SACRED SILENCE

Have you ever been speechless? Have you ever been so deeply moved that you no words would form? When we hear of a diagnosis, a death, a loss, and find words are simply inadequate?

It happens to me a lot. I get a call and someone I care about has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. What do you say? I want to be encouraging, but not sure I feel encouraged. I feel awful and find that no words are powerful enough to express my sadness for them or my helplessness in relation to their illness. I sometimes say "That really sucks!!" But, those words are no sooner out of my mouth when I feel foolish. Nothing is strong enough.

So, what do you do? I find that it helps to realize that nothing will be adequate.  The conversation will be awkward because both parties do not have words to express their feelings. It sometimes helps to ask some questions like, "When did they find out? or What kind of treatment are they going to do? or Who else have you shared this with? or What do you think you are going to do." But, we will run out of questions and silence will swallow any other word we might try to utter.

Now, the fact is, most of us will feel awkward and inadequate. There may be long periods of silence.  And silence often scares us.  When no one says anything we fill in the blanks with the anxiety we are feeling.  We project our feelings on to others. Silence has a certain emptiness to it.

But, remember, you are making contact.  You are reaching out. You are trying to speak a language that is unfamiliar to both you and the person you love. Neither of you has been here before. This is a foreign country with a foreign language.

Remember that we can't solve other's problems, but our silence communicates our respect for the depth of life with which another is struggling. And we can accompany another as they seek to work out their fear and their future. And the awareness that another person cares to be silent with us can sometimes be the strength we need to take the next step on an unwanted pilgrimage.

Silence in respect for the depth of another's experience can be a sacred space where some healing can happen. 

THANKS DADDY

Hiking today in the warming weather, sun shining, heart lighter. The dark clouds of frigid cold have taken a break and allowed the warming sun to melt the shoulder-hunched heart.

And I am thinking about my Daddy.  I am wondering how he would have handled my frustration during these past couple of days. My computer would not work and I was grouchy.  I couldn’t get my calendars to sync. I couldn’t write my blog. I had to type email replies on those little keys on my phone. (Not exactly life threatening frustrations.)

The reason I was thinking about my Daddy is that he would have known what to do. You see, he was creative and resilient. He could take any tool and make it do what he wanted. It is said that the key to getting things done is having the right tool. Well, my Daddy believed that the key to getting things done is making the tools you have do what you want them to do.

So, if he didn’t have a wrench, he would take the pliers he had and use them.  If they were not working, he would add a piece of scrap pipe to the end of the handles to get a tighter grip. If the job needed a chisel and he only had a screw driver, he made it into a chisel. 

This is the unwanted gift my Daddy received by being a child of the depression. It was a gift he probably would have preferred doing without, but one that made it possible for him to survive and provide a living for his wife and five children. 

Now, I admit that I didn’t inherit my Daddy’s tool skills. But, I am grateful for the gift he gave me of believing that I could make it with the gifts I had been given.  It doesn’t keep me from getting grouchy when I have to adapt, but it does enable me to stay with the tools I do have available for my work and get the job done.

On this warming day in a painfully cold winter, I am grateful for my Daddy.

PARTY TIME

[This post is the final in a series of devotions on forgiveness that I first published last year in a leaders’ devotional book, "Disciplines 2013" from The Upper Room. This is based on a reading found in Psalm 32: 1 & 11 and Luke 15:22-24]

This is the day to take a breath.  This is a day of celebration. The parable reveals a father who is so delighted with the return of the lost that he stops production for a  party.  The compulsion that often captures those who are responsible for providing the resources for sustaining life is suspended.  Get the best food and the party hats and let us take time out to rejoice and sing for joy.  

When the alienated are finally reunited, when the hard work of forgiveness is under way, when the conversations that have been interrupted begin again, even haltingly, it is time to party.  It is time to acknowledge that something new is happening.  It is time to taste the first fruits of the reign of God.  It is time to allow happiness to overtake us and to shout for joy.

All too often we fail to join this party.  Our churches can be so caught up in holding people accountable for their mistakes that we can’t experience the joy of forgiveness and the freedom to discover a new way.  The burden of ungrieved loss and disappointment weights us down and we are lost in the prison of the past, unable to move forward into that new world of abundant life designed by God’s forgiving spirit.

Open your heart to God who  longs for you to join the journey toward a new creation.  Allow your burdens to be lifted so that, at least from time to time, maybe each Lord’s day, you might set aside your struggle to be right and allow God to give righteousness as a gift to you.  Then you can celebrate with the father, with the wayward child, and the steady child who stayed home.  Won’t you join the party?

Thanks, Giver of new life, for putting a new song in our hearts.

DENYING GOD'S DESIRE FOR FUTURE

[This post is the sixth in a series of devotions on forgiveness that I first published last year in a leaders’ devotional book, "Disciplines 2013" from The Upper Room. This is based on a reading found in II Corinthians 5:18-21]

God loves creation.  Divine life creates the world and declares it good.  All creatures are gifts of God.  God ‘s love is attentive and enjoys being in right relationship with the created order.  God creates partners with whom to discover the way life can be lived fully and faithfully.  God’s goal is the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Therefore, God is committed to not holding our sins against us. In Christ, that is, through mercy and forgiveness, God acts to reconcile us with each other and with the divine will.  God’s agenda is to break down the walls of pain and injustice that divide us from the good that was created.  God has chosen those who claim Christ as Lord to be partners or ambassadors for Christ in the creation of a new world that reflects the divine desire of justice and mercy.

That new world will be different from the previous one. Our experiences, our mistakes, our discoveries, our achievements and failures will all be taken into the Divine heart through “the one who knew no sin” and will give shape and form to the new world that is being created.  Because God returns to us and does not hold our mistakes against us, we can be bold in our living, trying and failing, picking ourselves and each other up and trying again.  The future world of a reconciled people keeps calling us forward into new action. 

When we allow the mistakes, the hurt and pain of past offenses to capture us and create prison bars to keep us away from a new and reconciled future, we deny God the insights of our experience. We are kept from offering ourselves, broken and incomplete, for the service of God’s design.  Therefore, receiving Divine forgiveness is the devotional imperative of those who seek to follow Christ.  Are you open to be free to join God in an innovative future of grace and justice?

Beloved of all, take our hands and walk with us into your divine future.  

HEALING SPACE

[This post is the fifth in a series of devotions on forgiveness that I first published last year in a leaders’ devotional book, "Disciplines 2013" from The Upper Room. This is based on a reading found in II Corinthians 5:16-17]

Parables invite imagination.  We don’t know what happened to the prodigal’s family when they were working life out together after the party.  If their life was anything like ours we know that there was probably much trial and error, effort and failure, miscues and mistakes, tears and struggles. When life confronts us with situations that are without precedence, we must make up what happens next.  We don’t always know the best thing to do.  We don’t know the outcome of actions till we try them.

Living this way can be scary because we will make mistakes.  These are not intentional but are simply the result of life lived by experimentation and discovery. We will make choices that work out well and some that will create more pain and confusion.  Patient testing of direction and action are required to recreate life after the scattering and breaking of alienation.

Paul shares with us insights as to how God creates a healing space for experiment gone awry--a way to keep us from becoming the mistakes that we make.  He talks of a God who does see us from a human point of view.  God in Christ is in the business of innovation--of making a new creation.  God so desires that we join in that creative process that the Divine self is given to overcome our mistakes and our separation. 

This forgiveness releases the innovative energy that we humans can share and thus break down the walls that divide from God and each other.  We too can take the initiative, not seeing others as humans do, locking each other into our mistakes, but as God does, as humans who make mistakes.  This frees us all to join God’s journey of new creation.  Can you develop the divine eyesight and join in that journey?

Holy Initiator, be patient with us as we make our way to your will.