A Hard Week

My heart is heavy as I write this. No doubt you’ve been hearing or reading near constant updates on the shooting deaths of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. Four of them were part of Campus Crusade on that campus.

On Wednesday I found out that three Christian workers were killed in Turkey because of their involvement in spreading the gospel. Friends of mine knew two of them well. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/19/news/turkey.php for more details.

Yesterday I got word that in another country where Christians are the minority, 41 have been arrested for their association with a believer who had insulted the majority religion. A friend of mine is en route to this country as I write this. She isn't yet aware of the crisis. Attempts are being made to inform her and have her stay at her next layover rather than going on to her final destination.

Even as I read lists of requests to pray for the victims' families, it seems trite to summarize their needs. All I can find to ask of God is, "Help them. Please help them." For a more articulate expression of how to gain perspective in the midst of these tragedies, I'd recommend Keith Bubalo's posts from Wednesday at http://globalroad.blogspot.com. That Keith is a wise man.

The god of Safety

One morning last week I woke up thinking about the dream I'd just had: I was meeting with a couple young women I was mentoring (don't know who they were) and asked them a bizarre question, "When you pray, who do you pray to?" I think I was expecting them to respond with either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. The first answered with, well, I honestly don't remember, but her answer seemed normal. The second girl paused, and sheepishly said, "I pray to Safety." This was not, "I pray for safety," but "I pray to [the god of] safety."

In the dream I went on to explain to these girls that safety is not so safe after all, that self-protection leads to self-destruction in that it kills the heart. I passionately tried to help them understand this.

But I woke up disturbed by the dream. I believe what I told the girls. My desire is to live in the junk of life rather than running from it. While I'm comfortable enough diving into hard conversations and wading through "muck and mire," the scarier thing is to be stuck on the sidelines, feeling out of control, confused, and as though there's nothing I can do except wait. I wish I could say that I've got this figured out, that I choose God's path of gracious uncertainty all the time, but the truth is, I am still on the journey of learning to trust Him with what is unknown and seemlingly unsafe.

I'm sure there will be much more on this topic in the next year...or ten. Stay tuned...

Snakes, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails Are Just the Beginning

I love my nieces' kids. They're the apples of my eye. Being little, though, they sometimes do really gross stuff.

The other day my sister's family was out for dinner at a restaurant. After they finished eating, three-year-old N. (see post, "Daddy Helped Me," for more on him) went and got a mint. Then his dad took him to the restroom. N. apparently thought it would be cool to spit the mint into the urinal. Then, before his dad could stop him, he reached into the urinal, picked up the mint, and popped it back into his mouth!

Can I hear a giant, collective, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW!?!"

N's mom is wondering why her sister is recounting the story to everyone (i.e. me), and probably won't be pleased that it's now here for all to read. There are just some things one can never live down.

Good Friday Contemplation

The first time I remember being brought to tears for pain that was not my own, was on Good Friday. I couldn't have been older than seven. I have this memory of going into St. Dominic Church with my mom and sister, kneeling down between the two of them, and gazing at the covered crucifix. It had red fabric over it, a representation of Jesus' body having been removed from the cross and placed in a tomb. I remember thinking that it looked sort of like a giant red kite.

Once that random thought cleared out of my head, my eyes stung because, for the first time, it gripped me that Jesus suffered and died, and for reasons I contemplated but couldn't understand, He had to suffer and die. In my young mind, it had to do with opening the gates of heaven -- the explanation my mom had given me. It wasn't until years later that I understood that it was so much more personal than that, that He was opening the gates of heaven to me because I never could've entered any other way. May I never forget...

Sometimes I Miss Being Catholic

I'm a recovering Catholic...still trying to get rid of the tapes in my head that whisper about having to do penance for being bad. Bad = things like eating less than an hour before taking communion or skipping Mass on August 15.

Over time, however, there are things that I've grown to appreciate about Catholicism, most notably, Lent. As evangelicals, we're quick to rush to the resurrection and completely miss Christ's passion.

I miss the solemnity of Holy Week. I'm grieved that I don't often think about what it cost Jesus to give me freedom and to invite me into relationship with Him. The guilt that we shove behind masks, forget amidst busyness, or bury in addictions, He willingly embraced so that we wouldn't have to bear it. He, the perfect One, chose our pain, our shame, our death over His much-deserved glory. Really, I can't get my brain around this.

So I'm thankful for this week, a reminder that Jesus went into the garden at Gethsemane, rhetorically pleaded, "Dad, isn't there any other way?" and knowing that there wasn't, suffered unbearable pain and humiliation so that I wouldn't have to. Once again, I'm awed by this God whose love is wider, longer, higher, and deeper than I'll ever know this side of heaven.