retreating

This past week United Life retreated to a vacation home in North Bend located between Mount Si, Rattlesnake Ledge, and Twin Falls State Park for three days. Although we didn't go far geographically (North Bend is only about an hour away from Seattle), spiritually we definitely got somewhere. 

Specifically, last week was a great time for us to taste and see what God was all about. Often we act and think like we'll never see God at work. Last week, however, our speakers Abe and Boyoon Gin led us through some real practical (yet simultaneously spiritual...the two are not mutually exclusive) prayer exercises, exercises that challenged us to have faith that God is alive and active and speaking. 

Isn't it funny that Christians who profess belief in God actually have a hard time really believing that he is living and active? Granted, there have been many, many examples throughout history of people abusing the possibility of an active voice of God. When I was a child, for a light example, another student pretended to be God's voice telling me they saw me doing something bad and that I should ask forgiveness (kids can be so messed up!). Sadly, worse examples, of course, are bountiful.   

But just because bad has been done, doesn't mean the core message isn't true. Followers of Christ need to know that Christ not only believed in a God who was living and active, but Christ promised the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is God present and alive in our world today. And not only believe, but act on this as well. 

So this past week we had a lot of really practical and straightforward chances to do this: praying through hurtful experiences from our pasts, confessing, receiving and giving forgiveness to one another, even going through a simple of exercise of picturing our own hearts and asking God to give us a picture of how he wants to heal them. No crazy, emotional fireworks, just the basic work of bringing situations, memories, and feelings to God and asking him to actively speak into them today. 

Sometimes our picture of God gets in the way of what he's actually doing and what he's actually like. We need, however, to be open to let him move in the way he wants to, even if he chooses to act in simple, straightforward ways. 

Iron Love

I love you.

I love my fiance.

I love my family.

I love the guy on the corner holding up the sign that tells me that "Anything helps, God bless."

Or at least I'm trying.

Now what does this really mean...?

Here's the deal: love is not primarily an emotion. Being "in love" is a wonderful experience, and I wish it upon everyone, but it is not the essence of love. The essence of love is closer to commitment. It is more a part of the world of actions rather than emotions. Loving someone is a verb that you do, not a warm feeling that you get when you think about them (though that doesn't mean that that doesn't happen). 

Specifically, I think the easiest way to think about what it means to love someone, the clearest way to obey Jesus' command to feed his sheep is this:

Remember that they are human. 


Whoa, that's it? Don't we do that anyway?

Unfortunately, we do not. From extreme examples like genocide to more common occurrences like road rage, our daily news cycles are filled with people treating other people like things rather than people. Normal people have a hard time killing someone when they know their life story, know the faces of their children, have talked with their parents. That's why soldiers are trained not to think about those things in the line of duty, even to the point of using language that refers to enemies as objects rather than people.

'Those who say, "I love God," 
and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; 

for those who do not love a brother 
or sister whom they have seen, 

cannot love God whom they have not seen.'


1 John 4:20

Those who follow Christ are called to love others: not because this will earn them God's acceptance, but because he has already loved and accepted us. We love others because this is his heart, and, as God's children, we want to be like our Father in heaven. 

This means we are called to remember that everyone we meet is a human being: someone created by God, someone that God loves even more than they love themselves, someone with a story that has or perhaps needs God written all over it. 

This is not an easy calling. We live in a world where it's so much easier to think about numbers rather than individual people: 15 million Americans unemployed, 15 million children around the world dying of hunger each year, 200,000 killed by the earthquake in Haiti. Our brains just can't comprehend this many human lives at once, so we shut that part down and stop thinking. 

But we can't stop there. We've got to remember each person's humanity if we're going to love, if we're going to be obedient to Christ. We can't stop at numbers. 

So let me give you one thing you can do today to follow this call: Treat one person you meet today just as you hope someone would treat one of your loved ones. Ask about their day. Have their best interests in mind. Offer help if they look like they can use it. Give them respect, no matter what they look like. Listen to their stories. 

And let me give you a promise in return: as you do this, you open yourself to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, Christ's promised gift to us. And there's no telling what amazing thing will happen next when the Holy Spirit gets involved. 

Psalm 141

"Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice."

As I read this passage this morning for my daily devotional, I wanted to understand this simile more deeply. The psalmist is so generous with image that disciplined research often enriches reading the psalms. My decision to step out of meditation for a moment to do this rewarded me with the following:

"Incense was placed on top of hot coals on the small altar inside the Temple, in front of the curtain that separated the main room from the Holy of Holies [where the symbols of God's presence and action resided with the Israelites]. Both the smoke and the aroma ascended to God, as did the smoke of the sacrifices (animal or grain), placed on the large altar outside the Temple." (New Interpreter's Study Bible)

The thing that caught my eye as I read Psalm 141 today was the link made between prayer and the lifting up of hands. Both of these are compared to the physical acts of worship made by the priests at the Temple: burning incense and sacrifice (whether grain or meat, sacrifices were burned and their aroma and smoke created a multi-sensory cloud that rose to God). It is helpful for me to see prayer in this way, a cloud that rises out of the offering of my life and heart to God.

Yet I don't often see the lifting of my hands in this way. I certainly am a "hands lifter" when it comes to worship, though I only do it when I feel a stirring in my heart. When this happens, often I put my hands forward in a receiving position (palms uplifted) to show my readiness to receive what God is graciously giving to me. Yet the psalmist shows another way, one that stretches back thousands of years: our hands showing the offering of our living sacrifices, our outstretched arms a picture of the cloud that rises to God as we lay our lives and our hearts on the altar before him.