The Story of Jonah

Dear Friends, Every once in a while I come across a story, song, or video that captures so beautifully the heart of God and I love sharing them with you.  This is one a friend posted on Facebook tonight and it is extraordinary.

A few years ago, I was at our local Jewish temple and the Rabbi did a midrash with the congregation on the story of Jonah. Throughout his telling, he would ask us questions as if we were Jonah, or the Ninevites, or even the whale and we had to answer from that person's perspective. I loved it. The story of Jonah has been precious to me ever since but this girl tells it like I've never heard it before. She's given me much to think about.


The story of Jonah from Corinth Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Five Minutes a Day

I was listening to the radio while driving the other day when the announcer talked about a new Bible for "busy moms" claiming that with all the multitasking moms do, this Bible would help them take five minutes for God. Five minutes? That is all God gets out of a day? In fraction form, that is 1/288 of our day that will be devoted to God and that is a good thing? What about the other 287/288 of our day? Are those not for God?

Admittedly, I have long since gotten out of the practice of a regular sit down time of Bible reading and prayer, a value instilled into me by the church I grew up in. However, I talk to God in the car, at work, I sing songs to him, we sing songs together (God is really good at duets), and I read with him in mind. At night, I always kneel by my bed and pray before climbing under the covers. I just can't imagine my life without God walking through it with me and being in relationship with him. I would give the excuse for all of us that the regular sit down devotional time is a launching point for a deeper living spirituality and I am sure that is true for many. However, I am also sure that many people give their "five minutes" on Sunday, or an occasional nod to Jesus during the week and don't talk to God for the other 287/288 of their day. How much they miss. God doesn't want our five minutes, he wants all 1,440. No matter what we are engaged in, we can commune with him. Whether it is when we cook, when we clean, when we are helping others with a problem, or even when we sleep, we can do those things in acknowledgement of him. We can even fall asleep in his arms, even that is a prayer.

God is not here to be our religion. God is not here to be our salvation plan. He doesn't want us to go around telling people how they can escape the punishment of sin and go to Heaven instead of Hell. He doesn't want us spreading the word on how to avoid judgement. Judgement and escaping punishment is not what God is about. God is not about having it right, having it together. He is not up there keeping a tally of our deeds. And I will even say this, God is not up there with a gigantic pink divine eraser erasing our mistakes as if they were never there when we recite the "salvation prayer". If he did, how would they help us grow?

When we come to God, which we actually do over and over again throughout our lives, we think the salvation prayer solves "our sin problem". But for God, there is no sin problem, at least how it is usually defined. The problem of sin is not about what we do or don't do, it is about who we are disconnected from when we do it. Sin is acting outside of the love of God, the love of the earth, the love of each other, and the love of ourselves. Repenting is turning back to God and living out of his love. Like the prodigal son parable Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke, God is not worried about how dirty we are or where we have been. He is just beside himself with joy when we come home. And like the father in that story, God does not put a beautiful robe on our bodies and a ring on our finger to make us presentable before him for where he wants us to be. He puts those things on us to tell us who we already are and where we already belong.

Telling people they are going to Hell and that they need to repent so they can go to Heaven is completely missing the point. God is not a harsh judge. God is a loving father. Sin is not what the story is about. Love is the main theme. I've heard the speakers who talk about what rotten people we are and how God is going to send us to hell if we don't repent of our evil deeds. It is important to choose to stop behaving in such destructive ways, but really, is this the way to tell about love? By slamming them with what bad people we are and how God can't stand to be around us? No wonder so many of God's children have terrifying images of a father/mother God they are scared of. What would it look like instead to tell ourselves and each other how loved we are exactly as we are, how God longs, aches to be with us.

What would it look like to tell people about God's strength, joy, and gentleness, and compassion? What would it look like to tell them we were made and born to be in relationship with God, that it is intrinsic to who we are? Being in relationship with God doesn't fix our problems and it doesn't make us rich. We will still struggle but when we know the love of God, we know who to struggle with. We know who to talk to and who will fight our battles. There is still the storm, but there is peace in the midst of it. There are still the waves, but we've been handed a life jacket.

I still get angry with God. He is okay with that. I am honest, or try to be, about where I am at, and he sits down beside me and we start dealing with it. It is okay to be angry at God. He welcomes us to express those thoughts. God wants our presence no matter what we are in the midst of, no matter how filthy we are. God does not turn away from sin. It isn't something his holiness makes him turn away from. Jesus came and swam in sin, became covered in sin so he could get to us. It doesn't scare him. That is why we can come to God just as we are, warts and all, flaws and all. He loves every bit of us. The emphasis on salvation is turning to God, knowing he is there to listen and to speak and that are listening and speaking to him. That is what it's all about.

I do not feel shame with God, I know who I am: his beloved. I know God loves me and that he's there wherever I go, ready to talk or just sit in silence. He is playful and fun, he is serious, sometimes somber, and he teaches me how to live out that love I feel all around me radiating from who he is. God is the core of our lives. Everything comes from him. It is a truth beyond time yet a true we live out within time. And this isn't for just five minutes a day, it's for all 1,440.

Try Again

I went to Ecclessia tonight (church) instead of staying home for a good cry. It was a hard night and I was upset and frustrated over something I have struggled with for nearly half a year and tonight I was an inch away from my breaking point. Deciding that I was too emotional to talk about it at the moment I was with that person, I went home, pushed back my tears, and went to church.

Now, to be quite frank, the last few weeks have been hard for me. (Thus, the fewer posts.) I've had a lot on my mind and have not been taking the time to refill and renew myself. So, I grant you, I've been near tears many times lately. One of those times in my life, which I am sure you are all familiar with, when the water drips, drips, drips in our bucket and I haven't turned it over to dump it out, it just keeps spilling over. So tonight was the needle that nearly broke the camel's back.

Going into church, I see one of the large and comfortable armchairs is still available so I kick off my shoes and relax into that. Jordan starts off the teaching portion (I usually miss the singing due to always coming after tap class) by talking about the book of Ephesians. It is our first week on this book study and he explains to us how you wouldn't examine the details of a movie until you've seen it all the way through. So we were going to read Ephesians all the way through tonight as if we were hearing it from the perspective of the people to whom it was written. He explained the background of what the church was struggling with in their city and their relationship with Paul. He then explained they didn't have Bibles so we were to close ours. They also wouldn't have been sitting in chairs, they would have stood or sat on the floor in respect and humbleness to hear Paul's words so we all moved to the floor or stood. Jordan then opened up "The Message" as the original language of the letter was everyday Greek and "The Message" is everyday English, and read to us the letter from Paul in its entirety. Hearing it like that, any Bible book like that, was a first for me and I loved it. It reminded me of Jewish midrash, a way to digest God's word to his people that I also love. The words were comforting, challenging, intriguing, and thought-provoking. Many things stood out to me like the image of God pouring his grace and peace into me, abundant freedom, and that we are each meant to do what we were given to do by God. We talked afterward about what stuck out to us, what feelings the letter invoked, and what hit home.

Around this time, Taylor, age 3, had joined me on the floor with paper and pen in hand. While we discussed the book of Ephesians, Taylor and I outlined each other's feet and hands. According to Taylor, my hands and feet are quite large. She then told me we were going to draw a farm on one side of the paper. I had already drawn a pig and was following her instructions to draw a cow as she didn't know how. She instructed me to draw the legs and then while watching my attempt, she looked at me sympathetically and stated very matter-of-factly, "I'll do it." After adding some to the picture, she then handed the pen back to me and watched me draw another leg with another look of sympathy and another patient "I'll do it." I admit, the cow did look more like a dog which she pointed out to me by telling me, "That doesn't look like a cow." I agreed, it didn't. She then handed me the pen again and said, "Try again." This time I drew the face from the front and added horns, rather like the buffalo from the safari. I explained to her what those were and while she didn't tell me it looked like a cow, she didn't say it looked like a dog either so I took that as a sign I had passed, for now.

Sometimes I think God says the same thing. He looks at our drawings, adds some lines of his own and then kindly tells us to try again. No judgement, no criticism, just the gentle yet firm invitation to "try again." Paul told the Ephesians to keep trying, he encouraged them with God's peace and grace when times were tough. Listening to his words, I could feel his comfort, like lavishing lavender lotion on my dry skin. I felt God near, him calling in my heart.

I've seen Taylor have a tough time listening and struggling to obey. I've seen her upset and have to sit down until she was ready to listen again. But then she always gets up and tries again. She keeps playing and talking with us. She delights in our company, she is present. When our discussion was finished, some of the group played two songs while we sang and took communion. Taylor danced.

Sometimes God speaks to us from a letter written 2,000 years ago and sometimes he speaks to us through a little girl handing us a pen and telling us to "try again." Either way, both ways, they were the words I needed to hear tonight. They hit home. So tomorrow, I am going to try again. As I overheard Kim say today, things will work out. You have to live today and enjoy it for the gift it is. And if it's a tough day, if it's a day when your bucket is full and you want to cry, God is still telling you that you can always try again tomorrow. Solutions will come, problems won't seem so big and you can find a new perspective. Try again. What a gift of grace.

Lead a Child in the Way She Should Go... Part 2 of 2

In the church I grew up in, not only were we encouraged to read the Bible on our own, but we were also encouraged to have a personal relationship with God that was vibrant and growing. Even if that relationship was struggling and we were wrestling with God, the struggle was welcome too. On Sunday nights after our high school choir, "One Heart", finished practicing, we would all troop over across the parking lot and attend the Sunday night services. We weren't pentecostal, but you could raise your hands when you sang and show your emotion. After the sermon, the pastor would sometimes invite anyone up who needed to talk something over with God up to the alter steps that lined the front. You could bring someone to pray with you or someone might even join you there. If you cried, no problem, there were Kleenexes waiting for you. On occasion, we would also have people in the service give their testimonies. In fact, when our choir went on tour every year, two different students would give their testimonies at every concert. We were taught to stand up and express our faith and that our relationship with God was a journey worth talking about.

So perhaps you can understand my confusion in a recent conversation when people were discussing that the reason for religion is to give people answers for the way things are. I grant you, they may have meant something entirely different by "religion" than I do, but is not the point of religion the belief in God himself? Isn't religion about knowing Him? In another conversation, someone said that the moral concepts of the religion he practiced growing up is so much a part of him that he doesn't participate anymore as if the moral concepts was what it was all about. How can we practice religion and entirely miss the whole point of coming to know God? Is that why so many people are spiritual but not religious? They want something to believe in, the unseen dimension if you will, but without the legalistic moral code and unsatisfying answers of theological judgement.

In my own walk with God, I have really struggled with the idea that if I stepped across some line, I would suddenly be out of favor with God. I was so concerned with how I lived my life, I forgot to live my life. I learned God gives freedom, not chains, love, not dogma. But while we walk free, we need to remember there are still hard places, dangers we could get ourselves into. The relationship is the entire point, but in that relationship, God is there beside us, helping us along, letting us know what to avoid, how to conduct ourselves so we can enjoy the really important and long lasting things in life. He guides for our good, not to make us conform so we all look the same. His instructions are for our benefit, they are not there to weigh us down but to lift us up. As humans, we see from such a small perspective and knowing God's is so much wider, we can rely on His/Her perspective to help us through where we might fall on our own. But we listen not to make it through life, but because we love God and God loves us. It's for that dynamic and growing relationship, the love shared that we breathe, and blink, and grow each day.

My suspicion is that some people look at the world from their beliefs and see it in black and white, sinner and saved and see the world in judgement. But I think a better way to see things is in color, through the eyes of God, over filling with love and passion for His people. Everything else comes after that. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33).

365-09 #209

Lead a Child in the Way She Should Go... Part 1 of 2

Many of you, I am sure, have heard the verse, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." (Proverbs 22:6). I heard it as a child but it has only been as an adult when I have really understood it. As you know if you regularly read my blog, I have had difficulty attending church as I knew it with all the praise singing, the sermons, and the spoken prayers. And, I am sure, I still have some of those same issues. But, I have now surprised myself by turning back in that direction, needing to walk down that path and explore it with new eyes and a more developed voice.

This returning need has been brought about by not only the natural course of my journey, but by several experiences I have lately had. It seems our general culture has come to stand behind a phrase: "spiritual but not religious". They want something bigger than themselves but they don't want the discipline of religion or the box they feel religion will put them into. Or, maybe they want God without having to deal with God's children. They want their individualistic beliefs without having to work those beliefs out in community. Basically, they want it their way, freedom of choice. Isn't that what our culture is all about? Your way, all the time? No real commitment, no rules, a spirituality you can design and no one will tell you that you are wrong. Why? Because we have taken right and wrong and made much of it grey. Yes, we each have the light Quakers keep talking about but we also have the capacity to do evil too. I think we have taken what is in the Bible, cut out all that stuff about sinning and doing wrong, and only have kept that feel good, God is love, readings. We have forgotten our conviction.

Maybe it was a necessary part of my journey that I needed to let go of the idea of right and wrong and just explore for a while but I have come back to black and white knowing that even while the world is full of color, there are still morals, there are still right and wrong ways to behave and we have become so caught up in how we look, we have forgotten to pay attention to who we are. After all, it is not what goes into a person that makes them unclean, but what comes out. We have become so caught up in not offending someone, we have forgotten to lovingly call ourselves and each other back when we are doing something that God specifically told us not to. How can we be so afraid of what others think and ignore God?

For several years now, I have not read the Bible on a regular basis outside of seminary as I had been taught to do as a child. Lately though, I find I have really needed to pull it off the shelf, open it up, and take in what it says on those pages. At a time in my life when so much feels like shifting sand, I have needed the grounding, the truth, the Bible holds. I have needed to hear God's voice in its pages filled with directions, guidance, and love. We wonder what God wants us to do so many times and it's there, waiting to be read: don't be rude, seek understanding, watch what you say, love the Lord your God. While there are many questions yet unanswered in my life, I know that if I listen for God's voice and ground myself in his written word as I was taught, then at least I know I have sure footing as I seek what is to come.

365-09 #208