said and meant it.

The smells-good-stick is currently sitting in a plastic baggie in my closet and let me tell you the closet smells wonderful.  And every time I open the closet door, and catch a whiff of my smells-good-stick, I am reminded of the gift that little girl gave me.

She gave me a glimpse of God’s light.

Amen.

Bear v. Man

This past April a TikTok video emerged asking seven women a very interesting question.  If they were alone, walking in the woods, would they rather come across a bear or a man they didn’t know.  All but one of the women chose the bear.

The video went viral with a majority of women once again choosing the bear, saying things like if the bear attacked them, no one would ask them if they had led the bear on.  Another woman who chose the bear said at least she didn’t have to guess the bears intentions.

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself what you would choose, so I just want a take a moment to point out something from today’s reading from Proverbs 17:1-20, specifically verse 12 which reads, “Better to meet a she-bear robbed of its cubs than to confront a fool immersed in folly.”

Even the Bible chooses the bear.

The man or bear scenario though is yet another example in this world of how we react and respond to fearful events.  We are a society that is steeped in fear.  I get alerts from my Ring doorbell app throughout the day, mostly from neighbors in a five mile radius reporting various crimes.

We live, these days, seemingly in a constant state of anxiety.

I woke up from a nap the other day in the middle of a panic attack.  My heart was racing.  I was gasping for breath.  I admit, it’s possible I had been experiencing sleep apnea and woke up in a panic because my brain was suddenly freaking out from the lack of oxygen.

But as I lay there, trying to calm down, taking deeper more meaningful breaths, I realized that sleep apnea aside, waking up in a panic might be a natural response for me given all that has happened to me so far this year.

Since January, I have bought a house, moved, discovered I needed surgery for the first time, and most recently had someone fire a gun outside my living room window.  Whether it’s something positive like buying a house or negative like a shooting, anxiety is a normal response.

My surgery is now roughly a week a way and if you want to know if I’m afraid, my answer right now is I’m not as afraid as you would think, mostly because the surgery has to be done—I don’t have a choice and so therefore whatever happens … happens—I have very little control.  I am most worried about how my crazy immune system will respond to the surgery and I am hoping that the stress dose of prednisone they are supposed to give me will help with that.

Among the things I’m thinking about regarding the surgery, I am thinking about being under general anesthesia.  I have had minor procedures done over the years requiring light anesthesia, ranging from having my wisdom teeth out twenty years ago to have an endoscopic ultrasound done just this past December.  There is always a moment, a delayed reaction on my part, right before the drugs start working, the nitrous oxide or the propofol where my brain understands that the switch has been flipped, that something is happening and I’m about to lose consciousness and that moment is terrifying to me, every time, for those few seconds before darkness hits and the next thing I know I’m awake in recovery.

I have only ever been under general anesthesia once.  I was five years old and had broken my arm.  They had to put me under so they could set the break.  I remember everything about that day so clearly.  I remember trying to convince the doctors and nurses that I could fall asleep on my own that I didn’t need to be put out.  I remember that the worse pain was from the IV.  I remember them showing me my xrays before I went under.  I remember dreaming that Winnie the Pooh was operating on me.  Somehow that wasn’t a nightmare.  It was oddly comforting.

And I remember waking up in a sunlit room from what I, in my short life to that point, thought was the best sleep I had ever had.  There was a nurse at a desk in the corner working on paperwork.  I didn’t want her to know that I was awake.  I wanted more of that sleep so I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, but I couldn’t so this time, I opened my eyes for real and looked at the nurse.  She must have known something had changed, because she looked up almost immediately and when she saw I was awake, she gave me the biggest smile you have ever seen and by that I mean that I have never had someone look at me that way since.  It was a smile of pure joy and divine love.

At that moment, I believed she was an angel.

I still believe she was an angel.

As a chaplain, I have spent a lot of time with people in the ICU, recovering from various surgeries both minor and otherwise.  And I know that God is there.

I know.

Period.

And now that I will be experiencing this from the other side of the hospital bed so to speak, I need to remind myself of that.

That God is there.

That angels are present.

That there is nothing to fear.

That love drives out all fear because light drives out all darkness.

A couple of days ago, I was at the grocery store, the one with the armed guards.  Remember what I have said before about shopping carts—they’re all bad, we are all victims—and sure enough the first cart I chose had locked wheels.  You couldn’t even move it but the next cart was remarkably smooth.

As I was leaving, I was prepared to drop the cart off before exiting—I only had one bag to carry—when I saw an old man approaching the cart with the locked wheels.  He put his bag in the cart and his cane and sure enough when he started to push the cart, it wouldn’t move at all.

I knew right then that I would give him my cart and headed his way.  He saw me coming and he knew I was bringing him my cart.

He took out his cane and bag from the first cart and waited for me.

“You need a cart?” I asked him.  “This one will do you good.  You have a nice day.”

You see sometimes the strange man is preferable to the bear.

Because, again from our reading from Proverbs today, this time from verse 17, “a friend loves at all times.”

Do not ever be afraid to reach out in love.

Love is bigger than fear.

Amen.

 

If You Build It

I’ve decided that after I recover from my surgery in a couple of weeks, I want to build a prayer labyrinth in my backyard.  My backyard is small and the grass is already spotty.  It is filled with chunks of concrete, rocks, trash and years of neglect both in its time as a vacant lot and also during construction of my house. 

I won’t give up on it, but with a church across the street and google map rumors that a church may have also been on this property at some point, I want to make sure the ground around here is filled with spiritual life.  I want to saturate it with something holy. 

One of the things I miss the most about Florida is walking the prayer labyrinth at my friend Laura’s church weekly for years.  And while there are labyrinths a short drive from where I live now, I have, for the first time, my own yard and therefore the ability to make this land whatever I want.  I want it to be a place you take off your shoes.  I want this to be holy ground.

That’s the backyard.

In the front yard, I want to fulfill another dream and put in a Little Free Library.  The thing I miss most about being a Language Arts teacher is providing books for kids to read, curating a classroom library filled with books so loved their pages were falling out.

There are children in my new neighborhood.  They have in the past been fascinated with my house—I’m not sure why except maybe it’s the newness of it or the mystery of whoever lives there.  They love my Ring doorbell.  And they are like little detectives searching through my mailbox for evidence that yes, someone lives here.  They get a kick out of ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door and running.  They’re very fast; their giggles are still in the air long after they vanished down the street.

Summer is coming fast, and I don’t know what these kids will be doing, but I want them to know that in my front yard there is a magical place that is never empty of books.

A labyrinth and a library—these are things I want to do and yet, for a while this past Saturday afternoon, I questioned if building either was wise.

I was sitting in the recliner with Pippin on my lap, watching a Yankees game, when out of nowhere there was large thunderclap outside the window.  The window shook.  The wall shook and flash of a white shirt ran past the window, barely visible with my curtain blocking most of the view.

Pippin fled from my lap as I leaped from the chair.  I was halfway to the window when I realized that the sound I heard was a gunshot and that running to the window might not be the best move.

I have heard gunshots before in real life—not just on TV, but up until this past Saturday, the only gunfire I had ever heard was from a hunting rifle.  I had never heard a handgun up close.

A handgun does not sound like a rifle.

I would describe a rifle as like a thundercrack.

A handgun is more like a thunderclap.

You may wonder what the difference is and all I can say is that if you heard them both, you would know.

For all the time that gunfire is compared to the sound of firecrackers, I can tell you that a handgun does not sound at all like a firecracker.

And if you remember my sermon from a few weeks ago, a handgun definitely doesn’t sound like oranges falling from a tree into the bed of a truck.

This gunshot was so close, I thought the house had been hit and when enough time had passed, when I had heard the running footsteps fade and the sound of screeching tires as the person peeled away in a car, I went outside to check on my house.

The house was fine so far as I could tell.

The story is that apparently this past Saturday a group of teenage boys had gathered just a few houses down from me, near where that car had hit the house a couple of weekends ago.  Words were exchanged and shots fired, including the one that I heard by my living room window.

When I walked outside to check on the house, once again the church across the street was worshipping, but this time instead of emptying at the sound of a car crashing, there were only two men standing out front to check on the gunfire.

A teenage boy walked down the middle of the street past us and one of the churchgoers asked him if he was okay.

The boy didn’t even look his way, but mumbled, “yeah.”

The churchgoer continued.  “Because if someone is hurt, we have nurses inside.”

“Nah,” the boy said and continued on.

Though I had not been the target of the gunfire, I had almost been caught in the crossfire and this made me wonder for a moment if building a prayer labyrinth in my backyard was a good move, if even being outside sitting on my back patio was a good move, if there was a chance I could be shot.

I wondered these things, but only for a moment because then I decided that building a labyrinth, installing a Little Free Library—doing these things was more important than ever.  My goal had been to saturate this land with holiness and after the shooting on Saturday, I realized this goal was more important now than ever.

There are only a few short years separating the children who rang my doorbell and ran and the boys who shot at each other on Saturday.

What happened in those years to turn laughter into fear?

I don’t know and I don’t have answers on how to fix something that has been ailing society for a long time now.

All I know is what I can do in my little patch of earth.

And that is saturate the ground with divine love and grace.

In today’s reading from Matthew 11:16-24, Jesus is addressing the people and chastising them for ignoring important signs.  He says, “But to what will I compare this generation?  It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’”

Woe to whoever ignores what is right in front of them, who turns away from the children when they are laughing or when they are crying.

Woe to all of us who turn away when Jesus comes knocking.

Jesus was knocking this past Saturday. 

Where you might ask?

I saw Him, in those two churchgoers offering comfort and healing to the boy walking down the street.

I saw Him, in their calm presence.

And I felt Him stir with my own spirit.

This ground is Holy Ground.

Amen.