THE ONE DOES MATTER

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a new show I was watching called Phony about a boy who, after a car accident, wakes up in the hospital convinced that the woman at his bedside is NOT his mom.  But while this is the central mystery to the show, the show does have other subplots and one is between a girl named Mallory who has returned to high school after having been homeschooled for several years and the relationship she has with her father who is the pastor of their church.

In one episode, Mallory is embarrassed when her dad shows up to man a table at the school’s career day and asks Mallory to help him bring in his things including a large cross, draped in purple cloth. 

Later Mallory asks her dad to leave.  She tells him the kids are mocking him, laughing at him.  And he, with utter conviction in his eyes, says that if he reaches just one kid that day, it will be worth it.

Last Friday, I was sitting in the lobby, waiting for my 11-vial blood draw, when I noticed an older woman standing off to the side.  The lobby was crowded.  All the seats were full.  I didn’t know if she was waiting for her own lab work or waiting for someone else.

As it turned out, it was neither of those things.

As if suddenly being given a cue, she started with the man next to me and worked down the line, handing out a pamphlet and saying simply, “Good morning.”

Then, when she was finished, she slipped out the door and disappeared.

Now there is pretty much only one reason someone slips you a pamphlet or tract, especially when you live in the Bible Belt, and it is only to ask if you know Jesus.

In fact, I had passed a truck in the parking lot earlier that morning that had bumper stickers plastered on the back asking if you died today, were you confident where you would be headed?

The man next to me left the pamphlet on his seat when they called his name to go back for bloodwork.  And I did the same when they called my name.

Probably most of the people did—I didn’t see a trashcan anywhere.

But I am sure that little old woman felt a lot like Mallory’s dad.  If she just reached one person … then it was worth it.

A lot of us are turned off by this kind of interaction.  It feels invasive.  We did not invite you to speak to us about God.  We did not invite you to our door.  I had a woman once approach me as I was pumping gas.  And if you do engage in conversation, the words can sometimes take a judgmental tone.

Most of the time we try to be polite.  My Southern Baptist grandparents would invite Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons into their home if they knocked at their door and then you had the battle between who was the most righteous and who, in fact, was going to hell.  It was a battle of who was going to save whose soul, though given it was between Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses and Southern Baptists, it was probably the most polite battle for one’s soul that you will ever witness.

Next week is the anniversary of my mom’s diagnosis with pancreatic cancer.  It’s been twelve years since her diagnosis.  She lived for exactly seven weeks after.

Back when all that was going on, I was asking anyone and everyone to pray for her.  And so a friend texted me that she had seen a group of men holding a Bible study at the restaurant she was at, so she approached, told them about my mom and they all prayed.

I, myself, opened the door to two young Mormon men one day and stepped outside, told them about my mom and then the three of us began to pray.

There is an abundance of ways to engage with people about your faith that are real and authentic and don’t seem like you’re just trying to make your quota of saved souls.

And the easiest way to do this is by simply living your faith, not parading your faith, not showcasing it, not talking down to others, not telling people they’re going to hell. 

I believe that Jesus would want people to come to Him out of love and not because of fear. 

When I would visit people in the hospital who were near death, my grandmother would ask me if I talked to them about being saved.

And this is where our faiths diverged, because while we both believed in Jesus, while we both loved Jesus and believed that belief had enriched our lives and yes, saved our lives in some respect, I thought the last place to tell someone they were going to hell was on their deathbed.  She thought that was exactly the right time, because the difference was heaven or hell and the clock was ticking.

Today’s reading from Luke’s gospel is the story of the lost sheep, how the shepherd leaves behind the 99 to go after the one that is lost.  Jesus says, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

It is this verse that motivates some people to knock on doors and hand out pamphlets and God bless them.  Sincerely I mean that.  Because that takes some heavy-duty conviction.  You have to be willing, like Mallory’s dad, to be mocked and made fun of, to have your pamphlets tossed aside as trash.  You have to be willing to sacrifice your ego to do that.

I may not agree with the approach, but I respect the internal conviction it takes.

Because I believe the lost sheep matters.

I say that as someone who was a surgical patient in the hospital this year and as a chaplain who visited patients in the past and I can tell you when you’re in the hospital, there is always fear, the fear you are lost.  You’re in a strange place filled with strange smells and strange noises, hooked up to wires and machines that become the soundtrack to your life.  The nights are long.

When I would visit patients, my goal was simple.  Remind them they are seen.  Remind them that God’s light shines through all darkness.  Remind them they are loved.  Remind them that they are cared for.

It’s what I would tell coma patients—whispering to them.  “You are safe.  You are being looked after.  You are being tended to.  God loves you.  God is here.”

It’s what I would tell detox patients—"God loves you.”

To the ones who felt alone—"I’ve got your back, your spiritual back.  Know there is someone out there praying for you tonight.”

And when I needed reminding of all that, as a patient, God sent me the night nurse to wash my feet.

The one does matter.

It’s the line from Emily Dickinson that I have made my motto so to speak … “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”

The one does matter.

You matter.

And you will matter to someone today.

Amen.

 

 

 

WHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN THE RAINS COME?

Our reading today from Luke tells the story of a woman commonly known as “the bent woman.”  She is given no name.  We are simply told her condition has crippled her for eighteen years causing her to remain bent over.

Jesus heals her and that’s fantastic, but the story moves away from the woman herself, and shifts focus to the hypocrites in the synagogue who condemn Jesus for healing her on the Sabbath.

I’m always amazed when, in these situations, Jesus addresses the naysayers at all.  That must have gotten old, real quick.  How exhausting to continually have to explain to people what it means to show grace and mercy and kindness, that such things cannot be bound by the law, but are only bound by God’s love for His people.

In our Monday group, we read the section of my book “Your Light Has Come” which tells the story, as I imagined it, of the bent woman who I named Rachel.  My story of Rachel makes her a witness to Jesus’ miracles.  And at one point I weave Rachel’s story in with the Beatitudes, illustrating each with people that Rachel meets as she follows Jesus.

Throughout “Your Light Has Come,” I tell the story of people who were healed by Jesus, but more importantly, I share their imagined lives before they met Jesus and, for the most part, I tell the story of people who had people in their lives, had family or found family, had a community that they were a part of.

I spent all afternoon on Monday, watching my former community at work, looking out after one another, taking care of each other when torrential rains dropped two feet of rain on areas of Brevard County, Florida.

Specifically, I followed a man named Mike, from Mike’s Weather Page.  I have watched Mike for many years.  When I lived in Florida, he was who I turned to when hurricanes began forming deep in the Atlantic.  He started as a small weather hobbyist but has become someone who is now featured by the national news, CNN and Fox when storms impact Florida.

He is based in Tampa, but on Monday took his very large truck and headed to the east coast to document the flooding. 

I watched him for hours.  He was streaming live.  At one point he stopped, got out of his truck, waded through a foot of water over to where a bunch of cars had been left abandoned in the flooded street.  He was gone for some time, and we couldn’t hear what was going on, but when he returned, he had an old man with him. The old man’s car had stalled in the water.  Mike lifted the man up into his truck and then drove the man through the deep water to his development and then to his house where his wife was waiting anxiously at the front door.

Later, Mike helped another woman push her stalled car out of the road and onto the grass and safety.

Every time he passed an abandoned car (and there were hundreds), he checked carefully to see if anyone was trapped inside.

Mike’s goal in coming out to Brevard County was to document the weather event.  He is a storm chaser, but I like to think he is a lot less reckless than some.  Though I was getting anxious watching him drive through some of the water, not because I thought his truck would stall out, but because you couldn’t see the road and I knew how narrow those roads were.  You could be on the road and then neck deep in a ditch before you knew it.

And yes, Mike had a call into Fox news during his live stream.

But wherever he could help, he stopped to help.

I don’t think he would call himself a hero and I don’t call him a hero.

What I call him is something that seems so rare today, especially in our socio-political climate … Mike is simply a decent human being.

They do exist.

And he’s not alone.

In fact, I would say most human beings are decent human beings.  It’s just that what we are exposed to on TV, on social media, is generally the worst of the worst.

But Mike was not alone yesterday in helping people.  A friend of a friend was stuck in her car, swept away by flood waters, unable to get out until two good Samaritans (and the fact that we call strangers who help strangers Good Samaritans based on one of Jesus’ parables should tell you everything you need to know about the hidden and unspoken kindness that is in our very nature), but these two men helped get this woman out of her car.

Because no one knew how high the water would get, if you found yourself in a house that was beginning to flood, you needed to get out.  And so neighbors helped neighbors, kayaking down streets, air-boating down streets.

I saw a video of a couple trying to save a fish who most definitely did not have “flopping around on the sidewalk after a flood” on his bingo card that day.

Jesus helped the bent woman because she needed help.

That was it.

She needed nothing else.  She didn’t need to know Jesus personally.  She didn’t have to be some distant cousin on his mother’s side. 

She needed help.

It didn’t matter it was the Sabbath.

She needed help.

And Jesus helped her.

If only we could have even a fraction of that Jesus courage, to be brave, to do the right thing independent of what society tells us is right.

To love without condition.

To love with grace.

To show mercy.

To be kind.

May we all remember that today.

Amen.

Phony

Recently, I have been watching a new show on Hulu called Phony.

It is the story of a high school boy named Sonny who survives a horrible car accident only to wake up in the hospital, convinced the woman at his bedside is not his mom, that she’s an imposter.  But he’s the only one who thinks this.

His mother, Ellen, is played by actress Connie Britton, who might be familiar to you from shows like Friday Night Lights and Nashville.  She plays Sonny’s mom both before Sonny’s accident and after, and the show uses digital effects to alter her “after” appearance just enough to be unsettling. 

The central mystery of the story being is Ellen actually an imposter or is her son suffering from face blindness or something called Capgras syndrome, both neurological disorders that might explain Sonny’s confusion?

We are only three episodes into the season and while I have no idea how the season will end, I am fairly confident that whatever we think is going on right now as of episode three is probably not how things will turn out.

In fact, the title of the show implicitly makes us think Ellen, the mother, is the “Phony,” but over and over we are shown how Sonny behaves around his peers, adapting in seconds to be a people pleaser, agreeing with opinions he doesn’t share out of what seems like an earnest need to make people happy.

Is Sonny the “Phony” in the title?

But perhaps the show is making an even bigger, more broader statement about the state of the world these days, about how real we are with each other, how real people are on social media, and—as election day approaches—how real are the people we’re getting ready to vote for.

But I feel that maybe because what we are shown throughout the day on whatever screen it is we happen to be looking at is the very worst of human behavior that that may be a direct cause of the angst we feel in our hearts today, the pessimism or cynicism.  The world looks like the worst it has ever been.

Perhaps the reason the world feels so wrong today is that our expectations are too high. 

I don’t think they’re too high. 

I think it’s reasonable to want each new generation not only to be better off than the generation before, but to simply be—better.

But I think if we narrow our focus, if we concentrate on our immediate circles, our families, our friend circle, our church, our jobs—the people we come in contact with every day in real life—also known as IRL—we can see that there is goodness in the world.

There is sadness of course and suffering.  These things Jesus told us will always be with us, but there is goodness too, when we behave in a way that shows what our souls are truly capable of, when we live up to our soul’s potential.

Today’s reading from Ephesians brings so much comfort to my soul.

Let me share again the last part of that reading, “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”

What an awesome gift we have been given.

What an awesome responsibility we have to that gift—to build ourselves up in love.

Paul speaks of Jesus ascending and points out that Jesus could not ascend if He hadn’t already descended.

Jesus came down from heaven not to debase Himself, but so He could lift us up.  Paul writes therefore that “we must grow up in every way into him.” 

We must grow up into him.

Almost like a plant stretching itself toward the sun.  The plant never comes close, but that doesn’t stop it from trying.

Our souls stretch themselves toward the light and love of God. 

And we must do nothing to hamper that movement.  We must allow our souls to orient themselves to God.

Recently, someone (who asked me to keep them anonymous) cleaned the windows in the chapel.  She cleaned both the windows and the stained glass, and we both stood there with jaws open as what was once filmy and foggy became crystal clear.

Monday, as she cleaned, I told her about the rose bush on the other side of the window, how a couple of months ago, a single rose, in full bloom, began climbing toward the sky and light like no rose I had ever seen before.  It was a Jack and the Beanstalk rose.

When it first began its climb, I noticed it during Morning Prayer.  I always face those stained-glass windows, and I could see the red blur of the rose bloom as it grew up, at one point settling on a spot just above a stained-glass rose.

My dad would call that, I think, synchronicity.  I call it the divine artist at work. 

But we must be like that rose and grow up into Jesus.  It is not easy.  It makes us, in fact, pretty vulnerable.  But the journey, the effort, is so worth the price.

When I look at the world around me these days, the world that appears on our screens, I don’t see people growing up into Christ.  I see a lot of people content to remain right where they are, the place that Jesus descended to, rather than striving upward and toward the place Jesus ascended to.

Paul writes, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”

This is the world we see in social media, in the news … we are children, unmoored and vulnerable to trickery and scheming.

It is a world that screams at us that what we see is reality.

Even when the reality directly surrounding us in our home, our church may show us something different, a hurt and wounded people, yes, but a people surrounded by and embraced by the light and love of Jesus.

If you want to know what’s real and what’s phony in the world, listen for Jesus.

Our Jesus is rooted in love.  This is His language.  This is how we know Him.

Through love.

Orient yourself to that love and grow up and into Christ.

Amen.

Vote!

Yesterday, I drove out to the Board of Elections to vote early.  This is only my second time voting in person.  Prior to this, every time I voted in Florida, I voted via absentee ballot.  Ever since I have moved to Ohio, I have voted in person.  And it is a vastly different experience.

Two years ago, I found the experience to be very smooth.  If you know me, you know I get more nervous about driving somewhere new and finding parking than anything else.  As I drove to the Board of Elections yesterday the trip was familiar enough to quell that anxiety.

I laughed to myself when I passed a parking garage with a sign that said more parking for voting was available there and I thought that seems optimistic for voting in a year when the president is not up for election. 

I found parking quite close yesterday.  It was cool and I was walking briskly.  I realized only later that I was wearing all blue—I did not do that on purpose—though I can’t rule out that my subconscious may have dressed me that morning.  I was wearing blue jeans, a navy blue shirt and a blue jacket.

The only thing not blue on me were my sneakers.

And perhaps that’s why they caught the attention of the very first poll worker I saw.  She was waiting to greet everyone as soon as they walked through the door.  She was an older woman with gray hair and she was seated, but she moved to the edge of the seat, when she saw me.

I pointed to my left where the sign was pointing, but she immediately stopped me and said, “Those shoes look so comfortable!”

I stopped in my tracks.  “They are!” I said back not just because I was being friendly but because legitimately they are some of the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn.

“What kind are they?” she asked me, sliding off her chair so she could get a better look.

“Skechers,” I told her.

She pulled back.  “Those always feel heavy to me.”

“Oh, not these,” I told her.  “These are like walking on clouds, like pillows.”

“But they’re not slip-ons?” she asked.

“Oh, they’re slip-ons,” I said, and right there in the voting place, I slid off my right shoe and then slipped right back in again to show her.  “It’s that easy.”

Meanwhile, other people are filing in behind me and this woman who’s supposed to direct them as to where to go is laser-focused on my shoes.

I’m thinking they can read the signs.

And sure enough, everyone seemed to get where they needed to go.

“I have neuropathy,” the woman told me.  “I’m looking for a good pair of shoes.  Take them off again and show me how easily you can slip back in.”

So, once again, I took off my shoe to show her.

Let me just say that this conversation probably went on for five minutes or so and ended with her pulling out her phone so she could get a picture of the shoe.

I can only imagine what the people who came in behind me were thinking like, "Why are they making that woman take off her shoes?"

I eventually went on my way to vote and that was that.

But you know as soon as I got home, I was thinking to myself—God always gives me a story to tell and He knows I’m going to use this story in this week’s Morning Prayer reflection.

I have to admit that there was a part of me that didn’t want to vote this election.  It was not about apathy—I am so far from apathy—it wasn’t that I don’t care.  It was that a tiny bit of helplessness and hopelessness and pessimism had begun to take seed.  Not only the thought, did my vote matter, but even if all the people I voted for got elected would anything change in a meaningful way or are we too far gone as a society.

Part of the problem is that everything we see on the news is the worst of the worst of society.  And specifically with voting, we have been told whether we are democrat or republican that bad things might happen when we vote, that there will be people there watching us or discouraging us from voting, that the other side will cheat, that there will be mass chaos.

And then I showed up to vote yesterday and all I found was an old woman with neuropathy who wanted a pair of good shoes.

There is more light in this world than darkness.

And even the tiniest bit of light can drive out the darkest of nights.

The light of God’s love might some days feel like a pinprick, but if that pinprick is the light of a star winking at us in the night sky, then know that that pinprick of light has the power to illuminate galaxies. 

In today’s reading from Luke, Jesus tells the disciples “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!”

The disciples saw miracles, food to feed the poor, healing for the unwell and resurrection of the dead.

But we too can see the miracles that happen every day all around us.

What I saw at the Board of Elections yesterday was something that was both simple and profound—neighbor loving neighbor, strangers smiling at each other—good will and hope.

We are not so far gone as a people.

We can be each other’s light.

We can be Jesus to each other.

And all it takes is one step … in some pretty comfortable shoes.

Amen.

Jonah, Whalefall, Frozen 2 and Narnia

Recently I saw the trailer for a movie called Whalefall.  It is the story of a young man, who while scuba diving, gets in between a squid and a sperm whale just as the whale is getting ready to eat the squid.  The young man is swallowed whole and survives to find himself trapped in the whale’s first stomach. 

(Apparently, sperm whales have four stomachs.  Also, fun fact, the sperm whale is the largest mammal with teeth.)

So this guy is trapped in the whale’s belly with about an hour of air left in his tank and he has to find a way out.

And I’m sitting there watching this trailer thinking—okay this isn’t remotely believable.  Whenever we watch fictional movies or read fiction stories, we must always take with us a willing suspension of disbelief because there is always something that happens that makes us think—no way, that cannot happen.

And watching this movie trailer and seeing this man snug in the whale’s belly—I just could not suspend my disbelief.

Whalefall is not based on a true story, but considering our reading today, I know you are thinking of the story of Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish, though when I was a kid, it was always Jonah and the Whale. 

In the movie, Frozen 2, Olaf, the snowman comments to the group just as they are about to enter a part of their journey where they have no idea what will happen next that “an enchanted forest is a place for transformation.”  He then adds, “I can’t wait to see what it’s gonna do to each one of us.”

With both the young man in Whalefall and Jonah’s journey in the belly of the beast for three days, both men cross a threshold.  They enter a place of the unknown that will transform them into someone very different.  (Though I will add as an aside that Jonah emerges still cranky at the Ninevites.)

But all good stories have these threshold moments.  If the main character doesn’t change—if the main character remains the same from the beginning of the story to the end, well, what’s the point?  Character is plot and without those intense character moments, there is no plot, no movement.

Now you might say, “But Kendra, Jesus doesn’t change in the Gospels.  He’s the same in the end as He was in the beginning,” and I would say, “Ah, but Jesus is not the main character, is He?”

What?

We are the main characters in the New Testament or more specifically, our surrogates are the main characters, the disciples, the people who are healed.  Every person who comes into contact with Jesus or one of His disciples is changed forever.  They have crossed a threshold and nothing in their lives will ever be the same again.

Last night, I watched the trailer for the new Narnia movie, based on the book The Magician’s Nephew, and coming out in February next year, about fifty times.  I was mesmerized.  Over the past forty years, as I have read The Chronicles of Narnia over and over and over, my favorite book in the series has changed.  For many years, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite, but for most of my later adult years, my favorite has been The Magician’s Nephew.

The Magician’s Nephew is the story of how Narnia came to be, how the great lion Aslan literally sang the world into existence. 

There are threshold moments throughout the book from Digory and Polly’s decision to explore the attic spaces above the row homes, eventually leading them into Uncle Andrew’s magic laboratory, to Digory deciding to literally ring a bell that cannot be unrung, thereby imperiling Narnia for generations, before it even comes into existence.  And Digory’s final threshold moment coming when he has to make a very Eden-like choice, changes him forever.

The new movie, written and directed by Greta Gerwig who exploded into popularity with her take on Barbie, looks to be a wild choice.  Already fans are split from those who think the CGI elements overtake the movie, to someone like me who sees CGI being used not as a replacement for real work, but as a way to create a movie experience unlike anything you have seen before.  The soundtrack during the trailer is Stairway to Heaven and the final scene of the trailer, this kaleidoscope lightshow highlighting the emergence of Aslan is breathtaking.

Hence me watching it fifty times.

Threshold moments.  What have been some threshold moments in your life?  How have they changed you?  Where have you found God in those moments?  Are you in the middle of one of those moments right now?

I hope for two things as you encounter these moments, that you will trust that God is walking right beside you during those moments and that those moments will take your breath away as you see just how God is working to shape you into the person you were always meant to be.

Amen.

 

Who or What Are You Showering With?

When you are blind like I am and take off your glasses before stepping into the shower, sometimes, when you’re finished and you step back out and put on your glasses and turn around to close the curtain, you might notice that you had been showering with a wolf spider.

When I saw that spider the other day, I just stood there, exhausted.  I couldn’t even work up a good shudder.  I briefly considered just walking away and pretending I hadn’t seen it.

I will say that the spider looked even more traumatized than me.  He didn’t even flinch when I came at him with a whole roll of paper towels, because when you’re killing a wolf spider, it requires at least half a roll of paper towels.

Can you believe that it is October?  When Reverand Jane mentioned stewardship in her sermon this past Sunday, my first thought was “Stewardship?  But it’s March!”  And then I started counting the months out and realized it was October and in less than three months the year will be over.

It is cold enough now that there are no more sleeping bees.  The milkweed pods are bursting open with their silken seeds.  Dried leaves litter my yard and spill from the gutters.  Earlier in the summer the grass seemed to grow six inches overnight, but now it is slowing down.

The other morning when I went for a walk, I could see my breath fogging in front of me.

Several mornings, I have left for my walk, got to the end of the drive and said, “Nope,” and then turned back around to the house to grab a jacket.

We are rapidly approaching the time of year when I say, “Okay, we’re at that point where I won’t be warm again until May.”

Time flies so fast the older you get.  I was reading that the reason why time runs so slowly when we’re children is because everything is new.  Our brains are being bombarded with new information daily.  Perhaps that’s why the school year always seemed to last forever, but the summer flew by in a heartbeat.

The key to making time flow more slowly as we age is to engage in new things.  Learn a new language, a new skill.  Avoid the routine.  Even doing something as simple as taking a new route to a familiar place can slow down the pace of the day.

Or we can try a more contemplative approach and not just look for God wherever we are at but allow ourselves to get excited by the positive things that happen throughout our day. 

Our reading from Luke 7:18-35 has a lot in it, but I want to focus on this one verse.  Listen again, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.”

Can you imagine?

Let me ask that question again: Can you imagine?

Something amazing was happening.

Something wonderful and perhaps a little scary, because this Jesus, this guy from Nazareth, was doing some pretty incredible things.

People blind at birth are seeing again.

Paralyzed people are walking again.

Sick people are being made well again.

Perhaps you can pass off those things as naturally occurring.  Sometimes people do just get better.

But tucked into that list are these words, “… the dead are raised.”

Can you imagine?

I have spent the last few weeks working on two little books, one entitled “Lazarus, Come Out” and the other, “Little Girl, Wake Up.”  They are two works imagining the events surrounding Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus being raised from the dead.  Lazarus’ story is told from the point of view of his sisters in the days leading up to his death and the days following and the grief they feel and pain they feel from what they think are unanswered prayers.

Jairus’ daughter, who I have imagine with the name Anna, is the imagined story of what happened after she was raised from the dead.  What does it mean to live again?  How does a child comprehend what has just happened to them?

But whether it’s Lazarus or Anna or the son of the Widow of Nain (also raised from the dead), these were signs—the season was changing.  Something new was happening.  Time seemed frozen in those moments. 

What is the season of life you are currently inhabiting?  What are signs in your own lives that things are changing?  Where do you see God at work?

For me personally, I turned 50 earlier this year and apparently different parts of me reached their expiration date.  I had emergency gallbladder surgery in the spring.  And now, this fall, I have had my first two root canals and other tooth excitement.

I have been exhausted.

And yet, as far as my writing is concerned—I have never been so productive in all my life.

Writing sustains me.

Thinking about God fills me.

Finding God someplace new every day is what nudges me out of bed in the morning.

I mean a spider in the shower is what fueled this reflection.

Do something new today.  Look for God somewhere you wouldn’t expect to find Him.  I promise He is there.

Amen.

 

CHEER UP SLEEPY BEE

The other day, early in the morning, I was out for a walk when I noticed a sleeping bee hanging upside down from a dead milkweed leaf.  It is the season for sleeping bees and this year I have seen these vampire bees as I call them, sleeping, inexplicably, upside down.

But on this morning, the sun was just beginning to rise and when it did, it highlighted this tiny dewdrop suspended from the bee’s furry back.

It was just perfect.

Unfortunately, I had not brought my special close-up camera that morning.  I was carrying my more midrange camera.  In order to get a picture of the bee, I had to stand about four feet back and then try and zoom in.  It was not ideal.

And then I thought, you know, it’s a short walk, just a block, back to the house.  Should I go back, get my camera, and hope that the bee is still here?

So, I said, why not?

I “ran” back to the house (that’s ran in quotes because I am physically incapable of running), grabbed my special close-up camera and headed back to my sleeping bee.  But when I got back, I couldn’t find him.  I didn’t know if the sun had risen enough to warm him up and get him moving.  Had it flown away?  Luckily, I found another sleeping bee, hanging upside down from a dead milkweed leaf nearby, but this bee didn’t have the special sunlit dewdrop hanging from him.

Still, I was glad to get the picture.

But after I had taken a few pictures, I looked back at a nearby plant and saw my original sleeping bee.  He had not flown away—I had just forgotten what plant he was on.  The sunlit dewdrop wasn’t quite as spectacular, but I was so excited.  I turned on my camera, focused in on the bee, pressed the shutter release and … nothing.  The camera shut off.  The battery was dead.

For every story of the spectacular pictures I have gotten over the years, the rainbow over the rocket launch complex in Cape Canaveral, the pictures of hurricane damage that cost me my very first and, as of this second, only parking ticket of my life, the bobcat pictures at church, the baby swans swimming behind their mother in a retention pond, the flotilla of white pelicans making their way through the waters of the wetlands—for every one of those pictures, I have a story, but I also have a story for every picture I haven’t gotten.

And there have been many.

There is a scene in the movie The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya is sword fighting with the Man in Black and Inigo demands to know the Man in Black’s real name, but he won’t tell him, saying, “Get used to disappointment.”

But the disappointment I have had over the years with pictures has not stopped me from going out every day with my camera and searching out moments where God’s presence is so apparent it leaves you speechless.

Disappointment has not stopped me from taking risks, leaving the moment, so I can run back home for a camera.

 

I did that just yesterday when I passed a leaf hanging from a spider web.  I ran back inside, got my camera, took the picture, posted it online and said, “Look, even leaves have bad days.  This one is hanging by a thread.”

Haha.

But seriously, ask yourself this question:  When was the last time you stopped what you were doing and paused as you took in the world around you and acknowledged the wondrousness of God’s creation, the power of God’s love?

My confession this morning is that the reading I used for today is actually the reading assigned for tomorrow’s Morning Prayer (shhhh, don’t tell anyone), but I wanted to use it (Luke 6:1-11) because of the story of the man with the withered hand because it applies so much to the world around us these days.

So in this reading Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.  The Pharisees are standing nearby, waiting, hoping that Jesus heals the man, not because they think the man should be healed, but because if Jesus heals on the Sabbath, He will be breaking the law.  You can picture the Pharisees leaning forward, licking their lips, tenting their fingers in a true villain pose as they wait to see what everyone knows Jesus will do.

Jesus heals the man.

He doesn’t tell him to come back tomorrow.

He doesn’t ask him to prove that his withered hand is a true disability.

He doesn’t ask the man if it’s his fault—if he sinned—and that’s why he has a withered hand.

He doesn’t consider if the man is deserving of healing.

He doesn’t ask for the man’s papers.

He simply tells the man to come closer and stretch out his hand.

And the man’s hand is restored.

Healing the man is, as Jesus explains, doing good.  And there are no rules that bind us when it comes to doing good.  When we have the opportunity to help someone in need, we help them, unconditionally.

This is Jesus preaching radical empathy.

Now, what in the world does this have to do with bees, you might be asking?

Well, it has to do with this … I believe that in order for us to do big things in this world, we must first be able to do small things and then build from there, otherwise the needs of this world will overwhelm us.  We are not Jesus and I think even Jesus was occasionally overwhelmed.  Consider all the times He left the scene so He could go off by Himself and pray.

Before we can move out into the world, we must be able to address our inner world.  Before we can preach radical empathy in our own daily lives, in our actions, more than our words, we must learn to love God’s creation, all of God’s creation, on the smallest of scales.

For me, that means stopping to consider the sleeping bees.

It might mean something different for you, but I want you to think about it, to think about what made you pause today, where you saw God today, to linger in those God moments.

I have been researching sleeping bees.  They are able to sleep upside down by either hooking their little feet on the leaves or biting the leaf.  Their mandibles work in such away that once they bite down, even sleeping, they will not let go.

During this time of year, early fall, when the temperatures get around fifty degrees or so, it becomes cold enough that bees enter a state of torpor.  They are almost frozen still until the sun warms them enough to get them moving again.  The bees you see at this time of year are male bees who have been kicked out of the hive.  They cannot return.  I read one thing that said a good place to find them sleeping is in goldenrod.  And that all these bachelor bees tend to hang out together and sleep near each other.

As it happened, I knew exactly where to find some goldenrod Monday morning—right next to the milkweed where I had seen the other bees—so I went out, with a fully charged camera. 

My research was spot on.

There were dozens of sleeping bees among the goldenrod, hanging upside down in the cool, crisp morning.

It was a God moment.  And here’s the thing, I am pretty sure that those bees were there the day I had gone back home for my camera.  But now I was actively looking.

My prayer for us all this morning, is that we stop and pause and linger throughout the day as we explore where we see God around us.  It is a necessary prayerful practice that primes our hearts for the radical empathy that this world requires of us.

Amen.