God With Us

Back when I lived in Florida, I liked to take early morning walks around my development.  I would go when it was still dark out, when it was silent, when it was just me and the birds, the great blue herons and green herons that lingered by the water’s edge of the nearby retention pond, and the ospreys that sat high in the trees, mere shadows with wings, waiting for their chance to do a little fishing.

It was dark, very dark, when I went walking.

Depending on the time of year, the air could be hot and thick with humidity, even before the sunrise.  The only sounds were that of my own breathing, the soft clap of my sneakers on the pavement, a small splash in the water as the heron nosed its beak into the shallows.

One morning, I stopped at the pond and stared out toward the east.

I checked my watch and waited.

A moment later, a bright orange light appeared on the horizon.  It was blinding, a ball of fire that rose steadily into the sky.

It was so bright, the night sky seemed to pull back and retreat.  The darkness seemed to ripple and tremble, quivering as the light grew brighter and brighter.

You probably think I’m describing the sunrise.

But this is the east coast of Florida, specifically Brevard County, also known as the Space Coast.

If you have a Brevard County phone number, the area code is 321, as in three, two, one, liftoff.

I wasn’t watching the sunrise that morning.

I was watching a rocket launch.

The thing about rocket launches is that, if you are watching from a distance, you always see the rocket before you hear it.  The speed of light being far greater than the speed of sound.  If you wait until you hear the rumble to run outside, you’ve already missed the most exciting part.

When you watch an early morning launch, like I did that one day, the rumble seems even louder and more intense.  You might be tempted to mistake the rumble for thunder, but this thunder doesn’t come from the sky.  It builds through the ground.  It sounds more like a train coming than a storm.

This sound, this rumble fills you, and for a moment you feel as if you and everyone else around you, every living thing, every bird, every frog, every possum that had been scooting across the top of the fence but has now stopped in wonder … you feel as if you are all connected.  You are living this moment together.

It is a profoundly mystical moment.

In today’s readings from Isaiah and Matthew, we are treated to some of the more mystical moments of the story of Jesus’ birth.  We have a prophecy from Isaiah and Joseph with his own angelic visitation coming to him in a dream (not the first Joseph in the Bible to have interesting dreams).

All throughout the Christmas story, we have the wild and amazing, visitations by angels, annunciations, miraculous pregnancies for Elizabeth and Mary. 

Zechariah rendered mute because of his disbelief, finding his voice again only when he names his son, “John.”

The shepherds see not just one angel but a multitude of the heavenly host. 

The story of Jesus’ birth is filled with the mystical and the magical, the other-worldly, the extraordinary.

But let us not forget that Jesus enters this world in the most ordinary of places.  The “King of Kings, Salvation Brings,” is laid in a manger, surrounded by sheep and goats, possibly cows, definitely a donkey and later maybe even camels.

The story of Jesus’ birth is the story of the son of God making His entrance into the ordinary so that His extraordinary love, His extraordinary restoration and redemption of humanity, His extraordinary saving grace might be accessible to all people.

Jesus arrives in the ordinary.

God is found in the ordinary.

And since we are surrounded most days by the ordinary, we can feel certain that we are surrounded by God.

Immanuel, Isaiah names Him.

It’s repeated again in today’s gospel reading from Matthew.  Emmanuel.

God with us.

When was the last time you felt God’s presence in your life?  When was the last time you felt that God was with you?  Not just at Christmas but all year round?

Not only on the extraordinary days, the weddings and births, the baptisms and graduations, but on the ordinary days in between.

Where have you seen God today?

Yesterday?

When I was going through a particular rough patch in my life—physically I was very ill—a friend of mine, who knew I loved nature photography recommended a book by Mark Hirsch called That Tree.  In this book, the author takes a picture of the same tree every day for a year.  My friend texted me six words that would forever change where and how I saw God in this world.  She said, “You can do something like this.”

And, so I did.  Every day for about 300 days—I didn’t quite make it the whole year—I drove to my church which sat on an acre or so of Florida woodlands, and even on days when I felt so sick, I could barely take two steps out of the car, I took a picture—sometimes it was just the nearest palm tree, palm fronds chattering in the breeze—and then I went home and wrote about it—where God had revealed Himself to me that day.

Beyond the palm tree, though, I marveled at the things I saw, at the pileated woodpecker, the lumberjack of woodpeckers with its shock of red hair, ripping and tearing through the trees, showering the ground below with chunks of bark.

I watched two hawks settle in a nest in one of the tallest pine trees.  I learned to wait and watch each day until their babies hatched.

I spoke softly to a hibiscus bloom that was struggling, wilted, a lone bloom on what looked like a pitiful stick someone had jammed into the ground.

On Day 54, I took a picture of a cardinal, sitting in a tree.  In the sunlight, the cardinal looked like it was on fire, more phoenix than red bird.  And this is what I wrote: There is sunlight.  And there is Godlight.  There is the light we lounge by, the light we read by, and then there is Godlight. 

This is the light from God that touched the prophets of old.  Sunlight only goes skin deep.  Godlight goes directly to the soul.  This is the light we search for, the light that seems so fleeting, this is the light that if we don’t stop for it now, we may not find it again for decades.  This is the light we cannot hold, so we let it hold us instead.  This is Godlight.

Those 300 days that I went out to take pictures were ordinary days.

But in those ordinary days, I found myself surrounded by the extraordinary.  It was not suddenly there.  It had always been there.

God had always been there.

It’s just now I was paying attention.

God was there, with me.  And He had always been there with me.

As He is with you.

Emmanuel.

During those days I drove out to the church, the most extraordinary thing happened to me.  I wasn’t healed physically, but I was restored spiritually.

Our psalm today, psalm 80, carries that refrain, saying three times:

“Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

Restore us.

Let your face shine upon us.

How does God restore us?  By being present with us.

The birth of Jesus is the birth of Emmanuel, the God who is with us.

The God who walks with us, laughs with us, mourns with us, takes delight in us, the God who shines His light upon us, so that we don’t ever have to walk in darkness.

The God who walks alongside us on our own roads to Emmaus and waits for us to “see” Him, truly see Him, because then His joy and our joy can be complete.

God is with us.

That sunrise rocket launch I saw a few years ago … sometimes when you see a rocket launch right at sunrise, as the rocket appears high in the night sky, the incoming rays of the sun will reflect off the gases emitted from the rocket and create something known as the jellyfish effect.

What you see from the ground is this ever-expanding bubble of light, this loop of diaphanous silken thread, growing bigger and bigger in the sky.  It’s a balloon of light, filled not with air, but with stars.

It is the divine artist at work.

And, if you’re like me, you can’t help but grin like a little kid, because it is awe-inspiring work.

It is the extraordinary appearing on an ordinary early morning walk.

And I am not, by far, the only one to ever see something wonderful in the night sky, am I?

To feel my spirit filled by wonder.

It’s the same wonder I feel every Christmas no matter how old I get.  It’s the same excitement I always felt opening that last door, that last window on the Advent Calendar.  It’s the anticipation.  Something beautiful is being born.  It’s more than gifts under the tree.  It is a gift bigger than the whole of the universe and yet it chooses to walk with us, to infuse the dirt under our feet and the trees over our heads, the mountains, the rainstorms, the wind that rushes past us, to infuse it all with a holiness and a love beyond imagination.

It's extraordinary.

It’s Emmanuel.

God with us.

Amen. 

Peace, be still

 Peace, be still.

 

The storm has passed.

The snow blankets the ground,

flows into the street

like an ocean tide

and drifts in the breezes,

blown from tree to tree.

 

At night the sky is bright

as streetlight and moonlight

and starlight, and not a little

amount of Godlight

bounce from snowflake

to snowflake, illuminating

everything,

and for a moment you

understand how darkness

can also be light

when God is present.

 

Peace, be still,

my heart,

my hand,

my spirit.

 

In the morning, the tracks

of phantom deer appear

in the snow, leaping and loping

before vanishing

at the fenceline.

 

Beside them, other prints,

the frenzied, frantic, swirling

dance of the squirrel

searching for breakfast

as the sun rises.

 

Peace, be still.

The knee-high spruce

in my front yard,

can only manage a sigh

and a shrug under

the heavy weight

of the snow,

sending the smallest

of avalanches rolling

off its peak.

 

The sun parts the clouds, putting

out a hand, squeezing past, muttering

an “excuse me” because the sun

values politeness, but the show

is just beginning

and the sun is the star

everyone is waiting for.

 

Peace, be still.

 

Oh it is cold,

but the upper crust of snow

contains multitudes

of frozen snowflakes, perfection

each one, mathematics as art

prisms, not prisons, of light,

free to everyone who dares

to take a look.

 

Only in the bitter cold—

what an unfortunate modifier—

but only in the coldest of colds

will the fallen snow sparkle

with rainbows of light.

 

Nature has put out

its own Christmas decorations.

 

Peace, be still.

 

The storm has passed.

And the first gift

of Christmas is here,

the birth of a child

in Bethlehem

who will still and calm

all storms,

both in the world around us,

and the world inside of us.

 

Mary felt it

and Joseph,

the shepherds,

the innkeeper,

the sheep,

the goats,

the cattle that lowed

in their sleep.

 

The baby Jesus cried,

and His cry

was a song,

a hymn,

an anthem

 

that stilled worry and fear,

and stirred hope and joy.

 

Peace, be still.

 

That song still sings,

if you listen carefully.

 

It’s that hush I hear

at night when I dare

take a cautious

and reverent step

outside and look up

at the sky

and the stars that wink

at me, because they know—

they hear it too,

light years away—

the song sings to them too.

 

But for me,

it’s that hush after the storm,

that whisper of one snowflake,

settling itself, hunkering down

in fellowship with every other snowflake.

 

It’s the hush

that makes me cherish,

each brittle breath I take

in the cold,

because in that breath

is the song

of redemption,

restoration.

 

It’s the song

that makes all things new.

 

It is the Christmas miracle.

 

Peace, be still.

 

Amen.

The Snoopy Dance

This past Sunday at the 9 am reflection group, we looked at my book Holy Living, but before we dove into the book, I shared a Peanuts cartoon, a Snoopy cartoon, that I had seen recently.

In this particular strip, Snoopy is dancing.  It’s one of the things Snoopy is famous for … dancing.  Lucy chastises him for it in another strip, asking him how he can be dancing when the world is falling apart?

But in this particular strip, Snoopy is dancing, dancing to a tune only he can hear.  There is a tree behind him and a leaf falling from the tree.  In each panel, the leaf moves as it falls, to Snoopy’s right and to his left and finally, the leaf hits the ground.

At this point, Snoopy stops, bows to the leaf and says, “Thank you for this dance.”

I told the Sunday group this was an example of Holy Living, the joy in Snoopy as he dances and the recognition of the part the natural world plays in the dance.

But also, when Snoopy thanks the leaf for the dance, he is seeing the leaf, truly seeing the leaf, acknowledging its value, its worth and its importance.

Charles M. Schulz, who created Peanuts, frequently touched upon this theme of being seen or being understood.

In one famous series of strips, Charlie Brown puts a bag over his head, with two eyeholes, and finds himself instantly more popular when people can’t see him.  That’s called irony.  But it’s also poignant, because I would argue that being seen and being understood is something we all want.  And each of us has experienced times in our lives when we have felt unseen or misunderstood. 

As we see in today’s reading from Matthew 13:53-58, we see that not even Jesus is immune to being misunderstood, ironically, by some of the people who should know Him best, asking, “’Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offense at him.”

It is frustrating, isn’t it, that the gospels shed very little light on who Jesus was between being born and beginning His ministry?  We are only given the one account in Luke 2:41-52 of Jesus disappearing and being found in the Temple.  When His parents admit their worry and concern over Him, having lost Him, and not knowing where He was, He asks them something along the lines of, “Where else would I be?”

Even then His own parents, Mary and Joseph, despite the angelic visitations surrounding Jesus’ conception and birth, don’t seem to see Jesus for who He truly is.  (Although if I had been put in charge of the Son of God and then suddenly lost him, I would be massively panicking too.)

Perhaps no one knows better than Jesus just how it feels to be misunderstood, to go unseen.  Even after the resurrection, Jesus nearly goes unseen by Mary Magdalene who thinks Him the gardener at first.  He goes unseen on the Road to Emmaus. 

But Mary Magdalene does eventually see Him and the disciples do have their eyes opened.

Because Jesus knows what it is like to be unseen, He makes a point of seeing others, especially those who are used to being invisible.  He sees the Samaritan woman at the well.  He sees (or hears) Blind Bartimaeus even though everyone else has tuned the man out.  He sees the lepers.  He sees the poor and the hungry and He does something about it.

Think about John 12:8 for a moment, where Jesus says, “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not have me.”  He says this after Judas, in particular, grows angry with Mary of Bethany for seemingly wasting very expensive perfume to anoint Jesus’ feet.

Two things here. 

Mary of Bethany sees Jesus.  She sees Him for who He truly is.  The perfume is not a waste.

But also, the comment about always having the poor with us has always struck me as a very pessimistic view of humanity on the part of Jesus.  It has always bothered me.  I want Jesus to have more faith in us.

And yet here we are two thousand years later and we still have the poor among us.

Why?

Because we don’t see them.  We don’t see the real them.  We don’t see them as children of God.  If we saw each other as God sees us, no one would go hungry.  No one would be without a home.  We would do everything in our power to provide for the least of us. 

Back to Snoopy’s dancing.

Snoopy doesn’t dance because he leads a worry-free, struggle-free life.  He frequently kicks the door in the middle of the night because he’s scared and wants to sleep in bed with Charlie Brown.  In one famous series of strips, Snoopy’s doghouse burns down, leading him to lament the loss of his Van Gogh.  He feuds with the cat next door.  He longs to be a writer but only receives rejection letters.

And yet, despite it all, he dances.

Snoopy’s dancing is clearly spiritual in nature.  Though he never refers directly to God, Snoopy’s joy stems from being seen by, being in communion with and being embraced by Love, with a capital “L.”

And that joy is infectious.

Is it any wonder that Linus, Lucy’s brother, the most spiritual and philosophical of the group, eventually joins Snoopy and dances?

Is it any wonder that Lucy, herself, finally joins Snoopy in his dance, because, as she says, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?”

Who wouldn’t want to dance with Snoopy?

The world these days is filled with human beings who are completely blind and ignorant to the fact that we are all children of God.

The first step to being able to see others, is to first know that you are seen by God, that you are loved by Him, that He sees the real you, the true you, the good that you are and the good that you can be, and He’s asking you to join Him in the dance.

Amen.

Claimed

One day, when I was volunteering as an on-call chaplain for a series of hospitals in the area, I got called in to minister to a Jewish man who was suicidal.  It became quickly apparent to me as I talked to the man that he really needed a rabbi.  My problem?  It was Saturday and the rabbi the hospital usually called in emergencies did not answer his phone on Saturdays. 

I called the head chaplain for the hospital and he put me in touch with a Jewish woman who was also a spiritual care volunteer for the hospital.  I relayed the need for the rabbi to her and she called the rabbi herself, knowing he would pick up if he saw her name.

The suicidal man got his visit with the rabbi.

One of the most interesting things to me, as a chaplain, was ministering to all people, not just Christians, but Jewish people, Muslims, Hindu, Buddhists … even agnostics.  Even among Christians, various denominations had different needs.

Some Catholic patients wanted a priest.  One Catholic man prayed the Hail Mary in Spanish while I said it in English.  Another man wanted healing prayer, not just prayer for healing, but the laying on of hands.  A husband and wife wanted to know if I believed in spiritual warfare before they would let me pray for them, because they needed prayer for that specifically.  One man began to speak in tongues as I prayed for him.  Other patients punctuated my prayers with “Yes Jesus” and “Amen” as I spoke.  One patient was so high, he was convinced he was deaf and couldn’t hear, so I wrote a prayer for him on the whiteboard in his room while a large, burly orderly sat nearby for my protection.

You meet people where they’re at.  You offer them whatever you can to ease that spiritual pain.  You offer it unconditionally and without judgement. 

Last week, I spoke about the value of a sparrow.  Jesus says we are worth so much more than a sparrow, but what is a sparrow worth?

And in today’s reading from Matthew 12:1-14, we get another animal comparison.  This time, Jesus, being peppered by gotcha questions from the Pharisees, asks His own question of them in return.  They want to know if it is lawful to cure someone on the Sabbath.  Jesus says to them in verses 11-12, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep!”

There are two very important things that Jesus is saying here that go beyond simply our value being more than a sheep.

First, He’s not asking them if they would save any old sheep that they happened to find in a pit.  He’s asking if they would rescue their sheep.  And in doing this, Jesus is implying that those He heals are His.  They belong to Him.  We all belong to Jesus.  We are all His sheep.

Secondly, when Jesus asks the Pharisees if they would save their sheep, He qualifies that by saying suppose it’s your ONLY sheep.  Again, there is a greater implication here.  It’s not just that we belong to Jesus, that we are His sheep, it’s that He treats us as if we were His only sheep.

We are, therefore, much like the sparrow, priceless, irreplaceable. 

And, so of course, in today’s reading, Jesus heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath.  He belongs to Jesus.  And Jesus, as He always does, shows compassion on the Children of God.

You, too, belong to Jesus. 

When I was volunteering as a chaplain in the hospital, I was mostly visiting people in the ICU.  That meant I was seeing people who were quite possibly suffering the worst moment in their lives.  And when I would pray for them, I would pray two prayers—there was the prayer I spoke aloud, and the prayer I held silently in my heart.

That silent prayer was simply this—I was claiming them, I was claiming them for God.  They were protected.  They were anointed.  They were a Child of the Living God.  Whatever evil or darkness had entered their lives, it was not welcome.  It had no home there.  This person belonged to the light and to God. 

A couple of weeks ago, I read to you my favorite quote on prayer from Anne of Green Gables, that part where she talks about staring up at blue, blue, blue sky and just feeling a prayer.   That silent prayer I said for patients, that prayer I held in my heart, that was feeling a prayer, feeling it in my spiritual bones.

My prayer for you today would be that you would know that Jesus has claimed you as His.  You are His and He is yours.  There is nothing He wouldn’t do for you. 

Amen.

Did You Know Bees Are Side-Sleepers?

Okay, some bees are side-sleepers.

Some bees just sprawl out on their bellies and sploot.

Still others dive into the flowers and sleep with their little bee butts pointed to the sky.

The other day, when it was a bit chilly out, I saw another bee, dug deep into a zinnia, with the petals wrapped around him like a blanket.

The one thing I have never seen is a bee asleep on his back.  Alas, if a bee is on his back, chances are the poor bee is not sleeping.

But still the most amazing thing to me is this … bees sleep.

And they’re not alone in the natural world.  Early in the morning, I have seen, not only bees, but also moths, spiders and flies, sitting still on flowers, seemingly frozen in time.

When I lived in Florida and walked our church’s prayer labyrinth in the spring and fall, I was careful not to disturb the thousands of love bugs that were sleeping in the labyrinth’s shrubs. 

If even insects know it’s time to rest, why is it so hard for us?

I, myself, function best with about nine hours of sleep.  I wish it was uninterrupted sleep, but honestly, if I slept nine hours straight that might feel more like a coma.

How much sleep do you need?

Do you wish you could sleep more?

What’s holding you back?

Is it time?  Do you think you just don’t have the time to sleep that much?  Is sleep low on your priority list? 

Because if that’s the case, let me remind you that in Mark 4:35-41, Jesus and the disciples are on a boat during a very intense storm.  The waves are crashing over the boat.  The disciples think they are going to die.  And what is Jesus doing?  He’s sleeping.  That’s how important sleep is.  Not even a storm will deny Him rest.

And when the disciples wake Jesus up, begging Him to do something, here is what He didn’t say.

He didn’t say, “Oh, it’s storming?  I had no idea.  Thank you for waking me.  Let me try and quiet this storm.”

He’s Jesus.  He knew it was storming.  He just prioritized sleep over the storm.

So when the disciples wake Him, the first thing He says in Mark 4:39 is “Quiet! Be still!”

Now is He saying that to the storm or to the disciples?  The Bible says He addressed the storm.  I think He meant it for the disciples too.  Because both the storm and the disciples got real quiet, and real still, real quick right after that.

But rest is more than sleep, isn’t it?

Sleep can give our body and mind time to heal each night.

But to rest our spiritual selves, we need something more than just sleep.

Take Elijah in 1 Kings 19:1-7.

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’ Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’

I see memes on this passage frequently, in reference to selfcare and the necessity of eating well and staying hydrated.  But this passage isn’t Elijah taking some time off to have dinner with friends.  He is specifically attended to by an angel of the Lord.  And it is only after he has had this time to eat, drink and rest that he is ready to meet with God in 1 Kings 19:11-13.

He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’

It is only after Elijah has taken care of the important things, like food and water, only when he is able to accept those things from the angel of the Lord, that he is able to truly listen to God.  He wasn’t ready, sitting under that broom tree, begging God to take his life.  But he’s ready now.

Rest is not just about our physical needs, but our spiritual needs as well, and we can absolutely see that in the natural world.

Ten years ago, I was getting ready for my first Christmas without my mom and two grandfathers, all three of whom had died earlier in the year.  Those first holidays without loved ones are so difficult and I could not get into the Christmas spirit, even going so far as to pack up my Christmas decorations only days after putting them out.

I was hurting spiritually and so every day, I drove out to the church to walk the grounds, to be surrounded by nature, in the hope that I would feel God’s presence.

On one of these days, I got out of the car, headed out around the church toward the prayer labyrinth, when something caught my eye and I stopped suddenly in my tracks.

Our prayer labyrinth was a living labyrinth with a path marked by shrubs.  Throughout the year, it was home to pollinators, birds and rabbits, and, at first, that was what I thought I was looking at … a rabbit, something grayish-brown, close to the ground, hiding behind all that green.

So, I took out my camera and zoomed in to get a closer look.

It was not a rabbit.

It was a bobcat, lounging in the labyrinth.

Now, I knew that people had seen a bobcat at the church, but despite all the days I had spent walking the grounds with my camera, I had never seen one—until that day.

I did one of those choking, half-sobs, mesmerized by the beauty of this bobcat, the wildness of it and the complete serenity it seemed to embody there in a place for prayer.

I took picture after picture, following it—from a distance—as it walked away and headed for the woods. Once, it looked back at me—I have a picture of that too—and there was a spiritual connection, the kind you feel when God answers prayers.

I had prayed that morning to feel God’s presence and God provided that in a way I could not have thought to ask for or imagine.

Rest.

It’s not just sleep.

Rest for your soul is time spent with God, breathing in and out, in and out, the spirit of the living God.

Like Elijah in the wilderness, selfcare is more that eating and hydrating—it is time spent with God.

What Is a Sparrow Worth?

“You are of more value than many sparrows,” Jesus says in today’s reading from Matthew 10:24-33.  Figuratively speaking, it’s a very nice sentiment, but I can’t help but thinking—okay, but what’s a sparrow worth?  We’re worth more than sparrows, but how much is that? 

And for the literalists among us, Jesus gives the answer to that, too. 

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” Jesus asks, rhetorically.

Okay, so we’re worth more than a penny, but really, does that answer the question as to how much God values us?

So, I’m worth more than a penny, but what is that in today’s money?

It’s like that time when a friend of mine, who is a priest, told me she prayed for me for a whole mile on her way to church that morning. 

“Thank you,” I told her, earnestly.  “That’s so sweet.”  But in the back of my head, I’m wondering, was that a mile through a school zone, or a mile on the interstate, because a mile going through a school zone is going to take a whole lot more time than a mile zipping down the fast lane on the interstate.

These details are important!  How much prayer did I get?

All joking aside, let’s get back to the original question—how much does God value the sparrows?  What is a sparrow’s worth?

I have been a nature photographer for a long time and especially, living in Florida, that meant becoming a bird watcher too.  In Florida, birds are celebrities. 

Seriously, next time you are in Florida, drive around—maybe not in the big cities—but definitely in the smaller cities and suburbia, and if you see a group of people gathered on the side of the road, ninety-nine percent of the time it’s for a bird—sometimes for an alligator, but mostly birds.

Some years ago, there were so many people pulled over down the road from where I lived in Florida—people with tripods and cameras and even a news truck, you’d think they were covering a royal wedding.

It was royalty of a sort.  The mating pair of swans that called that particular retention pond home had brought half a dozen or so cygnets into the world.

That was a rarity.  But the sandhill cranes seemed to make that same spot home for their nest year after year and believe me, I pulled over in mud and through heavy traffic to get pictures of those first steps those baby cranes took.

There was a bald eagle’s nest overlooking the interstate and in order to get a picture of their babies each year, I had to either hike up the overpass, bike up the overpass, or eventually, I just bought an electric scooter and scooted up the overpass and then used a camera with a zoom big enough to capture the rings of Saturn to get pictures of the eagles.

And then there were the white pelicans.  White pelicans are migrating birds in Florida, so you see them in December usually and then again a few months later.  But when they arrive it is with such fanfare.  There can be dozens and dozens of them, moving, swimming in mass in the retention ponds.  But they aren’t alone.  They follow the cormorants who lead the pelicans to the fishes.  All that attention draws in the great blue herons and great egrets and hawks and osprey and eagles.  Yes, you have to stop when you see such a sight.

The Florida Scrub Jay is the only bird endemic to Florida.  Florida is the only state you will see them in and they are protected.  I would drive a few miles down the road from where I lived to a sanctuary where they were known to live.  Scrub Jays generally stay with a very small area.  They don’t venture very far.  They are also very tame because, despite the signs warning against feeding the Scrub Jays, people still do.  And so yes, I have had Scrub Jays land on my head when I have tried to take a picture.

I was looking through all my old photos the other day to try and see when I became a bird watcher, when I went from someone who noticed the birds here and there, to someone who brought her camera to church with her, just in case something miraculous happened outside the church windows, like the hawk who landed on the arbor that marked the entrance to the prayer labyrinth, or the cardinal who regularly tapped on the glass during the service.

When did I start seeing birds as something of value, of worth, as something distinctly of God’s creation?

It was in 2014, I think.  It had been a rough few years.  I had gone from the highest of highs, starting seminary, trying to answer God’s call to the priesthood, to the lowest of lows, having to drop out of seminary and quit my teaching job because of health problems, I had zero control over.

What do you do when you are one hundred percent certain of your purpose in life, one hundred percent certain you are serving God with everything you have—and it’s not enough?  What happens when your spirit is strong and more than willing, but your physical health means that somedays just walking from the couch to the bathroom is nearly impossible.  What do you do when all you have ever wanted to do was serve God, but now there seems no way? 

“God will make a way,” the lyrics to the song tell us or in Proverbs 16:9 this, “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.”

Or earlier in verse 3, “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”

And so, in a story I have told many times, a friend of mine from work told me about a book where a man had taken a picture of the same tree every day for a year.  Knowing my love of photography, she told me, “You can do something like that.”

And so every day, I drove to my church, to that beautiful little church surrounded by trees and overlooking the water, and I took a picture.  Sometimes I only made a few steps from the car, but I took a picture, drove home and wrote about where I saw God that day.  I was able to do this for almost three hundred days in a row, and those pictures turned into a book called, Hope Lives: Choosing God in the Face of Illness.

But it was around Day 172 that suddenly my daily pictures exploded with birds, mockingbirds and blue jays, cardinals and osprey, red-shouldered hawks and cooper’s hawks, ducks and great egrets, great blue herons and little blue herons, and the incredible pileated woodpecker. 

Together with all the other life, flora and fauna, dragonflies and butterflies, snakes and turtles, lizards and wasps—God filled my days with His creation.  He filled my spirit.

All that life, especially that bird life, was precious to me.

God saved me with birds.

And so birds are priceless to me.

And if they’re priceless to me, you know they are priceless to God.

That is how much a sparrow is worth.

You are worth more.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

Is There Balm in Gilead?

 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “

“'Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this, and nothing more.”

 

Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was in the bleak December, and each separate dying ember ….

 

Okay, I’ll stop there.

These words may sound familiar to you.  Maybe you recognized them right away.  Maybe the title and the author are right on the tip of your tongue.  Maybe you need a little hint—so here it is—this poem features a bird who utters only one word over and over—Nevermore.

If you guessed this poem is The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, fantastic!

If you’re also thinking “Hmm, Nevermore?  Isn’t that the school Wednesday Addams attends in that show on Netflix?”  Yes, yes it is.  That’s how writers pay homage to the greats who came before them.

If you’re also thinking that you never expected to hear a sermon that featured Edgar Allan Poe, the master of the terrifying and the macabre, and a reference to the Addams Family, well, two things—it’s October, tis the season, and also, I’m a former Language Arts teacher … trust me.

In the poem, The Raven, the narrator is deep in grief over the loss of his beloved Lenore.  When a mysterious raven appears in his room, he finds himself compelled to speak to the raven as if the bird were a mystical conduit to the other side. 

It seems crazy, but the narrator is suffering, frantic for answers, desperate for something, anything to ease his pain, at one point asking the raven, “Is there balm in Gilead?”

This question—is there balm in Gilead—is actually lifted directly from the Bible, specifically, from Jeremiah 8:22, where Jeremiah, another man in deep grief and mourning over the suffering of his people in forced exile in Babylon, asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”

Jeremiah is also credited with writing the book of Lamentations and, for the most part, the book lives up to its title.  It is a book of laments, an accounting of suffering, a liturgy of grief.  Jeremiah is known as “the weeping prophet” for a reason.

And yet, as we see in today’s reading from Lamentations 3:21-24, Jeremiah also offers an antidote to spiritual grief and suffering.  Those verses read, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”

Let those words just settle on your heart for a moment.  Isn’t it amazing that thousands of years later, words like that can still have so much impact, can still provide so much solace and promise?

“The Lord is my portion, therefore I will hope in him.”

That’s a verse worth remembering, worth tucking away in your mind to be pulled out when needed. 

If I surveyed a hundred people, Family Feud-style, and asked them what they thought was the most popular and well-known verse in the Bible, what do you think would be the answer?

My guess is John 3:16, right?  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only son …” we know this one, right?

But my pick for the second most popular verse would be Jeremiah 29:11 … “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to help you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  That’s my paraphrase. 

And here’s the thing, I can tell you how old I was, where I was and who shared that verse with me for the first time.  I was spending the summer with my grandparents when I was seventeen.  They were devout Southern Baptists and so that very first night that I arrived, they sat down with me on the couch in the living room and gave me my very first Teen Bible.  And that night my grandparents shared with me Jeremiah 29:11. They taught me to underline it and date it so that I would always know when I had first heard it.

Now, I will be the first to tell you, my grandparents could be a little heavy-handed when it came to sharing God’s word, aka, witnessing. 

I had believed in God since I could talk.  I had plenty of Bibles.  My grandparents were not the first people to ever talk to me about God.  I had been through CCD at the Catholic church and Sunday schools at Methodist churches and other Baptist churches.  I prayed nightly and deeply.  I was intensely spiritual.  And I owed most of that to my parents and how they raised me.

But that night with my grandparents was the first time I had ever heard Jeremiah 29:11.  And those words spoke to me.  They speak to me still.

My grandparents weren’t finished, though.  They told me that just like they had shared that verse with me, I now needed to share that verse with someone else, which considering I was an introvert—was more than a little terrifying to me.  But my grandparents knew the power of God’s word to heal and bring hope to others.

In today’s reading from 2 Timothy chapter 1, Paul tells Timothy in verse 5, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.”

It may seem like a throw-away line at first.  Ah so Timothy has a family.  Grandma Lois and Mom Eunice.  Great.  But this verse says so much more than that.  It is a statement that shows how faith is passed from generation to generation.  How Timothy’s “sincere faith” is directly connected to his mother and grandmother’s faith. 

It is a verse that shows us just what our purpose is on this earth.  We are stewards of God’s word, stewards of His love and it is an awesome responsibility.  It is a responsibility that should humble us in how grand a purpose it is.  God’s word is precious.  Afterall, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  We are caretakers of that Holy Word.

But we cannot hoard the Word and keep it to ourselves.  We must share the Word, share our faith, because as Paul tells Timothy in verse 7, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love.”  It is a “holy calling” Paul says later because he knows how powerful the word of God can be in driving out darkness and hate and bringing light and love to the world. 

It seems like in the world these days, we are shown again and again how words hurt, how words divide, how words prolong pain and encourage hate.

Every day we see the power of hateful words, so much so that maybe we doubt that words of love can ever be enough.

Very rarely are we shown how words heal and bless, how the power of grace and mercy, of forgiveness and unconditional love can move mountains.

In today’s gospel reading from Luke, Jesus tells the disciples if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could say to that mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and plant yourself in the sea,” and it would do exactly that.  The mustard seed command in Matthew is a bit different, replacing the mulberry tree with a mountain.  But regardless the message is the same. 

This is what your faith is capable of.  Even faith the size of a mustard seed could change the shape of the world.  The potential of your faith is beyond anything you could ever comprehend or imagine. 

Nothing you do in service of that faith is small.  And woe to anyone who dismisses your mustard seed.

Nothing you do for God is small.

That summer with my grandparents, I was on the phone with my mom one night.  She was having a hard time.  My mom had a hard life.  And on that particular night, she was upset and was having her own “balm in Gilead” moment.

People who feel helpless and hopeless, who are in despair, always ask, in their own way, about the balm of Gilead. 

When you are suffering spiritually, when your soul cries out, when you ache from someplace deep within … you become desperate for anything that might ease your pain.

And so, Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator turns to a raven for answers, only to be left angry and bitter, cursing the bird, for its constant non-answer of “Nevermore.”

In the end, Poe’s narrator is left without hope, confident there is no spiritual balm for the grieving.

But we (you and I) we know better.  We know there is hope.

There is hope in God.  And that hope is no small thing.

And so while I was on the phone with my mom, that night, more than thirty years ago, I opened up my Bible and said to her, “Have you ever read Jeremiah 29:11?”

[And let me say one last thing on Jeremiah 29:11.  God’s promise in this verse that His plans for us are plans to give us “hope and a future”—that promise is not just a promise to us, but a generational promise.

What does that mean?  It means that no matter what generation you are, whether Silent Generation, Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z or Gen A, you are the hope and the future of all the generations that came before you.

You are someone’s hope.]

So what are the words that you need to hear today?  Is it Jeremiah 29:11. Perhaps you need the words from Jeremiah 31:3 where God declares this … “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

But also, remember this—as important as God’s word is in sustaining us, in lifting us up, in carrying us through the dark, Decembers of our lives, we, as stewards of God’s word, have a duty to share that spiritual balm with others.

And so, I will leave you with one last verse, this time from 1 Peter 3:15.  “Always be ready to share with others the hope that is inside of you.”

Amen.