grace

CBG: Vulnerability

May 5, 2020 — Leave a comment

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the seas, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8

It takes a minute to receive a passage like the one above. If you are in a state of irritation, annoyance, anger, frustration, Psalm 8 feels trite. A lot of passages about God’s goodness and glory feel inappropriate according to our present attitudes. Within irritation, annoyance, anger and frustration is a sense of injustice that can armor us up. It is a tightening for safety. It is a pointing outward at all that is out of line and wrong. You have the right to do that. No one can deny your experience. No one can urge you to be soft when you feel slighted and scared and forgotten. I only ask, does the hardening harm you or help you? Is a softening more work or less work? What are you protecting when you harden? What and who are you forgiving when you soften? What will it take for you to feel vindicated? What needs to break for you to heal?

Psalms like the above can only enter through a porous vulnerability. Vulnerability is a conversation between protection and surrender, the risks and the gains. Vulnerability is a rebalancing of trust between that which we have given to humans and that which we give to God. Psalms of God’s goodness and love for us hold their weight most in our surrender. This life is an asymptote to that surrender, so have much grace when you’re not there yet have much hope that you are ever approaching that openness.

Prayer: When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Character: Where are you hard?

Grace: Where has Jesus demonstrated his redemption in the midst of that specific hardness?

CBG: Sacrificial Love

May 4, 2020 — Leave a comment

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with out hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:19-25

What an elaboration of the summation verse from 1 Corinthians 13, And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.

Why is the blood of Jesus and his flesh necessary for us to enter the holy places? What is the holy places? As a humanity, we too, need a human manifestation to viscerally and holistically know and experience God. That is the significance of God in the flesh, God on earth, God among us as Jesus Christ. It’s our way into the sacred through the profane. It’s our way into our holy through a form our current beings can understand. The blood of Jesus, (if we are willing to look beyond the nature of a violent gruesome capital murder because it eventually leads to the most glorious of rebirths), point to an unfathomable sacrificial love. A love so deep and free from any obligation on our part that it pulls us in. Sacrificial love is the ultimate way into connection and vulnerability. That is what exists in the holy places. It is a sanctuary before and with God that is void of any pretense and armor. In that place the unnecessary burdens and cares of this world fall away and we are built up with hope and faith to reenter to love and encourage others.

Through the sacrificial and visceral love of Jesus Christ, we are able to access a vulnerability that cleanses us and builds us up to in turn love and sacrifice others. Without the former, it can feel exhausting and impossible to do the latter. Without the former, it can feel obligatory and unnecessary to do the latter. Without the former, we cannot fully access vulnerability. It’s all about the love. It has to start from there, and we have full access to it.

Prayer: Lord, help me to always play the love, see the love, know the love that is in you. God help me to lay my armor down. God help me to be an encourager instead of a hater. God help me to live in a confidence marked by sacrificial love.

Character: Where have I let doubts and worries tamper my hope?

Grace: What does it feel like when I am in the holy places?

CBG: Agenda

May 1, 2020 — Leave a comment

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law of Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus, said, “Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more.”

John 8:3-11

How often do we use people as examples for our own agendas? We miss the humanity right before our eyes and aim only to protect our own culture. How often do we get tunnel vision because of our own agendas? We ask the wrong questions and are shocked by answers that reveal our own pain. How often do we think in terms of old narratives to justify our own agendas? We miss the new life right before our eyes. I hope every accusation we have against another is a truer opportunity to self-reflect and shift. I hope our grip on old ways of living that gave our lives a sense of certainty and structure would give way to a more faithful, unpredictable journey of undoing and relearning.

I hope we know that unlike humans who are wrapped up in self-agenda, God does not condemn us. He doesn’t condone the harmful ways we live and act, and he beckons us to change in privacy. He doesn’t expose us as a display for other humans to learn. God exposes us so we can experience an intimacy and a connection. Even as God tells us to sin no more, he knows that’s impossible on this side of heaven. What he is encouraging us is to do is make a choice to turn from our former ways that amount to deeper pain and loneliness, and instead to turn to a new way of wholeness and faith. It won’t be perfect, but simply because it’s a continual act does not mean we don’t keep trying.

Prayer: To stop justifying, figuring things out, testing God. To see what’s presented before us and receive.

Character: What actions, thoughts and stories create more harm, self-reliance and disconnection in your life? What is the cost of shifting?

Grace: Where in you life have you felt the grace of God over and over again?

CBG: Judgment

April 30, 2020 — Leave a comment

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler — not even eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

1 Corinthians 5:9-13

My blood boils. The intolerance. The judgment. The contradictions in this compared to Paul’s previous statement about not judging. I keep reading the verses to understand. I read it again, through the “lenses of a good compassionate God.” I read the whole passage — okay, this was in the context of Paul addressing a man sleeping with his stepmom. Okay, okay? This passage still pisses me off. What about that plank in your own eye, Paul?! Church people?!

Can I toss this passage away? Why was it included? Because a set of old white men decided what should be the canon?! Why was this included? What does it reveal about Paul? About us? About God?

Look out: Paul was on the far, far other side before Jesus. He was a proud, angry, over-educated man of society. I wonder if he still carries those traits into his new self. I wonder if his “passion” and once-again certainty makes him say things without thinking about the emotional impact of others. I wonder if he’s so desperate for people to know a transformative Jesus that he himself is impatient when he doesn’t see how others aren’t already on the same page as him. Paul is flawed. Paul is imperfect. Paul can be wrong.

Look in: …name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler — Christian, you are that brother. How quick we are to point to that person whether it’s in pity or in disgust. How quick we are to judge and dissociate. Are we cutting others out to protect our image and flow? Or is knowledge of another’s behavior information for us to tailor our acts of grace and patience for them? Is knowledge of another’s behavior fuel for us to take personal responsibility to be less greedy, less manipulative, more careful with our words and more focused on God’s call on us?

Look up, in & out: God can handle our questions and our doubts. God doesn’t fit in human wisdom. God’s grace and compassion are boundless. God warns to draw in. God love to change. God shifts our behavior, our thoughts, our whole beings.

Prayer: God help us move from anger to action. God remove the parts of us that want to be tribal. God help us work through uncomfortable relationships.

Character: Who have you been judging? What does your judgment reveal about you?

Grace: Where do you feel not enough for God and for others? How are those exact places your unique power for the community?

Day 14: Pointing to a way doper Joseph: J. Christ!

December 30, 2018 — Leave a comment

Genesis 43-45; Psalm 14

What it must have taken for Joseph to not only forgive his brothers, but to embrace them with such compassion? He moved from mere forgiveness to generous and open grace. He no longer blamed his brothers but rather saw his situation as part of God’s plans. He was vulnerable in his weeping. He didn’t forget what happened to him; he put it in context with where he is right now.

The brothers didn’t do anything but be honest. They received what they did not deserve. It was a situation and a gift too big they could not understand.

I mean this is essentially the gospel. God loves us not with just enough, but overwhelms us with unimaginable love. He doesn’t hold what we used to be against us, even though he could reaccount every last detail. Instead he rejoices at where we are in the present. We do not need to do anything, but be honest and vulnerable with where we are at and accept the love. Accepting the love is accepting that God really truly loves us to the moon and back and back again, and his greatest act of that was showing us Jesus. We are human and we needed an example, a way to see that made sense to us. Well, his death and resurrection doesn’t fully make sense because it’s both so horrific and so open. But in his life, death and rebirth, can we see the depths someone would go to affirm they love us? Can we see the non-obligatory love? Can we see an utter forgiveness, acceptance, compassion and relentless hope? Yes Jesus!