In our family, we love a good road trip. Part of the magic of trekking across this vast landscape we call America is leaving room for new adventures that might present themselves as we roll along. A few years ago, as we were driving through the Southwest, we saw that we were closer to the Petrified Forest than we realized. So, we stopped and spent a lovely few hours hiking through ancient (or beyond ancient) rocks–marveling at the grandeur and majesty of God. This past summer, we headed East to Washington, D.C. With no plans one evening, we made our way to the U.S. Capitol and sat on the steps of this hallowed seat of government, visiting with a group of veterans who had come to exercise their Constitutional rights in the push to secure funding for service members who had become ill in the course of their duty. More recently, on a work trip to Philadelphia, I spent half a day wandering the city and exploring some of its history–going wherever the spirit of inquiry led me, delighting in learning more about the marvelous mayhem that was our nation’s founding.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that you didn’t click onto this post to read about my travel history…and that’s a fair critique. So let me get to the point…In this day and age, we lead hyper scheduled lives. Look at your calendar and see how many empty days you have. We don’t have a free Saturday until February 25. Our daily schedules follow a same pattern–minutes carefully accounted for from the moment we wake to the moment our heads hit the pillow once again. Yet all of this scheduling poses a problem for our practice of faith, because God doesn’t move according to our schedules. He has his own, and it often looks nothing like ours.

I love this passage from the Gospel of John. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who wants to believe in salvation, but Jesus’s words just don’t gel with his understanding. Everything in Nicodemus’s life says to follow the path of tradition. Hold fast to your education, maintain your daily practices, adhere to the schedule established in the Book of Law. And so, Nicodemus says to Jesus, “This doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely illogical.”

And, in the most aggravatingly awesome way ever, Jesus responds…Yes. You’re exactly right.

Instead of walking Nicodemus through the law (see Peter’s speech in Acts 2:14-41 for that), Jesus essentially tells him that God’s plan goes against everything Nicodemus has ever expected, and that he just needs to get over that and accept that things are going to be different. God’s Spirit goes where it wants to, Jesus says. You can follow, or not.

Personally, I find a lot of relief in Jesus’s response to Nicodemus. It takes the pressure off my already overtaxed brain to figure something else out. It’s one less thing I need to have an answer for. God has his own plan, and I can follow or not. But like Nicodemus, following God’s spirit might require some unscheduled stops–or even a full-out detour from the present path.

God doesn’t care about our schedules, which I know from personal experience, as He has disrupted nearly every plan I’ve ever had for my life. If you don’t believe that God is the Great Disrupter of Schedules, a cursory glance through Scripture should confirm this truth. Try Abraham, or Jacob, or Joseph, or Moses, or Hannah, or Ruth, or Mary, or Peter, or Paul….the Bible is full of human plans usurped by God’s eternal ones.

Part of being a follower of Christ means that we must be ready for unscheduled stops because we know that the Spirit blows wherever God wills. Maybe it’s a co-worker who needs some encouragement when we have a deadline to meet. Or maybe it’s our child who wants to talk ad nauseam about seemingly mundane things (but really just wants to be with us) when we’re simply trying to relax and unwind from a hectic day. Perhaps it’s a request for financial assistance when we had planned to use our resources on something completely different (and likely more fun). Sometimes, it’s even upending our calendars to make room for work that God is doing somewhere else.

Jesus reminds us, in the Gospel of John, that wherever he is, there his servants should be. If we truly seek to follow the path that Jesus has laid out, then we have to be okay with unscheduled stops along the way. As you and I ponder our calendars, make plans for the days ahead, I would encourage each of us to leave some room to follow where God’s Spirit leads. As with some of our best vacations experiences…the unscheduled stops are sometimes the best.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

“Mom,” my 16-year-old said, looking down at me on my hands and knees, pulling armfuls of dead leaves from beneath a thorny bush. “You know the wind’s just blowing the leaves back under there, right? I think you need to stop aiming for perfection.” With a sigh, I looked at the leaves scuttling along the footpath…inching their way toward the bushes…gleefully taunting me in my efforts to clear them from the yard.

“I just need to get a few more,” I replied, reaching my tired arms forward to pull another bunch from beneath the bush. After all, this was a church mission project…and I was supposed to be working on behalf of God. Perfection seemed appropriate. My son shook his head. He knew what I didn’t want to admit–there will always be just a few more leaves to get.

We live in a society that relentlessly pushes us toward perfection–the perfect body, the perfect marriage, the perfect kids, the perfect pet, the perfect job…it goes on and on. Carefully crafted branding messages and pithy social media slogans bombard our senses–perpetuating the push to perfect. Fake it til you make it; If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again; Nothing ventured, nothing gained; Failure is not an option; Keep going; Persist.

The problem with all of this, in my life anyway, is that the drive to be better always leaves me feeling like a failure, because no matter how much harder or smarter I work, perfection remains out of reach. I keep persisting, only to run headlong into the same brick wall time and time again–and the only thing that gets dented is my head! And when I start feeling weak and broken, judgement enters in–of both myself and others. To soothe my own feelings of inadequacy, I turn my ire on others–judging them in their failures to ease my own hurting soul.

This, of course, is the opposite of what God wants for us. God, who comes to us with grace, love, and mercy, never intended for us to bear the brunt of perfection. If we could achieve it on our own, why did we need salvation in the first place? The truth is, we weren’t made for perfection–we were made for God.

It is only when we release the need for perfection, when we resist persisting, that we find ourselves made perfect in God’s love. How is that possible? God created us to be dependent not on ourselves, but on him. God is so much bigger, so much more capable, and so much wiser than we are that it is he who does the heavy lifting for us. When we yield…God picks us up–and he is infinitely more able to transform us than we are to transform ourselves.

The apostle Paul understood this need for humility–a gift he did not naturally possess. In 2nd Corinthians, Paul makes a revealing statement. Though he admits to being vastly superior to most every other human being in his knowledge, fervor, and leadership abilities, he notes that God has given him a “thorn in his side” to carry. The thorn (he doesn’t elaborate on the specifics) vexes him, until he realizes its purpose: God gave Paul the thorn to teach him the lesson he could not learn on his own–surrender. And with that surrender, Paul experienced freedom.

Because he realized his need for God, Paul was able to boast more avidly–not in his own abilities, but in God’s mercy and grace.

Change is hard work, but it doesn’t require more striving, it requires letting go. We must go to God and admit our failures…our tendency to judge, to be jealous, to be petty and conceited and self-righteous. He knows it anyway, but there’s release in the confessing, and then comes the freedom we receive when we finally stop persisting and lean into God’s mercy, knowing that change doesn’t come from us. And accepting that others are undergoing the same transformation.

I like the way Anne Lamott puts it in her book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy:

“Over and over, in spite of our awfulness and having squandered our funds, the ticket-taker at the venue waves us on through. Forgiven and included, when we experience this, that we are in this with one another, flailing and starting over in the awful beauty of being humans together, we are saved.”

Each year, I like to choose one word to anchor myself as the world hurtles around the sun for another 365-ish days. This year, I had planned on choosing the word flexibility, as it seems to be something God is asking of me a lot lately. But then, a simple misinterpretation on my husband’s part opened up a whole new realm for me this year as flexibility became possibility.

What a beautiful word! Possibility is gazing at magnificent pink and orange sunrise through an open window, that first sip of hot roasted morning coffee with a splash of cream and chocolate, the moment between typing in my password and my email loading on my work computer, standing before all of the newly released books adorning the shelves nearest the entrance at our local library. Possibility is heady and intoxicating–the seed of an idea ripened with expectation and hope.

Possibility is looking out at the world not as it is, but as it could be. It’s about greeting each day as an adventure waiting to be had, each project a world waiting to be explored. Possibility is about being open, vulnerable even. It’s a surrendering of self to what might be if we are willing to lay down our ideas of what we think can or should be. Possibility is a resounding YES in a world that so often wants to say no.

As we see in this Scripture, Jesus calls us to be people of possibility. But it’s not a possibility borne of our own efforts and strivings; rather, it is something that requires us to be wholly dependent on our Creator–the one who brings all possibilities into being. This year, we will be faced with many impossibilities: peace, forgiveness, an end to poverty, justice, an end to oppression. We can’t save the world, but the good news is that all things are possible for God, and he has already laid out the path of salvation for us. How might God be calling you to embrace his possible this year?

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

Last weekend, we held a service event at church cleverly called “Leave the Leaves to Us.” You can likely guess what it entailed–lots of raking and bagging of fall foliage. Unfortunately, this was an event that had to be rescheduled, due to unseasonably warm temperatures in early October and the stubborn persistence of the leaves to remain tethered to their trees. The later date for our project meant that the “us” participating consisted of 3 adults and 2 teenage boys (my own) who have a strong aversion to physical labor. The weather had finally turned cold as we plodded out into wet morning, and the winds were gusting.

For the next approximately 6 to 60 hours we went from yard to yard –raking, scooping, bagging, tossing over and over and over again. The wind blew, taunting us it seemed in our efforts, as leaves once piled gleefully twirled and pirouetted to freedom. This, I thought to myself, is why I hate yard work. Aside from mowing, which I love because it’s a workout in which I can see immediate results, I detest yard work. It always seems like a pointless endeavor. Pull weeds one day, they’ll reemerge the next. Pack up one leaf, another will fall. And it uses muscles that I generally prefer to leave in peace.

By the end of the event, my quads were screaming, my nose was stuffed up, I was covered in dirt, and I stunk. And herein lies the truth about serving–sometimes it stinks.

In churches we like to sell the Hallmark version of serving–soft lights, loving smiles, warm fuzzies and hot cocoa for everyone. Organizations know that if they’re going to ask for help, the helpers better get something in return, like a t-shirt that says “I’m a good person.” So, we sell the quid pro quo: Serving isn’t just about helping someone else–you get something, too! You get to pat yourself on the back and bask in the butterscotch-scented glow of doing a good deed. And eat free pizza.

The problem with this message is that it misses the point. Serving isn’t about us, it’s about loving God and helping others. It’s about someone else’s needs, not our own. When we serve, we are allowing ourselves to be the conduit by which others can experience the love of Christ–and sometimes that means raking and bagging leaves until our quads quit in protest. Sometimes it means giving up a Saturday lie-in to go stand in the cold and ring a bell while shoppers push past, or taking that ten dollars you had earmarked for a coffee and cinnamon roll and giving it to the guy on the street you’re trying really hard not to see. Serving might mean giving up prime vacation time to help clean up after a hurricane rather than lying on a beach, or volunteering to mentor a kid once a week when children make you more squeamish than spiders.

The disciples understood this true nature of serving, though they didn’t always like it either. Paul often writes of the suffering he endured in his quest to spread the gospel near and far. There were nights without shelter, days without food, muscles that were constantly sore, and physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion. Yet notice what Paul says to the Corinthians about working for God:

Paul doesn’t tell the Corinthians that serving others feels great. There’s an implicit acknowledgement here that it does not. But what he does say is that in whatever work God calls us to do, God will provide what we need to get the job done. God gives us the tools we need so that we can help others in his name–fulfilling their needs and showing them that God is real. He is here. And he cares.

So, was there was a moment in leaf-bagging last weekend when God’s spirit descended and turned the task into a profoundly soul-stirring event for me? Not even a little. But even so, when it comes time to leaving the leaves to us next year, I’ll be one of the “us’s.” Because for the people we helped, it meant a lot. Our work was just another way to show the grace and love of God to our neighbors. And in the end, serving others isn’t about me at all.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

Last night, along with thousands of others, I watched the T.V. in open-mouthed shock as the St. Louis Cardinals ended their fairy-tale 2022 season with an unexpected loss in the first round of MLB playoffs. This was not the story Cardinals fans had written. It was supposed to be one last magical post-season run with three of the greatest players the franchise (and baseball) has ever known. And instead, it stopped before it had barely begun.

Over the next several days, countless sportswriters and armchair managers will unpack all of the decisions, plays, and missteps that crashed the dream team train…but I’m not sure it matters. In fact, the Cardinals loss reminds me that when it comes to life, we don’t always get to write the story the way we want.

Americans love a good fairy tale–it’s what we’ve been raised on. From our nation’s inception the mythos has been one of digging deep and pulling up to overcome great odds and achieve the seemingly impossible in a way that storytellers describe as fated…magical…extraordinary…historic. We’ve been raised to expect a happily ever after. But that’s not real, at least, not always. The truth is that, despite our best efforts to write ourselves into the sunset, life can change the story pretty quickly. The dream team loses, our dream job goes to someone else, we’re outbid on our dream home, and our dream vacation turns into a nightmare. Sometimes there’s no prince charming or fairy godmother. Relationships get broken. Loved ones don’t get better. And we’re left with a profound sense of unfairness.

Unfortunately, many churches and ministries have fostered this fairy-tale thinking by selling a fabled version of Jesus. If you truly trust Jesus, the story goes, then your life will be magical, maybe what some would call #blessed. But that is a fallacy. The truth is, Jesus understood this life much better than we do. He saw the unfairness of life everyday as he walked past soldiers occupying his homeland, as he ministered to those who were outcast through no fault of their own, as he grieved with friends in the loss of a loved one, as he shared his food with those who had none to spare, and as he received the kiss of betrayal from a trusted friend. In this life, Jesus told his disciples, you will have trouble.

Fortunately for us, God is fashioning us a faith that can carry us far beyond the proverbial human-made sunset into the God-breathed ever after. How so? Look at what Jesus tells the man healed of demon possession in Luke 8:

When Jesus brought healing, he often instructed the recipients of his miracles to remain quiet. It seems odd, since so many people would have been moved by the miraculous. Yet Jesus wasn’t looking to be a side-show–he didn’t want people to focus on the happily ever after, but on the spiritual transformation that occurred when he entered into the story. Apparently, spiritual transformation is what this man in Luke 8 received. So Jesus instructed him to share his story with others…even though it wasn’t a fairy tale….and that is exactly what God is asking us to do too.

God calls us to share the story HE is writing–to live the messy, broken, unfair, complicated, ordinary, non-Insta worthy experiences that the world has written in our lives, but to do so with God as the author and perfecter of our souls. God invites us to place the big-game losses in his hands, so that he can encourage us, instruct us, and ultimately shape us for his kingdom. We don’t have to wallow when life does’t go our way, though there will be grief to bear. Instead, God calls us to give it to him because he can craft it into a story worth sharing.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

Each morning, my boys and I engage in a ritualistic dance as we head out the door. Arms waving in frenzied motions above our heads, we feverishly hop-skip to the car, twirl beside the doors, and fall breathless into our seats. Pulling out of the driveway, we roll the windows down and wave our arms in the air–a bizarre adieu to the neighbors who must be thinking…we should really invest in a privacy fence.

While our neighbors might be confounded by our early morning motion madness, there is a perfectly good explanation for the cavorting–namely, gnats. Each night, seemingly millions of little gnats surround our home, swarming around the screen door and congregating in the dewy condensation on the cars. Our frantic arm waving, hopping, and twirling is all an attempt to push through the flighty insects without them zooming into our mouths–or up our noses. These gnats are a pestilential problem…an annual plague that disperses only when the temperature falls.

Until recently, when I read the story of the Exodus, I always thought the Egyptians were kind of wimpy. I mean, getting all fussed over a plague of gnats? Please…Yet God has a sense of humor, and it sometimes leans toward the ironic. As I open the front door each morning and prepare to fling myself into the teeming mass of what our “pest control specialist” calls midges, I totally get it. Gnats are a plague. Albeit, a seasonal one.

Pondering the gnats led me to a realization beyond the fact that I need to stop spraying for spiders (because they eat gnats). Like the gnats, our everyday worries can become a plague–pervading our thoughts, disrupting our focus, and leading to pointless feelings of both consternation and agitation. When we worry about the small stuff, we not only miss out on the blessings God is trying to give to us, but we also forgo opportunities to be God’s blessing to others. How so?

As a United Methodist pastor’s spouse, I’ve moved around a lot. My family and I are always transplants in communities, and that can be a hard thing. Sometimes I worry when facing new opportunities to get to know people where we’re dropped. I think that my clothes are too shabby, my chin wobbles too much, and I’m really too much of a book nerd. All of my little worries consume me to the point where it feels easier to just shut the door on the idea of peopling and stay home. Yet how much I would miss if I let those unfounded fears have their way!

I would have missed opportunities to make new friends. I would have missed opportunities for God to refresh my soul. And I would have missed opportunities to lay some paving stones in the building of God’s kingdom.

Our daily gnat-like worries can rob us of joy, leaving us isolated, overly self-focused, and often cynical. Our God wants more for us than that. He wants us to rest soundly in the knowledge that, whatever life throws our way, he is there–the Rock on which we stand. I love this passage from the book of Isaiah:

Have you ever come across a rock bigger than God? I am going to guess not. Though life can throw us for a loop, “trouble don’t last always.” God reminds us, just as he reminded the Israelites long ago, that he’s bigger and stronger than any worry we might have. And his plan for us is greater than any of our fears.

So how are we to live? Look at how Peter puts it:

Living a life of joy is the greatest expression of love for God that we can offer the world. I’m not talking about Pollyanna-ish optimism, I’m talking about a deep-rooted sense of peace that springs from God’s spirt which dwells within our souls and pours out of us in genuine expressions of love for others. It might be turning a conversation around when it becomes overly pessimistic. It could be praying with someone who needs to know that there is another human being in this world who cares about what is happening to them. It might be participating in a service project with a glad heart, rather than grumbling under your breath as I have been wont to do. A carefree life isn’t free of cares, but a person living a carefree life in God understands that he cares for us more than any of our fears. And that should give us hope.

Like the gnats that gather around our home each summer, so we will have seasons of worry. There will be illness, budgets will be stretched thin, loved ones will make questionable choices, we will fail at many things. Just a I can’t banish the gnats, so we can’t banish our worries. But we can make a conscious choice not to be consumed by them. We can turn to God, our Rock and Caregiver, and cast those cares on him. We can live carefree, knowing that God cares so much for us.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

It’s three weeks into a new school year for the Snyder household, and we are settling into the routines that define us during this season–early morning band practice, Friday night football games, weekend marching competitions, after school clubs…and regular homework. I love the rhythms of school life, partly because, as a child of educators, it’s all I’ve ever known. There’s a familiarity in the routines that comforts me, a structure that I depend on. Yet for this generation of students, there is something darker and more insidious that disrupts the familiar cadences of learning–the threat of school violence.

I was reminded of this awful reality last night, as my phone gently buzzed alerting me to a new message. To be honest, when I saw it was a school message, I dismissed it as yet another reminder to order a 2024 yearbook–seriously, the school must own stock in a yearbook company for the amount of marketing they do! It wasn’t until my 14-year-old shoved his phone in my face that I realized it was something much more significant. Apparently, there had been an online threat of violence toward the middle school, where my 14-year-old attends. While the school was working with law enforcement and did not believe students were in imminent danger, precautions were being taken to ensure everyone’s safety. Needless to say, my son was anxious.

We spent the next 20-30 minutes discussing the situation, as we have in previous instances where threats of violence have been made. He mentally walked through each of his classrooms and listed ways that he could protect himself in each room were the school to be breached–a calming mechanism that makes him feel like he has some agency over a truly terrifying possibility. We talked about the fact that there would be an increased police presence at the school today, and that most mass shootings happen without warning. Finally, we told him that if he felt unsafe or too anxious to learn, to call us and we would bring him home.

If you’re not horrified yet, you should be. Because this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. And I know from talking to other parents that similar conversations happen across the country with increasing regularity. In the past, I told my sons that there was nothing to fear. These situations were an anomaly, not the norm, but that is no longer true. We can’t promise kids they’ll be safe in school. And kids know that.

Today’s teachers are routinely trained in how to respond to an active shooter, and they, in turn, train their students in class. At the elementary level, barricading classrooms has been turned into a perverse game. Ask any kindergartner, and they’ll likely tell you what to do if a “bad guy” comes into their room. When my 16-year-old was that age, he was told by his teacher to throw books.

As adults, we try to bury our heads in the sand when it comes to school violence, but our kids don’t have that luxury. They’re on the front lines, and our yelling at one another about gun legislation versus mental health resources versus making schools a “hard target” only exacerbates the problem because nothing gets done. Nothing changes. So our kids plan for what they consider to be an eventuality. When a gunman shows up, how can I save myself?

This is so far from the kingdom God wants to build here on Earth, and it appalls me that we, as Jesus followers, have let it get this far. How can we, as parents/grandparents/mentors/community leaders allow society to turn a fundamental human right (getting an education) into a source of trauma? And what do we do to change it?

Scripture tells us that we are to be a people of peace. “Embrace peace!”, the Psalmist writes. “Happy are those who make peace,” Jesus tells his followers, “Do your best to live at peace with all people,” Paul writes to the Romans. But to do so, we must put aside enmity and discord and look for the common humanity that exists between us all. Somewhere along the way we’ve forgotten (or maybe never understood) the fact that we are all God’s children, and therefore, dearly loved. None of us is perfect, but none of us is wholly bad either. And yet, we often characterize those we disagree with as being somehow diabolical, forgetting their humanity and the fact that they, too, are made in the image of God. Our children are never going to be safe if we keep viewing each other in diametrical terms, because dichotomy does not breed peace, only more division. At some point, we must put down our weapon of politics to find real solutions to real problems. How do we create a society in which all of our children can grow in safety? This should be a meaningful conversation in our communities at the local, state, and federal levels, and the question cannot be answered with political talking points. It will take compromise…and love…to get there.

Earlier this week, I read the following quote in a sermon given by Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s stayed with me, and I think his insight is as relevant today as it was nearly 50 years ago.

I’m compelled by the idea that love is a “creative force”…something powerful and alive…like a cleansing fire burning through a wood to rid the landscape of decay, or stormy waves crashing into and eroding a rocky cliff to make something new. Love is not passive; rather, it is an active agent working good in the world. And it is the path to peace. When we harness the power of love and use it to help others, we bring God’s kingdom closer. Love allows us to see the humanity in others. Love allows us to humbly admit that we have made a mess of things. Love allows us to empathize with those who have lost loved ones to tragedy, to the extent where we will not rest until we ensure that no one else suffers in the same way. Love allows us to hear the opinions of others and to understand the motivations behind them. Love allows us to do hard things, to have hard conversations, to keep journeying on a hard path. Love allows us to understand that some people need extra help, and that we, as a people, have an obligation to help them.

My 14-year-old spent his bus ride to school this morning composing a letter to one of our U.S. Senators. He knows that his opinion will not be popular with our elected official, yet he believes that his voice should be heard. And I agree. Our kids should be given agency over their own safety. They should be given a voice in the dialogue about how to make school a safe place where all can learn, because they’re the ones living with the threat of school violence. And as those who support children, we need to be a safe place for them to communicate their feelings. We need to let them know that they can come to us to share their concerns, and we need to be willing to put aside our own feelings/fears/opinions/perspectives to really listen to what they have to say, even if they just want to talk through ways that they can feel safe in a classroom.

Blessings and PEACE,

Sara

This past Sunday, Christians around the globe gathered in churches scattered far and wide to celebrate something big–the birth of the church. On Pentecost Sunday, we remember the remarkable story of the Holy Spirit roaring like a hurricane throughout the room where the apostles were gathered, branding them as holy vessels with a tongue of fire above their heads, and giving them the ability to speak in many different languages. On that day thousands of years ago, God showed up in a big way. God sent his Spirit…the Advocate…the Breath of God…to fulfill the promise Jesus made to the disciples before he was raised to heaven.

“…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1: 8

As the disciples spoke, the Spirit was set loose–opening the minds and hearts of countless people from all over the known world to the gospel message.

At its core, Pentecost is a celebration of the Holy Spirit and of God’s awesome power to fulfill each and every one of the promises made in Scripture. It’s a celebration of hope –the hope that we have in God’s mighty power to act in this world and to build his kingdom here…on Earth as it is in heaven.

But lately, I’ve had a hard time reconciling the Pentecost story to the world in which we live. There’s too much hate. Too much evil. The news of yet another massacre of innocent children at a school broke something within me. To be honest, God and I are still processing the rage I feel at this senseless act of violence, and my despair that we, as a people, keep allowing such tragedy to take place. I don’t know what the answer is, but I believe that we, as American citizens, are accountable for the lives of these children. We have chosen the tribalism that is American politics over the sanctity of life beyond the womb. And far too many Christians bow before the alter of nationalism rather than the alter of Christ. My own teenagers see the world as a fraught, chaotic, and confusing place, and they feel great anxiety as they seek to navigate what seems to be a swirling, churning ride. Studies would suggest that my boys are far from alone in this sentiment, as many kids and teens prefer to cocoon at home rather than entering a world that seems so tumultuous.

While cocooning is tempting in time’s like these, it’s not what God wants for or from his people. As the Spirit threw open the doors behind which the disciples hid during Pentecost so they could share the good news of Jesus Christ, so, too, the Spirit calls us forth into the turbulent waters of the world today to share the message of God’s love. It’s not easy. There’s much that stands in the way. But where God wills, the Spirit makes a way, as Paul affirmed when he was in the midst of stormy seas on his way to Rome.

Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem, but he appealed to Caesar. The journey to Rome was fraught with peril, but Paul used each stop along the way as an opportunity to spread the good news. When Paul’s ship becomes swamped in a terrible storm at sea, his traveling companions (some of whom were seasoned sailors) panic. They’re sure they’re going to drown. Yet Paul invokes the Spirit of God, assuring them that he still has work to do, so the Spirit will lead them safely to shore. “I believe,” Paul tells his shivering shipmates, that “God will do exactly what he told me.” Acts 27:25 And, of course, he does.

Scripture is a wonderful gift. It’s a record of God’s love for all he created, especially his children. Scripture is full of the promises of God, and time and again God shows up to fulfill each and every one of those promises. Paul got to Rome, and he shared the message of Jesus’s love with some of the top government officials of the day. God showed up for Paul throughout his journey, even when all hope seemed to be lost.

Some days, it’s easy for me to feel like God has abandoned us. That he’s washed his hands of his belligerent children who seem compelled to throw away his gifts of grace in favor of selfish destruction. But Scripture tells a different story. Scripture tells us of a loving Father who relentlessly chases after his wayward children, ultimately sacrificing everything he has in order to bring them home. Our God doesn’t give up on us. And he doesn’t stop acting.

The psalmist writes:

The story of Pentecost is the story of God showing up. So let’s be brave, my friends. Let’s be strong. Let’s lean into the storms raging in our communities, our nation, our world, and allow the Spirit to lead us. Let’s be the hands and feet that bring good news to the brokenhearted. Let’s speak to others in words of love. Let’s offer grace to those whom we disagree with. Let’s forgive those who have wronged us. Let’s show mercy to those whom we feel are misguided or wrong. Let’s offer food to the hungry, and care to the homeless. Let’s listen before we speak, and give room to those who need to talk. Let’s greet others with kindness. Let’s open our hearts to empathy, and show compassion for those whose journey looks different from ours. Let’s sit with those who mourn, and encourage those who are struggling. Let’s push our leaders to be better and to do better.

Most importantly, let’s expect God to show up in the midst of the chaos. And let’s be ready to follow when he does.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

Today, we find ourselves entering the home stretch of the Advent season. Christmas is in three days and, per usual, I am in manic mode. There are gifts to finish purchasing, stockings to stuff, menus to plan, and goodies to bake. In all of my self-inflicted hustle and bustle, I sometimes forget to pause and reflect on why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. Holidays can easily devolve from celebrations to chores if we’re not careful, and there are times I have teetered on that ledge–or nose-dived right off it!

This year, as part of my Advent practice, I decided to reflect on the writings of the minor prophets: specifically, the books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These three prophets lived and worked in the post-exilic period, after the Israelites had returned from Babylon. There was a lot of work to do–the land was in ruins. So this group devoted themselves to putting the pieces of their nation back together. It was busy work and, as happens in the midst of busyness, the people were neglecting God again. The prophets were there to remind them that, although the work of rebuilding the nation of Israel was important, most important was their continued faithfulness to God and his law. Kind of like our to-do lists, right?

And yet, I have found, that when we set aside our “must…keep…pushing…through” items and focus our souls on God, he shows up in such unexpected and remarkable ways that we can’t help but, as the hymn proclaims, stand in awesome wonder. My moment of awesome wonder came in my kitchen a few days ago, as I was sitting on the little wooden step stool my husband’s grandfather made long ago and which has become my Bible time stool. I was reading through the book of Malachi. Like his contemporaries Haggai and Zechariah, Malachi was urging the people to remain faithful to God, and chastising them for prioritizing other tasks and only giving God the left-overs of their daily lives. But Malachi was also speaking beyond the present, prophesying a time to come when God would judge between the faithful and the faithless, setting aside a people to call his own. Chapter four of Malachi ends this proclamation:

I quickly turned the page to see what would happen next, and was flummoxed to discover that there were no more words. What?! I thought to myself. That’s it? Truth be told, there’s one more verse–it says God will come and strike the land with total destruction. (Malachi 4:6) Quite the exclamation point! But I want to focus on the proclamation–the promise of Elijah before the day of the Lord’s arrival.

As I flipped ahead through the next several pages of historical commentary in my Bible, somewhat disgruntled by the lack of resolution on the author’s part, it dawned on me…Malachi ends abruptly because the story’s not done. Flipping quickly to the book of Matthew I sat, stunned, as I looked at the words before me. For the first time ever, I was awed, not by God’s word, but by a genealogical list of names.

Normally, when it comes to biblical genealogy, I just skim through it. But what stunned me, what awed me, weren’t the names themselves, but the fact that God had been continuing the story for generations, even after the prophets in Scripture had gone silent. Malachi spoke of the coming of Elijah in 430 B.C., and in the first-written synoptic gospel around 60 A.D., we have John the Baptist, an Elijah-like figure, living in the Judea wilderness and preaching a gospel of repentance in preparation for the coming of the Lord.

The final word in the Old Testament is a promise of the Lord’s coming. Then there’s silence. Time moves on. One generation gives way to the next. Nations rise and fall. Yet the minutiae of life keeps moving, like a time-lapse video, different figures blurring together as they move in an out of the same scene. Years pass…hundreds of them in which people are born, in which they live and laugh and love and cry, in which they die and are laid to rest with all of those who have gone before. And the Earth keeps turning.

It’s quiet. It’s ordinary. Until one day, in an ordinary time in an ordinary place, an angel delivers a message to a young man and a young woman that will change everything. While many people had long ago stopped expecting God’s promises to be fulfilled, God hadn’t forgotten. From Malachi to Matthew (and Mark and Luke) God had a plan, and what we celebrate at Christmas is the fulfillment of that plan.

This, then, is what fills me with awe. That God came in a moment when it was least expected–in a time when many had likely written off his promise of a messiah as a myth or legend–a story of hope to be shared, but not really to be anticipated. God continued the story…for thousands of years! And it’s a story he’s continuing to write–his words etched into the hearts of all those who love him–his promises yet to be fulfilled.

As the shepherds did on a night long ago, I stand (or sit) in awesome wonder of God’s work. I’m overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of his faithfulness. For me, this Christmas is about hope. The hope that God is faithful, that all of his promises will come to fruition in his time and in his way. God never gives up. He came when everyone least expected it, and in a way that no one could have foretold.

My prayer for you as we enter the Christmas season is that you, too, will have an experience of God that leaves you standing in awesome wonder. Are you looking? Are you waiting? Fear not! God will come.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara

There’s a certain glow that comes with Christmastime–a soft-focus lens on the world that is suddenly strung with warmly hued lights. The air seems suddenly scented with pine, and we all breathe a little fuller in the crisp cleanness of it. Carols ring around us, Bing Crosby’s velvety baritone proclaiming “in the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas.” People greet one another with festive good cheer, and our hearts grow with love for all of our fellow human beings.

It’s an illusion, of course–a Hollywoodesque production of a holiday season in which we aspire to something greater than ourselves. Like a child listening intently for the gentle paw of reindeer hooves on the roof, we want to believe in the magic of Christmas. And sometimes we find it. Those moments of Yuletide perfection where the world itself seems to still in its constant revolving and we feel something–some joy or love or peace or hope that has been buried deep within our souls. And we give thanks, ascribing it to some sort of ethereal holiday being–Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Present, perhaps. But it’s not magic that brings us joy or love or peace or hope this season. It’s a miracle. And that is what we, God’s people, are called to celebrate.

There’s a big difference between magic and miracle. Magic is a practical art–a learned skill used to confound, delight, and even awe. Based in mystery, magic is illusory. And a good magician never reveals her tricks. In contrast, a miracle is a divine encounter. While it can be mysterious, it is not shrouded in mystery. A miracle is a revelation–God revealing Godself to humanity in a way that no human being could ever replicate. When we experience a miracle, we know it can only come from God. It’s not magic, it’s divine.

The Christmas story is a miracle. God sent a part of his Triune self into the world to redeem all of humanity. He sent his son, not as a mighty warrior, but as a helpless babe, to live among us. God came to experience all of humanity, from start to finish, and to gather it all back. As 1 John says, God sent his son to give us life. He used the miracle of the virgin birth to deliver a miracle to all of humanity, and he did it because he loves us. God loves us. God loves me. God loves you. So much so that he made his dwelling among us. That’s the miracle.

But there’s another miracle to the Christmas story, and it’s one that takes us beyond the cradle to the cross, as Jesus, God’s voice, the one who spoke all of creation into being, sacrifices his life so that we might live. And, oh, what life we are given! In miracle upon miracle, Jesus doesn’t stay on that cross. He doesn’t make his home in the grave. He rises from the tomb, he rolls the stone away, and in doing so, Jesus casts off the shackles of death for all of us, offering life eternal to all who call on his name! It’s not magic, it’s a miracle. God, through Jesus, triumphs over the grave. And in doing so, God makes a path for us to triumph over death, too.

As John writes:

This, then, is what we are to revel in during the Christmas season. Not magic. But miracle. How can we not share this good news? How can we not, like the shepherds, run through the streets proclaiming this miracle of all miracles? Love has come. Salvation has come. Life has come. This Christmas, as we gather with our friends and family, as we deck the halls, as we bake cookies and watch Hallmark movies, as we carol and revel, as we wrap presents and stuff stockings….let’s take some time to remember the miracle. And let’s look, really look, not for Christmas magic, but for the miracle of God With Us.

Blessings and Peace,

Sara