"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." -1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
"Love laid down to bring to life all that's lost inside." -Love Laid Down, Green River Ordinance
If you've ever been to a wedding, chances are you've heard 1 Corinthians 13. At least some of it.
You know the section though. It begins, "Love is patient. Love is kind..." and so on and so forth. It's a lovely and pithy few statements from one of Paul's letters to the people of Corinth. We've probably heard it so often that we've lost how incredibly profound it all is.
A couple of weeks ago I was meeting up with a few high school students to talk about a sermon on love and marriage when this particular passage came up. Don't get me wrong, I'm intimately familiar with these few verses. If I've heard them once, I've heard them one hundred and one times. They're not exactly earth-shattering nowadays.
But the other night, something about it felt fresh.
Love is hard. It's really hard. But so often we sell it short. We're surrounded by Disney princess stories and Nicholas Sparks fairy tales of romance and excitement that we've reduced love to an emotion with butterflies in our stomach and an emoji with hearts for eyes.
We've substituted an emotion for what was meant to be a verb.
I've got to confess that I am not all of the things that Paul professes love to be. I'm not always patient and I'm fairly proud. I can get really jealous and be really rude. But as I sat there with those high school guys, I started to think maybe that wasn't the point.
I started to think that maybe all of those attributes that Paul mentioned were ways of practicing love. Follow me for a second. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice being patient and not envious, we will be more about love. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice holding our tongue and putting others first, we will fall more in love. Perhaps it's the case that as we practice not bragging and telling the truth we'll experience a deeper taste of love than we ever have and that our relationships will richer and deeper than we've ever shared.
I think there's something to this, that if love really is all of these things, then as we practice living them out we will experience more and more love. I think if we're willing to practice the hard and sacrificial things that love is, our experience of love will be all the greater. We'll stop settling for some second-rate emotion because we'll have redefined that love could be.
But I think there's another side to this passage to. It doesn't just exist in a vacuum as a nice saying. It's part of a bigger letter. And right before Paul writes this, he has some other things to say about love. "If I speak in tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal," he writes. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."
There's another layer to what Paul is saying about love. Paul could do all of the right things, but if love wasn't there, they would mean nothing. Love is deeper than simple actions, no matter how kind and sincere they might be.
Let me offer a modern translation: "If I tell you the sweetest things and tell you how beautiful you are every day, but don't have love, my words are nothing more than Rebecca Black lyrics. If I leave roses on your doorstep, but don't have love, they might as well be dried up and dead. If I buy you nice things and always open the door, but don't have love, I'm not really worth your time."
Those are all nice things, don't get me wrong. I try to do most of them, in fact. But they are not love. Don't let them be confused. Love is not being sweet and doing romantic things. Love is much deeper.
When you love someone or are loved by someone, you should become more patient. They should brag a little less and not hold things over your head. You should become less jealous and they should be less proud. You should be honest and they should be slower to anger.
These traits become a litmus test for love. The more we practice the hard work of love well, the more we should experience these traits. The more we should embody these traits. Love should bring them out in us, and we should see them in brighter colors in the ones we are with.
Let me add one final note. Most of us have been surrounded by messages about what love is since the day we were born. Some of us have lived through unhealthy and abusive relationships, and we've trained ourselves to believe that that is what love looks like. We've bought into the lie that that is all we can faithfully expect. We've convinced ourselves that the love Paul talks about might be nice, but we should settle.
Love looks a lot of different ways. It wears many clothes and comes in many shapes and sizes. But it should always bear the fruit Paul describes.
So may we stop settling for half-hearted expressions of love, believing the lie that romance and sentiment and love are the same. May we allow love to transform us, drawing us towards more kindness and honesty and patience. May we learn to embody love in all of its shapes when its heart is rooted in the love that Paul describes. And may we lean into relationships that teach us more and more what love looks like.
forever unfinished...
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Chick-Fil-A...
"We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same." -"Our Deepest Fear," Marianne Williamson
"I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other." -John 13:34-5
I was recently dating a girl. Now I'm not. I know, it's not the first blog that's started that way.
She's a great girl, just not the one right now. When we stopped dating, she wrote me a letter. (P.S. That's totally cool. I LOVE letters! They're a lost art.) At the end of the letter she finished, "You have always inspired me to be the best person I can be. Please continue to spread your joy with others."
Wow! There truly couldn't be a greater compliment. That meant more to me than anything. I am certainly not the world's greatest guy in a relationship. But I was so humbled. Something about the time we'd spent together had made her life a little better and given her a little wider picture of love, and now she's sending more light out into her surroundings.
And that got me thinking. Things aren't great in our world.
That's not saying anything groundbreaking. But it's not just in the midst of the election results. Clearly, if the past 11 days have shown us anything, it's that there is a lot of fear and pain in our world that has been building for a long, long time. And it's not limited to one region or one party or one gender or one race.
Institutional and relational racism remain in our world. Executives are making obscene bonuses while workers are left struggling to manage the budget day-to-day and paycheck-to-paycheck. Neighborhoods have become increasingly segregated by class, race, ideology, and status. Teen suicide rates are at an all-time high, while mental illness affects more and more each day. We've developed better relationships with things than we have with people. Leaders have misused their power and roles to lie, cheat, abuse those under their care.
We've let fear of others and fear of the unknown dictate our choices. The pain in the world is real. For some, it feels insurmountable.
But that's not how the world was meant to be.
There's a beautiful word in the Hebrew language: shalom. You know the word, even if you don't know Hebrew. It's usually translated "peace." And peace is a great thing. But it's not exactly what shalom means.
No, its meaning is MUCH deeper. Shalom is about wholeness, completeness, order. When things are in a state of shalom, they are all working together in harmony and perfect rhythm.
And that's how the Bible tells us creation started. God created and called everything "good." There was a garden, and the trees, the animals, the first two people, and God were all living in perfect harmony, in shalom. There wasn't competition. There wasn't fear. They were working together and there was perfect reliance on one another.
But that's clearly not the story we are living in today. Everything is not in shalom. But shalom should always remain the due north to which our compasses point. Followers of Jesus should recognize the deep pain of our world and our neighbors better than anyone because we have an anchoring story for what the world should be. We should never overlook it or dismiss it. It should pain our souls.
But we should also always remember that that pain is not the last part of the story. We should always be looking for the light, working to make more shalom in our midst.
One of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, writes in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, "Cynics seek darkness wherever they go. They point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes. They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental... People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness."
I think that what it means to follow Jesus is that we leave the fingerprints of light and shalom where darkness and sin have left pain and brokenness. We should be particularly tuned into the pain of our neighbors and then work to jump into the light that God is seeking to shine into the broken places in our world. The world started with shalom, and that is where God is moving it again.
The world should be better because people who love Jesus are a part of it. Our neighborhoods and our schools and our workplaces should feel the fingerprints of God's grace because we passed through them. After all, that was Jesus' charge to his friends at their last meal together. "When people see you," he told them, "they should know you are my followers because of how big you love." In other words, they should see you adding more shalom to the world.
I was in the drive-thru line with one of my students the other day after the election results had come through. They were talking about the fears they felt. They were upset at all the hate they saw in the world. And as we were ordering and getting ready to pay, we looked at each other and decided that we couldn't fix every one of the world's problems. But we were also definitely going to make the world a more shalom-y place, little by little.
So we paid for the meal of the woman behind us in line. Her check was even more than ours! HA! And as we were pulling away, we could see her smiling and waving in the rearview mirror. We'll never know anything about that woman, except that for one instant, there was more shalom in her life because two strangers wanted to leave the fingerprints of love on a fast food order.
This is a really small story, but I'm more convinced by the day that we are called to work to bring light into the world. We are called to see how deeply broken things are and to call those out those things that bring darkness and oppression. We are called to recognize the pain our neighbors feel and comfort them and work to alleviate the mechanisms that keep them in pain. We are called to see the darkness.
But we 're never called simply to point it out. We are never called to settle in it. And we're never called to let others settle their either. We are called to see it and help others recognize that there is light in our midst.
So may we see the places sin has left things out of shalom, the places where relationships and structures are broken and people aren't living the fullness of life they were designed for. And may we be people who work to bring light into that darkness. May we be the kind of people who have the audacity to believe that things can be better. May we be accused of naivety and childish dreaming for believing the world is capable of working in harmony. And may we get our hands dirty in that work of shalom.
forever unfinished...
"I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other." -John 13:34-5
I was recently dating a girl. Now I'm not. I know, it's not the first blog that's started that way.
She's a great girl, just not the one right now. When we stopped dating, she wrote me a letter. (P.S. That's totally cool. I LOVE letters! They're a lost art.) At the end of the letter she finished, "You have always inspired me to be the best person I can be. Please continue to spread your joy with others."
Wow! There truly couldn't be a greater compliment. That meant more to me than anything. I am certainly not the world's greatest guy in a relationship. But I was so humbled. Something about the time we'd spent together had made her life a little better and given her a little wider picture of love, and now she's sending more light out into her surroundings.
And that got me thinking. Things aren't great in our world.
That's not saying anything groundbreaking. But it's not just in the midst of the election results. Clearly, if the past 11 days have shown us anything, it's that there is a lot of fear and pain in our world that has been building for a long, long time. And it's not limited to one region or one party or one gender or one race.
Institutional and relational racism remain in our world. Executives are making obscene bonuses while workers are left struggling to manage the budget day-to-day and paycheck-to-paycheck. Neighborhoods have become increasingly segregated by class, race, ideology, and status. Teen suicide rates are at an all-time high, while mental illness affects more and more each day. We've developed better relationships with things than we have with people. Leaders have misused their power and roles to lie, cheat, abuse those under their care.
We've let fear of others and fear of the unknown dictate our choices. The pain in the world is real. For some, it feels insurmountable.
But that's not how the world was meant to be.
There's a beautiful word in the Hebrew language: shalom. You know the word, even if you don't know Hebrew. It's usually translated "peace." And peace is a great thing. But it's not exactly what shalom means.
No, its meaning is MUCH deeper. Shalom is about wholeness, completeness, order. When things are in a state of shalom, they are all working together in harmony and perfect rhythm.
And that's how the Bible tells us creation started. God created and called everything "good." There was a garden, and the trees, the animals, the first two people, and God were all living in perfect harmony, in shalom. There wasn't competition. There wasn't fear. They were working together and there was perfect reliance on one another.
But that's clearly not the story we are living in today. Everything is not in shalom. But shalom should always remain the due north to which our compasses point. Followers of Jesus should recognize the deep pain of our world and our neighbors better than anyone because we have an anchoring story for what the world should be. We should never overlook it or dismiss it. It should pain our souls.
But we should also always remember that that pain is not the last part of the story. We should always be looking for the light, working to make more shalom in our midst.
One of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, writes in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, "Cynics seek darkness wherever they go. They point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes. They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental... People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness."
I think that what it means to follow Jesus is that we leave the fingerprints of light and shalom where darkness and sin have left pain and brokenness. We should be particularly tuned into the pain of our neighbors and then work to jump into the light that God is seeking to shine into the broken places in our world. The world started with shalom, and that is where God is moving it again.
The world should be better because people who love Jesus are a part of it. Our neighborhoods and our schools and our workplaces should feel the fingerprints of God's grace because we passed through them. After all, that was Jesus' charge to his friends at their last meal together. "When people see you," he told them, "they should know you are my followers because of how big you love." In other words, they should see you adding more shalom to the world.
I was in the drive-thru line with one of my students the other day after the election results had come through. They were talking about the fears they felt. They were upset at all the hate they saw in the world. And as we were ordering and getting ready to pay, we looked at each other and decided that we couldn't fix every one of the world's problems. But we were also definitely going to make the world a more shalom-y place, little by little.
So we paid for the meal of the woman behind us in line. Her check was even more than ours! HA! And as we were pulling away, we could see her smiling and waving in the rearview mirror. We'll never know anything about that woman, except that for one instant, there was more shalom in her life because two strangers wanted to leave the fingerprints of love on a fast food order.
This is a really small story, but I'm more convinced by the day that we are called to work to bring light into the world. We are called to see how deeply broken things are and to call those out those things that bring darkness and oppression. We are called to recognize the pain our neighbors feel and comfort them and work to alleviate the mechanisms that keep them in pain. We are called to see the darkness.
But we 're never called simply to point it out. We are never called to settle in it. And we're never called to let others settle their either. We are called to see it and help others recognize that there is light in our midst.
So may we see the places sin has left things out of shalom, the places where relationships and structures are broken and people aren't living the fullness of life they were designed for. And may we be people who work to bring light into that darkness. May we be the kind of people who have the audacity to believe that things can be better. May we be accused of naivety and childish dreaming for believing the world is capable of working in harmony. And may we get our hands dirty in that work of shalom.
forever unfinished...
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Speak...
"...then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being." -Genesis 2:7
"Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus." -Mr. Holland's Opus
There are certain movies that bring me to tears every time. No matter how many times I see them or how prepared I am for what is coming next, my tear ducts are activated.
Mr. Holland's Opus is one of those movies.
Yesterday afternoon I laid down for a lazy afternoon on the couch and plugged in the movie in hopes of a little nap. No such luck.
In case you've never seen it, Mr. Holland's Opus chronicles the life of Glenn Holland, a high school music teacher who always dreamed of bigger things. He wanted to compose and conduct. He wanted to be famous and never imagined teaching was the route to that dream, but only an obstacle.
And yet, by the end of the movie there are 40 years worth of students who have been shaped and molded and inspired to become something more than they were. There are knuckleheads, stoners, flunkers, hopeless cases, and more. Whether it had been his life goal or not, teaching had been Mr. Holland's greatest success.
The movie closes with the school board deciding that budget restrictions necessitate the closing of the music program. All those years. All those students. All those lives changed. Done, without a glimmer of appreciation. Until he is cleaning out his office and walking out of the school for the final time.
Hearing a murmur from the auditorium, he curiously walks in to investigate, where he is met with a full room and a raucous ovation. After taking his seat, his very first student walks in to deliver a final note of appreciation.
"Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his," she begins. "And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong, because I think he has achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are you symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life."
We all have the capacity to be what Mr. Holland was to his students. We all have the potential to unleash the potential in others, recognizing in them what they may not recognize in themselves.
The book of Genesis begins with a story of creation. Seeing a dark and formless void, God creates the heaven and the earth. And how does God create? God speaks. "Let there be... and it was good." God speaks things into being.
In Genesis 2, the writers tell a story of creation a little different than in Genesis 1. God gets God's hands dirty in the mud forming the garden. And when the garden is done, it's time to create people. So God takes some of the dust and creates man's form. But it's not finished. Yes, it looks like a person and probably smells like a person, but there's no life in him. There's no inspiration. So God breathes into his nostrils and fills his lungs with God's breath. The same breath that spoke the world into being in Genesis 1. And the man comes alive.
We still have that same breath in our lungs. We still have the breath that can bring life out of nothing and speak hope into darkness.
Our words have the ability to tell people who they are, to recognize in them the potential they don't recognize in themselves. This isn't about self-esteem or unwarranted praise. No, this is about seeing the dust the same way God did (ready to be unleashed with possibility) and breathing into it the same life God did. This is taking the breath that sparks our imagination and our joy and sharing it with others.
Think about it. How much more do you respond to encouragement than critique? How much more do you aspire when people recognize your gifts and your possibilities instead of your limitations? How could a life be re-shaped if we were willing to tell a teenage girl of her infinite worth rather than call her a slut for choices she'd made? How could a life be transformed if we were willing to tell a young man of the immense potential he carried within him instead of drawing attention to all the times he had failed to meet expectations?
Our voices carry weight, so may we take the breath that fills our lungs with life and breathe it into our neighbors. May we animate others with the same spark of inspiration and possibility that brought life out of the dust. May we speak something into nothing, writing a new chapter in a story that felt complete. May we pass on the breath of God.
forever unfinished...
"Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus." -Mr. Holland's Opus
There are certain movies that bring me to tears every time. No matter how many times I see them or how prepared I am for what is coming next, my tear ducts are activated.
Mr. Holland's Opus is one of those movies.
Yesterday afternoon I laid down for a lazy afternoon on the couch and plugged in the movie in hopes of a little nap. No such luck.
In case you've never seen it, Mr. Holland's Opus chronicles the life of Glenn Holland, a high school music teacher who always dreamed of bigger things. He wanted to compose and conduct. He wanted to be famous and never imagined teaching was the route to that dream, but only an obstacle.
And yet, by the end of the movie there are 40 years worth of students who have been shaped and molded and inspired to become something more than they were. There are knuckleheads, stoners, flunkers, hopeless cases, and more. Whether it had been his life goal or not, teaching had been Mr. Holland's greatest success.
The movie closes with the school board deciding that budget restrictions necessitate the closing of the music program. All those years. All those students. All those lives changed. Done, without a glimmer of appreciation. Until he is cleaning out his office and walking out of the school for the final time.
Hearing a murmur from the auditorium, he curiously walks in to investigate, where he is met with a full room and a raucous ovation. After taking his seat, his very first student walks in to deliver a final note of appreciation.
"Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his," she begins. "And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong, because I think he has achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are you symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life."
We all have the capacity to be what Mr. Holland was to his students. We all have the potential to unleash the potential in others, recognizing in them what they may not recognize in themselves.
The book of Genesis begins with a story of creation. Seeing a dark and formless void, God creates the heaven and the earth. And how does God create? God speaks. "Let there be... and it was good." God speaks things into being.
In Genesis 2, the writers tell a story of creation a little different than in Genesis 1. God gets God's hands dirty in the mud forming the garden. And when the garden is done, it's time to create people. So God takes some of the dust and creates man's form. But it's not finished. Yes, it looks like a person and probably smells like a person, but there's no life in him. There's no inspiration. So God breathes into his nostrils and fills his lungs with God's breath. The same breath that spoke the world into being in Genesis 1. And the man comes alive.
We still have that same breath in our lungs. We still have the breath that can bring life out of nothing and speak hope into darkness.
Our words have the ability to tell people who they are, to recognize in them the potential they don't recognize in themselves. This isn't about self-esteem or unwarranted praise. No, this is about seeing the dust the same way God did (ready to be unleashed with possibility) and breathing into it the same life God did. This is taking the breath that sparks our imagination and our joy and sharing it with others.
Think about it. How much more do you respond to encouragement than critique? How much more do you aspire when people recognize your gifts and your possibilities instead of your limitations? How could a life be re-shaped if we were willing to tell a teenage girl of her infinite worth rather than call her a slut for choices she'd made? How could a life be transformed if we were willing to tell a young man of the immense potential he carried within him instead of drawing attention to all the times he had failed to meet expectations?
Our voices carry weight, so may we take the breath that fills our lungs with life and breathe it into our neighbors. May we animate others with the same spark of inspiration and possibility that brought life out of the dust. May we speak something into nothing, writing a new chapter in a story that felt complete. May we pass on the breath of God.
forever unfinished...
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