Retreat

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He is looking for that place in each of us – the empty and waiting.

He knows it’s there even when we cannot remember.  He formed its hollows and the echo of His breath still vibrates within.

This is the very breath that exhaled life into what was fashioned from His heart.  This void stretched like the working of the glass blower’s gentle wind.

Creating

Expanding

Empty always seems to beg to be filled but it is not always discriminating with what it allows to enter in.

Filled isn’t always fitted well.

I just spent six short days unpacking this truth.

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Whatever it is we give our time to, our attention to, our thoughts to, this is what fills up our interior space and chips away our capacity little by little.  (Dana Candler)

Whatever it is…good or bad…needed or not…fills us but all too often, doesn’t fit us.  He cannot inhabit a space that is already occupied and yet, this is the space only He can fit.

Six days to unpack the unnecessary to increase my capacity.  A wisp of time spent where author Luci Shaw describes as the place “God can get at me, fix His gaze on me and I cannot turn away.”

Good is gone.  Bad is forgotten.  Needed is no longer necessary and not doesn’t exist.

All that remained was Him, me and the once again, hollowed space.

Do You Know What Time It Is?

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I was making my way through the parking lot on a mission to clutch my hands around a triple grande extra hot caramel macchiato.  It had been one of those nights when my mind started racing at 1:00 am and the holy nudge to get out of bed and get on my knees to pray soon followed.  Now with that mission completed, this one became imperative.

I didn’t get too far from my car before a small red pickup truck idled slowly next to me.  I am a little wary when things like this happen.  When cars idle up and windows slowly lower down.  Scars from the past when the similar occurred and perverted intentions were exposed.  So I side glanced briefly when I heard a soft voice say, “do you know what time it is?”

In the driver’s seat sat an older man wearing a well, worn red flannel shirt with a face etched in a million wrinkles and skin as thin as vellum.  He spoke with a country slowness echoing a different time and a different place.  I knew the only threat here was to my schedule.

What started out with an innocuous question idled on to where he was going.  Some place he hadn’t been before in a town he hadn’t seen in 20 years but was only 40 miles or so down the road.  While the engine of this little red pickup whirred on, he quietly told me where he was from, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.  He had left long, long ago but his dear sister still lived there.  I know that because when he spoke about the snow – how he didn’t like it nor wanted anymore to come – he shared he called his sister during our last snowstorm to find out she had her own storm.  She doesn’t like snow, either, so he said.  I smiled and nodded as I silently wondered if the time was ever what he really needed.

I don’t think so.

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At least not the time a clock wore at that moment.  More like the time of a slow conversation talking about something, about nothing.

Just talking.

And in that very brief moment, my caramel macchiato didn’t seem as necessary anymore.

The coffee could wait because this was needed.

I pray to see the sacred in the ordinary and yet the momentum of my days cause the ordinary to blur into oblivion.  Far too often, I miss the holy that is right before me.  I miss the holy that resides within me.  This moment I stopped and stood in what looked like a parking lot but was really sacred ground.

We ministered to each other.  He to my busy.  Me to his lonely.  God amongst it all.

God knew what time it was.  It was time for church.

This is what real church looks like.

 

Breaking Through

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Words hold mystery and truth in the very same sentence.  Words can break through the cold and hard places within much like the daffodils break through the wintered ground in the spring.  Words, whether born from my pen or from another’s, are my thing.  I am always hungering for more.  Yet there are moments, like this morning, when the world seemed to stop spinning if only for the briefest of moments.

“Because a loveless world,” said Jesus, “is a sightless world.” (John 14:23)

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One and done.

I can’t move beyond.  I am set to wonder if all those times I have prayed to see but found myself struggling in the dark is because of this.

Love-less.

How many things have I called invisible but truth be told, the blindness was first in my heart before it ever made it to my eyes?

It seems fitting to me that I sit here awhile.

Daffodils don’t break through the ground flowering yellow right away.

 

 

 

 

 

A basin and a towel

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The days were drawing to the end and Jesus knew it.  No matter how he tried to prepare those he loved most, they just didn’t grasp it.  But their inability to understand didn’t stop His persistence in preparing them.

Now, it is dinner time and as they recline at the table, Jesus is aware their feet have not been washed.  No one else notices or if they did, they said nothing.  They did nothing.

How many times have we have not seen or worse yet, seen and did nothing?

Sandals and walking make for dirty feet.  A servant in the household would normally wash the grime off the guests.  But this night there was no servant to wash – so everyone stayed dirty.

We are not much different.  We see the need but it’s not ours to own so we all stay dirty.

But Jesus…

He stepped away from the meal, took off his garments and fastened a servant’s towel around his waist and prepared the basin of water.  Then one by one He began to wash the feet of his disciples.

Did anyone notice when He stood up from the table?  Or when he prepared the basin?  Were they so intent on eating the meal and talking with each other they missed what was happening until he started to wash their feet?  Even then, no one said anything.

I wondered how many grimy feet He washed before He got to Simon Peter’s.  As the water sloshed dirty in the bowl and the servant’s towel hung wet, limp and stained from His waist, could they even begin to understand what was happening?  Their silence is deafening.

Then Simon Peter…

Leave it to this impetuous one to open his mouth and insert his foot.  He is the only one who speaks up and challenges Jesus.  Peter first wants him to stop and then he wants a head to toe bath.

You see, Peter recognized what was happening was out of the norm but his rashness couldn’t wait for Christ to finish.  He was too self-aware to see the deeper things.  It is not ignorance but rather impulsiveness from where his words are born.

He wants but he can’t wait.

Oh Lord, we know that well.

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We want to know.  So much so, we often to jump to conclusions before we even understand the story.  We see the moment and filter it through lenses of past experiences.

Rose colored they are not.

We make judgements.  We all do.  Peter did.

So, when Christ lowered his knee to pick up Peter’s foot, Peter assumed a servant’s job was not for Christ to undertake.  Yet, it was…necessary.

A Lenten season is a preparation for what is to come.  The giving up’s and the whittling down’s while presently uncomfortable have holy implications.  Sacred releases of

           …what we think we want

                 …what we think we need

                      …and even, who we think we are.

This Lenten unleashing is our basin of filthy water and the damp, dirty towel.   It’s bigger than this moment even if we can’t comprehend.

We may choose our Lenten sacrifices but the more importantly, He chose us to clean.

“You do not understand what I am doing, but you will understand later on.”

John 13:7

Prisons

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Prisons are unkind places.

It matters not how the walls are built because those that rise from disappointment, dereliction, discomfort and discrimination stand as sure as those made from brick and mortar.  These walls, no matter how they were constructed, cause us to doubt who we are and all that we have ever known.

John the Baptist was a man on a mission.  He stood in the wilderness and in the water preparing the way for the One to come.  When this One came and Heaven spoke, John’s job was done.

Endings are rarely easy, no matter how they appear.

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Not long after, the pages turn and John is found sitting in a prison – isolated, dark and foreboding, I am sure.  A place where time holds one hostage and thoughts fall incessant as tortured drops.

Drip

Maybe I should have done this or that instead?

Drip

Why am I here?  What did I do wrong?

Drip

He is not doing it like I thought it would happen.  Is He really the right one?

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Prison walls hold tight their contents until they gnaw away even the most stalwart of heart.  We may wonder why John so quickly doubted within the walls what he knew to be true in the water.  But truth be told, we do the same.

Life encircles us in ways we never expected.  As the calendar pages turn, we hide our hurts and disappointments with the intention to move past.  But instead they burrow their way deep within the walls and there they find the perfect place to fester.

Infections like these weaken even the strong among us.

Yet John, in his wisdom, knew the question was worth the ask.   The answer was the antidote to the ailment seeking to poison.  Jesus didn’t avoid the question.

God never does.

We just far too often avoid ask

 

Further reading:  Matthew 11:1-6