I don’t have a problem with that.

I have a problem with the church stopping there.

If we as churches take the gospel seriously, we can do far more than have a few moments of remembrance for those who have died for their country. We as the church can proclaim the gospel on this Sunday, which means that we need to earnestly pray for and proclaim the Prince of Peace who will end all war and conflict in his kingdom.

The promise of the world is more war and more conflict: a world where there will always be Memorial Days. The promise of the kingdom is exactly the opposite: there will be no more Memorial Days, only the rule of the Prince of Peace.

As so many of us go camping, go to church or fire up the grill this Memorial Day, we as Christians sell ourselves short if we just go through the motions and pay our respects. We need to give the good news of the Prince of Peace to all, that one day there will be no more war, no conflict, no violence or suffering, for the kingdom of God will be unleashed upon the world by the one and only Prince of Peace!

“May my meditation be pleasing…” – Psalm 104

I. Meditation is not a means to an end, it is the substance of worship.

II. Meditation does not produce worship, it is an act of worship itself.

III. Meditation is not to please myself, it is to please God.

IV. Meditation is the renewing of one’s mind.

V. Meditation is the breaking down of the patterns of the mind and the transformation of godly thought.

VI. Meditation, if it produces no works, is dead like a faith without works.

VII. Meditation is an act of radical selflessness, to give God control.

VIII. Meditation should be a form of examination; it should not necessarily be comfortable.

IX. Meditation may not always be comfortable, but it is hopeful, and thus joyful.

X. Meditation, in its joyful examination and renewal, is an acting out of our spiritual lives before God.

I think I would also add:

XI. The more I meditate on meditation the more I realize I am totally and completely inept at it.

Please add your own maxim or anecdote on meditation!

It is with our lips that we sing your praises,
It is with our tongues that we rejoice,
for your goodness endures forever,
from the apostles down to us.

It is your desire that every nation know you,
that every knee bow,
every tongue confess,
that you are Lord,
for your kingdom endures forever,
from age to age.

It is your church that serves the world,
that becomes the hands and feet of Christ.
Teach us to be Christ,
to hold our tongues when mercy is needed,
and to open our mouths when grace is needed,
for the Way of Christ is forever,
from the beginning to the end.

Amen

It happens three ways:

1. community
2. story
3. prayerful hope

My delight in the midst of so much despair is because I am constantly surrounded by a community of believers who are going through the very same thing I am. They know what the world is really like out there, past the fancy commuter trains, Starbucks and across oceans and borders. They know the oppressive nature of violence and crime that plagues the poor. I know. They know. We know. We are all in this together.

But community does not readily bring delight. Community is also a place of great despair. Yet, if your community is going to be a place that transforms despair into delight you must be a community that tells stories. Story is what reminds us of how people and circumstances of the past were transformed from despair into delight. It is in these stories that we find how to orient our moments of despair into a delight in the goodness that has come in the past and is currently happening in the present. To come full circle like this, from despair to delight, follows the trajectory of human story: we were made to live within these redemptive narratives, and they are our currency of delight.

If we keep telling stories as a community, we will be given a prayerful hope which culminates in delight. If we live within the stories of our communities, then we will have a foundation on which to stand and prayerfully hope for the future. I say prayerfully because this is not a given; delight and redemption don’t just happen. But we can pray that they do, and live and move and have our being in that prayerful hope.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in discussing his own work, and narrative in general, described the move from despair to delight as eucatastrophe (literally: the good catastrophe). When we despair and think all hope is lost, we must rely on our community, our stories and our prayerful hope to bring about the abundant change we need in our lives, our families, and our world. And when the turn finally comes, and justice wins once again, we can bask in delight.

When my daughter was born, I recall feeling an overwhelming sense of love for her. I loved her just because. She couldn’t offer me anything. She was a helpless child and needed me for provision.

Now my daughter is five years old and her crying is not as cute as it once was. She has perfected throwing a tantrum and can fall prey to an obstinate attitude. It’s hard. It takes a little more effort to show her love but I still love her just because. She’s my daughter. She still doesn’t offer me much but I still love her…I just do.

I’ve recently been struck by the idea of “one-way love” (popular in the writings of Paul Zahl). As followers of Jesus, we are called to love people even if they can’t give anything in return. It’s hard. It takes more effort. Inevitably, the question comes: how are we doing with showing people love, one-way love, even if they don’t deserve or they can’t give it back to us?

And then I’m reminded of Paul’s encouragement in Romans 5:8,

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Did you catch that? While we were still sinners! While we were dead in our trespasses. While we were marred, ugly, undeserving…Christ died for us. Christ shows one-way love to us. We couldn’t offer him anything, yet God sent his Son to die for us…just because.

I don’t know where you are today. But I want to offer you this encouragement: God loves you just because. Of course, you don’t deserve it, but God gives it. May we offer one-way love to others, too. But regardless if we are “up to snuff,” God offers one-way love to us–the ugly mess that we often are.

Remember today: God loves you just because.

The world is a tempest, raging,
tossing the nations about,
like a ship adrift, far from shore.

In your power, calm the waters,
and hear the call of your people.

Transform the world with your goodness,
and heal the world with your steadfast love.
Let all the rocks cry out, for you are King.
There is no other.

Amen

It was about six months before I realized I had stopped writing poetry. I was digging through my desk looking for a new journal and found a just-started journal, the one I needed. As I grabbed it and headed off for my little writing spot, it dawned on me that this was no longer normal. There was no sense of commonplace, nodéjà vu, no rhythm to this action.

I had not written a single poem in six months.  Maybe I didn’t need a creative outlet anymore?

To read the rest, head on over to The Curator. Be sure to also read “The Art of Baseball” by Carolyn Givens.

“Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance  and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth.” – Acts 10

“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.” – John in Revelation 1

“ I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” – Paul in Galatians 1

“The question for Evangelicals today is just this: Will God’s Word be enough?” – Tim Challies, in “The Boundaries of Evangelicalism“

Peter, John and Paul. Together, tradition holds that they wrote 20 out of 27 books in the Protestant New Testament, which is basically three quarters of all Christian Scriptures. These three also happened to openly participate in and accept mystical practices (visions, contemporary revelation from God, tongues, etc.) within Christian faith and practice. Yet, for reason that is astounding to the point of being blatantly and categorically illogical, Christians throughout the centuries, particularly Protestants of an Evangelical vein, have seen mystical experience within Christianity to be profoundly disturbing. Hence, you have someone like Tim Challies saying point blank that any experience of mysticism within an Evangelicals spiritual life is anathema, or outside the boundaries of orthodox, regular and recognized practice:

“Mysticism was once regarded as an alternative to Evangelical Christianity. You were Evangelical or you were a mystic, you heeded the doctrine of the Reformation and understood it to faithfully describe the doctrine laid out in Scripture or you heeded the doctrine of mysticism. Today, though, mysticism has wormed its way inside Evangelicalism so that the two have become integrated and almost inseparable. In an age of syncretism we fail to spot the contradiction and opposition.”

So, here we have a pretentious, albeit well-meaning pastor who thinks that if anyone has an experience with God that equates to an experience that the majority of New Testament author’s have had then it is in direct conflict with the writings of said authors? That, my friends, is ludicrous.

For all the Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide doctrine Challies and other anti-mysticism teachers want to throw about, it doesn’t get any more clear cut than the actual, primary sources: the Scriptures and the authors themselves. Ironically, people like Challies are more concerned with holding up a narrow and suffocating version of Reformation theology than to actually let the definitions of terms like Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide be allowed to point toward clearly allowable and natural expressions of Christian faith and practice that are defined and practiced by the authors of these very Scriptures.

Quoting New Testament scholar Donald Whitney, Challies puts up two ways that mysticism goes against Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura:

1. A Christian seeks an experience with God in a way not found in Scripture.
2. A Christian is seeking to experience God in a way not inaugurated, guided, or interpreted by Scripture.

If 75% of the New Testament was written by people who practiced Christian mysticism in some form, how does it not follow that things like seeking direct revelation from God through prayer or other spiritual disciplines is not clearly found and inaugurated in Scripture by the very authors themselves?

Furthermore, maybe sensing that this appeal to Sola Scriptura is one of the flimsiest and most ridiculous prescriptions of doctrine, Challies says that the Reformation doctrine of Sola Fide necessitates that Evangelicals not learn spiritual disciplines that are mystical in nature because “There are few mystics who hold to a robust doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone.” In other words, those people are just too Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and non-Evangelical that the very thought of learning from them should make us squirm and shake in our boots. Seriously, run, hide, and bury your head in Evangelical books devoid of any allusion, illustration or quotation from a non-Evangelical author is the antidote to mysticism that Challies gives. If you take this logic to its natural end, you would then have to trace this back to those mystical authors of Scripture themselves, and, in cutting out 75% of the New Testament books, do a hatchet job to the Protestant canon that even Martin Luther, in his vigor over Sola Fide, would have never dreamed of!

Simply put, in the words of Ed Cyzewski:

“I frankly don’t care that this blogger thinks I’m a meditating heretic who will one day teach his sleeping son the disciplines of silence before God, Lectio Divina, and waiting on the Holy Spirit. I just hope that others won’t let his condemnation keep them from experiencing God….It is possible to study the scriptures diligently in search of life and to still miss out on the one who gives life.”

What I do care about though is the close-minded view of influential pastors like Challies who will disregard the very authors of our Scriptures if necessary in order to hold on to their narrow theological positions. That is not a good way to lead, to say the least. If the Word of God really is enough for Challies, he wouldn’t have to supersede the words written plainly by John, Peter and Paul with his distorted views of what being an Evangelical means.

Just yesterday my wife and I helped lead communion at our new church for the first time. The person who helps run the communion team was kind enough to pull us over for a quick training on what to do when serving communion. Everything was great, yet I felt this nudge to interject.

“This is great. You know, I was the facilitator of communion at our old church for four years. I wrote an original prayer and presided over the elements each week. I know what I’m doing. I….”

Something made me hold my tongue, and I’m glad I did, because truthfully, that doesn’t really matter now. We’re part of a new community, and we’re learning how this community does things, so I had to be honest with myself and consider that relating how awesome I am at communion would not serve any purpose other than a subtle acknowledgement of how good I am at this, to a kind person who is instructing me. Dying to self, and humbling submitting to someone’s helpful words, was what I needed to do, no matter how much prior experience I thought I had. And letting someone cheerfully explain to me all the details of communion in this community easily took the place of what little gain it would have brought me to talk about myself.

We all have areas in our life that we may be blind to that we need to open our eyes up to and die to self, joyfully. There are hard and fast stipulations about what kinds of character flaws we need to eliminate from our lives, but what makes dying to self so hard is that we need to reflect on our own lives to see where pride, contempt, anger, malice, deceit and the like thrive in our own lives, because pride pops up in your life differently than it does in mine.

Pushing further, a big part of growing in self-control, I have found, is identifying the areas where you don’t see a need to die to self, but others do. When I talk about what I have done or my past experiences, I really don’t intend to show off or broadcast how awesome I think I am. I just love how stories connect and intersect―but the way I say it sometimes, and how often I may share, can appear like pride to others. So even thought I don’t feel like I am being prideful, I need to continue to grow in self-control to stomp out the ways that I am appearing prideful before other people. If we begin to exercise the gifts that God has given us, the joy of dying to self will far outweigh the fringe benefits we can receive by going our own way and refusing to die to self when it is not convenient.

What areas of your life do you need to die to self in, even if you don’t feel the spiritual need to do so?

The waters of your forgiveness resound
from canyon wall to canyon wall;
your mercy is forever deep,
like a lake that is sounded,
but the bottom is never found.

Out of the depth of your loving-kindness
give to us a cherished hope,
beyond compare, a pearl of great price.

Teach us then, knowing the cost of your great love
to bestow it generously and compassionately
on our neighbors, an unabashed love
that is only through the power of your Spirit.

Amen