out of the mouths of babes

Licking the Plate Clean

July 6, 2009

“Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).

He tasted yesterday. In fact, he took things a step further.

He licked the plate clean … literally. Let me explain.

Following our Sunday morning services yesterday, I took some time to linger with a friend on the couch outside the sanctuary. In the midst of our fairly emotional conversation, I noticed a group of people approaching our perimeter.

My people.

Husband, daughter, and son, all carrying the remnants from our earlier moments of Holy Communion around the altar. Plates, chalices, left-over bread and juice being dutifully carried by two of my people. One of my people, my son, was holding his plate sideways and to his mouth. He was licking the plate.

Mid-problem solving, I paused my conversation with my friend and stated…

“Would you look at that?! My son is licking the communion plate. I’m sure he’s broken at least a hundred rules as it pertains to the “taking” of communion.”

My husband looked over his shoulder and commented back to me…

“I’m sure there are worse things he could be doing.”

We all had a good laugh, except my son who was too busy trying to consume a final flavor of the sacred bread. Indeed, there are worse things he could be doing. This wasn’t one of them; in fact, I think this “doing” to be a very good thing, and here’s why.

My son’s licking of the plate indicated a prior understanding regarding the worth of the plate’s contents. Had sardines been the fare of our previous altar moments, I don’t think he’d have been so eager to lick the plate, much less carry it. No, what he carried in his hands was a tasty left-over, a good portion of a good remembrance.

The small piece of bread that passed through his mouth and onto his taste buds moments earlier was enough to warrant his desire for more. When he decided to “help himself” to the remains, he didn’t do so with any religious rituals in mind. He simply did so because of his hunger. How thankful I am for his earthly father who saw past ritual and allowed my son a feast.

How thankful I am for my heavenly Father who sees the same; who allows the same.

God created us with the feast in mind, friends. He intends for us to be hungry. To know and feel the deep ache that cries out for more. More bread. More filling. More Jesus. More truth. The closer we come to table of grace, the more we grow in our understanding of just how sacred the sacrament is.

I don’t imagine my son fully understands or appreciates the “worth” behind such moments. I’m not sure I do, but this I do know. He knows Jesus; he knows church, and he is beginning in his appreciation for some of the traditions of the church. It doesn’t matter to me if he absorbs it all now; what matters to me is his tasting along those lines.

And he would tell you all today, this day after a Sunday’s sacred remembrance, that church tasted really “good” yesterday.

The body that was broken. The blood that was shed. Our “more than enough” to keep us well-fed in the moment and in the posture for receiving more down the road. May we all be found “licking the plate” this week. Thus, I pray…

Thank you, Father, for your Word that feeds us. For the everlasting remembrance of the everlasting moment that still breathes new and viable for the hungering ache of a hurting world. You are our Sustainer, Lord, in times of feast and in seasons of famine. Rain down the bread of heaven each and every day so that we can be filled with the true and lasting sustenance of heaven’s bounty. Thank you for a child who isn’t afraid to explore that bounty. May our hearts be found as willing. Amen.

Noticing Love

May 17, 2009

“Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that is was Jesus.” (John 21:4).

He saw her across the dimly lit restaurant. He hadn’t seen her in over a year. Last year, they shared a first grade classroom. Today, they shared only vague remembrances of one another. He’s stayed put. She’s moved on to another school.

After brief words of conversation with her family, we made our way back to the table. My eight year old son gave his best efforts at coloring the sombrero on his children’s menu and then hand delivered his gift to his friend. Moments later, she responded by doing the same. Back and forth, waves and glances, until the hour was complete, and we said our good-byes.

On the way out to our car, my son shared his thoughts with me.

“Mom, you know I kind of like that girl.”

“Son, you haven’t seen that girl in over a year, and you didn’t even remember her name. I think you’re confused.”

“No, mom, I really do like that girl.”

“How can that be, son? You’ve never even talked about her before.”

“Mom, I know when I like somebody. I’ve had love before.”

“Really? When?”

“In K4.”

And with that proclamation, the conversation ended and the contemplation began.

I’ve had love before … in K4.

What my son was saying was that this “inkling” that he felt … this notion of emotion … wasn’t the usual everyday kind of love that he carried for his friends. This was a different kind of love. A love that tugs deeper, breathes bolder, and speaks its insistence over top of the others. An unfolding type of love that, when “presented” to a heart, calls for its notice.

Jadon noticed, and tonight he has me wondering if I do the same—

Notice love when love comes knocking.

The disciples didn’t notice Love’s knocking … not at first. The confusion resulting from competing stories about his death and their hopes deferred in keeping with that death, kept their hearts at a distance; the sea was deep enough to hold their uncertainty and wide enough to harbor Love’s recognition at bay.

But then Love called, offering an invitation of familiarity—a common conversation that collided with past remembrances. Something about catching fish and casting nets and the “right” side of a boat. And with that summons and subsequent obedience, Love struck a chord deep within their hearts, calling forth a recognizable “inkling” that beckoned them shoreward to share in a meal and to bask in a few moments of tender reunion.

The gathering would be brief, but it would be more than enough time to amply seed them with the truth of Love’s embrace—a three-fold asking, a three-fold response, and a three-fold commissioning to go and to feed the Father’ sheep out of the overflow of Love’s consumption. That was the heart of the matter on a day set aside for God’s presenting Love.

When the disciples walked away from the shore’s table, they knew they had tasted Love. Why? Because like my son, they’d known Love before. They shared a classroom with him in an earlier season. He had been their teacher; they had been his willing pupils, and in the end, the kingdom of God was best served by the sacred collision of their hearts with his.

Thus, a question a two for your heart this night.

Do you notice Love when Love comes knocking? When was the last time that Love stopped your heart in its tracks and forced your perception? If Love were sitting across from you in a dimly lit restaurant, would you feel his pull and look up from your table to search out Love’s glance? Would you color Love a picture? Would you then deliver it in hopes of receiving Love back?

Or has your love for Love grown cold, distant and harboring within the waters of an uncertain tomorrow? Have you given up on Love’s embrace? Have you forgotten the sound of Love’s beckoning call? Has life hammered its cruelty so loudly that you are deafened and blinded by the truth of Love’s approach?

It’s easy to miss Love, especially when our hearts are prone to a constant wandering. If we choose the world’s classroom over God’s classroom, then we choose our handicap. Love is always presenting himself … always passing our way … always sending his notes of affection to our tables. But if we haven’t logged in some hours under his tutelage, rarely will he garner our notice. Instead, we offer him our neglect, leaving the table with but a whisper of a vague recognition that was always meant to last longer.

We could leave better, friends. God intends for us to leave with a heart full of Love’s recollection. With a pulse that shouts,

“I’ve been with Love today because I’ve known Love before.”

That is the heart of the matter for our everyday … noticing Love when Love comes knocking because Love has been our companion all along.

My prayer for your life and mine is for a blatant and sacred intersection between Love’s heart and ours. I pray for eyes to see him when he walks in a room. I pray for hearts to receive him when he knocks at the door. I pray for ears to hear him when he calls from the shore. And I pray for the “yes” to answer him when he asks for our more.

May the holy and gracious presenting Love of a Father’s heart be your portion as you walk this week. It is his joy to give you the abiding truth and fellowship of heaven’s native Son. As always,

post signature

PS: If you want to spend some more time in God’s classroom via a long ago breakfast on the shores of Galilee, then hop over to John 21 and let the truth of that moment be the truth of your moment with Jesus today. The winner of Kennisha Hill’s “Simply Wisdom” is Joye at The Joyeful Journey. Congrats, Joye. Please send me your snail mail via my email, and I will send you Kennisha’s book. Shalom.

The Amazing Confrontation of Grace

April 27, 2009

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’” (John 6:60-64a).

I made a two-year-old cry this morning.

I didn’t mean to make her cry. Singing about the amazing grace of God isn’t supposed to bring one to tears, at least not her kind of tears, but this morning … it did.

Perhaps I sang it too loud. Perhaps too shrill. Perhaps too full of a truth that exceeded the silence of the moment. Regardless of the reasons behind her tears, they came in full measure toward the end of my song, accompanied by her tender proclamation to her grandma, “I don’t like that song.”

It made my heart smile, and then it made my mind think.

The amazing grace of Jesus Christ is a confrontational word. It is meant to stir a response in the hearts of those who sit within earshot of the proclamation. Jesus Christ didn’t go all the way to Calvary and back to keep us paralyzed by its truth. Grace is meant to evoke a response in each one of us.

For some, grace swallows sweet. For some, it’s a longer chew. For others, grace doesn’t swallow … amazing or otherwise. It’s simply too big of a bite for a stomach that is content to gnaw on the stony rations of an uncomplicated understanding.

Just ask them—those “followers” of Christ who were eye-witnesses to the real-time unfolding of grace’s “amazing.” Some would immediately take to its unwrapping. Some would live with it for a season before coming around to acceptance. Some would simply balk at the weight of it and run in the opposite direction. The “them” of Jesus’ day are no different than the “us” of this day.

We like to think that our responses to Jesus would have been different had we been there. That somehow we would have immediately taken to the truth of his living witness. But I don’t think the benefit of a 2000 year hindsight has birthed a better faith in most of us. Why?

Because we have the truth of Christ’s living witness in our midst. He is here among us; he didn’t vanish on a hillside to never be seen again. He’s been presenting himself and his amazing grace to humanity throughout the existence of time. You and I sit on the backside of grace’s redeeming finish; still and yet, its truth isn’t an easy cloaking for many. It is a “hard teaching” in our time, even as it was during its genesis on a Judean soil so long ago.

Does this mean that grace no longer works? That the amazing of John Newton’s 1779 penned reflection lacks in its truthful punctuation about the completed work of the cross? That our many words about the Word have somehow lost their potency … their capacity and strength to transform?

Not at all.

Grace is still amazing. Two thousand years of testing its waters hasn’t diminished its effectiveness. Grace’s truth remains, despite man’s neglect to the contrary. But grace is as grace has always been.

Confrontational.

Thus, some will receive it and some won’t because confrontation pushes the issue of our consent for God’s holy consecration of our lives. Grace stands at the door of a heart and knocks and pleads and invites and offers, but never will it hammer its insistence into the heart of unwillingness. The cross of Jesus Christ will never force its grace into the will of an unbeliever. It only forces a choice in the matter.

Acceptance or rejection. There is no middle ground when it comes to the amazing grace of an amazing God. Hearing his truth requires a response.

As a teenager, I walked my definite response to an altar on a wintry night in Alabama during a youth retreat. In some ways, it was a familiar walk; from my earliest days I have believed in a great big God who loves me beyond reasonable limits. It wouldn’t be the last time I would walk a pilgrimage of surrender. I’m still walking it. I did so today.

Not because I have finally come to the conclusion of what an amazing grace means, but rather because grace and all its amazing is worthy of my bended knee and a heart’s pause that cries out a prayer or two of unashamed thankfulness.

Even when it’s loud. Even when it’s teaching is a hard swallow. Even when it elicits unsuspecting tears. And especially when the fullness of its truth exceeds the worth of a world’s silence to the contrary.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.[i]

How glad I am for the amazing confrontation of God’s grace with my heart. May I never lose the wonder behind its unwrapping. May I always speak the witness of its truth. I pray the same for you. Thus, I offer my plea this day to the One who created us with grace in mind…

Intersect our hearts, Father, with grace’s amazing witness this week. Fill our mouths with the sweetness of its taste. Loudly knock its truth upon the door of our wills so as to drown out the world’s insistence to the contrary. When it’s hard to understand, when it’s difficult to accept, paint grace for us in a way that swallows easy and that portions fully. May our tears pour the witness of understanding rather than the wet of confusion. Gently wrap our faith in the mystery of Love’s redeeming work and then give us the ample courage to tie the bow accordingly. What we now know in part, we will one day fully grasp. Keep us in revenant anticipation of that final revelation. Amen.

[i] Robert J. Morgan, “Amazing Grace,” Then Sings My Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 78-79.

Brotherly Love

February 10, 2009

“Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, ‘Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.’” (Nehemiah 4:13-14).

Some things are worth fighting for. Some people, all the more. Just ask my son.

While driving the carpool Friday afternoon, I listened to my eight year old explain to his sister and her friend his strategy for playground defense should the need ever arise. It went something like this:

“If they won’t leave you alone on the playground, here’s what you do. First, you could tell the teacher. Or, you could just ignore them. Or, you could walk away. Or, if that doesn’t work…

you could just find me.”

He was very serious, and I was humored. At least in part. My other part was internally screaming my motherly “hoorahs” for a son who loves his sister, so much so, that he is willing to protect her from the wild and wooly of a playground taunt.

I never knew the protection of an older sibling’s love, so when I witness it between my own children, I am drawn to the magic of their deep bonding. And while they occasionally rival their passions and their wills with all the red and fury of Pamplona’s running of the bulls, their love for one another always exceeds their momentary sparring.

As it should be.

Family love roots deep, and if those with whom we share our homes cannot be trusted to love us, and, therefore, protect us whenever the taunts of the playground mock their insistence, we are left to our solitary efforts at defense. And as defense goes, two is always better than one, especially when one of the two is bigger, stronger, and solely motivated by the sacred trust of family bloodlines.

The prophet Nehemiah understood the value of familial love. He exposed its depth by instructing the Israelites to work in families while repairing the walls of their beloved homeland. He understood that corporate focus would yield greater results than individual determination. The taunts of their playground were very real and very likely to make good on their threats. Single determination wouldn’t be enough to build the second half of Jerusalem’s walls. It would take the family—God’s family—working on behalf of one another and on behalf of a cause deemed worthy of the potential peril involved.

That cause?

The kingdom of God.

“‘Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.’”

Not … fight hard because if you don’t you and your family will die.

Not … fight because you have no other options.

But rather, fight because you’ve got a God worth fighting for—a great and awesome God who is worthy of your walls and your best efforts at protection.

When the Israelites forged ahead in their rebuilding with a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other, they did so knowing that they were fighting for something rather than against something. They were fighting for the preservation of God’s kingdom and for their families’ rightful place therein.

When the playground warfare surfaced, there was no telling the teacher, or ignoring the taunts of their enemies. There was no option of simply walking away from the threats. For walls to be built there must be laborers willing to put their hands and their hearts to the task. Thus, the option remaining for their playground defense (according to an eight year old and according to the prophet Nehemiah) was to find a bigger brother … a bigger sister … a bigger family that was completely and holy motivated by the sacred trust of family bloodlines.

By a love that roots for the life-giving truth that there is a great and awesome God worth preserving and that he is the only worthy gain of our hearts in the end.

Walls will come and go, friends. But God? Well, he remains. And if we’re not willing to fight for the truth of who he IS so that our brothers and sisters, our children and our parents, our neighbors and our friends might live and walk in that truth, then we are forsaking the sacred trust of our family bloodlines.

When we are no longer willing to put our lives on the line for the sake of our families’ salvation, then we have limited the grace of the cross which was never ours to limit. We are tied to Immanuel’s veins. They bled long and wide and high and deep so that you and I could find our rightful place in the kingdom that is now, that is to come, and that is solely within our Savior’s right to give.

When the truth of Calvary becomes the welcome taunt of the playground, telling the teacher (thus abdicating the responsibility to someone else), ignoring the threats, or walking away seeds very little toward kingdom gain. But walking the parameters of the playground with familial love as your anchor?

Well, this is when walls find their framing, families find their strength, and the enemy finds its eventual retreat.

Indeed, some things are worth fighting for. Some people too. One God, all the more. And in case you’re still not convinced, just find my son. He’s got a few things to say in the matter and the faith to back it up. Thus I pray…

Keep us to our walk of faith, Father, both at home and on the playground. Let us not fear the taunts of the enemy, but let us stand firm in the truth of your love for us. You are building us into your everlasting kingdom, where the stones of our brothers and sisters come alongside to build a beautiful witness of your promise and grace. Let us not forsake our voices and our hands in the process. Keep us to our mortar and to your sword until the wall is finished and our family … your family … is safe within its shelter. Amen.

PS: Our Spring study on “Esther” launches this evening. I covet your prayers, especially for the eight new additions to our group–that God would grip the soles of their feet and turn them inside out and on fire for the truth of who HE IS! Shalom.

Nothing Else I Choose…

January 13, 2009

“This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).

I’ll be honest friends…

You are worthy of more than what I have to offer you this day. I confess that I have few words to give to you. Not because they aren’t available, but rather because of the “pressing in’s” that are insisting their walk upon the soil of my 24/7. I’m feeling the frantic pull of many directions, and when my heart gets pressed with the chaos of the seemingly urgent, I have a hard time marshalling enough energy for any of it.

Thus, there is a simple phrase I want to give to you today based on God’s Word from the book of Deuteronomy and on a song that’s been running through the speakers of my mind and my stereo this day.

Choose life.

Choose Jesus. Choose the walk of a sacred pilgrim and find your rest.

What joy it must bring to our Father’s heart when we bow the knee and bend the will to a righteous journey that places his agenda at the helm. We have a choice in the matter. There are those who would argue to the contrary—that somehow, my choice in choosing to do life with Jesus is a mute point and an invalid reasoning because it’s already been chosen for me.

My heart tells me otherwise, but my thoughts aren’t designed to invite controversy. Not today. Instead, they are meant to be a word of witness to the powerful, life giving potential that exists when choosing to walk this journey with Jesus.

I’ve been walking it with him for as long as I can remember, and there is nothing—no person, no place, no accolade, no adventure, no memory—that exceeds the worth of walking this life with the Lover of my soul.

Everyday, in simple and sometimes profound ways. In and out, over and above. In the mundane and in the occasional extraordinary when he splits the skies and reminds me that his eyes are ever on me.

He takes my breath away; thus, today I choose life.

With him at the helm and with my family in tow, so that we can know the joy and promise of a sacred fastening that keeps us anchored to the faith of our spiritual ancestors and to the heart of our life-giving, promise-keeping God.

He, alone, stands worthy of all my love and all my choosing. Accordingly, I leave you with the song that’s been running its witness through my speakers and within my soul this day.

“So in Love” by Jeremy Camp. Choose life and find your peace!

As always…

PS: I feel like a give away… you guessed it–the new JCamp CD, Louder than Words. Leave a comment, and I will draw a winner later in the week. Shalom!

Category Archives: out of the mouths of babes