I have been trying most of this evening to craft yet another audience-wowing bit of personal insight for the blog. Having now set a precedent for writing these soul-searching devotionals, I suddenly feel some pressure to make whatever I write about sound intensely spiritual and profound.
Today, people, I got nothin'. I’m tired, dry. Empty.
I don’t want to write about what God is doing in my heart because I’m not really sure He’s doing much at the moment – or maybe I’m not letting Him. I desire to hear the Spirit’s voice every day, and on days when I don’t, I am lost, questioning. This past week I have received more than I have given. I am so thankful for the friends who have blessed me in such small but important ways: friends who have asked me genuinely, “how are you doing?;” two students that stayed over at my apartment on different nights both so selflessly washed my dishes for me! Sunday during prayer time with students at the dorm, one girl prayed for me. She truly prayed for my heart needs, and it was such a blessing. In her prayer, she spoke some amazing words of encouragement and thanks for the work that I’m doing at LCC.
I needed to hear those words this week. Tremendously.
I know that our service should be done only with the desire to hear our King say, “well done, my good and faithful servant.” But it is hard to keep on going sometimes if no one around you affirms that, yes, in fact, you are doing a good job, you are making a difference, you are being the kind of example you want to be.
I don’t want this to sound prideful. I think it does. At my core, maybe I’m just an approval-junkie. Then again, we need to hear words of encouragement from our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and that isn’t the same thing as desiring approval. My approval should come only from the Lord, but we are commanded in the Bible to “encourage one another and build each other up.”
So I'm going to ask something weird here. If you are reading this blog, if you log in here and read these ridiculous soul-baring epics, will you take the time to post a comment? I hear in roundabout ways that people like to read this, but very rarely does anyone post a response. Just say hello so I know you're out there. It would mean a lot to me.
Thanks.
Talking this morning to my friend Christine, we were talking about balance and how difficult it is to keep up with all the expectations that are on us (that we take on ourselves). We have schoolwork, and friendships, and ministry opportunities, and laundry to do, and food to cook, and dishes to do, and prayers we should pray, and a need for sleep, and for service, and for exercise. And we should go to chapel, and study Lithuanian, and have people over for dinner, and talk to others about Jesus, and write emails to friends who love us and who we feel we’ve neglected, and prepare for Bible Study, and plan good lessons, and take the time to have meaningful conversations, and sing in choir, and think about clearing out some of those old sins, and plan Christmas parties, and put things on the calendar and…
The simple command to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” becomes a juggling act as we try to figure out how to organize our time so we can love God, love ourselves, and love our friends. Those words of Jesus come to mind, when he said, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Was he kidding? There is so much to carry in this Christian walk, we feel like we’re staggering up a path, trying to carry a million things with our own strength. There is a U2 song (“Yaweh”) in which the cry to God is to, “take these hands, teach them what to carry.” Maybe we feel like we’re carrying so much because we have decided to pick up and carry things that we aren’t supposed to. Maybe God doesn’t ask us to carry a lot of the things that we think we should.
We can’t carry the future, and yet we walk around with tomorrow’s duties weighing down our heads like bricks. We try to carry the past, not letting go of sins, memories and habits that are heavy. We try to carry the emotions and needs of others, when we cannot be responsible for them anyway. We think we have to carry the past, the present, and the future – and as time-bound creatures, we can’t possibly do this.
When Jesus talks about His burden being light, I wonder if it is because when Jesus was with people, He was fully present to them in that moment. He focused His attention completely upon that person – whether it was Nicodemus, or the women at the well in
We try to carry too much. Humans can barely carry the weight of a single moment of time. The atoms of an instant are just about the limit of our strength. “Take these hands, teach them what to carry.” And importantly, too, I have to learn what not to carry.
It is Thanksgiving week, and despite the fact that Thursday will just be a regular work day at LCC, I find my thoughts circling toward home and family. We had a beautiful dumping of snow on Friday and Saturday, which means I felt justified in cranking up the Christmas music and cooking most of the day on Saturday. In the midst of preparations and daily duties this weekend, a feeling of peacefulness and centeredness settled over me as delicately as the thick wet flakes that caught on my coat.
This is a time of year when it is so easy to miss one’s family. And yet, lately I have been reminded that I am very much part of a family here and everywhere. Last Wednesday I had a great conversation with one of the staff members (Jon) I don’t talk to very often. We were talking about surrendering our hearts and plans to God, whether we’re single or in a relationship or whatnot. (Yes, this is a common topic of conversation with me!) He is at the beginning of a relationship and is full of joy at God’s provision and guidance for he and his girlfriend. Sharing in his joy gives me strength to hold onto trust in God. I hold onto that trust and say aloud, in the tiny bit of Lithuanian I know, Aš nežinau daug, bet aš žinau kad Dievo geras. (I don't know a lot, but I know that God is good).
Jon asked me a great question that afternoon. He asked me if I had considered what this illusive hope of marriage means to me, if I had sought out the root of that desire and surrendered that desire to God. I thought a minute and realized that what marriage represents for me is the desire for home. Realizing that, I can see that what I need to rest in is the fact that the Church is my home – it is our family. Even more, heaven is my home, and my heart will be restless for that place as long as I live, married or no.
But community, relationship, family – that is what Christian faith offers me. Some days here I am tempted to despair, to wallow in loneliness (as I must admit, I did a little bit of after Fall Break). And yet, so beautifully, God reminds me that there is a whole community – a whole family – that surrounds me. When I feel like the friendship deck at LCC has been reshuffled, and I have been dealt out, even momentarily, God speaks to me with tenderness and reprimand. “You are not alone.”
I once heard someone say that, “home is where God is, and we feel him in each other.” This past weekend – through the LCC Thanksgiving celebration, time spent with Lithuanian church friends, and in Spirit-filled prayer with students – I experienced that intense belonging that can exist in God’s family.
I talked to my friend Annie yesterday. Annie was my roommate in
Previously, I think I would have chalked up a statement like that to over-dramatic-ness, but the way things in my own life have been going, I think she’s right. There are such things as divine appointments – phone calls that come just when you need them, emails from distant friends who just happen to think to pray for you. The Holy Spirit is working in the world. He really is. Why do I ever doubt this? Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer. Prayer has become so natural for me here – probably because I live alone and have no pets, so talking to God is the only way I can have conversations! Seriously, though, I am learning so much about what prayer really does. One thing I have noticed is that prayer makes you aware of what God is doing. Sometimes we might want to just attribute things that happen to coincidence or human effort, but when you pray, you are aware that God is acting. It isn’t even a matter of God simply responding to our prayers. Rather, He is always there working, desiring to enter our lives and times, and when we pray, we wake up to the already-existent reality of God’s work. Prayer helps me see everyday occurrences with the eyes of the Spirit.
And so when Annie tells me that my phone call was a divine appointment, I believe her. She is battling through all the same emotions and questions and doubts that I did in my preparation to move to
Annie mentioned that she had gone into Crate and Barrel the other day. “Why did you do that!” I exclaimed over the phone, “That place is the Devil!” What I meant was, going into such places is only a reminder that neither she nor I get to “nest.” While most 27-year-olds we know are well into furnishing apartments and homes, and probably have achieved the dream of all-matching silverware, she and I are boxing things up, taking pictures off the wall, and starting over. What I see in those beautiful dishes and bedspreads and smelly candles is the lure of the comfortable, the safe, the fantasy of domestic bliss not found this side of the Donna Reed show.
I am NOT playing a small violin of pity for either of us. Not even remotely. We are both ecstatic beyond measure that God has allowed us to be chosen for service in these ways. Nevertheless, when you’re 27 and all your worldly possessions are stacked in boxes in your parent’s basement, it’s hard not to wonder what’s wrong with you. Why you feel compelled to do such things – again and again?
And maybe that’s how this all connects with prayer. God is working in this world and Annie and I want to join in. That means more to us than fancy dishes and comfortable apartments filled with the laughter of old friends. It means we are trying to be responsible to the call we’ve received, to live lives worthy of that calling. Every believer has this calling – not necessarily the same one – but I wonder how often we pay attention to it, how often we can hear it? Prayer helps me hear. Prayer helps us drown out the nagging voices of consumerism and biological clocks and the voices that would tell us to just settle down and be comfortable. Prayer is allowing God’s voice to speak more clearly and sharply than anything else, and to order my life by it.
(Next blog, stay tuned for why Baby Gap is the anti-Christ.)
Somehow, it is already November. October was a whirl of travel and color, ending in my trip to
Without too many details (noisy, snoring drunk Lithuanians; burning my hand with the scalding tea water at 3 a.m.; giddy LCC students singing Beatles songs as we pulled into Minsk; having my passport THOROUGHLY examined at the border crossing – and my name passed along to KGB, no doubt), I will simply say that it was an adventure! The week in
Even given my exciting run-in with Belarussian Secret Service, the highlight of the week was our visit to the International Christian Church of
The message that morning was given by a minister visiting from the States who preached on the words of Isaiah 61, that Jesus read when He began His ministry:
“The Spirit of God is upon me, to preach good news to the poor,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of His splendor” (Isa. 61:1-3).
Sitting and listening, as the minister read the phrase – “to bind up the brokenhearted” – I began to cry, and I felt in my heart the Spirit saying, “this is what I am calling you to do.” In my short time at LCC, I have had so many conversations with young women who are truly broken, hurting from the lives they’ve lead, or the choices they’ve made, loves that have gone wrong, or the broken families they’ve been born into. I had a profound sense that God wants to bestow on these women “a crown of beauty instead of ashes.” He wants them as oaks of righteousness displayed for His glory in this part of the world. It was such a needed and unexpected reminder that this is what I am to be about, a big part of why I have been brought to LCC.
Now, the last few hours of fall break light are dwindling into the late Sunday afternoon haze. I have piles of grading left to do – which of course means that my house is spotless, all my laundry is done, and I have been cooking most of the weekend (nothing like productive procrastination!). There are only six weeks left of classes before Christmas break, and I know they will go by in a rush and if I am not intentional, I will miss out on the things God wants me to do. But, I have slept, taken pictures, seen a new country, read a novel, sat on buses and trains listening to music and knowing, without a doubt, what it feels like to be alive, and to know that I know it.
