Rejoice

“Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.  Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoicing is a beautiful thing.  JOY is a beautiful thing.  But it isn’t happiness…it isn’t something that just happens to us,  (happenstance, happiness), as if we have no control.  Happiness is temporary, fleeting, a feeling… I would encourage you to jump over to my post about Happiness.

Rejoicing is praising, exalting our King, even when it’s hard, painful, confusing…even when we don’t really feel like praising the Lord.  Even when bad things happen, tragic events and depressing times.  When Paul tells us to “rejoice in the Lord always” he wasn’t joking…or talking about just when it’s fun, or easy, or enjoyable.  

As I mentioned in my “Happy” post, 

The Holy Spirit is my source of joy, that will never end.  Happiness is fleeting, but JOY lasts forever.

 And for that, we rejoice!  Why would we bottle up such joy?  Rejoice!  Show that great joy and delight!  Dance for Jesus!  Shout praises!  Sing to the Lord!  And show the love of our Savior who died for you and me and every single person (even the ones who are so irritating, or close minded, or loose, or rude, or nasty, or selfish or just plain evil.  For all of us.  

For that I will never stop rejoicing!  

I pray that as we continue journeying to the cross this Holy Week that you would take some time to sit, meditate, pray, walk, breathe, read the Word, and welcome the Holy Spirit into your life to transform you, and to give you a reason to rejoice. 

Love, Mycah

 

Lent Reflection, Day 28: Silence

In my life today, I adore silence.  Silence in my life now means that my children are sleeping, that my dishes are done, and that the seemingly constant demands upon my life have been met (if even only temporarily.)  Silence means that, if only for a brief moment, I can sit in a space of time that is vacant and not feel the pressure to fill that vacancy with busy-ness or thought.  Silence, for me, is an indulgence–a time to pay attention just to the quiet thoughts in my head–in which I don’t have to be concerned for anyone, helping anyone, encouraging anyone but myself.  In silence, I don’t have to be thinking outwardly at all.

I don’t think that in today’s busy, over-scheduled, over-marketed, constant-noise society, I’m the only one who values the benefits of silence…even if the constant chant of society is that we don’t value it enough.

Which is why it was hard for me to read that, in Scripture, silence is most often not a good thing.  And it is not a good thing for the very same reasons that I value it–for it’s self centeredness, for it’s lack of movement, for it’s disregard of others.

Job talks about silence the most: “Will your idle talk reduce others to silence?  Will no one rebuke you when you mock?” “He silences the lips of trusted advisers and takes away the discernment of elders.” “Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.”

Psalms comes in a close second, saying “Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land…” “Whoever slanders their neighbor in secret, I will put to silence…” “Unless the Lord had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.”

I know these are just quick snippets with no context and some pretty stark language, but hopefully you can still grasp my point: in Scripture, silence is something that is reserved for the wicked or incapable because “to be silenced” often means “not to contribute.”  To be made to sit in silence means to be rendered useless, harmful, or–worse–dead.  If you were silent, you were not proclaiming.  If you were silent, you were not defending.  If you were silent, you were either forced to be that way, or you were just flat out lazy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had the same issue with silence.  “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  And again, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”  And again, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”  MLK, Jr. is joined by Eli Weisel, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.  We must always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented.”  These men, who dedicated their lives to breaking the silences surrounding racial oppression and the Holocaust, respectively, see silence as permission.  Permission for the status quo to carry on.  Permission for oppression to remain unchallenged.  Permission for evil to have more power over good.

Don’t hear me wrong: I’m not saying that we should never be still or take rest.  I mean, let’s be real–if God decides to take a rest, then I think that’s permission enough.  But what I am saying is that, for as loud and noisy and busy as our society is, we sure are silent the vast majority of the time.  We are silent about big things, like extreme poverty and genocide, and we are silent about quieter things, like mental illness and addiction.

Talking incessantly is not the same as breaking the silence.

Just as being cognitively aware of the injustices of this world is no competition for the self-absorbed silences that we often conduct our actions in.

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” –Abraham Lincoln

 

 

Lent Reflection, Day 26: Ate

There are stories throughout Scripture that talk about meals and feasting and food, about people eating and about people starving and about people being either welcomed to or denied a seat at the table.  Some of these stories are simple and delicate, such as when Jesus’ disciples walk through the grain fields, running their hands over the tops of the plants and snacking in the sunlight.  Some of these stories are elaborate, such as when David searched throughout far lands to find Mephibosheth in order to rightfully give him a place at the king’s table, where he would eat for the rest of his life.  But these are only two stories in a myriad of others that center on food and eating, which then almost always segue way into stories about community, belonging and exclusion, and–maybe most profoundly–purpose.   

There are two stories about eating in particular that have shaped the foundations of the Christian faith: the story of Adam and Eve, and the story of The Last Supper.  In both stories, the act of eating changes the purpose of those who ate.  For Adam and Eve, once living without the knowledge of good and evil, they were transformed by becoming not only aware of God and His good, but also becoming aware of evil and it’s darkness–of shame, brokeness and injustice.  And that knowledge transformed their DNA, changing humanity from a people who were intended to be in relationship with their Creator into a people who where, all of a sudden, alone.

At the Last Supper, Jesus surrounds himself with his friends (and his enemy) and gives them bread and wine, repurposing that simple food as an illustration of his body and sacrifice that, upon consuming it, his friends could repurpose themselves as well, changing from fishermen and tax collectors into men of vision, and hope, and inspiration, for thousands of generations following their martyrdom.

And I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that these two stories standing at the core of our faith–stories that describe what life and death really are beyond the confines of our soft heartbeats and fragile breath–both center on what people ate.  Because what we consume transforms us. 

And what we consume will consume us.  

Years ago, when I was in high school, I remember the local youth pastor talking about guarding ourselves from things that corrupt us and, instead, seeking to consume things that would purify us.  He used the example of salt in a cake, saying that if there was too much salt in the batter, then the cake wouldn’t rise as it was intended to rise or taste sweet as it was intended to taste.  The salt would consume the flavor of the cake.  And once the salt was in the batter, there was no getting it out. In other words, once the cake batter consumed the salt, it was forever ruined.

And I don’t actually mind that analogy, apart from one thing–while it’s true that there is no getting salt out of cake batter, there is always the option of getting a bigger bowl and adding more batter to the salt.  Nothing is forever ruined.  I mean, that’s the Good News of the gospel, right?  That if we stop consuming the fruit that forces us to look evil in the face, and instead consume the bread and wine that provide us energy for being blessings of hope, and peace, and justice, we will actually become those things.  We will be transformed into hope and peace and justice and love and kindness and compassion.  

And, if we are transformed, we will transform the world too.  

“Tell it like it is (And on this land, we cast our fortune)/ Till there’s no misunderstanding (And on this ground, we make our home)/ You make up what you like/ Man feed machine/ Machine feed man.”  –Peter Gabriel

 

 

Lent Reflections, Day 8: Evil

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our [human] race can fall about the devils.  One is to disbelieve in their existence.  The other is to believe, and to feel and excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”  C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

One of the reasons why C. S. Lewis’ quotation above strikes me is because it highlights the two ways that I am most comfortable (if I can even say such a thing) approaching evil: either make a joke out of it, or put on my doomsday voice (if I even have such a thing) and warn of the lurking corners of darkness that the everyday human avoids out of ignorance or apathy.

The truth is, evil is very difficult for me to consider with any sustained amount of concentration.  Maybe part of that is because the classification of what is evil and what isn’t evil has been so hard fought and wrestled over–in politics, between religions, amongst cultures–that labeling something as evil is equivalent to picking a fight.  And, in case you haven’t heard it in my tone as of yet, I’m one with little patience for social bickering.

Maybe another reason why I find evil so hard to consider is because evil can have a subjective-kind-of-nature to it.  For example, a bottle of wine can be a part of a nice evening with friends for some, whereas, for the recovering alcoholic, it can feel more like a portal into a world of chaos and shame.  A bottle of wine can be evil, but isn’t always.  Or let’s take it one step further, when sometimes the same thing can be declared evil for two different and opposite reasons.  For example, taxes.  Those who want them paid are robbing the entrepreneur of the rewards of hard work and perseverance, whereas those who don’t want them paid are selfish and cold hearted, uncaring of the “least of these” in society.  (Insert easy “but we all knew taxes were evil” joke here.)

Or maybe the reason I find evil so difficult to consider is because I just don’t want to.

I don’t want to consider how evil may be closer to me than I initially imagine, and I don’t want to consider how powerless evil can make me feel.  I don’t want to consider how evil can permeate distant actions, especially if those “distant actions” are my own actions far away from another global citizen.  I don’t want to consider the life lost, the dreams extinguished, the survival inadequate.  I want to think that evil is powerless if I am dedicated to goodness.

But that’s not true either.

People who are dedicated to goodness still experience evil.  Sometimes, people who are dedicated to goodness are still complicit in evil–the photo above is a picture of wealthy, high rise hotels, devoid of windows so that guests will not see the slums across the street.  Evil is like cancer–it crosses every generation, all socio-economic boundaries, all races and cultures.  We can do our best to try and avoid it, but at the end of the day, evil goes where evil wants.  And that’s why I hate it.  I hate evil’s autonomy, it’s imperviousness, and it’s destruction.

And so, what else can I say?  Evil is there.  And to ignore it or to dwell on it won’t change it’s existence and won’t stop it’s coming.  Maybe it appears differently for some people instead of others.  Maybe it’s obvious, like genocide.  Or maybe it’s subtle, like the quiet thought in the silence of solitude.  But it’s there.  And it’s here. With us.

I will say this one last thing–I do think that we can be free of evil.  On a large scale, that’s why I’m a Christian (a perfect kingdom with no tears and all that).  But on a small scale, I think that evil relishes in the loss of full life.  And in the times where evil has been the most obvious–the Holocaust, Rwanda, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and so on–it was allowed to persist until people were united in contributing to the full life of other people they most often did not know.  What I am saying is that it’s not enough to just do no harm–we have heard story after story in Germany of those who “did no harm” but also “did no good.”  If we are to keep evil from having the last word, then I am convinced that we need to intend and conform our actions to the principle of sharing the fullness life with every human.  Maybe that’s a simple hug or a listening ear, maybe it’s giving someone you want to keep to make your own life full, maybe it’s a full blown revolution.  But, whatever it is, I believe we each need to be a part of it, all the time.  Fullness of life doesn’t just happen on it’s own.

I think that’s why Jesus said that lust was just as bad as adultery, and anger was just as wicked as murder, because thoughts centered around lust and anger do not contribute to the full life of the other, even though the thoughts themselves “do no harm.”  They objectify, de-humanize, and distance one person from another so that the other person isn’t a person made in the image of God (just like you and me), but just an object for our consumption, for our satisfaction, for our service, for our ridicule.  And perhaps that is, at the root of it, just simple evil.  Just plain and simple, devastating evil.

Where do you see and experience evil?  And what are the ways that you can contribute to the fullness of life, be it for those you love or those who nobody loves?