listening to our lives...

So, nursing home adventure this past Sunday=laughing, listening, learning, and saddening. We spent a little over an hour just visiting with the residents...met some pretty great people. Everyone has a story...we just have to realize that and listen. And in the listening, we find out that we're not so different. Those people in the nursing home lived so that we can live...and we will live and get old and die so that others may live. These lyrics from Jon Foreman keep playing in my head..."She's somebody's baby--somebody's baby girl. And she's somebody's baby still." I've sung that all week as I think about the kids I've been charged with this year...and for the random person I encounter. Our lives are wrapped up in so much--I feel like I go all of the time and that I have so much to do all of the time to get to the next step...I feel like I'm always asking God, "what's next?" But, in reality, I should be looking at what I've come from and what's happening now that will shape whatever is next. In the here and now...in the sitting with old people, listening to those around me, taking time to wipe a kid's nose, and these mediocre day in and day out activities, there is the kingdom, and there is the will of God...to be known by God and to know people...and not only to know, but to love. Love is constant, but it is not motion...it is the settling, the quiet listening, the silent prayers full of tears because we don't know what else to pray...because we have finally taken a lesson and maybe gotten something right.

Now for part 2...quote from Beuchner on Lent...

"In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year's income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.

If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why?

When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?

Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?

Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?

If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who yo uare but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end."

i always have thoughts...doesn't everybody?

I have a confession-I journal during sermons. I'm an active listener, ok? ha...but really, it is the time that I get a whole lot of my thoughts out and onto a concrete piece of paper. And most of the time, I go back and read and think, "wow, i really do believe that." So...here is one of my excerpts from a Sunday morning sermon series on being fishers of men.

James and John-Sons of Zebedee (great name)
"They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind."

The service that we have come to attend each week is not the act of following Jesus. To follow Jesus is a continuous sacrificial way of living. It is a community of exposure, honesty, and love that takes hard acts of self-sacrifice. It is leaving whatever we hold dear to find out what God holds dear. It is learning the art of compassion, the humility of mercy, and the embodiment of love and grace. When we truly follow, we do not necessarily need programs or tracts or church services because we change and realize that it is in the living out of who Jesus was and wants us to be that the true following begins. To follow, we must leave--that may be a physical leaving, an emotional leaving, even a spiritual leaving. When Jesus called James and John to follow, they were ready and willing. They may not have been ready for everything ahead--who is? But, something deep within them responded to the mystery they felt calling them to something greater than what was behind and in front of them. Jesus did not ordain them or speak to others about their accomplishments. He accepted them, knew them, loved them, empowered them, and helped them see who they were in the grand scheme of things. Jesus does the same for us, if we allow it.

A fisherman's job is hard and full of long days. Sometimes it takes a long time to catch one fish--sometimes you don't catch any at all. Fishing is dirty work--you have to be willing to get dirty and smell when it's done. Fishing requires silence and patience--two things I have not yet fully attained (and may never). We must listen and wait while following--that is movement that shows us and others that we have truly been caught.