Month: January 2019

Deep and Wide

On By Innermost BeingIn Spiritual GrowthLeave a comment

When I was a kid, we used to sing a song called “Deep and Wide.” Deep and wide, deep and wide, there’s a fountain flowing, deep and wide. We used our hands to illustrate the deep and wide part as children love to do. But as a child, even though I believed that Jesus loved me, I had no comprehension of how deep and vast that love is.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)

Before his life-changing conversion, Saul fought the spread of the gospel. He threatened to arrest and take the Lord’s disciples as prisoners. But on the road to Damascus, the Lord confronted him asking: “Saul, why do you persecute me?” After his encounter with Jesus, Saul became Paul, one of the greatest proponents of the gospel. It was his mission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles – to the very people he had once condemned.

The apostle Paul understood the “boundless riches of Christ.” With great enthusiasm, he wrote to the Ephesian believers about the great mystery that had been revealed to him (Ephesians 3:6): that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Because of Jesus, those who were once shut out of God’s promises were able to approach God with freedom and confidence.

As a child, I would not have understood the mystery that Paul was so excited to reveal. The word “gentile” was not in my vocabulary. There was no need for it; everyone in my small hometown was gentile. I was never excluded from the promises of God because of my heritage.

As a child, my knowledge of the love of Jesus was quite simple. He loved me because he loved all the children of the world. He loved me because he is good. He loved me because he is merciful. I was shy and self-conscious and felt like I didn’t fit in but God loved me just as I am. Even as a child, I knew that I could approach God with confidence because he knew me.

As an adult, I have seen the ugly side of humanity – the ways we fight with and hurt each other and treat others as less than ourselves. I see how we delight in building walls instead of bridges. I see how superficial we are in the ways we judge one another – on the basis of skin color or beauty or social status.

Now I see how radical the love of Jesus truly is. I see it in the way he told us to love our enemies and to bless those who curse us. I see it in the way he chose the despised Samaritan as the exemplar good neighbor – not the priest or the holy Levite. I see it in the way he responded to the teachers of the law and the Pharisees when they brought the adulterous woman before him hoping to trick him:

Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?

Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

The love of Jesus is a love that is so wide and long and high and deep that it extends to everyone. There is nothing about us that he does not already know. He sees right through to the mess inside of us and loves us anyway.

As an adult, I am rooted and established in the love of Jesus and yet I don’t fully grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is. It’s hard to find the words to describe the love of Jesus. Amazing. Unchanging. Unfailing. Ridiculous. Scandalous. Just call it what it is. Call it Grace (Unspoken).

It’s the light that pierces through you
To the darkest hidden place
It knows your deepest secrets
But it never looks away
It’s the gentle hand that pulls you
From the judgment of the crowd
When you stand before them guilty
And you’ve got no way out

Some may call it foolish and impossible
But for every heart it rescues it’s a miracle
It’s nothing less than scandalous
This love that took our place
Just call it what it is
Call it grace

Breaking down the wall of hostility

On By Innermost BeingIn Faith and CultureLeave a comment

Before church on Sunday, my pastor placed a long piece of blue tape down the middle of the sanctuary. When he began his sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22, he pointed out the tape in case we hadn’t noticed it. Those of us on one side of the tape were to imagine that we were God’s chosen people of Israel; the others half were Gentiles, excluded from the Jewish community. The blue tape represented the wall of hostility that once separated Jews and Gentiles.

The apostle Paul reminded the believers in Ephesus that as Gentiles, they were excluded from the covenants of the promise, without hope and godless. Jesus reconciled Jews and Gentiles. Because of Jesus, Gentiles are not considered foreigners or strangers to God’s promises. Now all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, may come to God the Father with the Holy Spirit’s help because of what Christ has done for us. We are not lost. We are not without hope.

God made a new covenant with the people of Israel; Jesus made the old one obsolete. Jesus annulled the old system of Jewish laws. Jesus broke down the wall of contempt.

Paul wrote that Christ’s purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two. He made peace between us.

My pastor said that many Christians still think in terms of us versus them, black versus white, liberal versus conservative, Christian versus Muslim. This is not the way of Jesus. This is not the model of the kingdom of God.

Given how divided the United States is and how divided the Church is, I was pleasantly surprised that my pastor specifically mentioned a few of the walls of hostility that exist today, though much more could be said. I was very happy that he said this is not the way of Jesus. God-and-Country Believers need to hear this. Too many Christians forget that people of all nations are children of God. Too many Christians forget that we are all temporary residents of God’s world.

How incredibly timely was this sermon, coming in the midst of a huge, costly debate about building a wall to keep people south of the border from entering the United States. Today the president demands that we spend billions of dollars to build a physical wall to protect Americans from murderers and rapists. But the truth is, he is building a wall of hostility to shut out the brown people he has always despised. This is not the way of Jesus. This is not the model of the kingdom of God.

No matter what happens in the coming days, I take heart in knowing that my brothers and sisters south of the border are loved and welcomed by God. God does not see them as foreigners or illegal aliens. Jesus will break down the walls of hostility and one day a great multitude of people from every nation, tribe, people and language will stand before the Lamb of God (Revelations 7:9-10).

The Age of Acceptance

On By Innermost BeingIn Faith and CultureLeave a comment

When I was 51, I wrote that I was Determined to Age Gracefully. To me, aging gracefully means having an inner beauty that shines through the wrinkles. While aging gracefully is a noble goal, getting old is no fun. If you kick and scream like a toddler as Father Time carries you off into old age, there is nothing graceful about it. And there is nothing fun about the aches and pains and physical degeneration that come with aging. It took me a few years to come to terms with losing my youth. Thankfully, I can now say, with no shame: I am old.

Accepting Reality

The process of coming to grips with aging is much like the stages of grieving the loss of a loved one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Many people deny that they are getting old by lying about their age or pretending to be younger than they are. We bargain to put off aging by buying anti-aging, age-defying products or having cosmetic procedures to cover up the effects of aging.

I never saw the point in lying about my age because if you lie about your age, you have to lie about other facts of your life, like how long you’ve been out of school or how long you’ve been married. In my opinion, pretending to be younger than you are just makes you look silly. Yet I do try to counteract the effects of aging by using anti-aging creams and by taking hormone replacement therapy. I work out harder than I did when I was young to offset my decreasing metabolism.

There is a lot of cultural pressure to deny and defy aging. I often see articles targeted to people my age about hair mistakes that make you look older, makeup mistakes that make you look older, fashion mistakes that make you look older. The underlying message is that there is something wrong with being old or looking old.

Aging is a fact of life. Looking your age is not.  – Howard Mo 

And here’s a quote from SilcSkin, a company that sells anti-aging products:

When you are happy with what you see in the mirror, your self-esteem is directly affected and when you feel great and look great, you are unstoppable.

SilcSkin on Twitter

Isn’t it better to feel good about yourself and to feel unstoppable, regardless of how you look? I think so. Because no matter what you do, if you live long enough, you will eventually look old.

It’s true that your physiological age may be less than your chronological age. Research shows that exercise makes your DNA younger by lengthening the telomeres that shorten as we age. I hope that my biological age is younger than my chronological age because I want to be healthy at any age. But even if it is, I’m still relatively old.

A meme I saw on Facebook said it well: the day you realize that your co-workers are young enough to be your kids is the day you are officially old. It is hard to deny that you are old when you see how old you are relative to other people. I am old enough to be the mother of a couple of my coworkers. My boss is more than a dozen years younger than me. And here’s a link to a fun graphic: at my age, 70% of people are younger than me.

It helps to accept aging if you can laugh at yourself. The first time I experienced the shock of seeing my aging neck skin in the side mirror of the car, I felt bad about my neck, just like Nora Ephron. She wrote,”our faces are lies and our necks are the truth.” If redwood trees had necks, you wouldn’t have to cut them open to see how old they are.

I am now able to laugh at my aging self. My husband tells me I look like an old lady when I bend at my knees to pick something up. You didn’t do that when you were young! I just laugh and say, I am an old lady! I don’t care if I look old; I just want to protect my back.

I have a great-niece who is nine years old. She has always struggled to understand how we are related (her grandma is my older sister). When I visited before Christmas, she said, “wait, are you my great grandma?”

Accepting aging is accepting reality. There is a time and a season for everything. I’ve had my time to be young. Now it’s my time to be old.

Becoming a work of art

Poet Stanlislaw Jerzy Lec wrote, “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” I know that not all old people are a work of art. The challenges of life make some people bitter, resentful, and prone to complaining about everything. When they age, they become crotchety and curmudgeonly.

Fortunately, the challenges of life can shape you into a wise, compassionate, and beautiful soul. People who are open to the lessons of life can become a work of art. Age provides perspective on the purpose of life and clarifies what is really important.

The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.

William Arthur Ward

I believe that the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit never fades. As I continue to age, I want my beauty to come not from the outside but from the disposition of my heart.

******

Painting of Chronos (Father Time) by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli – pl.pinterest.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54277715

I resolve to react respectfully

On By Innermost BeingIn RandomLeave a comment

I read several political news stories on Facebook everyday. The comments to an article are often just as or even more interesting than the story itself. The articles expose the ugliness of American politics and the comments reveal the ugliness of our hearts – the selfishness, anger, and self-righteousness.

My mother used to tell us kids, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Facebook has made it easy to say something that isn’t nice without saying a word. You can express anger and contempt with a click of a button. It’s especially easy to react uncivilly to strangers.

When Facebook added the laughing reaction icon, I am ashamed to say that I started using it in the same way that I see other people use it – not to express amusement at something that is actually funny, but to let the person commenting know that I think their logic is laughable. Laughing at someone you think is foolish or ill-informed is bad enough; there are people who use the laughing face reaction to ridicule victims of sexual assault.

When used to show disdain, disrespect, and insensitivity to other people, the laughing face on Facebook makes an ass out of me. 

My New Year’s resolution is to control my reactions on social media. I resolve to not laugh at strangers. I resolve to not get angry at strangers. I resolve to respect other people, even when I disagree with them. I resolve to not be an ass.

May the words of my mouth, the meditations of my heart, and the emoticons I choose be pleasing to you, O Lord.

May the words of my mouth
    and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you,
    O Lord, my rock and my redeemer

Psalm 19: 14 (NIV)

Photo by Dan Cook on Unsplash

https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/your-daily-word-prompt-resolution-December-31-2018/