Half Truths

Reflections on John 16:7-13

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong …”

Four-year-old, Amanda asked her mom how babies got inside their mother’s tummy.  Amanda’s mom told her a half-truth or maybe even a quarter-truth.  She said that it was miracle, a special gift from God and left it at that.  That worked just fine for little Amanda.  It was just enough truth to make her feel loved and special and connected to God … all good things and of course, absolutely true.  It was also just enough truth to ease the uncertainly of welcoming a new baby brother or sister in a couple of months.  If it is God who is giving her a baby brother or sister, well then it must be a good thing, she thought to herself.

Eventually, Amanda would need more truth.  She would ask her mother that very same question, worded differently of course, at ages six, seven and ten.  At age six she asked because her mom was pregnant again, at seven because her best friend’s dog was about to give birth and at ten because she was picking up some conflicting information from the older girls at the school bus stop.  Each time the topic came up, Amanda’s mom doled out a little more of the truth.  

Michael too found himself in the business of doling out the truth.  As a family physician, he was often in the position of calming the panic of internet self-diagnosticians and sounding the warning alarm for those who thought it could never happen to them.  He found himself, on a patient-to-patient basis, deciding with every appointment how much truth to tell.  It is a fine line between inspiring healthier living and stirring up unhealthy anxiety.  Most of his patients can’t handle the truth, at least not the whole truth.  

Life is series of unfolding truths.  The whole truth never comes all at once.  It is always just beyond our grasp.  It is too big.  We cannot take it all in.  We can’t handle it.  It slips through our fingers like water.  We cannot contain it, nor can we harness it.  We cannot manipulate it or own it, because it doesn’t belong to us.  It is beyond us and yet from time to time we bump into fragments of truth that satisfy us for a time.  Like the tale of the blind man who encounters an elephant bit by bit, our experiences expose bits of truth, quarter truths and half truths. As we age and grow, as life knocks us around a bit, as our vision expands along with our questions, more truth lies waiting to be mined. 

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now^.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…”

Photo by Jaime Owens

Jesus was preparing the disciples for his departure … for his death.  He had shared so much with them in the time they traveled together.  So many miracles, so many memorable moments, so many bits of truth, but there was still so much to say, so much to do, so much to experience and yet their time together was about to come to an end.  Change was in the air.  A storm was brewing.  Things would not be the same, but not even death could stop truth from coming. Truth telling would not end with a Galilean Jesus.  The truth would continue to unfold.  It would continue to find them just as it continues to find us.  Jesus had more truth to tell.  And even now God has more truth to tell and it is the Holy Spirit who guides us to it, shines the light on it and stirs within us a hunger for it, if we will just pay attention.  

People grow and societies grow.  Experiences and experiments, getting it right and getting it wrong, all carry within them treasured truths to be mined and embraced or rejected and ignored.  No one has it all right and I venture to guess no one has it all wrong.  Those, who in their arrogance, believe they have it all, the whole truth, revel in their ignorance.  While those, who in humility, discover that the more they know, the more they don't know,  grow closer to the whole truth with every question they ask.  For God is in the business of doling out the truth, bits at a time.

  

Great Expectations

Reflections on Isaiah 40:28-31

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

Margaret cares for her four grandchildren, three boys and a girl, ranging in age from 8 to 16.  She lives not far outside Zambia’s capital city of Lusaka, but her village is a world apart from that modern city. 

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted

Me & Margaret in front of her new house.

I visited Margaret in the summer of 2005.  World Vision had built for Margaret a three-room brick house to replace the mud and thatch hut she shared with the children.  We were there to see the work that World Vision had done with the money raised by youth groups such as the one from my church.  We were also there to see how HIV/AIDS has taken the lives of so many young parents, leaving grandparents, such as Margaret to raise children left as orphans.  We saw as well how many young children have fallen victims to this disease as it is passed from mother to child.  It was a sobering and powerful trip on many levels … a true mix of tragedy and great joy.  Margaret was so pleased with her new home.  She invited us in and showed us around.  We saw not only the new house, but also the old one-room hut that had been their home for so many years.  You could see a lot of sky through the gaps in the thatched roof.  I wondered what it must have been like to weather the rainy season in such a hut.

We also saw a silo type structure for storing corn grown in the summer months, but that was not all we saw.  Just to the right of the new house was a miniature hut on stilts made from tree trunks.  It was thatched on top too, but without gaps.  It was well cared for in a way that the other mud and thatched structures were not.  Maybe it was new or maybe it was special, but what was it for?  It was raised an inch or two above my head.  Perhaps it stored food of interest to local African wildlife, like the way we have to protect our food from bears and raccoons and other critters when we camp.  Still something didn’t add up.  I had to know what it was for.  I asked our Zambian translator to ask Margaret.  I was not prepared for what I heard.

… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

The hut was certainly special.  She had made it to welcome doves that might be on their way to somewhere else, but might also like to rest and take shelter for a time.  Doves, she continued, symbolized the Holy Spirit, the power of God in the world and she wanted God to know that she expected the Spirit and welcome its presence.  She was ready to receive whatever God sent her way.  She had great faith that God was good and that God wanted good for her and her grandchildren.  Even in the face of all that they had suffered, God had provided for her and she, in this unusual way, wanted to provide something in return.  She was ready for God and she expected the Spirit to come.

they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

While I was there, Margaret had a visitor.

I think of Margaret often and wonder how my expectations of God compare to hers.  Have I created a life of welcome for the Spirit to have its way with me?  Have I trusted fully in the goodness of God, even when my circumstances seem to the contrary?  Certainly, I have not suffered as Margaret has suffered, nor have I had to trust as Margaret has trusted.  In so many ways our lives are apples and oranges.  In my comfortable first-world life, I have yet to fall exhausted and I have yet to fully mount up with wings like eagles, but thanks to Margaret, I know that it is possible and for that I thank God!

The Music of God

Reflections on John 3:1-9 

If you want to see a miracle watch the video below.  I bumped into it on facebook and I was truly moved.  In the church we throw around words like transformation and rebirth and even phrases like born again, but what do they mean and what do they really look like?  This clip, from the Alive Inside Documentary Project sponsored by Music and Memory, details the awakening of Henry, an elderly nursing home resident.  Years of seizures have sucked the life out of Henry and left him curled up and wheelchair bound, depressed and at times incoherent and unresponsive.  But when headphones are placed over his ears and plugged into an iPod loaded with music from his younger years, Henry comes back to life.  The proof is in the video.  Transformation, rebirth, awakening, this is what it looks like.  

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about a rebirth, an awakening of the human soul necessary for life in the kingdom of God.  Don’t mistake the kingdom of God for some eternal heaven in the clouds.  Jesus was far more earthly minded than that.  Jesus spoke often of a kingdom of God that was being ushered into a flesh and blood, here and now world that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, but was real nonetheless.  He spoke of a kingdom with no borders or boundaries, limited only by our refusal to recognize it.  A kingdom ruled by love, divine love and characterized by peace and joy, generosity and grace.  A kingdom that is our divine right, our divine call, but which we can’t embrace without an awakening, for who can embrace what they cannot see? 

Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.”

Henry’s body kept him alive.  His heart beat and his lungs took in air, but seizures robbed him of the person he was created to be.  He was alive, but there was little to no life in him.  Perhaps that is what Jesus saw in us, in humanity.  We are alive, but there is little to no life in us, for we have made our home in a kingdom with borders, ruled by fear and characterized by greed and selfishness, prejudice and hatred.  A kingdom that is the very human consequence of a broken humanity seized by a one-dimensional blindness which confuses the tangible and the real.      

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

Who will wake us up?  Who will breath life back into us?  Who will open the eyes of our souls to a greater truth?  Jesus is clear.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to transform, to awaken, to breath new life into us.  The Holy Spirit is the music of God.  It was the power of music that brought Henry back to himself, back the person he was, the person he was meant to be.  The songs of his youth animated him.  They engaged him physically and mentally.  They lit him up and connected him to others.  Dr. Oliver Sacks, world-renown neuroscientist and author, has been quoted as saying; “music brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.”  The Holy Spirit does the very same thing for us spiritually.  The Holy Spirit breaths life into curled up, bound, depressed, incoherent and unresponsive human beings.  It restores us to the people we are created to be.  It connects us to one another and to God.  It helps us to see the bigger picture, the greater truths.  It animates us, calling us into action, inspiring generosity and grace. It transforms us in an instant and over a lifetime, in big ways and small as we give ourselves over to the power of the wind.  

Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’

I am with Nicodemus on this one.  I do not know how the Spirit does it, just as I do not understand how music does what it does.  Music moves me emotionally and often physically, even without my consent, I find my foot tapping or my head bobbing to the left and to the right.  Music winds me up.  Music calms me down.  Music inspires me, speaks for me, makes me laugh and makes me cry.  In short, it lights me up.  And just like music, the Holy Spirit, the wind of God, the power of God, lights me up too.  It is the agent of epiphanies, the source of inspiration, the impetus of good works.  I am the person I was created to be when the Holy Spirit has its way with me.  

That is what we mean when we throw around the words transformation, rebirth and born again. 

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Music and Memory is a non-profit organization that brings personalized music into the lives of the elderly or infirm through digital music technology vastly improving quality of life.  

To learn more visit ... http://www.musicandmemory.org/index.html

Bluebonnets

Reflections on Luke 24:8-11

Having found the tomb empty and being told that Jesus had risen, the women share their epiphany with the other disciples:

... returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and all the rest.  Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.  But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

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In the spring every region has its particular beauty.  I am from the northeast and we glory in the tulips and the hyacinth and then the forsythia, the rhododendron and the azalea.  And that is not even to mention the flowering trees, the dogwoods and the cherry trees.  We are spoiled in the northeast.  There is so much color to our spring.  In other parts of the country spring comes less auspiciously. 

I was in Austin, Texas in April of 2010.  I was attending a conference with friends, two of whom are Texas natives.  I wasn’t expecting much from Texas in April.  What kind of spring could Texas possible have?  I confess, I came with prejudice in my heart.  Texas and I are not on good terms.  I have yet to forgive the state for the disaster that was my sixth grade year.  (That is another story)  So suffice it to say, I was not expecting much from my visit to Austin.  However, I had been told, more than once, that Texas bluebonnets were a sight to see. 

I flew into San Antonio, where my friend, Katheryn, pastors a church.  She picked me up at the airport and we traveled together by minivan to Austin, north on Highway 35.  We had a lot of catching up to do.  There was talk of the glory days of seminary and of course crazy church stuff, friends we had in common and enemies too.  Pastors so rarely get the chance to vent, it was a shame we didn’t have farther to travel.  There was so much to say.  In the middle of one long tale, out of nowhere, Katheryn gasped.  Literally G A S P E D.  I was looking out the passenger side window, away from Katheryn, lost in thought, focused on the trials and tribulations of church service, when Katheryn unexpectedly took in a whole lot of air.  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.  I was sure that I was no more than a second or two from meeting Jesus face to face and I didn’t want that to happen while I was telling tales out of school.  I snapped my head to the left, in Katheryn’s direction.  She was pointing to her left, out the driver’s side window.  “BLUEBONNETS!” she exclaimed.

Are you kidding me?!  It took a moment before I could make the transition from impending death to wildflowers.  It took more than a moment for my heart rate to drop back to near normal.  In the mean time, before I could respond, I saw them.  Little specks of blue scattered in and among the tall grass on the median strip that separated the northbound and southbound lanes.  Little flowers, not in mass, not bunched together in a blaze of glory, but scattered randomly, haphazardly, maybe two-dozen peaking out in a sea of tall grass.

All I could say was, “oh,” with a tone of relief, rather than awe.  While it was certainly better than death on a Texas highway, and it obviously meant something to Katheryn, to be honest, it was underwhelming.  I have to say, the build up was better than the reality.  I expected a sea of blue outlined in grass, not a sea of grass with specks of blue.  I expected a wildflower patch like you see on the highways in the southeast where dense, purposeful swatches of color are framed by highway on-ramps and exits. 

That is the nature of an epiphany.  It is as individual as our taste in wildflowers.  The Holy Spirit opens one person to a truth, a revelation, through a walk in the woods or the words of a song or a happenstance at work, any of which on any other day or for any other person might convey nothing out of the ordinary and even if that walk or song or happenstance is shared with another, one might have an enormous God-moment, while the other remains unaware and untouched.  Katheryn’s reaction to the beauty she saw in the bluebonnets drew from her a physical and audible reaction, a gasp, as if to say, "If you saw what I just saw, surely you would gasp too."  But I did see what she saw and I was not moved in the same way or even moved at all. 

There is a truth in that simple scenario that speaks to our desire to force our epiphanies on others.  We believe that if we can lead someone to the place of our own revelation, if we can point to what we saw or heard, put words to what we felt or what we had, in a holy moment, come to understand, then others will see or hear or feel or understand it too.  If I was moved, you will be too.  We want to share our epiphanies and we think we can make it happen.  But an epiphany is a work of the Holy Spirit, not a human creation.  It finds us when the time is just right.  It finds us in God’s time.  We cannot manufacture or control it.  It happens to us, not because of us and subsequently we can not make it happen for others. 

We can’t force the Spirit’s hand, just as the Spirit chooses not to force our will.  The Holy Spirit woos individual hearts and minds toward holy truths at God’s pace, a timing synched to our own individual personalities and circumstances.  It may take a lifetime for some to see the beauty of God’s creation on the median of a Texas highway, while others seem ready to oooooh and ahhhhhh at birth.  This, should we grasp it, gives us cause to be patient with those who cannot share our epiphanies, who fail to be impressed with what moves us to the core.  The Holy Spirit isn’t finished with them yet, just as the Spirit isn’t finished with us.  Epiphanies come when we are not looking, not expecting.  They take us by surprise.  They make us gasp.  If a co-worker, acquaintance, family member or beloved friend, cannot share the enormity of your revelation or inspiration, it doesn’t mean that they never will, only that this time is your time not theirs.  This epiphany is for you, a gift from the God who loves you, who knows you, who created you.  Their time will come and perhaps already has with a different message, another insight, something you can’t quite see yet, but perhaps someday you will. 

Our epiphanies are individual affairs.  The truth is, you can lead a person to bluebonnets, but you can’t make them gasp!

Katheryn sent me this picture just the other day.

Apparently a rainy winter has made for a spectacular spring in Texas this year. 

Had I seen this, I may have GASPED!