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God made our bodies, and God made our bodies good. Your body has a nervous system — this is one of God’s many good gifts to you. Your nervous system can only do one thing at a time. It can either protect or connect. Under safe conditions, your autonomic nervous system will be in a regulated state and it will seek connection — with God, self, and others. Under unsafe conditions, when you sense a threat of any kind, your autonomic nervous system will prioritize protection. You can only do one at a time. At any given moment, your body will either be in a state of connection or a state of protection. This has helped you to survive. Most of our lives – close to 70% of the time – we are living in a state of disconnection. So, be gentle with yourself as you honor the reality of what your body tells you. It is actually a very normal part of being human to feel some level of disconnection inside yourself, outside yourself, or between you and others. 

And also, God has given us practical tools that foster a sense of connection in our bodies. We can practice these things that foster a sense of safety and connection. For example, take some time to recall positive shared memories and your nervous system will begin to feel safe and connected. Practice gratitude. Breathe. Participate in celebration. Pray. As one author said, “eat CAKE” — which is to say, practice Curiosity, Appreciation, Kindness, and Eye contact. These practices will build in your body a sense of safety. When you feel safe, you can connect — with God, yourself, and others. We all want more connection!

Thank you, Lord, for these incredible bodies you’ve given us. Thank you for the ways they have helped us survive. Help us to honor them, and all they are telling us, as temples of your Holy Spirit. Help us to embrace the practices that foster connection with you and ourselves and others. 

Grace and Peace in Christ to you as you listen to and honor your body today.

My heart is burdened by the conflict that has erupted in the Middle East this week, as well as the ongoing wars across the globe that often go unnoticed. I grieve for the hidden oppression and violence that rarely reaches our news feeds. I lament the pain of war, death, and loss in a world that God deeply loves and this weighs heavily on my spirit when I read the headlines. During these days of war and rumors of war, I find help and solace in my book of prayers, for words often fail me. Let me share a few lines of prayer from “Every Moment Holy, Volume 2” that I have been praying this week:

“Break the chains of death that plague this world. O Lord, hasten the day! Accelerate the moment when bombs and bullets no longer serve a purpose, when the tools of violence and the strategies of war are forever buried beneath the joyful flourishing of humanity in an age of enduring peace. Expedite the day when we no longer endure loss or harm, when we are spared from numbing news and the sudden shock of widespread death or senseless killing. Act swiftly, O Christ!”

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

If you and I have spent any amount of time together lately, you’ve probably caught me talking about the novel Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. To me, it is an unforgettable story. One scene that took my breath away is between two orphan kids. They are swapping their life stories one night when we read this, “…we just lay there being sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt, like not being hungry.”  Isn’t that the truth?

When our kids are sad we tell them: “that which is shareable is bearable.” It is usually the sharing that counts, not the response. In the book of Job, we read about a guy who has lost everything. At one point he says to his friends, “You are miserable comforters, all of you.” — Job 16:2

I can imagine Job yelling these words, boiling over with hot angry tears of pain. That is how it feels when we attempt vulnerability and are met with advice, or disbelief, or attempts at a quick fix, or a sort of “suck it up buttercup” sentiment. Jobs’ friends get a bad rap but actually, there was a lot they did well as friends — at first. In the beginning, they were like those two orphan kids who “just lay there being sad together for awhile.” Initially, they came. They sat with Job. They didn’t rush away from his pain. They were there. But they got some things tragically wrong in the end when Job lost everything. 

This story rings so true for anyone who has ever been questioned, not believed, or misunderstood in their grief. Dear friends, your grief does not need to be defended. It doesn’t need to be explained. It needs to be lived. You and I need a compassionate witness to our lives. Jesus wants to be that for us, and then He wants us to be that for each other. 

May we receive from the Lord the companionship He offers. In a world that offers so much therapy, may we remember that there is nothing better than the presence of the Lord. May we be like Christ in coming alongside one another with a similar presence that is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Dear friends,

I’m not sure if this note is for you or for me today. Maybe us both. I feel inclined to say: don’t try so hard. Have you ever been laying in bed with so much tension and concern holding you up that it seems as if someone could come take the mattress away and you would still remain?

Let the bed hold you up. God gives you grace for today and more for tomorrow, so exhale, relax, let the bed hold you up, don’t try so hard. Maybe this poem below will find its way to you as it has to me. You are dearly loved, and as my spiritual director says, “You have nothing to earn, and nothing to lose, and nothing to gain, and nothing to prove.” 

As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.

— “The Avowal” by Denise Levertov

You are truly, deeply loved.

In the opening pages of the Bible we have this chorus, this refrain, in creation.  God is making, making, making — making the world and everything in it. The Creator is creating all the things on this planet. Like a song of praise sung on repeat, upon completion of each thing, God says “it is good,” “it is good,” “it is good.” This is the Hebrew word TOV, and it is a chorus, a refrain, throughout the opening pages of Genesis: it is good, it is good, and then the crescendo, “it is very good.”

But then suddenly the first human is alone and God says for the first time that it is not good.

“The Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone.” — Genesis 2:18

Now very often this gets misapplied, and in confusion is wrongly thought to be a sort of mandate for marriage. And then Christians can get all sorts of goofy thinking that marriage is somehow a superior state. No! Let us always remember that the greatest human who ever lived was Jesus, and he was single. So this idea that it is not good to be alone is much larger than marriage — this is about human connection. This is about belonging in all its forms, and how we were made for it, and how we need it to survive and thrive. 

The house of belonging is the answer to this alienation. Belonging to our Triune God, belonging to ourselves, and belonging to one another. Jesus died to bring about this belonging in the family of God. This place called the Church is where Jesus says we practice together loving and being loved: by God, by self, and by others. Your family of origin was never meant to be your primary family. Jesus died to create the family of God, where everyone is meant to find belonging. The church is the place where we are to come home once again. 

May you experience a fresh invitation to belong today.

When asked how to live, Abba Anthony of the 3rd century said there are 3 things to keep in mind: 

1. Whoever you are, always keep God before your eyes.
2. Always live according to Scripture.
3. Wherever you live, do not easily leave. 

You won’t meet many people urging you to stay where you are today. We live in a world that values self-actualization and taking matters into our own hands.  Usually, we applaud when people are leaving uncomfortable situations, removing themselves from pain, creating distance from whatever it is that doesn’t make sense, or that they do not understand. Certainly there are necessary endings in life, and great courage is needed to face them. And yet, there is something to be said for developing into the sort of person who does not leave easily. This is the character trait we call perseverance. The Bible speaks of Jesus as one who “endured opposition.” And this Spirit of Christ resides in you who follow Him. Perseverance is the ability to persist despite difficulties. 

Is there an area in your life where God is asking you to persevere today? 

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

— Hebrews 12:1-3

“Do not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” — Hebrews 10:25

On two separate occasions I have had old friends reach out to me on their deathbeds. In both cases, we had totally lost touch. I had not seen or really even thought of them much in years. Yet, as they faced their own mortality in the eye, they remembered me and the connection we had shared long ago. 

We all get busy with this thing called life. Every day there are things calling for our attention saying with such urgency, “Watch this thing!” “Send this work email.” “Join this program or buy this thing now!”  

In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, palliative nurse Bronnie Ware shares her experience of having spent countless hours supporting terminally ill patients. She says that in a person’s final twelve weeks of life their top two regrets are: 

1. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard

This rings true for me. In my own journey, I have not valued and prioritized meaningful relationships as much as I would like to. God made us for relationships and loneliness is now an epidemic. We need to be in loving relationship with God, with ourselves, and with others. Like it or not, we simply cannot find meaning and peace apart from relationships. 

This month we are kicking off a sermon series called “The House of Belonging” where we will be talking about humanity’s ache to belong. Together we will explore how we can nurture belonging through simple but powerful practices that create meaningful and transformative community in our lives. 

Hope to see you there!

“I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving.” — Henri Nouwen

Pastors rarely forget that they are pastors, but we often seem to forget that we are people. Maybe it’s the same for all the helping professions, that tendency to become so preoccupied with others that we forget to be human too? 

Oh and about that being human part, isn’t so much of that simply about befriending limitation, embracing mystery and acknowledging grief? I’m asking for a friend. ☺️ Why is that so consistently hard for me? I guess if I’m honest I prefer to pretend I’m limitless if I just apply enough self control. That I can find certainty if I just study hard enough. That grief will evaporate if I just look on the bright side. 

I am holding the wisdom of Nouwen with me on my morning walks. “I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving,” he said. He was old when he penned that, which gives me a vision for being a beginner in prayer again myself. 

Death cannot interrupt eternal life.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

— Jesus

We often talk about eternal life as something that begins after we die, but that is not how Jesus spoke of it. Jesus said eternal life is not something you enter after you die, eternal life is something you can begin living in now — and then death cannot interrupt it. Eternity is now in session and you and I are invited to live there starting now. 

Author Dallas Willard was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and lived less than a year after the diagnosis. During that time he said to a friend, “I wonder if it will take me a while to realize I have died after I die.” You see, for him, he was already living in eternity (in the presence of Jesus) on a regular basis. He experienced the reality that eternity is now in session. It was his practice to live in that reality for as many moments of each day as possible. When he found that his thoughts moved to worry, or fear, or his own concerns apart from God he would try to notice that and gently work to remove anything that got in the way of living in the reality of the presence of God.  He was already living in eternal life and so death could not interrupt that. That is why it was just sort of natural for him to wonder…when I die…will it take me a little while to realize that I have? 

What a thought! Eternity is now in session and you and I can live there.

It seemed irrational to me at first — the energy of his response. I try to keep a neutral face in these moments, not wanting to convey that an 11-year-old-sized problem is suddenly now a 47-year-old-sized problem too. I wish to be like a detective in these moments of parenting, to try to search for that thing under the thing. So, I took a deep breath, looked down at the ground where he was looking, and said, “what’s wrong, buddy?” 

“YOU COULDN’T EVEN SEE ME!” he said, with that fiercest of face that was a collision of mad and sad with tears about to rush out from behind his eyes. 

We had just left the spring musical at school and he had danced with a girl. They were in the back row, so I had to really stretch my neck to glimpse them through the song. He saw me stretching to see him. They had been practicing for weeks, and even though he kept a cool front about it, I knew he was proud of those dance moves they had learned. 

(Dear reader, I want you to know that I did see him. But no amount of explaining could reach his heart at that moment.)

And then it occurred to me like a voice from heaven, it is not irrational at all actually. The intensity of those emotions. Perhaps adulting means to pretend otherwise, I’m not sure. But what was clear was this — He wanted me to see him. He didn’t feel seen. That is not irrational, that is human. Curt Thompson says, “We are all born looking for someone who is looking for us.” Even at 11 years old he is still looking for my eyes to see him. Even at 47 years old, so am I.

We are all looking for a compassionate witness; in our joys and in our pain. 

Do you see me?

Do you care? 

Can I trust you are good?

God came searching for those first humans in the garden and he comes searching for us still now. 

“Where are you?” God asks. 

“Who told you that you were naked?

Soon after these questions, God is seen sewing clothes for Adam and Eve. One of the first acts of the creator of the universe in the wake of sin and shame is not a lecture. It is not a hurried attempt to move on to more pleasant things. It is not 3 points for achieving that miracle morning tomorrow. God’s first response is to become a seamstress, to start sewing something of worth, to create a covering for their shame. What tenderness, what compassionate care, what a God!