Monthly Archives: November 2010

on Christian "calling"

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
 
 
Calling.
 
Yours and mine.
 
You know the word. If you’re immersed in pop-Christian culture, then you’ve heard it before, probably even received some preaching about it from the pulpit. It certainly is the topic of many current best-sellers, Bible studies, devotionals, and self-helps all determined to aid you in your exploration toward discovering what yours is…
 
Your calling.
 
I can hardly abide the word. It makes me bristle each time I hear it used in casual word-toss amongst Christians. Not because I don’t believe in its validity—that, in fact, each one of us has a calling—but rather because of the way its intentional “push” is leaving so many of us feeling diminished. As if, somehow, we’ve missed the mark when it comes to our relationship with Jesus and just exactly what that means for us as it pertains to our doing something for the kingdom in keeping with our conferment.
 
Over and over again, I receive e-mails and comments regarding the issue; words like:
 
I’m afraid I’ll miss my calling.
How do I know what my calling is?
I know that God has called me to something, I’m just not sure what it is.
 
Words like that. And I feel the pain of those who utter such confusion, because I, too, have spoken similar uncertainty in recent years. I’ve spent a lot of time researching the issue, sweating through the issue, praying about the issue, purchasing and working through the issue via some valuable resources, all to arrive at a similar conclusion about the issue of my calling: that, apparently, I’m not there yet. That what I’m doing for Jesus doesn’t match up with what the experts are saying. That according to them, I’ve yet to really take hold of what my calling is because there remains a restlessness within my spirit. That because I don’t have clearly defined goals in place and that because my “passion and pulse” have yet to be fully determined, then I’ve got some more work to do. That if I’ll just keep reading more, practically “applying” more, jumping through spiritual hoops more, then maybe, at the end of it all, I’ll find what I’ve been longing for—God’s more for my life.
 
Oh my good friends, what a dangerous and willing slope we often stand upon when it comes to God’s “calling” upon our lives. What a tragedy to live beneath the weightiness of such burden. We’ve made God’s calling upon our lives a cumbersome yoke around our necks. We’ve made it too hard to understand, too glamorous, too glitzy, too elite to attain. We inadvertently have reserved it as something for those who are seemingly more seasoned in their walks with God—those who hold the market on righteousness and faithful living—all because we have decided that our spiritual temperature isn’t yet hot enough to warrant kingdom effectiveness.
 
Instead of feeling relieved after our careful examination of the Christian “calling,” we often conclude such contemplations feeling diminished. Less than. Under used and as having “missed the mark” when it comes to our Father’s plans for our lives. We dangerously compare ourselves to others, wondering that if somehow we could be more like them, then surely, we’d have some peace regarding the issue. But the truth is, the more closely we examine our lives in relationship to others, the more willing we become to concede our limitations and minimize our worthiness.
 
And then there we are… stuck in confusion, pained by our ponderings, and begging the Lord for clarity regarding our callings.
 
And then there, too, is God… stuck in our confusion, pained by our ponderings, and longing to bring clarity regarding our callings, because he, unlike the experts of today, has kept it pretty simple.
 
His theology isn’t weighed down by a lifetime of good study, marketable research, fads and trends and buzz words. Unlike us, God has little regard for five-step programs or carefully administered checklists when it comes to his calling upon our lives. God doesn’t need the benefit of our wisdom and our well-intentioned efforts as it pertains to helping ourselves and others determine his intentions for us. God, simply and profoundly, boils “calling” down to two words.
 
Know me.
 
That’s it, and it’s enough… at least it is for me. When I came to this realization a couple of years ago, I was freed from the burden of my “calling” as it was being purported within Christian circles. I no longer carry the struggle of having to figure mine out, because in knowing God, I know more and hold more than I will ever be able to fully administer to others in my lifetime. I don’t have to go searching for my calling and what that will look for me in the days to come. I simply have to know him more today than I did yesterday and then, out of that knowing, lead others to know the same.
 
It’s what Jesus Christ prayed for in his garden moments before his crucifixion. That we, believers in a season yet to come, would know him and his Father… intimately (John 17). That we would share in the love and knowledge of a relational God who longs to reveal himself—his character and his heart—to his children. That the overriding “passion” and boast of our hearts would not be regarding our wisdom, our strength, and our riches, but that instead our boast would be in our understanding and knowing God (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
 
And that with that being said, even more so lived, we walk in our callings. Not perfectly, but more fully as God intended. Daily stepping alongside Truth, so that with every breath we take, every thought we think, every word we speak, we do so knowing that God hovers in close proximity to our frames, making sure that we get it right. Get Him right.
 
Knowing God, and then out of that knowing, leading others to know the same.
 
This is my life calling. My freedom shout. My willingness to believe it’s just as simple and as beautifully profound as it writes and reads and sounds. May God grant me, perhaps even you, the courage to walk his depth and breadth for as long as the earthen sod tarries beneath our feet. May you know God more today than you did yesterday, and may you harbor the expectation of tomorrow’s knowing as sweet promise in your heart.
 
Knowing God. If you are headed in that direction, friends, then you are walking your calling.
 
Keep to it. Keep to the glorious revelation of our King. I’ll meet you on the road. As always…
 
Peace for the journey,
her finest hour…

her finest hour…

 
 
I had lunch with the sisters last week. I’ve yet to tell you much about them… these three Southern women connected by birth and each of them hovering toward eighty years of age. I first met them on a Saturday before that Monday (August 23, 2010—a date now chronicled as a beginning diagnosis for my cancer). I was sitting with my family in the local Wendy’s; my mind wasn’t on the food. Instead, my mind wandered to other things… possibilities, my “down the road” and what that might look like for me.
 
Amelia cradled closely beneath the crook of my arm as she ate her chicken. I just stared and pondered while conversation milled about the table. One of the sisters noticed our bonding, and within a few minutes, made her way to our table.
 
“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but have we met before?”
 
“No, ma’am, I don’t think so, but it seems to me that I might need to know you, and those other two sitting with you.”
 
Thus began the seeding of a friendship between the sisters and me. We haven’t had much occasion to get together since that Saturday. Life happened and change set in. Still and yet, they are good to remember me… call me, bake for me, send notes to me, and occasionally hang with me for lunch at Wendy’s. Last week, provided one such occasion, and the fellowship was rich.
 
I said something to each one of them during our gathering—an unrehearsed, unplanned kind of something. Words that spring forth from a deep well of emotion. Something I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks now, and something, I think, worthy of sharing with you in this moment.
 
“Ladies, don’t be surprised if your best days of mothering lie up in front of you; your finest hour of parenting might yet be up ahead, not in those moments that lie behind you.”
 
They looked at me, eager for an explanation. At eighty years of age, they probably hadn’t given much thought about their parenting in recent days. Grandkids and great-grandkids are mostly fodder for table talk. But parenting? After all these years? How can that be and what could that mean to these sisters whose children probably date me by a few years.
 
And then I told them.
 
About her.
 
And her finest hour.
 
My mom.
 
Never in my understanding regarding the life cycle did I imagine her having to care for me as she is doing. She is thirty years my senior. I should be the one caring for her. Instead, she has opened up her heart and her arms again to gently gather me to her breast and to remind me that I am her child, and that no matter the decades between us, I will always be the little girl who arrived into her arms on an Easter morning back in 1966.
 
Certainly, I could chronicle many of her “shining moments” over the past four decades as a parent. She is the steady anchor in our family tree. Sacrificial in nature, she’s never required the “stage,” which is a really good thing in our family since most of us are continually vying for the spotlight. I asked her once how she and my father wound up together, how they made it work between them. Her response?
 
“Your dad needed an audience, and I was ready to listen.”
 
Straight and to the point; never mincing words. Wise beyond her years. When mom speaks, I listen because I know her words are chosen carefully and root from a place of understanding that few others possess. I cherish her influence; I adore her heart; and for all of the ways that she has groomed me, shaped me, taught me, and loved me over the years, I can honestly say that this season in my life has allowed her the one thing that she has often been denied.
 
The stage. Her shining moment.
 
It has arrived, friends, and this time we’re all sitting back and watching her speak her lines, take her mark, and watch her as she navigates the spotlight with all the grace and dignity of a queen in her court. She would tell you it’s nothing, that she’s only doing what any mother would do, but I would tell you otherwise. I would tell you that she’s grand and regal and meant for a moment such as this; that this is her season; that I have never needed her more, and that I am willing to be the recipient of her rich love and guidance.
 
No strings attached; no agenda from my end. Just a little girl caught in a terrible spell of trouble needing the crook of her mother’s arm as she cradles my fragile frame and soothes me with words of truth, comfort, and peace. I think, perhaps, she may not realize this in all the fray and activity of my current chaos. I’m afraid she might downplay her role, and so I wanted to tell you about my mom and extend my thanks to her for her willingness to stand on stage and to live her finest hour so that all may witness its worth.
 
This is it. And this is enough for me. I hope it is enough for her; she deserves far more than a few meager words of thanks from my heart. Still and yet, even if my words fail to express the emotion I currently feel, they need saying, because words and feelings are a gift we give to one another while there is yet time to release them. We need to “send flowers” while the living are yet amongst us, and we have the occasion to bless them with our sincerity rather than leaving this earthly life without having said much of anything.
 
I don’t know who’ll make it home to heaven first, me or her. But I know that for as long as God allows us this shared pilgrim road, I’ll keep to her shadows. I’ll bend in closer for a listen every times she speaks, and I’ll make sure to press in for lots of hugs and conversations and tears and love. Why? Because my mom shines like a star these days. She illuminates my world with the light of all heaven, and this is …
 
her finest hour.
 
 
I don’t know how this strikes you today. I want to encourage you as a parent, maybe as a mentor or as a friend to someone in need. Perhaps you think that your finest hour is behind you. That you’ve done all you can do and that there is little hope of you having a further impact on a relationship that’s grown dim or cold or barren of connection. You fear it’s too late for further influence… that your season of persuasion and shaping has exceeded prearranged time limits. That what you think, feel, and want to say won’t have much of an impact on the one who has seemingly lost interest. I’ll tell you the same thing that I told the sisters last week…
 
“Don’t be surprised if your best days of parenting, mentoring, loving lie in front of you; your finest hour might yet be up ahead, not in those moments that lie behind you.”
 
God may yet need you to sow some good seed into the hearts of the generation that rests just beneath the crook of your arm. It’s never too late to speak your faith, friends. Never too late to take a chance on loving others and allowing them to be the lavish recipients of God’s great grace via your heart. Never too late to pray a few more prayers, say a few more thoughts, cook a few more meals, hug a few more necks.
 
There is someone out there who needs the wealth of your years, tenderness, and wisdom. A someone who needs your finest hour. May God grant you, each one, the wisdom to identify that someone, the strength to minister to that someone, and light enough to your stage so that you, like my mother, may be allowed to live a finest hour in keeping with King’s time table.
 
Oh the beauty of such trust… to be given time by the Father in order to live and to leave a lasting impact upon this generation. Keep to it, friends, keep to the kingdom road, and I will do the same. Shalom and blessed Sabbath rest to you,
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from where I’m sitting today {chemo #3}…

from where I’m sitting today {chemo #3}…

 {the Market House… will make sense if you watch the video}
Twenty-four points of sacred intersection between my heart and theirs—those twenty-four precious souls that God chose to weave into my morning and lunch hour. I probably missed someone in my counting, but it doesn’t much matter the number. What matters is that each one of those lives graciously allowed me a moment of their day to make a personal investment into their hearts. It is privilege I don’t take lightly… a gift given to me by them and by God as an opportunity to love and to simply say,
I notice you; you matter.
There is no pain I currently hold that negates the responsibility of such moments. Rather, God is using the pain as a catalyst to touch lives that I would have never had open access to in my previous life… my life as I lived it only ten weeks ago. I don’t want that life back. Instead, I want to hold the fullness of what I now know, now believe—
That cancer will not be my undoing; rather, cancer will be the threshold of my emerging. Something greater—God’s greater—will become of me because of the path I’m now treading. Perhaps not something in the tangible, seen aspects of daily living, but in the quiet, secret places of sacred consecration.  
I want a pure soul…  a cleanness before God I’ve never known. I want perspective and wisdom that can only come from the Father and that, sometimes, can only be birthed through suffering. I want to get to the end of treatment and not harbor any regrets for the time I now manage. I want to live my “now” rightly and honor the pulse of Christ’s heart as laid out in Matthew 28:18-20. None of us gets a pass on this one, friends. Regardless of what we’re “holding” today, no matter if it hurts us immensely and provokes our faith in the deepest kind of way, we must receive our calling from God as the most precious gift from his heart. We must treasure it, own it, believe it, live it.
Go. Make disciples. Baptizing every point of sacred intersection along the way with the truth, love, and witness of all heaven. There is no finer gift that we can offer to those fellow sojourners on the path of grace we trod. They may not understand that they’re on the path of grace, but when their steps coincide with ours, then grace abounds. It’s in me and in you; it’s ours to give. Dispense it liberally, rejoicing as you go.
I notice you; you matter.  
A word rightly and fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver (Proverbs 25:11a). So speak as you are given occasion, knowing that in those few brief moments of sacred pause, you step as God intends, you shine forth as gold, and all of heaven choruses its applause in honor of your understanding.
Keep to it, friends. As always…
Peace for the journey,

PS: For a copy of Sassy Granny’s recipe, click here…

a quick word about some kindred friends…

a quick word about some kindred friends…

I don’t have many words for you today; they are stuck inside of me, and I am frustrated by their accumulation. Can one explode from word retention? I hope so; I hope they will come forth in time, but for now they remain buried beneath the weightiness of my daily regimen. Accordingly, I want to share with you a couple of beautiful gifts I have received in recent days from some gifted, talented artists. I’ve never met these girls in person, but our hearts are connected because of the great bond we share in Jesus.
I am thankful for that bond because, in many ways, this has been the loneliest season of my life. Without the love and daily support of the blogging community, I know that this road and load would feel unbearable at times. You mean so very much to me. Please know that. And please know that you are in my constant thoughts and prayers as I quietly move through this contemplative season in my life. Truly, I never knew I was loved this much, and what you have given to me is proof-positive that our God is alive and well and moving in this place we’ve come to know as the blogosphere.
So take a moment, and visit some new/old friends. They are worth every intentional investment you make toward friendship.
From Shirley @ One Woman, Many Pieces:
PS: Comments are closed on this post, but I hope to be back tomorrow to offer a few thoughts post chemo #3. I’m feeling ready and confident about knocking down this one with the full force of my heart and faith.
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