Memory and Hope

It was Christmas Day and the morning news shows were on the television. Meredith Viera was interviewing Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church in California. Warren spoke of how his family asks two questions on Christmas Day: what am I grateful for from the year past and what will I give Jesus for his birthday in the year ahead?

I loved these questions and I began to think about the answers for myself. I found myself enumerating things like--opportunities to practice fearlessness and undaunted courage, chances to know the pain of grief and the powerful ways that people I've lost have touched my life, moments of sheer faith when I trusted so completely that all I needed was for God to show the next step; loving parents who take their wayward daughter in and love her no matter what!; flailing that reminds me of my humanity and calls me to live more as the spiritual being having a human experience that I am; forgiveness from special friends who suffer the flailing with me and still remain on the journey when they could have easily run away; new perspectives; lesson of love and the chance to wake up!

The Biblical narrative is full of stories that speak to the value of memory. The Hebrews understood memory and hope as inextricably linked. Their hope for the future was founded on the very testaments of faith that God had given them in the past. What, then are your memories of 2009 and how will they inform your 2010? What gift will you give God this next year?

I am resolving to give up my proclivity toward competition! I'm notorious for that! I am resolving to have a little more faith than last year and to know that God provides everything we need and more for us when we just let go and enjoy the journey. I am going to strive to keep waking up to the lessons God is seeking to teach me, to keep growing and to hope that somehow my faithfulness will make a mark on my tiny corner of the world.

Christmas always brings a time of new beginnings so this year may we not forget the people that are important to us and the lessons God wants us to employ in our living. May we be faithful and faith-filled souls who use our memories of God as both comfort and fuel for our hopeful living in the days ahead! Amen.

The Birthing of Love

Every year we celebrate the Christmas season, we do so with our regular traditions. Some of us traveling, some staying home to await Santa's arrival. Most of us focusing on family while others focus on the family we've created wherever we may be. I would venture to guess that all of us focus at one point or another on the traditional Christmas story.

In Luke's story, we are told about the shepherds hurrying off to find the baby and there he was "lying in the manger." Matthew reports simply that Mary gave birth to a son and they called him Jesus. Neither Mark nor John really focus on Jesus' birth and thus from these four stories we get a picture of this family in a stable with a baby resting peacefully in a little manger.

I can't shake the thought that this wonderful, picturesque family experience isn't at all the way it happened. My more realistic mind's eye portrait is of a family in a cave since that was where the people tended to live in those days. Maybe a cave is wishful thinking on my part. Maybe they really were outside in the cold. I do think it was cold as desert nights do tend to get fairly chilly. The joyful images just aren't there with me. I think of a woman in tears and not tears of joy. I think of her sheer pain! Her wonder as to when the pain will stop and why God did this to her! I think of screams and lots of them--almost the blood curdling kind. I think of poor Joseph who likely had to play midwife to a woman he loved and whose pain he could not silence. I think of the whole situation being so far less than the ideal we've created for our traditions. And yet, it is equally as beautiful because in all of these painful and wrenching moments, love at its essence is being birthed.

Love says the scripture, "is patient, kind, not envious or boastful, not proud, rude or self-seeking, not easily angered, not a record-keeper, rejoicing with the truth, protecting, trusting, hoping and persevering." I have to think though that before we get to experience the picturesque qualities of love, we like the holy family must go through the pangs of birth.

I've run into so many people this season who haven't known the Christmas spirit, (I include myself this year). The things of our lives may be causing us to experience flailing, painful birth-like pangs. But, this I know. Those trying experiences of our days, the stresses brought our way, are simply gifts of birth that lead us to the idyllic picture of love at work in our lives.

So my prayer for each of us this week, whether we are able to claim the spirit of Christmas or not, is that we will claim the spirit of love! Happy Christmas to all and love to everyone! Amen.

Rejoice!

"Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!" So said the pastor of the Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC, yesterday as he read the scripture and talked with his congregants about tapping into God's strength. "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!" So said the pastor of First Baptist Church in Indian Trail, NC when I flipped through the channels last evening.

Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when there are 12 warring conflicts going on in our world? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when Osama bin Laden and his groupies are on the loose? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when we discover that a loved one's life has been lost? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when a significant relationship has broken or wounded us at our core? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when our business is not making money and we are afraid of being dependent on our children or our parents? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when we've been diagnosed with a physical disability or potentially fatal disease? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when our hopes show no indication of manifestation? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . seriously?!

Seriously! So suggests the Apostle Paul who found himself in jail experiencing all manner of suffering. It was he who wrote those words "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!"
What Paul understood that is so hard for we humans to grasp in the face of our trials is that just shifting our focus to what is good changes us. But to shift that focus we have to have a belief that God is able and not just able but more than able to deal with whatever war, relationship, disease, financial challenge, etc. may come our way. We have to believe when everything around us looks impossible that God is the one who makes the possible palpable! God can do it! We can trust God! God is a God of Hope and a God of Peace! If we know that and claim that, then we have only to celebrate that!

I don't know what struggles are yours in this advent season. I do know my own way too well and I realize that if I will rejoice in all things, then somehow not only will I be transformed but I'll be able to move beyond my struggles to that place that will transform others and together we will find that the joy of the Lord is our strength!

May we indeed, "Rejoice in the Lord always and again . . . rejoice!" Amen.

The Gift of Peace

I feel certain that my friend must get tired of hearing it from me. Regularly I affirm to that person how much peace enters my life because of that person's presence in my life. What I mean by that is that first of all I feel a tranquility in my spirit but that tranquility is really only reflective of deeper gifts provided by the friend.

The Hebrew word Shalom and its varied meanings reflect what I mean. In our friendship there is a safety, a security unlike the conditional gifts that we tend to offer each other in most interactions that we as humans have. Shalom suggests that there is welfare, prosperity, fortune and friendliness. Shalom suggests a lack of hostility, equality, fairness, a lack of conflict and simply a healthy relationship. My friend might question these sometimes but wrapped up in peace, I would submit, is a level of forgiveness that allows us to see each other with God's eyes. This to me is the greatest gift of a peace-filled friendship--one that lets you be who you are, struggle with your own demons and yet know that you have a safe place to fall Peace reminds us that the person won't turn away from us but is choosing to be present for us and allow us the same opportunity to provide peace for them.

This is the week of peace in the advent season. This is the week that we begin celebrating that facet that an infant brought to our world. It is the week when we can look at all of the fractured relationships around the world-the wars, the separation, the lack of love and appreciation for other humans and be called to realize that we can offer a serenity that is profound. Our ending the conflicts around the globe aren't about engaging in war or even signing on with well meaning peace centered organizations. Peace will come in our world when we learn to act in relationship as my friend acts toward me--with equality, fairness, provision of safety to be our flailing selves and still be loved and accepted. Peace will come when we project our calm, serene ways of being friendly to EVERYONE around us and when we honor them as the God-created humans that they are with the respect that they deserve. When we pay it forward by changing ourselves first, we find that we can make a difference in a life that will in turn pay it forward.

In this week of peace, I am grateful for my friend. I am grateful for the lessons that my friend's life teaches me. I have not lived a life of peace but I am reminded this week that we are called to strive for this and so with hope I look to live toward peace and pray that together our peace-seeking lives will begin to transform our war-ridden world simply because we are reminded of the testament of a baby's life some 2000 years ago.

Peace be with us all this day and in each day hence. Amen.

Questions of Hope

This particular week of every year in the Christian Church is celebrated not only as the first week in Advent but specifically as the week of hope. I have noted before that the Hebrews understood hope as a waiting in anxious anticipation. If that is true, then they had to be waiting for some thing in particular. As a result, this week is also known as the week of expectation in some traditions. An expectation suggests that there is a specificity in what one is hoping/waiting for. As we know, the expectation on the part of the Hebrew people was that a Messiah was coming. They knew this because a prophecy had been made that a Messiah would come to save the people. Thus, this is also known in some traditions as the week of prophecy.

These words hope, expectation and prophecy are curious words to me. We use them as separate entities but I wonder and am wondering out loud with with you, if they weren't meant to be used together. They build on each other. First there was a prophecy that people chose to believe and then they turned toward expecting with hope (that kind of "on the edge of their seats' anticipation") that the prophecy would come to fruition.

For them the prophecy was clear. There would be a Messiah. Then they inserted their own perspectives of what that Messiah would be like. They came to agree that he would be a great warrior king coming to fight off neighboring nations and ensure their security. Never did they dream that he would be a Messiah for their souls nor did they imagine an infant born in a stable or a cave as was more likely.

Somewhere along the way of our living, we have forgotten that prophets still exist even in the old fashion kind of way. There are people with that spiritual gift who know what God tells them about a variety of things. But we don't tend to believe them because we are too scared of that ancient idea. Even people who understand that they have this gift are often scared of it because they don't want to confuse what God tells them with their own way of being in the world. It makes me wonder what God is telling us that we refuse to listen to or what God is telling us that we know in the pit of our stomachs is pure truth but we have this incessant need to run it by other humans who don't have the gifts we do instead of just trusting God and the way that he's gifted us to know this truth for ourselves.

So my first questions for us in this week of prophecy are: what promises has God made for you? Are they promises that you can allow yourself to trust? Are they promises that you can allow God to unfold for you in his own way just as he unfolded the coming of the Messiah in a way the Jews could never have fathomed?

Expectations tend to get us in trouble because we decide that something will be a certain way. It got the Hebrews in trouble and some were so caught up in the belief that the Messiah would be a warrior king that they refused to accept that Jesus was the Messiah. So it seems that the call of the Christmas story and as we prepare for its advent, is to believe in the prophecy but to take care to not paint the picture of its happening for God. Simone Weil once wrote, "in what concerns divine beings, belief is inappropriate, only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God. God calls us to expectations. God calls us to expect that He will fulfill his prophecies but God also calls us to detach and let God unfold the picture of his prophecy as he designs.

So my second group of questions for you are: What are you expecting this season about the promises God has offered? Are your expectations fair? Are you able to let go if they don't pan out the way you hope?

Hope is that certainty that is worthy of God. It is that thing that says, "God you've made a promise to me. I know you are faithful to fulfill that promise, that you don't need my help in designing it or implementing it but you do need me to claim the assurance that it is coming, to practice gratitude for it even before it shows up tangibly and to honor your word by trusting in what you say!"

I was visiting in the hospital one day and I remember the woman that I visited talking about how God was so faithful. She began to tell me how she regularly thanked God for things he hadn't even done yet, "Thank you God for the parking space that you are about to give me." I realized that what she had done was to hope. She had said to God, "I'm not asking you for this thing because I know you know that I need it and that you are faithful to provide for all of my needs. So I'm just going to thank you for the gift of the need that I see as if you've already fulfilled it." That is the certainty worthy of God. That is hope.

Can you claim hope that God's promises for your life are sure? Can you expect God to be the faithful God he is without defining for him what the picture must look like on your terms? Can you wait with anxious anticipation and gratitude?

May this week of hope call us to accept with joy the prophecies God has for each of us! May we expect them with detachment! May we await their arrival with anticipation and with gratitude! May we have the same perspective as we celebrate the advent of the Christ Child! Amen.

What Is Life?

We live it every day . . . this thing we call life . . . but what is it really? Recently, I was reading a devotional book that posed a number of questions. The questions were simple enough but in some cases I really didn't know how to answer them. How could that be?! They were questions about me? How could I not articulate a description of my own life?

What is it that makes me tick? What makes me cry? What makes me laugh? What opens my heart? What happens when my heart is open? How am I essential? How am I valuable? What is my purpose?

The questions went further and more deeply to query: What is important in life? What is sacred and holy in life? Where does life come from? What makes me want to be alive? What is life?

As I stopped to really answer the questions, I realized that the things that make me tick are rooted in relationship with God and with others. My energy comes in being connected to other people in deep places--those places where people are willing to share their deepest pains and joys. It is the laughter of others that makes me laugh and the lack of connection with others that makes me cry. Again and again my answers came back to relationship. It is relationship for which I long, relationship that God has given us in each other and it seems to me that life wouldn't be life without the gift of relationship.

Some years ago while living in upstate New York, I met a man named Albert. I met him in a curious way. I had been living with a family there and happened to come to the house for a quick bite of lunch from work that day. No one else was home but when I walked in the door there was this large, older man with long white hair and beard waiting in the kitchen. I asked who he was and why he was there and he informed me that he was a hermit who came out of the woods once a year and visited this family and then returned to his life.

Even Albert needed a bit of relationship. Even Albert needed that great gift of life. I don't know how you define life for yourselves, but I hope whatever you find in its definition offers you all of the richness of relationship.

On this Thanksgiving week, know that I am thankful for the various relationships we share and for the ways that you breathe life into me!

Hope Springs Eternal

The Arkansas area of the Mississippi Delta is one hot place especially in July! It is there, some years ago, that I witnessed the dejectedness of a community. Industry had left the area. There was little left for the people of that region but that was their home and they would not or could not bring themselves to follow prosperity. Given that parameter, other challenges arose for them. They could not find jobs nor could they imagine a future for themselves in that place. So they just got a long with a sadness that permeated their lives.

I look around me today and I see all sorts of people and all sorts of situations in which people cannot seem to move beyond the experience of what they HAVE known to embrace the hope of what they COULD know (for themselves or others.) The ability to dream and think outside the box seems utterly diminished.

Last night I found myself at a Rotary Foundation Dinner and there, gathered with new friends, one spoke of the economic crisis in some of the most impoverished places of our nation. It reminded me of my days in Arkansas. It reminded me that such lack of hope did not have to be. He spoke of how the key to moving them beyond their impoverishment always came back to incentive. Give them some sort of incentive to reach forward and they will move toward it.

One word came to my mind as he spoke: hope. Hope! The book of Hebrews says that "faith is being sure of what we HOPE for and certain of what we do not see. The Hebrew people themselves spoke of hope being that disposition in which we wait with anxious anticipation as if on the edges of our seats. To have that kind of hope there must be some vision for which we hope.

A friend and I were chatting yesterday about such hopeful visions. "Is it fair to hold to such visions? What if they are selfish? How do we know if they are God-given or if we've just made them up?!" we both queried. As our conversation ensued we realized that peace and contentment are the gifts of God. If we find peace and contentment around a vision, isn't it fair to assume that vision is a gift of God? And if that vision is a gift of God, would it not be sinful on our parts to resist believing that it could actually come true, that God is capable of providing that vision that he promised for our lives? Shouldn't that belief prompt us toward the posture to which the Hebrews referred? And once we find such hope don't we find incentive? Isn't that one and the same?

I don't know the detailed ways in which you may lack hope. I only know my own ways and I ultimately I know this. As a Christian, God calls me to trust what I sense him telling me. In that trust, I must have confidence that I hear God correctly. I must believe that the promise will come to fruition in God's time and in God's way and thus I posture myself with joy on the edge of my seat waiting to see the fulfillment of the promise.

This day, I hope for you and every community that may lack hope, the ability to see God's vision of peace for you and to place all hope toward it with anxious, excited anticipation. May hope spring eternal for us all! Amen.

Open Our Eyes

Sitting on my parent's deck, I find myself surrounded by the beauty of nature and the blinding brilliance of the sun breaking through the trees. Reflectively, I am taken back to a Biblical scripture in the book of II Kings, chapter six, I believe. It is the story of the prophet Elisha who has been at work faithfully letting the King of Israel know how to move his troops and how to avoid the attacks that the King of Aram sought to launch against Israel. Elisha had been quite successful in listening to God and working with the King of Israel to protect the troops.

The King of Aram, however, was tremendously frustrated. He was convinced that he had a leak amongst his own troops and when he questioned them, they informed him that it was Elisha in Israel who was the true leak. So, the King of Aram, did what any king would. He hunted Elisha down, essentially surrounded Elisha's abode and Elisha's servant was freaking out. What are we going to do? How will we survive this? The servant could see no way for survival!

Aren't we like this most of the time? Something "bad" happens to us and we immediately fail to see the possibilities. We see a place of no hope. We fail to get the job we want, the relationship that we desire falls apart, we lose the big donor for a major project, etc. Our immediate response is, "Woe is me! How can God do this to me? Haven't I been a faithful servant? Don't I deserve the best?"

Elisha was cool, calm and collected in the face of his impending death and his servant couldn't understand it. But Elisha knew that his failure to understand came only from what he could not see. Elisha prayed that his servant's eyes would be open and immediately they were. When they were opened, the servant saw that for all of the Aramean troops that surrounded them, there were even more troops sent by God that outnumbered the Arameans. Then he prayed that the Arameans would be made blind and God made it so. This enabled Elisha to lead them off to Samaria where the Israelites were able to capture them and return them to their land.

Isn't that the kind of thing that God does for us? Provides for us far more than we can imagine in our feeble human ways of being. God always provides the best for us and usually never in the ways we imagine but always in more wondrous ways. Our blindness to what could be is usually the block that keeps us from trusting God's amazing way!

Maybe all we have to do to claim faith is simply to pray that God will open our eyes to the marvels that we have yet to see!

The Legacy of Enlightenment

L. A. Hutson was his name. He was a member of my last congregation. On the day that he passed away, I had the honor of standing in the Intensive Care Unit room with his family gathered round. In those few last breaths of his life, his son looked to the ceiling of the room because he said, he wanted his father to see his face. A curious action we might think. Maybe we would think it simplistic in theological perception. But, in point of fact, L. A. had essentially died many years before. He had one of those near death experiences. He recounted how he had been on the operating table and suddenly he was above his own body, disconnected from the body in some fashion but able to hear and see exactly what was going on. When they managed to save him, he was able to recount to them what they said and where each person was standing in the operating room. That the younger Hutson looked up at the ceiling was simple knowledge that his father was looking down at him. That L. A. had had the experience was for him a transformative moment in which he sought with intentionality to live life from a spiritual perspective.

In the third century, there was a philosopher by the name of Plotinus who on about four occasions suggested to his student, Porphyry, that he had known union with God in its fullness. So that on his deathbed he said to Porphyry, "Now that which is divine in me, shall attempt to rise to that which is divine in the universe." While we don't know the ends and outs of Plotinus' existence, we can hope that he lived his life with a similar lens to L. A.

I don't believe that either of these gentlemen were enlightened but I do believe that each had an experience that tells us something about enlightenment. Enlightenment is the highest stage of power that can be had. It is the place where a human has no more concern for self whatsoever. L. A. experienced that bodily detachment at some point. That person has reached a stage of divine union such that their bodies are simply tools for the work that God is to do through them. Thus, we have stories like that of Jesus on the cross and his ability to rise above what was happening to his body to know that he was not his body. These are the people who bring such a mark to our world that they leave behind infinite peace and grace.

Plotinus' would have understood that union with God from a more mystical sort of experience and perhaps that is why he was unable to hold to it. Still, there have been people who have held to it. Some would say that Krishna, Buddha and Jesus all fall into this category. However you perceive that, each one was given the title Lord by their various religious entities. It was evident that others could see in them qualities of a level that would be inconceivable to the rest of us.

At this level, the human has reached total awareness and thus the description of this level is really beyond any words that we can assign. As I struggle through my days, reflecting and evaluating the lessons that each day holds, I am palpably aware of my self and utterly aware that I will never reach such a level. Still, those who do leave a legacy of enlightenment unlike anyone else.

Though most of us won't reach such a level (and probably don't care to reach it) there is a lesson of moving beyond the self to which we are called by this stage. As we continue our passage through life knowing enlightenment will likely never be ours, may we at the very least strive (like LA) to look so far beyond ourselves that we allow God to use us. Amen.

The Path to Peace

It proved to be a brief interval in my life. Three months and four days to be exact. It began like this: I arose at 5am on March 26,2009. Popping out of bed as if moved by a force beyond myself, I switched on every light in the room, peered toward the ceiling and began to speak to God. "God," I said, "let's just lay all of our cards on the table. I don't trust you! I never have trusted you! I WANT to trust you but I don't know how. If you would give me a step method, I would follow it to a "t". But, apparently step methods are not in your m. o. So, if you want me to trust you, then you are going to have to enable me to do it because I give up!"

Immediately the weight of 37 years of life lifted and I'm sure there must have been an audible voice that said, "Finally!" In those moments, I knew that I had spent my life forcing my way. I had tried to be obedient to God but somehow I believed that had to handle everything. The way that I had chosen to live had been the furthest thing from peace and yet in those early March moments peace was what I knew.

The months that followed would leave me utterly giddy. I wasn't doing, planning or charting any course necessarily. In the weeks that followed, people learned that I was leaving my job and their questions that normally would have either flustered me or for which I would have had a clear solution were posed: what are you going to do? where will you live? how will you survive?

My response? I don't know but God will take care of it. God will take care of it and I believed that so wholeheartedly that the only emotion common to my days was peace.

God did take care of it. From that March morning, two weeks later my home went on the market. I resigned a week after that. One month later I had two offers on my home neither to my liking. With a realtor freaking out over my rejection and adamant rejection, I waited. God would take care it. I left my job and three days later the house was under contract for the specific amount that I wanted. When we make a choice to trust God, he unfolds the way and peace ensues.

Peace is the stage of consciousness that follows on the heels of joy. Only one in 10 million people at any given time will experience true peace. True peace is lasting. Think of Mother Teresa or Ghandi. These both reached the stage of peace. It is a level of transcendence where any perspective on self fades to the past and one's thirst is but for God. Often, the people who reach this stage become ascetics. Some claim roles of spiritual teachers, others work quietly behind the scenes for the betterment of the world. The mind ceases to have the incessant need of conceptualization and rationalization. Everything simply is and the one who lives at peace is one with all things. Life is a flow.

Clearly my little interval with peace (which ceased by the way--I'm trying to reclaim it!) was not even a taste of what true peace is. That peace is experientially unfathomable to me and I imagine to most of us that is the case. Yet as we press forward in our lives, bent on making, forcing and crafting our ways, at the very least should this not be our goal? Shouldn't our objective be to so seek the divine will of God so purposefully that our individual selves fade to the background of our existence and God's being is channeled through the vessels of our souls? Imagine the mark that we each could make if we lived that way! I have to believe that God can take care of it, that God can bring us peace. Our job is to be willing to get ourselves out of the way enough to trust the uncertainty of God's path. May our paths lead us to peace! Amen.

Mary's Joy

Her name is Mary. I met her only this weekend and I cannot shake the experience. Upon my greeting of her she made me laugh out loud. "How are you?" I inquired. "I'm fine," she replied. We passed by each other and she stopped, turned around and shouted over the parking lot's distance, "I take that back! I'm old!"

Old or not, there was something different about Mary. There was something of a long life experience of which details were not required that spoke of spiritual growth, of love but of even more than that . . . of joy!

She told the story of going to an 8am worship service at her church. She was the first to arrive and as she waited for others she began to be concerned that others were not going to appear. So she resolved to pray that God would send others. She prayed and prayed and looked around but no one showed up. So . . . she kept praying. Finally, the priest came in to begin the service but she was still the only congregant. What did she do? You guessed it! She prayed some more. Then, all of a sudden, she began to feel a Presence come down the aisle. There was a warm feeling and she felt the Presence move into the pew with her so she slid down to provide more room. She found herself sharing the hymnal. When the priest asked her after the service who she was holding the hymnal for, she replied, "Couldn't you see the Presence of Jesus?"

Characteristic of those who reach the human consciousness level known as joy, is the experience of a Presence or an energy that enables seemingly miraculous experiences. Joy is that stage that follows on the heals of the stage of love. Joy is the place where love becomes so very unconditional that it is present all of the time and cannot be swayed by external happenings. People who live at this level see the positive sides of all things. When they look at the world they see beauty. Life seems to happen almost effortlessly for them as if in synchronous fashion.

Mary was clearly full of joy. She talked to me at length about the fact that there are so many people who know ABOUT God but so few who seem to KNOW God. Those who claim the position of living from joy are people who have come to learn that they would rather know God than just know about God. These are people who have given up their own will and seek to choose the divine will for their lives in all things.

Mary's joy and her thirst for relationship with that which is divine in this world must surely be the path to peace! May we claim Mary's joy today! Amen.

"Love Sufficent Unto Love"

For a period of time in the lives of the Taylor children, we were "latch-key kids." We'd come home from school with both parents at work and like most children we'd wind up fighting with each other. But everyday, we would be united by one hour of time when we would sit and watch a soap opera that we loved. Had our parents been there we would have been prohibited from viewing it mind you!

Those soap operas (as do other tv shows now) demonstrated for us a picture of love that was truly worldly. Love was seen as fragile, something that could be given and taken away. It was controlling, possessive, co-dependent, often without trust and of course sexually oriented. It involved arguments and tensions of all sorts that ultimately ended in the tragedy of broken relationships. While the other pictures of love in our lives (that shared between our parents, our other family members etc.) was different, I've often wondered how much we were swayed by the images that we took in as we defiantly watched those shows each weekday.

Examining the levels of human consciousness from force toward power, we now find that the level building on reason is that of love. As regards reason, the participants in that level are so focused on specifics that they miss the larger picture. Love, in contrast, sees the wide angle view and thus there is more grace and forgiveness than the false love portrayed by so many television images.

In the Greek language there are many words for love but in my opinion the best description is that of agape love. We translate agape as unconditional love and that is precisely what this level of human consciousness is! It is unchanging and permanent. There are no fluctuations with this love and thus there is complete trust. Those who love in this fashion are able to create solidity in the context of their relationships. They nurture and support--not because of any decision that they make intellectually speaking but simply because their hearts are so big. Love extends from the heart. It buoys other people!

Reason was that place where data is so important and we find ourselves blinded by information but with love we find that our intuition takes over and pulls us toward a larger understanding of life's situation than reason could afford us. It is that intuition that gives us our clearest understanding of life. Love isn't about taking a position but rather focuses on all that is good. In the face of negativity it simply places the negative thoughts/behavior/etc. in a new context rather than attacking or judging it/them. Love is where happiness is truly found.

The Biblical scriptures tell us that "love never fails (I Corinthians 13)." That picture of how love never fails is seen in these words by Kahlil Gibran, "love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love posesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love." (From The Prophet, p.13) That picture of how love never fails is seen in the people around us who live it out. My hope for us all is that we will reach the level of love, know its magnificent offerings and revel in sharing it with others. Such practice of love can only open the way to pure joy! May it be so!

Reason's Search for Truth

It was a blustery January day by my southern standards as I walked shivering across the campus of Princeton University. I had come for an interview as I was considering a Ph.D. in homiletics (preaching). My seminary professors had each given instructions on what to do when I arrived in Princeton. "Make it to the library!" said one. "Don't miss experiencing a chapel service," said another. "Whatever you do, just put your big toe on the grass at Albert Einstein's house," said the other.

My mind was filled with imaginings of what the third professor would say when he found out why I was walking so blithely yet frigidly toward Einstein's home. Not only would my big toe touch the ground, I was to have dinner with new found friends INSIDE his very home! I was so excited. Knowing that a man of brilliance and greatness had once walked that very sidewalk, ascended those very stairs and dined within the envelope of those walls was nothing less than thrilling!

Einstein has become such a representative of intellectualism that even phrases like, "Nice job, Einstein!" have become part of our language usage. Einstein was indeed brilliant and if he were here today, we could measure his level of human consciousness in the level known as reason. Of course, we've traversed the levels of force and examined the levels of power each one building on the one prior (courage, neutrality, willingness and acceptance) and now we find reason.

Reason is that level where the emotionalism of all of the other previous stages subsides. At this level amazing amounts of data can be processed for rapid decision making in way previously unknown to other stages. (At the very least, you would hope your doctor in an emergency room would live at this level!) This is the level of science and medicine that brings with it an ability for increased comprehension and conceptualization. Knowledge and education are valued supremely at this level. People who live at this level are often engrossed in their own thinking.

And thus the downfall of this level begins. Those who live at this level may well be some of the most creative thinkers among us and yet they can get caught in their own intellectualism. They miss the forest for their intense focus on the tree in front of them. Specifics are their great interest but balancing such knowledge can keep them from the balance of the whole picture. They become so utterly enamored with the technical that they tend to miss the spiritual. Given that fact, this is the highest level that most humans will ever reach as far too few are adept at enabling the spiritual balance necessary for transcending this level.

Ultimately, in one's search for truth, the person at this level will produce volumes of information but will lack the skills to propel them toward a definitive discovery of truth.

For all of the value that I found in those hours of soaking in Einstein's intellectual energy, I can only hope that somewhere along the way of my journey, Iwill have the spiritual capacity to transcend the stage of consciousness that ultimately held him hostage. I hope that for us all! May we find our way toward love! Amen.

Letters of Acceptance

The letter came in the mail and it must have been the second or third correspondence exchanged for the position for which I had been recommended. It wasn't so much a letter as a questionnaire and I found myself appalled by the questions. Not only were they redundant but there was one set of questions that gave me full incite into the group that was considering me for their senior pastor. While I cannot recall the phrasing of the questions, they said something like: How would you relate to people who are different from you? Do you envision yourself able to honor the diversity of others?

I realized that those questions wouldn't strike most people as odd. After all, we live in a culture that has come to value differences. We have all sorts of organizations formulated around people who have felt marginalized for one reason or another. But does that make it right? I'm all for valuing people, but as I read the questions I couldn't help but think about acceptance. That's what they were asking me to do. Right? They were asking me to accept others with all of their foibles but more than that they were asking me to agree and affirm others in their differences. What if I didn't agree with their lifestyles , their choices or their belief systems? Could I still accept them and could they not accept me?

I reasoned that this particular church had missed the mark. It had gotten so caught up in the service to the culture around it that it had begun to take on the values of that culture.

It seemed to me that acceptance wasn't about valuing diversity but unity. Why wouldn't the more fitting question be something like: Can you discern the commonalities with others and simply choose to love them? Isn't that what the gospel is about? If we can't agree on anything else, couldn't we agree that God is love? Couldn't we be bound together as a larger entity of people if we focused on our commonalities than if we focused on our differences? That was what acceptance meant to me.

Having discussed the levels of force and now the levels of power, we find that once we have grown through the stages of courage, neutrality and willingness, we discover the level of acceptance. Here we begin to take a new level of responsibility for ourselves and our choices in life. Harmony characterizes our living more than any other stage thus far such that we move away from a valuation of diversity to a claiming of unity. Prior to this stage exists the characteristic of finding happiness outside of oneself. Here, a participant in this stage comes to understand that one's happiness is really determined by what occurs within oneself. There is an ability in this stage to let go of determining the agenda for one's life and a calmness settles over the person who experiences this stage. There is no discrimination here just inclusion and with that inclusion comes the ability to tackle the problems of life with discipline and a lack of judgment around right or wrong. This level sees a problem and seeks a solution.

I realized that if I took such a position as the senior pastor of this particular church, I would either have a very difficult time pulling them along or might also get caught in the way they valued their world--a way that I had once known but did not prefer. They realized that I was not a fit for them and while we may have failed to accept each other, the lessons about the value of acceptance and inclusion served to make life richer for me.

So I wonder . . . how would you have answered those questions of the church? Do you find yourself living from acceptance and what does acceptance mean for you? The more I examine people who live from this level, the more I see glimpses of love, peace and joy and the more I covet that sort of living for us all! May we learn to truly accept each other and life as it comes to us! Amen.

Are We Willing?

I watched their family across the restaurant as I was dining one day with my friends. The parents were clearly low key kind of people but they were also disciplinarians. The love they shared for their children was evident. The fun they had with them and the joy that those two daughters brought to their parents' lives was unmistakable. When their meal was concluded, they sat around the table smiling and laughing with their friends and then I noticed the youngest daughter. She was pushing the bounds of her parents' patience. "Lisa Grace," said the mother, "sit down." The child ignored her. "Lisa Grace . . . what did I tell you? Sit down." Lisa Grace sat. A few seconds later, the little girl was swirling and twirling around her father with glee and before you knew it she was hiding under his chair. "Lisa, get off of the floor. We don't get on the floor in a restaurant." She ignored his command. Again the father spoke. "Lisa, get off of the floor." This time she obeyed.

Little Lisa wasn't doing anything horrible necessarily. Clearly, she was a good child. So why didn't she just follow her parents' instruction in the first place?

I realized, as I observed the interchange, that the parents were the authority. They were that line that gives us the rules for living, demonstrates the boundaries that exist for us, shows us how far we can go without harming ourselves. The parents' authority was well-intended. It was meant for Lisa Grace's good. But for whatever reason, she could not trust it. She had to push the bounds. She was unwilling to admit that her parents might know better than she. Then I realized that Lisa Grace is just human.

Her parents represent that Universal force of Life (that some of us call God.) That force wants to carry us to safety, to show us a way for our lives that is higher and better than what we can dream. Lisa Grace is like humanity. We push our boundaries. We force our ways. We ignore what we are told and sometimes we painfully learn the hard way that if we had just been willing to trust God and let life unfold as it would, ease would be a more predominant word in our vocabulary.

We have traversed the stages of force and we have discovered the power that exists in claiming both courage and neutrality, but the level of willingness is the most powerful that we have examined to date. Willingness is that stage that rockets us to new levels of power. Unlike neutrality where work is done with sufficiency, willingness strives for excellence. This is the level where self-esteem flourishes, where people are unafraid to try new things. Where, in the face of challenges, one is not afraid, but faces them head on knowing that Life will provide the appropriate path. The mantra of this path may well be, "it's all good!" It is all good, too! It is all good because the person that lives from willingness knows that God works for our good in every situation; that life does not mean ill for us, but blessing alone. Willing people bounce back from hardships, they operate out of compassion and thus they give back to society in ways that serve transform the larger picture of our lives as a society. They are introspective and always ready to improve themselves.

Lisa may be a bit too young yet to recognize the value of living from willingness. She will get there, I have no doubt and one day she may be having the same interaction with her children.

The question is will we get there? Are we willing? Do we insist on standing in the way of where life wants to carry us? Do we flail against God? Willingness is freedom if we let it be. May we indeed let it be!

Sitting in Neutral

What little child hasn't dreamed of the passage of his or her life. She dreams of the famous actress or singer that she will be. He dreams of being a great firefighter, a police officer, a sports hero or maybe just walking the in the shoes of his father. Maybe both dream of getting married and having their own family. Their dreams may tend toward grandiosity. But we all know that those childhood dreams usually escape our grasp. Somewhere along the way our lives unfold along paths we never could have defined--sometimes happily and sometimes not so much. Nevertheless, we make decisions about our paths and as we live from places of power we leave certain ways of being behind.

In the stages of force and the powerful stage of courage that we have studied thus far there remains a tendency to desire to control life. We know where we are going and we know what life should hand us. We believe that picture will come. Those bent on control are often devastated when they can't attain what they intended. But in the stage that succeeds courage a person comes to learn that phrase that is all too regular around my house. (Probably because I need to hear it more than anyone). "It is as it should be."

It is as it should be! In other words, I can't control what other people say, what other people do or how they choose to live their lives. I can barely control myself! It is a recognition that life flows and when we seek to stand in the way of the flow we are the only ones who create anguish for ourselves.

This new level of power is known as neutrality. This is the level when one becomes aware of his or her own power. It is the place where inner confidence begins to truly bloom and one realizes that in this life we have to go with the flow. This is the level of safety where people are willing to release emotionality and simply learn to be.

About a month and a half ago, I was at Wrightsville Beach with my family. Two men came and began setting up a contraption that I had never seen before (apparently my life is more sheltered than I knew!) It was a kite board and when they had everything ready, the rider strapped himself in with all of the appropriate cords, made is way into the ocean and the wind lifted him up. He blew all the way down the island and back again over the hours that we peered out there and I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the process.

What I witnessed in those moments was a lesson that I must learn and relearn it seems! Here was a man that was willing to go where the winds of nature would blow him. He had his vision and some level of direction that he offered to the process but the winds were what carried him. This is what sitting in neutral is all about. When we live at this level of neutrality, we let life carry us toward our goals and sometimes they don't pan out like we thought but allowing life to take us where it will often brings far more amazing experiences than we could have conceived of our own volition!

A Choice for Courage

Kate Gulden was dying from that raucous disease we call cancer. Her husband, unable to deal with the situation ordered his adult daughter to come home from her high powered job in New York and to take care of her mother. The daughter was bumfuddled by this request. Was it not his job? He was her husband. He lived there! She did not!

It didn't take long for the daughter to choose to leave her work, her boyfriend, and return home to care for her mother. She learned to really cook and do the domestic tasks but somewhere along the way she also got a glimpse of her seemingly stellar father. She deduced that he was having an affair and she knew there was no way that she could tell her mother. When Kate noticed that some thing was wrong she inquired of her daughter who refused to confess what she knew. Then Kate said to her, "There is nothing that you know about your father that I don't know about him." She went on to tell her daughter that when you live with someone that many years, you make a choice--and sometimes a courageous choice. You accept them for all that they are and with whatever baggage they bring. In her words, you "choose to love what you have."

The daughter would learn later that her father was having an affair with alcohol and she chose to learn her mother's lesson. While the scene is only a movie known as One True Thing, it demonstrates the courage required to truly be family to one another. A person living out of the levels of force, when given Kate's situation, might easily have run away. But courage is the transition point to power.

Whatever challenges and changes life brings, at this lowest level of power, one has the ability to explore, to be determined, to learn new things, to be willing to face oneself and one's fears and to grow as a result. Life challenges to anyone living out of the forceful levels that we've examined thus far would be seen as frightening, frustrating, sad and hopeless. A person of courage chooses to look at life through a lens that says, "ride the wave, embrace the adventure." Courage is the level where productivity begins. So whether that's attempting a new sport, starting a new job or choosing to love what (and who) you have, this level invites us to empowerment.

In the stressors of our days, in the face of our self-imposed expectations for what our lives should be, in the face of all manner of opportunities, we have a choice for courage. May courage empower us to new heights this day! Amen.

The Balance of Pride

My niece, Isabella, is 16 months old. I notice when I am with her how amazing she is. I marvel at her actions like banging on the bathroom door when her mother is trying for a brief span of privacy and saying, "Hey Momma!" I marvel at the rapid walking in which she engages. We, the adults, around her beam with every moment of growth. We are so very proud of her, for she must be better than or more advanced than any other 16 month old around! Right?! Of course right!

We are prideful and it is a perspective that we would do well to monitor. Pride is yet an even more advanced stage of forceful human consciousness than we have examined heretofore. We have looked at shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire and anger (see the anger article at www.btcevents.blogspot.com).

What we see with pride is a level that invites us to celebrate our achievements. We hold our heads higher, just like Isabella does when our family praises her successful actions. We boast about ourselves and believe that we are truly remarkable individuals. It seems there is a fine line between confidence and pridefulness. That old phrase comes to mind, "pride goeth before the fall" and it is so very true. A person who lives out of pride will find themselves standing very tall when life is going smoothly for them. They can call themselves a good catch and wave the gleaming resume in the air but when things aren't going so well they find that they can plummet back down to the lower stages of consciousness. A prideful person's esteem is rooted in what is occurring outside of themselves. It is rooted in being better than others.

I once heard someone say that no one is special. For if we make ourselves special then we make everyone else "not special." The downfall of this level of consciousness is in making ourselves better than anyone else, of valuing ourselves over everyone else.

As a family, we will do well to build Isabella up but also to teach her and remind ourselves that Isabella is equally as special as every other life on this earth. In so doing, hopefully we will release any bent toward the negative expression of pride.

On the positive side, we each have much to celebrate in our lives even down to the fact that those of us who live out of this level of life are inches away from growing toward a life of power as this is the last stage of forceful living before courage takes to experiencing a level of freedom.

I hope for each of us the ability to keep our pride in balance--to find that balance of being the confident people that God has created us to be but also being sure to honor the other remarkable people around us. May we celebrate one another this day! Amen.

Desire: Friend or Foe?

It happens all to frequently I'm afraid. I find myself dreading exercise, knowing that I should engage in it for my betterment, all the while, desiring to be doing something else. I am sitting to write this only because I actually should be exercising at this very moment. I realize that I should probably question my lack of desire. Am I lazy? Am I taking my health for granted? The issue of one's desire is an interesting study.

The forceful levels of human consciousness have directed us to examine shame, guilt, apathy, grief and last week we looked at fear. Therein we found that fear is the first of the forceful levels of life to bring a more positive energy (mixed with the negatives as well). Desire is the next level of forceful human consciousness that brings with it slightly more positive energy than fear. While we know that marketers count on our fear, they also count on our desires and play into them left and right with their advertisements for the shiny new cars, the fancy homes, the fun experiences of adventure, vacation or just imbibing alcohol with friends. They know that none of us are without our desires. The question is what relationship do we have with desire?

If we have a desire for anything--food, alcohol, drugs, monetary status, professional prestige--we are driven at this stage to achieve it. That can be a truly positive thing and can lead us toward excellence. It is that want that can energize us toward achievement but that same want can be the thing that drives us toward addictions of all sorts. The negative side of this level of life is that we find ourselves craving our desires. We value them more than we should. In some cases, we place more value on them than we place on the gift of our lives. The sad part of this stage of life is that no matter what we do or what we achieve, we are never satisfied.

Maybe you know people like that--people who walk that very thin line between achieving something with detachment versus pursuing something with insatiability. Maybe you have been or are that person if you look honestly at yourself. This level can rocket us toward higher less forceful ways of being in the world or it can destroy us. The question remains . . . what relationship do we have with desire?

We'll each answer the question in our own ways but for now, my answer is driving me toward honoring my exercise! :) Here's hoping that desire can be our friend and not our foe!

Facing our Fears

The exchange of the day has been etched in my memory since its occurrence. I had just moved to Richmond, Virginia. As a new college graduate entering seminary, I was aware that launching out on one's own is always a scary prospect. With groceries in hand, I unlocked my apartment door in Richmond's Historic Fan District just as my neighbor exited his door. "Welcome," he said, "to the second most dangerous city in the United States." Maybe it was warning or maybe his aim was to induce fear in me just for spite's sake. Whatever the case, fear became the navigator of my days. The years that would follow would find me learning to never look at the person next to me at a stoplight for fear that they might become agitated. The years would bring homeless men to sit on my front doorstep and scream at me as I tried to enter, "I have a right to be here!" They would bring the experience of sitting at a stoplight with friends with what I could only term as a machine gun (I'm not gun savvy) pointed directly at us. Fear became my faithful friend and though a friend is a one whom we generally like, I wanted fear to leave.

In our study of the levels of human consciousness, we have discussed shame, guilt, apathy and grief. Fear is the next stage and it brings with it a healthiness that the others have not. It brings the ability to discern danger. But, when we are too given to fear it becomes the driver of our lives as it did with me. Marketers could on that so that we will buy their products to protect ourselves. That's why I installed a security system in my last home!

In its negative capacity, fear says to us that we aren't worthy. It causes us to believe in things that could well be delusional. We might believe that the wonderful person we are dating will leave us because we cannot live up to what they deserve. We might believe that we simply can't maintain the intelligence required to be accepted into an educational program or land a certain job. We might believe that the stock market will never recover, that poverty should be the definition of our financial lives. Our list could go on for miles! Dr. David Hawkins tells us that while the level of fear brings more energy than the previous stages, it also serves to drive us toward negative self perspectives and worldwide perspectives for that matter. Ultimately, we do not trust our lives to leaders that live in fear and so we seek direction from those outside of ourselves who do not live in fear's lair.

It took me moving to a new town to realize that I had released my fear and moved forward. Yet to this day, I remember the knots that I perpetually felt in my gut and I wish such a constant feeling on no one! This day may you be free of fear and yet full of God's energy! Amen.

Championing the Apathetic

His posture said everything we needed to know. He was a small man, covered in layers of clothing that served as the meat to his bony frame. He sat at a table with his shoulders slumped forward and head bowed low. John Henry's story was just what his posture might have predicted. He was homeless. He had lost his job. His house had burned down. His family had given up on him and had abandoned him. He had absolutely nothing. He came to Uptown Baptist Church in Chicago for food and Uptown sought to give him both the physical nourishment that he needed and a side order of hope.

Francis had the same frame. His posture was brought on by years of walking through Africa with the Lost Boys population amid the ravages of civil war. After years in a refugee camp, he found himself resettled in America. But, this would be land where he could not quite comprehend how to succeed. Maybe he had been too enabled by the kindness of those Americans who sought to teach him the ways of their land. Whatever the case, he found himself depending on everyone to provide for his every need. His "brothers" (other Lost Boy refugees) resented him, his mentors became exasperated, he was left alone because he was deemed unteachable.

She found herself in a nursing home. Having had a stroke, she could do very little physically. Yet it appeared that her life would be long in this sad, smelly place. The nursing staff was only as kind as it had to be. No one ever came to visit except at Christmas and maybe Easter and then those were people from her church. Once in a while, her son might come. It was hard on everyone. She couldn't speak well and she essentially did what she thought she did best--stared into space. Her life became one of oblivion to the ongoings around her.

In each of these cases, these people are living at the level of human consciousness known as apathy. In recent weeks we have discussed shame and guilt. Looking at apathy we come to understand that this is the stage where we find those who are poverty stricken and despairing. These are the hopeless of our society who become dependent upon society.

So often these are the very people on whom the rest of give up. Only the likes of Mother Teresa seem to be able to sustain their ministry to these folks. So, I pose this question: How do we find it within ourselves to support the apathetic among us, to champion them to new levels and to move them toward hope. I ponder this question this week and invite you to contemplate with me.

Guilt and its Grievances

It was 1994, as I recall, and I was sitting on the sofa watching television and working on some project when the news broke in and gave report of a white bronco on the highways of Los Angeles being chased by police. Inside was OJ Simpson. At the time we weren't really sure what was going on with him. In the weeks and months that would follow we would watch a trial and an often divisive trial play out before our eyes. Whether you believe that he was or is guilty of the crime of which he was accused, I think of that trial and many others and am reminded of the media role in it all.

We depend on the media for everything and often our opinions are swayed by the opinions of those that travel over the airwaves or through our papers such that I have to wondered how often someone's guilt is determined less by the true evidence and more by the "court of public opinion" as they call it. We like to think that people get fair trials but if our culture is driven by guilt itself, then likely, fair trials aren't really available to any of us.

Last week we talked about the lowest level of human consciousness being shame. Just above that level is the level of force known as guilt. We have all known guilt at one time or other. Some times we feel it when we know we've done some thing bad--yelled at a neighbor, taken something that didn't belong to us. Sometimes we get it indirectly through others. Mothers most often get the rap for this with comments to their children like "you are always so busy and I never see you." Somehow the fact that you visited the day before and worked like a maniac around her house for her escapes her memory!

Sometimes people live out of this level and those that do are those who prove themselves as manipulators and power players. They like to turn your words around to make them serve themselves and often you wind up looking like the fool. At its extreme, David Hawkins says that "guilt provokes rage and killing is frequently its expression." He notes how cultures seem to find satisfaction in things like capital punishment and that very fact denotes a guilt driven culture.

When we live out of guilt it leads us to deliver on all sorts of grievances or to harbor them in such a way that a life of peace or even a moment of peace is just never possible for us. What a terrible way to live! Yet, throughout our culture people have arrested in their development at this level.

I hope for you that you don't have people in your life who live with such guilt and that you aren't one either and if you do have such persons in your life, I hope that you will understand that they simply cannot help living out of such a low level of life. I encourage you to pray for them to be transformed. In their transformation comes a societal transformation. Maybe through such transformation, our world can truly work toward peace.

Living in Shame

Last week I was taken aback by the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. I couldn't help but think of my last visit there. As one walks those halls, you can only imagine the horror that a whole people group experienced. The emotion brought on by the experience of the museum is overwhelming in itself. Then, add to that the chaos of evil being played out in that building. I couldn't imagine being one of the people in the museum the day that James Von Brunn wreaked his havoc there.

This horrible incident has caused me to reflect on the levels of human consciousness and so I thought I would spend the next several weeks reflecting upon them by following Dr. David Hawkins' outline of them in his book, Power vs. Force. He notes that the lowest level of human consciousness exists as shame and I can only think that this is what motivates people like Von Brunn.

Shame is that level of life where people who have been abused, injured, beaten down by life and by other humans internalize their experiences in unhealthy ways. Such ways lead the victim of shame to act out sometimes by suicide, sometimes by murder, sometimes by infliction of pain upon themselves. Those who live life from a level of shame are those who cannot move beyond the negative emotions of life. They become prisoners to anger, sadness, bitterness, revenge, etc.

We cannot know really why Von Brunn did what he did. What was really active in his heart to motivate that? Of course, he is to blame for this horrible act and while we cannot take responsbility for someone else's evil acts, it strikes me, that even we, as a people connected to one another have a culpability in situations like this. Somewhere along the way we have looked down on someone, thought ourselves better than someone, banished someone from our lives. We have played selfish roles with no thought for the effect that our cruel words or actions might have on that person and with no idea for what else may be occurring in their lives. Von Brunn is the only one who has to answer for his crime, but I wonder if evil like this would happen in our world if we exhibited more of a consciousness about how we treated everyone--even the strangers we pass on the street.

This morning, ABC News personality, Diane Sawyer, asked Von Brunn's son if he would ever forgive his father. Erik Von Brunn was clearly so ashamed of what his father had done and said that he believed forgiveness would never be possible for him. I hope that does not prove to be true or else he might likely arrest himself in his own human development.

This week, as we pray for those directly affected by Von Brunn, as we pray that Von Brunn himself might be changed for the better, let us also pray that we will be able to express God's love to everyone and make a difference in another life--for the good!

Blythe Taylor Coaching

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "Arrange whatever pieces come your way." So today, I begin the process of doing just that. What has come my way is an new opportunity to try a ministry outside the walls of church hallways and traditional worship services. So, after 12 years of operating through life as a full-time Baptist minister, today I begin writing from this blog as the owner of Blythe Taylor Coaching. You can learn more about coaching by going to my website, www.blythetaylorcoaching.com.

The mission of Blythe Taylor Coaching or BTC, as I like to call it, is to help individuals and organizations (of all types) reach their greatest potential. The vehicles used for this are varied but center around three types: coaching (obviously), consulting and speaking.

Coaching happens either in a group session where 10 or fewer people come together for an hour to invite members to discuss a topic of concern and have a trained professional ask strategic and powerful questions to help move participants toward their next steps. Individual coachees can contract with their coach for 30 minutes or one hour long time slots for more focused attention. (While the BTC prices on the website are static, I am more than happy to negotiate--especially in this economy!) Coaching can be offered to organizations (corporate or otherwise) to help workers succeed within the structure of the institution.

Consulting is offered to churches who are seeking to find new direction. This process can help churches clarify their identity, discover the strengths of members and how to use members in ways that are mutually beneficial, as well as redefine leadership inside the church structure, discuss ways of relating to outside entities and chart a course for the future. This is not expert consulting where the leader comes in, evaluates and tells you what to do. Rather this is experiential where we work together to clarify the desired outcomes and work toward their manifestation.

Speaking occurs through two means beneficial to individuals and organizations alike:
Retreats are offered for churches and (with my ministerial background) can be on any spiritual topic that is requested. Topics have ranged from prayer, to spiritual gifts to spiritual formation to ways for walking the spiritual journey. You name it, we can design something to meet your particular need.

Seminars are offered in partnership with companies and churches that include topics like helping job seekers find direction, helping retirees figure out what is next for them, helping students (teens, 'tweens and college students) identify their strengths and work toward them.

Blythe Taylor Coaching has a strong conviction that any person who is will can watch his or her life come together and I would be most honored to help you, "arrange whatever pieces come your way!"

Contact us: blythe@blythetaylorcoaching.com

Lessons Learned Part Two

May 27, 2009

Last week I shared with you a few of the life lessons that I have gleaned while serving as your Associate Minister and now as I am literally days away from turning in those keys that I have carried for so long, I offer you my final lessons that you have given me the space to learn.

Matthew 5:44-45
But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

I’ve learned over the years to become more observant of my behavior and that of others. This is not a lesson I have mastered but I see such value in trying to think through the effects of one’s actions and then act in compassion. Seeking to ask questions like, “who will this decision affect and what is the cost benefit analysis?” Somehow, the accomplishment of this cause and effect strategy seems like a straight path to wisdom.

One of the great strengths in my make up is being futuristic. But I’ve learned that living out there in the future means that I miss the savory nature of the present. I won’t ever see this moment again so learning to value this moment in time seems to be so key for claiming joy. I think of Job and how in the face of his pain he reflected on this fact. He understood that God was involved in every moment of his life. Remember that my life is a breath (Job 7:7a). I wonder if we remembered that fact more often if we wouldn’t value each moment as a gift.

Maybe if we remembered that fact, we’d also worry a bit less. I encourage you to read the section of Matthew 6:25-34 part of which reads “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? . . .”

In our culture we spend a lot of time worrying about needless things and some things that seem quite needful, but if we’ve learned to place the things of our lives—all of them-- in God’s care and then let go, then what do we have to worry about? A friend of mine, while driving around the capital beltway, once saw a billboard that said, “Worry is the misuse of the imagination.” My imagination is just too precious to misuse and I’m betting yours is too! 

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”

This verse sits on the bookshelf in my office. Planner that I am, it reminds me that there is a higher and better way. Too often we get caught up in our own agendas and with our own goals. We become inflexible and sometimes so inflexible that we force our way such that we cause pain to others. Isn’t it better to be kind than to be right? This verse reminds me of the value of doing the loving thing and trusting the big picture to God.

Isaiah 61:8b “ . . . and I will direct their work in truth . . .” reminds me that each one of us is here for a purpose that is greater than ourselves. When we can discern what our unique gifts and talents are and how God will calling us to utilize them beyond our own purposes, our lives become of monumental value. I have always believed that we can do what we love and love what we do—all of which is rooted in our God-given purpose.

So as I leave, I wish for you a life without worry in which your focus is on God first. Then through that focus may you find your purpose and live it out, living in each moment a life that honors God and makes a difference. I wish you each my love and Godspeed! Amen.

Lessons Learned Part One

May 20, 2009

As I struggled to figure out what passage to select for our devotional this week, I suddenly realized that in a week and a half I will no longer be doing this. Yes, I know I’ve known that these last days of my ministry among you were coming but now the palpability of them is real to me. So I figured that I would leave you, this week and next, with scriptures and lessons that I have learned, re-learned, (and am still practicing learning), while among you. May you find in these, hope for your days.

Psalm 46:10a
Be still and know that I am God.

The most crucial lesson in life that I have learned is the value of nurturing one’s personal relationship to God. Thirsting for God and allowing God to be the driving force in one’s life enables everything else to fall into place. You grow and advance in levels of consciousness until you find God’s peace. It seems to me that this is the ultimate goal of life and the foundational piece for living. If one can’t get this commitment in order, life will always be difficult and frankly it doesn’t have to be.

Matthew 7:1-5
Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye, while the log is in your own eye?’ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

This seems to be the hardest lesson for me. Somehow I was pre-wired to see how all of us should operate but the fact of the matter is there really are no shoulds. Things just are and we have a choice to accept them as they are and see the best in them or not. Letting life be as it is, is a very hard lesson but very freeing in the times that we can allow it to be as it is.

As a minister, one finds himself/herself standing as a representative of God which usually means that people feel free to lash out at you for no apparent reason. Learning to let others be as they are, learning that their issues are not about you, learning to allow others to have their journey in life without trying to fix them or internalize the hurt is such a challenge! But if the lesson can be learned, what peace can be found!

Luke 6:38
“Give, and it will be given you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put in your lap . . .”.

There is something powerful to be said for giving. Giving gratitude to God first for what God has done in the past, then for what is happening now (even if it seems to stink to you right now) and for what God will do in the future. There is so much of the larger picture of life that we are not privy to see and if we can practice gratitude through it all, we come to an understanding that (as Romans 8:28 says—all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose) life just seems to flow.

The other aspect of giving is the idea of abundance. I do not believe that God intends for us to lack in anyway. But I also believe that wealth and abundance of any sort were meant to be in constant flow. (Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . . for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:19-21). We are called give of what we have been given and if we live from a belief in lack, then we are saying that we do not believe that God is able or willing to care for us. I believe that God is more than able to meet my every need. I just have to let God do it.

Finally, giving of a smile or prayer or a complement can begin to turn a sour relationship toward sweetness. Those are simple gifts to offer and we don’t do them enough, I know that I don’t.

There are many more lessons that you have allowed me to learn while among you and I will hope to finish sharing them next week. For now, may you find peace in your own commitments to being still and knowing God and in letting others be as they are. May you also find wonder in the many facets of giving! Wishing you God’s best this week!

Will You Be the One?

May 13, 2009

Genesis 12:1-8

“Now the Lord said to Abram. ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.”

As we come to this story we come with knowledge that Abram is not unfamiliar with picking up, moving and settling elsewhere. His father, Terah, had done it before. We also come knowing that Abram’s wife, Sarai, was barren. And then we hear these words that God will make Abram a great nation (but his wife is barren! She can’t bear children! How is God going to accomplish that one?!) Abram is no spring chicken when God asks him to do this. Yet, you’ll notice that there is no balking at the request that God makes of Abram. There is no self-doubt, no doubt of God, just faith, patience and obedience. Abram just gets up and goes and along the way he worships.

In 1877, the dean of the college at Yale University, Henry Parks Wright and his wife Martha Burt Wright, welcomed their baby boy Henry Burt Wright into their family. Little Henry would grow up in the shadow of Yale, first being home schooled until time for high school and then graduating from New Haven High School somewhere around 1894. It’s no surprise that he got his BA from Yale in 1898 and his PhD from Yale in 1903. While there he founded a YMCA chapter, was a member of the famed Skull and Bones and distinguished himself as a scholar and as a faithful Christian. He began teaching at Yale in 1903—teaching Greek, Latin, Roman History and Latin Literature and finally winding up as the Stephen Merrell Clement Professor of Christian Methods in the Yale Divinity School. He was a prolific writer and among my favorite work of his is The Will of God and Man’s Lifework.

If I had the chance to go back in time and meet someone, Henry Burt Wright is one of the people I would like to know. I would love to have sat at his feet in tutelage, if only for to hear him speak the words with which he closed every class: “The world has yet to see what can be done by, with and through . . . one person . . . totally committed to doing the will of God. Will you be that one?”

Faith doesn’t come easy to us. Upon God’s calling, we automatically say “no way, Jose!” I can’t to do this! And . . .therein rests the lesson. WE are right when we say that. We can’t do this. What we can do is let go and let God work in us. Henry Burt Wright, even in the protective shadows of Yale academia, must have learned that lesson of letting go to seek God’s will—of surrendering himself so fully that he was able to just be and to live his life as God desired.

The scripture suggests that Abram got it pretty easily. Abram was one person totally committed to doing the will of God and a whole nation and three religious perspectives have been formed around his name.

As a church family, you stand on the precipice of making a significant mark on the world. You will not be successful if you rely upon yourselves. The possibilities will be endless if you let go and trust God. I amend Wright’s words only slightly—“The world has yet to see what can be done by, with and through . . . (one church) . . .totally committed to doing the will of God.” Will you be like Abram and walk in faith? Can you answer Wright’s question with your hearts, hands and feet? “Will you be the one?”

You shall know the truth . . .

May 5, 2009

2 Peter 3:14-18

“So, my dear friends, since this is what you have to look forward to, do your very best to be found living at your best, in purity and peace. Interpret our Master’s patient restraint for what it is: salvation. Our good brother Paul, who was given much wisdom in these matters, refers to this in all his letters, and has written you essentially the same thing. Some things Paul writes are difficult to understand. Irresponsible people who don’t know what they are talking about twist them every which way. They do it to the rest of the Scriptures, too, destroying themselves as they do it. But you, friends, are well-warned. Be on guard lest you lose your footing and get swept off your feet by these lawless and loose-talking teachers. Grow in grace and understanding of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Glory to the Master, now and forever! Yes!”

As I age and as family members pass on from this life, I am finding that I am discovering stories (most of which I would rather not know) that leave me feeling so disappointed. These were stories of truths that were covered over out of someone’s embarrassment over their own sinfulness or truths that others didn’t share for fear that they would create more pain. As I hear them now and learn of the failings of others, I find the phrase echoing in my brain . . . “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free . . .”

As Peter comes to close his letter to the church, he acknowledges the Apostle Paul. Paul had a good grasp on the truth but sometimes communicated in a way that was difficult to comprehend. To this day, we have trouble with Paul’s thinking and we deal with it in all manner of ways. Some of us interpret his work very literally because frankly it’s just easier to do so. But, if we are willing to do the work of historical, literary, textual, etc. criticism, then we discover aspects of the texts through different lenses and we begin to have a glimpse of what Paul was trying to communicate. As Peter prepares to close his letter, he makes it clear that the hearers of his letter have within their grasp the ability to discern the truth. It is only through their inner honesty with themselves that they can claim that truth.

If they will be objective and honest about what they know about God, then they will not live in the context of the delusion that false teachers like to paint. The false teachers, as we well know by now, had a proclivity for taking a part of the truth. Just as in our study of any Scripture, we have to look at the whole to understand the parts. The same is true for the living of our lives.

Many have been the times that people have lashed out at me because I am a minister and they believe that they can rightfully through their anger upon me as a representative of God. In those moments, I find it easier to ignore the truth and internalize their anger. But the truth is that the moment of their anger at me isn’t about me but is about their larger history—a history that usually I am not privy to know.

This passage is an exhortation to us at many levels. First, in our study, we will do well do avoid delusion if we take the time to understand the context of the message. Then, we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free . . .. Second, in our relationships, there exists so much about each one of us that we do not share but to understand each other and to live with each other in peace, grace and forgiveness without delusion, it seems so important to be honest with each other. This passage call us to honesty . . . with ourselves, with others, with God. So where are we failing in honesty? The words continue to ring in my thoughts . . . “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free . . ..”

Faith in the Present Moment

April 29, 2009
2 Peter 3:8-13 (The Message)
“Don’t overlook the obvious here friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change. But when the Day of God’s Judgment does come, it will be unannounced, like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a huge conflagration, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment. Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day—but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.”

When I was a very little girl, my parents began to observe a predominant trait in me that I’m not certain they appreciated at the time. It was inevitable that we would head out on a day full of errands and visiting. We would arrive at the drugstore, for instance, and by arrive I mean park the car in the parking lot. I would hop out of the car and say, “Okay, where are we going now?” They would exhort me to focus on where we were and what we were doing and we would be at the next place soon enough. We’d arrive at my great-grandmother’s house. I would hug her, go play in her bedroom for a few minutes and then announce, “Okay, where are we going now?” Can’t you just feel the roll of my parents eyes?

The Scripture tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” But what happens when the ‘what we do not see’ (that next part of the journey for which we are anxious) part seems NEVER to come? Surely you’ve had those times—longing for . . .(you fill in the blank)________- a material item, a new job, a new relationship, a child to be born into the family, etc. You know this thing as your heart’s desire and it never seems to show up for you.

This is precisely how the people of Peter’s day were feeling. They were so discouraged because they had operated on the thought that Christ’s return was eminent. Yet they found themselves waiting and waiting and waiting but no physical Christ was showing up. The false teachers made sense of this by saying that the promise that Christ would return was false. But Peter couldn’t tolerate such a thought. It had become evident to Peter that he would not see Christ’s return but he remained convinced that those to whom he wrote would see it in their lifetimes. In the long run, however, the time of the fulfillment proves to be irrelevant to the message that Peter hopes to convey.

Peter’s point is that while the people must expect that Christ will return in each forthcoming day, they also must be able to focus on the present moment. By focusing on the moment that is out there in the future, they miss the opportunity to focus on the status of their relationship with God in this moment. Up until now, they have turned Christ’s return (known as the parousia) into a grand event—but an event more important than the present moment--and their focus on that future moment keeps them from seeing what God is doing in the present moment.

Peter suggests that if we would learn to pay attention and appreciate this moment for what it is, if we would seek to learn and grow now, then the thing for which we long and which we have been promised would show up one day in a such a way that we would barely notice it because it would be such a natural occurrence.

That was the lesson my parents wished I had learned at three or four! Thirty some odd years later, I am just starting to understand it myself and in my shallow understanding I see what Peter was saying.

Such freedom comes when we are able to know first that God does fulfill our hearts’ desires but God fulfills them in God’s remarkable timing and not in ours. Letting go of our control over the details of when and where, etc. enables us to more fully surrender. In that surrender comes an undeniable peace and an ability to flow with life such that we come to appreciate the desire’s fulfillment more when it does happen.

Likely, for Peter’s audience, they would need to comprehend this experientially. Maybe the same is true of us and maybe we can do our part by working toward trusting God’s promises for our lives, knowing God’s faithfulness in those promises and getting ourselves out of the way so that God can work in our lives. May we embrace the true faith to which Peter has exhorted us! Amen.

What is your story?

April 22, 2009

2 Peter 3:1-7 (The Message)

“My dear friends, this is now the second time I’ve written to you, both letters reminders to hold your minds in a state of undistracted attention. Keep in mind what the holy prophets said, and the command of our Master and Savior that was passed on by your apostles. First off, you need to know that in the last days, mockers are going to have a heyday. Reducing everything to the level of their puny feelings, they’ll mock, “So what’s happened to the promise of his Coming? Our ancestors are dead and buried and everything’s going on just as it has from the first day of creation. Nothing’s changed.” They conveniently forget that long ago all the galaxies and this very planet were brought into existence out of watery chaos by God’s word. Then God’s word brought the chaos back in a flood that destroyed the world. The current galaxies and earth are fuel for the final fire. God is poised, ready to speak his word again, ready to give the signal for the judgment and destruction of the desecrating skeptics.”

Every year on January 6th, my mother calls me. Every year it is for the same reason—my birthday . . . and every year she tells the same story. “On this day, X number of years ago, I was in the hospital and they were pushing me into the operating room. They rolled me past your dad and I had green drool coming out of my mouth from the candy they gave me, your grandmother couldn’t stand being at the hospital and your Aunt Scotty and her boyfriend went to feed the dog and then . . ..” And so the story of my birth goes!

You have those birthday stories and like my family and me, you also have the stories of your growing up—the three year old birthday party, the first roller coaster ride, the adventures of your first date, graduations, college and on they go . . .. Our stories are the things that keep us centered. They remind us who we are and whose we are. Our stories remind us how we are connected with each other. Our stories remind us how God has been active in our lives.

In the same way, the stories of the Jews were verbally handed from one generation to another and then recorded for posterity, lest anyone of them forget the ways of God at work in their lives.

The Epicurean philosophy of those days when this letter was written was such that if they hadn’t seen a promise fulfilled they weren’t going to believe that it could be. The false teachers had brought the people of some of the churches to whom this circular letter traveled into the Epicurean belief. Peter writes to them in this letter having spoken rather coarsely to them heretofore and now writes from a slightly more pastoral perspective. Peter writes so as to shore them up spiritually so that when he passes, they know where to turn. The exhortation in the verses is clear. In order to keep to what we know is truth we must remember the lessons we have been taught—the stories of our history and faith.

So many centuries have passed since the writing of the Biblical narrative, this letter included and yet, as Christians, our book of lessons taught is the Bible. Some of us look at our Bibles and simply don’t understand what is being said. We haven’t had a seminary education. So we give up and hope that our ministers will just explain it to us. Some of us get very caught up in the details and the fundamentals that we completely miss the message that was trying to be taught to us. Some of us do comprehend it but don’t feel competent enough to share what we know with others. These stories are our shared stories and like the Jews before us, we are called to remember the stories, their promises and the truths they have to share and then allow them to be our guides in the living of these present days.

That’s all Peter wanted these people to do. Remember the promise of Christ’s return and just because it hasn’t happened in the first generation of Christians, don’t give up on the promise. Christian people are to be faithful people—people who are certain of what they cannot see.

I’m not sure that we are that different from those swayed by the false teachers. The Bible stories seem so far removed from us, how can they really be our stories? It is so easy to detach ourselves from the story of faith.

Being spiritual people means having a story of faith that guides our lives and being willing to share it with others. What is your story?

People of the Spirit

April 15, 2009

2 Peter 2:17-22

There’s nothing to these people—they’re dried up fountains, storm-scattered clouds, headed for a black hole in hell. They are loudmouths, full of hot air, but still they’re dangerous. Men and women who have recently escaped from a deviant life are most susceptible to their brand of seduction. They promise these newcomers freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for if they’re addicted to corruption—and they are—they’re enslaved. If they’ve escaped from the slum of sin by experiencing our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ, and then slid back into that same old life again, they’re worse than if they had never left. Better not to have started out on the straight road to God than to start out and then turn back, repudiating the experience and holy command. They prove the point of the proverbs, “A dog goes back to its own vomit,” and “A scrubbed-up pig heads for the mud.”

Every now and then, I read a book and become utterly enamored with it. When I was in seminary, there was at least one of those books amid my education studies written by a man named James Fowler. The book, entitled Stages of Faith, spoke to the developmental stages that a person can expect to experience or in some cases not experience as they traverse the years of life. The stages included “Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith” where we learn about trust and love but don’t have the ability to separate these from the threats of abandonment and so forth. As we grow, we progress to a stage between ages three and seven known as “Intuitive-Projective Faith.” This is where faith is fantasy like, where we learn through stories and by watching examples of others. Imagination runs free in this stage. The “Mythic-Literal Faith” develops in those late childhood years as the stories from earlier childhood years become our own. We understand them not as something someone else represents for us but as something we can know for ourselves—though our knowledge may be a bit stilted as we see things very literally. Reciprocity seems to be a key element in this stage. By puberty, we enter the “Synthetic-Conventional Faith” and many adults will arrest in this stage of development (this is where we find fundamentalists). Here faith has a conforming element to it as we are very focused on the expectations and judgments of significant others so that our authority is located outside of ourselves and likely in the traditional authority roles. If we are fortunate something will rocket us in our mid-twenties (a crisis of sorts) into “Individuative-Reflective Faith.” At this stage, the authority shifts internally and we begin to doubt and question EVERYTHING that we know or think we know. Most adults live at this stage. Somewhere in our 50’s, again if we are fortunate, there comes an integration of self as we reach “Conjunctive Faith” and here we begin to comprehend paradox. We are able to be a part of a faith group and yet detached from it. We understand God in the paradox—as changing and changeless. We understand the need to live in the paradox as working to trust and yet only finding trust through surrender. Finally, if we reach the likes of Ghandi, we reach Universalizing Faith. At this stage, we give ourselves to overcoming paradox through ascetic acts of faith. (Frankly, much less is known about this stage as so few people reach it.)

What does this have to do with Peter? These false teachers were not operating out of a sense of self awareness. They were not as in the conjunctive or universalizing faiths living out of the divine nature of Christ. But those Christians easily influenced as would be children, teenagers and those living in the synthetic-conventional faith, were falling hook line and sinker for the gospel as portrayed falsely. Peter wants these folks to see that there are three things to living out of the divine nature of Christ that we must observe. First, we must hold to our knowledge of Christ as a gift that comes from God. We don’t necessarily need others to tell us what is true about God. We should know it in our own hearts and that knowledge should bring us peace. Second, Christ is our vehicle away from the corruption of the world. If we commit ourselves to walking with Christ and living as closely to him as we are able, we will know a great peace and be much closer to the truth. Finally, it isn’t enough to have knowledge and to walk with Christ, we have to turn away from our own desires of the flesh. Turn away from sin. With those three things done, we’ll be on the fast track to the conjunctive faith at least. Peter wants these precious Christians to not fall prey to misguided faith.

This raises several questions for us: Do we live with knowledge of Christ? Do we walk in Christ’s way? Have we turned fully from sin? Are we able to lead others in the way of Christ as a result? Are we really participating in the divine nature of Christ? Ultimately if we want to be people of the Spirit, we must strive to live within the divine nature. So may we live! Amen.