(This is a short devotional I wrote for the Advent Devotional guide my church publishes every year. We use the daily Scripture texts from The Book of Common Prayer, and my selection is for Sunday, December 20, 2009.)
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ ” Genesis 3:8, 9
When we played “hide and seek” as kids, the whole point of the game was to not be found. We wanted the “seeker” to take a long time to find us; we wanted to win the game by being the last one found. On the other hand, we also didn’t want to go too long without being found—we didn’t want the others to forget about us! We didn’t (and still don’t) want to be abandoned!
Sometimes, not only as children but also as adults, we hide because we are afraid. Maybe we’ve done something to make someone mad, to upset someone, and we are afraid of how they’ll react—we don’t want to be yelled at or punished! Maybe I know I’ve done something wrong, and I’m afraid something bad is going to happen as a result. In these verses in Genesis, “the man and his wife,” Adam and Eve, know they have done something wrong (see Gen. 3:7) and they are afraid because they listened to the serpent. They aren’t sure what’s going to happen to them.
Today, we can take comfort in the fact that God is still looking for us; he’s still pursuing us. It’s not that he doesn’t know where we are, but rather that he wants us to come to him, to reveal ourselves to him so that we can have a relationship with him again. At this Christmas season we remember that God is actively seeking us because he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to pursue us, to reveal God himself to us, to clear the way for us back to a relationship with God. Let’s celebrate his seeking us still.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Do You Have Weeds in Your Garden?
One of my favorite parables is the one about the Sower and the Four Soils (Mark 4:1-20). It is a parable that captures our imagination with its sights (the Sower scattering the seed, the vast field with the varieties of soil), sounds (the wind blowing, the birds calling, the seeds falling on the ground), textures (the seeds, the dirt), even tastes.
The Sower goes out one day and scatters seed in the field; and the seed falls on four types of soil: the hard-packed path; the shallow soil with rocks; the soil filled with thorns and weeds; and the good soil that produces an abundant crop. As Jesus explains, the seed is the Word of God and the four types of soil are four different conditions of our hearts. Our hearts being in different conditions of receptivity take in the seed in different ways.
I know I have experienced some of each type of soil in my heart, sometimes in succession, sometimes all at once. There are times when my heart is like the hard-packed soil of the path. Whatever it is, I’ve heard it enough times and I become hardened so that when God speaks to me, nothing gets through. What God has said gets ignored and nothing grows. There are times when I hear the Word and I get excited about it, but when I need to live it out, that situation becomes more challenging than anticipated and the little plant wilts. Sometimes, I let my responsibilities overwhelm me. I focus more on how I am going to get everything done instead of praying and asking God to guide me and show me ways that I never would have dreamed up myself; the good word that I’ve heard and the ministry God has asked me to do gets choked out by my worry, and any fruit produced is pretty shriveled and dry. And finally, there are the times when everything goes just right: I hear the Word, the soil of my heart is well-turned and soft, ready to receive the seed; the Holy Spirit does all the feeding and watering necessary, and a good crop is produced.
My observation has been that an awful lot of Christians are like the third soil in the parable, the soil filled with the thorns and weeds that choke the seed which never gets a chance to really take hold and grow. We are choked by the cares and responsibilities of our lives. As adults, we have our jobs that take a lot out of us each day; we have to make sure the bills get paid, that our children get to school and do well and stay out of all the trouble it’s possible to get into these days; we have to keep up with the car payments and the boat payments and the mortgage payments for our home (maybe even a vacation home or time-share). We have to get our children to soccer practice, swimming lessons, ballet lessons, piano lessons, after-school tutoring to help get them into the right college—and none of that is free, either. We have so many things going that we don’t have time or space to let the seed planted in our hearts grow. There is lots of noise and distractions; there are so many things competing for our time and attention—sometimes they are legitimate things—that we just seem to let God, who is forgiving and understanding, wait while we “stand him up.”
I find that so many Christians don’t take (make?) the time to read let alone study the Bible. It has been said a lot but the Bible is truly a love letter from God to us, intended to draw us, the readers, to the Writer. If we ignored our spouse, our children, or our friends as much as we ignore God we would be pretty alone in the world! We all need to ask the Sower to weed our gardens, to turn over the soil, so that it will be soft and ready to receive the good seed which will then produce the fruit that the world needs.
And he will do it!
The Sower goes out one day and scatters seed in the field; and the seed falls on four types of soil: the hard-packed path; the shallow soil with rocks; the soil filled with thorns and weeds; and the good soil that produces an abundant crop. As Jesus explains, the seed is the Word of God and the four types of soil are four different conditions of our hearts. Our hearts being in different conditions of receptivity take in the seed in different ways.
I know I have experienced some of each type of soil in my heart, sometimes in succession, sometimes all at once. There are times when my heart is like the hard-packed soil of the path. Whatever it is, I’ve heard it enough times and I become hardened so that when God speaks to me, nothing gets through. What God has said gets ignored and nothing grows. There are times when I hear the Word and I get excited about it, but when I need to live it out, that situation becomes more challenging than anticipated and the little plant wilts. Sometimes, I let my responsibilities overwhelm me. I focus more on how I am going to get everything done instead of praying and asking God to guide me and show me ways that I never would have dreamed up myself; the good word that I’ve heard and the ministry God has asked me to do gets choked out by my worry, and any fruit produced is pretty shriveled and dry. And finally, there are the times when everything goes just right: I hear the Word, the soil of my heart is well-turned and soft, ready to receive the seed; the Holy Spirit does all the feeding and watering necessary, and a good crop is produced.
My observation has been that an awful lot of Christians are like the third soil in the parable, the soil filled with the thorns and weeds that choke the seed which never gets a chance to really take hold and grow. We are choked by the cares and responsibilities of our lives. As adults, we have our jobs that take a lot out of us each day; we have to make sure the bills get paid, that our children get to school and do well and stay out of all the trouble it’s possible to get into these days; we have to keep up with the car payments and the boat payments and the mortgage payments for our home (maybe even a vacation home or time-share). We have to get our children to soccer practice, swimming lessons, ballet lessons, piano lessons, after-school tutoring to help get them into the right college—and none of that is free, either. We have so many things going that we don’t have time or space to let the seed planted in our hearts grow. There is lots of noise and distractions; there are so many things competing for our time and attention—sometimes they are legitimate things—that we just seem to let God, who is forgiving and understanding, wait while we “stand him up.”
I find that so many Christians don’t take (make?) the time to read let alone study the Bible. It has been said a lot but the Bible is truly a love letter from God to us, intended to draw us, the readers, to the Writer. If we ignored our spouse, our children, or our friends as much as we ignore God we would be pretty alone in the world! We all need to ask the Sower to weed our gardens, to turn over the soil, so that it will be soft and ready to receive the good seed which will then produce the fruit that the world needs.
And he will do it!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Change
I’ve just finished reading a book by Gordon MacDonald called Who Stole My Church? A very thought-provoking book! I ordered it on the recommendation of Bryan Burton on his blog in an entry posted in August. The description on the back cover of the books says: “Who Stole My Church? is a fictional story that reflects the all-too-real situation of many church communities today, where loyal and long-standing members can feel pushed aside by the new demands of evangelism in the twenty-first century.” I was intrigued because I have felt this way sometimes.
The focus of the book is a journey with a group of “loyal and long-standing members” in their fifties and up as they discuss with the pastor their fears and concerns about the changes happening in the church. Music changes; technological changes; changes in the style of dress; all this is happening a little too fast for some of these folks. This group makes some great progress in understanding change and why the younger people want to make these changes, and the book handles that well. It does address the topic of helping the younger worship team to understand why these “long-standing members” are resistant to change and how to address their “worship needs” but I wish it had been developed a little more.
Change in the church is necessary. The church needs to speak in a language common to its surroundings. If I moved to France, I would enjoy myself and have more success in understanding and working within the culture if I learned to speak French. In the same way the church needs to learn the language of the people around it. Just as some of the vocabulary of the French language changes periodically, so the vocabulary of the church needs to change periodically. Not completely, and certainly not the message, but as the culture around us changes we need to be able to modify our language and communicate the message of Jesus.
It’s not that I object to change, but change is a process, not an overnight event with no preparation or explanation. It seems to me that pastors and leaders need to talk about change a lot with the congregation ahead of time, planting seeds in the minds and hearts of the people so they might be ready for the change when it happens. Changing the course of a church is more like steering a cruise ship rather than a ski boat. Churches can’t turn on a dime, especially if you don’t want it to tip over! Many churches desire to be intergenerational and to be that, the leadership must be considerate of all the generations.
Often, the solution to this need for change is to have two services with completely different styles (i.e. “traditional” with organ and hymns and “contemporary” with guitar and praise songs). I have found that having two different services generally does not encourage unity, but could easily promote a feeling of “us and them” (us vs. them?). This may often mean that if I’m not able to attend the service I prefer on a particular Sunday, I have an easy excuse for just not going at all because I don’t like the style of the other service. Having two services that are the same enables (and encourages) members of the congregation to attend either service. There is more likelihood then that the church has one unified congregation rather than two (possibly) competing ones.
This may instigate a big discussion about music styles and use of technology (i.e. Whose style takes precedence which week? Isn’t that just going to create a service that isn’t “satisfying” or worshipful to anyone? etc.), but my suggestion is that the teaching from the pastor and leaders over the years promote understanding and acceptance of change; consideration, kindness, thoughtfulness, and acceptance must be shown to all members of the Body of Christ, both young and old.
The focus of the book is a journey with a group of “loyal and long-standing members” in their fifties and up as they discuss with the pastor their fears and concerns about the changes happening in the church. Music changes; technological changes; changes in the style of dress; all this is happening a little too fast for some of these folks. This group makes some great progress in understanding change and why the younger people want to make these changes, and the book handles that well. It does address the topic of helping the younger worship team to understand why these “long-standing members” are resistant to change and how to address their “worship needs” but I wish it had been developed a little more.
Change in the church is necessary. The church needs to speak in a language common to its surroundings. If I moved to France, I would enjoy myself and have more success in understanding and working within the culture if I learned to speak French. In the same way the church needs to learn the language of the people around it. Just as some of the vocabulary of the French language changes periodically, so the vocabulary of the church needs to change periodically. Not completely, and certainly not the message, but as the culture around us changes we need to be able to modify our language and communicate the message of Jesus.
It’s not that I object to change, but change is a process, not an overnight event with no preparation or explanation. It seems to me that pastors and leaders need to talk about change a lot with the congregation ahead of time, planting seeds in the minds and hearts of the people so they might be ready for the change when it happens. Changing the course of a church is more like steering a cruise ship rather than a ski boat. Churches can’t turn on a dime, especially if you don’t want it to tip over! Many churches desire to be intergenerational and to be that, the leadership must be considerate of all the generations.
Often, the solution to this need for change is to have two services with completely different styles (i.e. “traditional” with organ and hymns and “contemporary” with guitar and praise songs). I have found that having two different services generally does not encourage unity, but could easily promote a feeling of “us and them” (us vs. them?). This may often mean that if I’m not able to attend the service I prefer on a particular Sunday, I have an easy excuse for just not going at all because I don’t like the style of the other service. Having two services that are the same enables (and encourages) members of the congregation to attend either service. There is more likelihood then that the church has one unified congregation rather than two (possibly) competing ones.
This may instigate a big discussion about music styles and use of technology (i.e. Whose style takes precedence which week? Isn’t that just going to create a service that isn’t “satisfying” or worshipful to anyone? etc.), but my suggestion is that the teaching from the pastor and leaders over the years promote understanding and acceptance of change; consideration, kindness, thoughtfulness, and acceptance must be shown to all members of the Body of Christ, both young and old.
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