by Elizabeth | Oct 20, 2010 | Learning Story
If you’ve been reading the blog lately, you know I’ve been in a [relatively] still state these last couple of weeks. (Except for the thousands of arm circles and broomstick moves I perform every day:)
This still state has given me lots of opportunity to reflect on the theme of “doing.” This morning I came upon an index card lying under a stack of papers on my desk. Occasionally a verse or passage hits me in a new way and I write it down (because it seems my ability to memorize left me in my 40’s along with eyesight and other losses).
Listen to this:
Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.
Sounds vaguely familiar, right? It is the last verse in one of our well-worn Christmas passages that foretells the Savior. As much as I love the preceding passages that tell of a kingdom of peace and beauty and righteousness, I really love the very last words of this verse, and NOT just because I can remember them. Watch out, I’m going to write it LARGE!
THE ZEAL OF THE LORD ALMIGHTY WILL ACCOMPLISH THIS! [Exclamation point implied:]
One translation says, “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will DO it!” When I worry and fret, I need re-orientation. I need to remember what I pray many mornings, “Thy will be done.” And then I need to remember that His will really will be done. And how will it be DONE? Not by my doing. Yes, by my active participation, whether through prayer or other means. But not by my doing. By his passion, might, mercy and strength. Say it with me now. Aloud. Right there in Panera.
THE ZEAL OF THE LORD ALMIGHTY WILL ACCOMPLISH THIS.
And today, through the day, when you need a rescue, remember that the rescuer has already come. The doing of redemption has been done. The ongoing process of renewal is being done. I think I’ll go back to my recliner and ponder that for a while:)!
by Elizabeth | Oct 19, 2010 | Learning Story
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” James 1:12
I went to get more coffee and returned to find our dog Abbey like this. I wondered if she was pondering the problem of being a dog and wondering why she doesn’t get to eat breakfast at the table!
It made me think of what I read in Alec Motyer’s commentary on James yesterday:
“Many people have pondered the ‘problem of pain.’ Few pause to ponder the problem of happiness. Why should a holy God give me restful days, a happy home, healthy and dear children to a sinner like me? How I should love him for these blessings!
Likewise it is true that the Lord visits with with hardships and sorrow so that he may draw near to us and ask, ‘Do you love me still?
An elderly man, bereaved of his wife, said: ‘It must be that the Lord still has something for me to do, else why has he left me here?’ And someone replied, ‘He has not left you to do anything except to love him still.’
Following up on yesterday’s post, I ask myself:
What do I have to do today? (What do you have to do today?)
And the answer, “He has not left you to do anything except to love him still.”
What do you think?
by Elizabeth | Oct 17, 2010 | Learning Story
I’m tired of sitting, sleeping, feeling too drowsy to do anything except sitting and sleeping (and occasional standing), and the fact that about the only thing I “do” these days is try to make a broomstick move approximately 8 inches back and forth and up and down. Oh, well, that’s not all. I do arm circles. Lots of them. Clockwise. Counterclockwise. Back and forth. Side to side.
Thus goes my rant for day 12 post-op rotator cuff repair. I will spare you some of the other complaints my family has heard.
It seems God has laid me out. Again. Despite taking the prescribed painkillers only at night to numb pain enough to sleep, I am struggling with powerful drowsiness and middling pain during the days. My frustration with not feeling like “doing” anything came to a head this morning when I heard the chapel choir my son is in sing one of my favorite hymns, “Take My Life and Let It Be.”
It occurred to me that I like the hymn because in my super-performance-oriented approach to life, I thought it was about active doing. Take my lips, my voice, my feet…and let them give praise. But this morning I heard it again for the very first time. It occurred to me that God doesn’t need my lips to move at all for me to give Him praise. He doesn’t demand that my feet be swift or beautiful, though it makes a lovely picture. I’ve always known my voice doesn’t sing very well. Thank God He doesn’t require what I have often imagined!
He just wants my life to be. That’s all the praise He wants from me.
The End. (Two-handed typing time is limited:)
May I learn as well as Paul did to be content in all circumstances and to let My Potter further refine this sun-baked lump of clay!:)
- Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
*Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise.
- Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
- Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
- Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
Every pow’r as Thou shalt choose.
- Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
- Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.
by Elizabeth | Oct 16, 2010 | Learning Story
Thinking we are being unkind, we do not speak. Fearing we are being judgmental, we remain silent. Back to the question of several days ago, “How do we love a fellow sinner well when we see them on a path of destruction,” we should ask ourselves why we would remain silent. Today, the last in a series on community from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.
It is a good time to ask ourselves and to bring before God this matter of Christian community. Where am I? Longing for community. Graced with rich community but on the outer fringes? Enjoying giving and receiving love of all kinds?
If we cannot bring ourselves to say the necessary word, we will have to ask ourselves whether we are not still seeing other Christians clothed in a human dignity that we think we dare not touch, and thus whether we are not forgetting the most important thing—that they, too, no matter how old or high ranking or distinguished they may be, are still persons like us, sinners crying out for God’s grace.
They have the same great troubles that we have, and need help, comfort, and forgiveness as we do. The basis on which Christians can speak to one another is that each knows the other as a sinner who, even given all one’s human renown, is forlorn and lost if not given help. This does not mean that the others are being disparaged or dishonored. Rather, we are paying them the only real honor a human being has, namely, that as sinners they share in God’s grace and glory, that they are children of God.
This realization gives our mutual speech the freedom and openness it needs. We talk to one another about the help we both need. We admonish one another to go the way Christ bids us to go. We warn one another against the disobedience that is our undoing. We are gentle and we are firm with one another, for we know both God’s kindness and God’s firmness.
Why should we be afraid of one another since both of us have only God to fear? Why should we think that another Christian would not understand us when we understood very well what was meant when somebody spoke God’s comfort or God’s admonition to us, even in words that were inept and awkward? Or do we really believe there is a single person in this world who does not need either comfort or admonition? If so, then why has God given us the gift of Christian community?
by Elizabeth | Oct 15, 2010 | Learning Story
Bonhoeffer names the fourth service Christians offer one another to be “the service of the word.” He brings this last because whenever we speak the Word to one another, it must flow out of the other three acts of service: listening, helpfulness, and bearing with others. Read what he says and imagine offering the Word to a fellow sinner coming from a standpoint of humility and the full knowledge that you (I) am the chief sinner. Do you think the Word can minister to a broken sinner’s heart? If so, how? What dangers do you see?
Wherever the service of listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others is being faithfully performed, the ultimate and highest ministry can also be offered, the service of the Word of God.
This word is threatened all about by endless dangers. If proper listening does not precede it, how can it really be the right word for the other? If it is contradicted by one’s own lack of active helpfulness, how can it be a credible and truthful word? If it does not flow from the act of bearing with others, but from impatience and the spirit of violence against others, how can it be the liberating and healing word? On the contrary, the person who has really listened, served, and patiently borne with others is the very one who can easily stop talking. A deep distrust of everything that is merely words often stifles a personal word to another Christian. What can a powerless human word accomplish for others? Why add to the empty talk? Are we, like those experienced spiritual “experts,” to talk past the real needs of the other person?
by Elizabeth | Oct 14, 2010 | Learning Story
Looking back at it, I jumped the gun yesterday when I brought the question of sin into what does it mean to bear one another’s freedom. In that section, Bonhoeffer was talking about a holy freedom that emphasizes our God-written differences and calls us to walk different paths of holiness and to celebrate one another rather than to compare and compete.
In today’s section, he talks about bearing one another’s freedom t osin. By this, I think he means that we can’t force people out of their sinful choices. But not being able to control other people doesn’t mean we stand idly by as fellow Christians commit murder (yes, sadly, according to Jesus, hating your neighbor because she was mean to your son when he was out selling candy for school counts), gossip (telling stories that are not yours to tell to people who have no need of hearing it), adultery (loving anyone or anything more than our Bride Christ)…and so on — any sin that destroys community. I’d love to hear more comments about how you’ve seen this practically work out in your community. What can it look like for a Christian to bear another’s freedom in sin?
Then, along with the other’s freedom comes the abuse of that freedom in sin, which becomes a burden for Christians in their relationship to one another. The sins of the other are even harder to bear than is their freedom; for in sin, community with God and with each other is broken. Here, because of the other, Christians suffer the breaking of the community with the other established in Jesus Christ.
But here, too, it is only in bearing with the other that the great grace of God becomes fully apparent. Not despising sinners, but being privileged to bear with them, means not having to give them up for lost, being able to accept them and able to preserve community with them through forgiveness. “My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1).
As Christ bore with us and accepted us as sinners, so we in his community may bear with sinners and accept them into the community of Jesus Christ through the forgiveness of sins. We may suffer the sins of one another; we do not need to judge. That is grace for Christians. For what sin ever occurs in the community that does not lead Christians to examine themselves and condemn themselves for their own lack of faithfulness in prayer and in intercession, for their lack of service to one another in mutual admonition and comforting, indeed, for their own personal sin and lack of spiritual discipline by which they have harmed themselves, the community, and one another?
Because each individual’s sin burdens the whole community and indicts it, the community of faith rejoices amid all the pain inflicted on it by the sin of the other and, in spite of the burden placed on it, rejoices in being deemed worthy of bearing with and forgiving sin. “Behold, you bear with them all and likewise all of them bear with you, and all things are in common, both the good and the bad” (Luther).157 The service of forgiveness is done by one to the other on a daily basis. It occurs without words in intercessory prayer for one another. Bonhoeffer, Life Together
A warning about taking this out of context: Bonhoeffer is not encouraging us to stand idly by when sin breaks community. There is a call to action he discusses. I have known too many Christians who felt it was their duty to suffer stoically because Christ suffered. We will suffer because of our own sin and others’, but we also have a call to move toward restoration and reconciliation. It requires prayers, and when the time is right, words. We’ll look at that tomorrow.
