You can change

You can change.

You are not simply a product of your past or environment, bound with invisible chains to your sins, failures, and family secrets.

Grace means transformation. Grace is real. Grace is true.

The fire of the Holy Spirit can sweep through your life and burn up all the garbage. You can live in freedom. You can taste purity and peace.

What you treat as unbreakable bonds are cobwebs to the risen Christ.

You can change. He can make you holy—washed white and entirely new.

Start asking, and he will come to your desire for him like a moth to a candle.

The Sunflower Principle

My choice of a sunflower is arbitrary. As far as I know, all plants grow toward the light.

People are no different.

Take a pretty girl, tell her over the course of her life how pretty she is, and she will grow in the direction of the attention she receives for her physical beauty. She will know how to dress, how to tan, pluck and preen, how to position herself to receive the most direct light. Her view of herself and her posture in relation to other people will reflect the validation that she receives.

Take a boy, a natural athlete, and give him slaps on the back, trophies, and encouragement. His identity will be wrapped up in his physical prowess. He will position himself to receive more validation, more attention. 

Our behavior is no mystery. We all want attention, so we grow toward the light. A fine ear for music, precocious acting ability, an attractive sense of humor, brains—we follow natural relief to praise.

How many beautiful men and women do you know who have remarkable integrity or character? Be honest.

Has anyone else noticed The Sunflower Principle?

I am a recovering cynic, so I may very well be wrong.

How many exceptional athletes do you know who take really good care of the people in their lives?

I know I’m making a generalization, but I have noticed trends.

Why do you think really pretty women and really handsome men are so rarely unselfish, compassionate people? Why are so many professional athletes unsuitable as role models?

Please respond with a comment. I’d like to know your thoughts.

Mom and Dad

Two Foxes :: 

1) My mom.

She is right most of the time. On the one hand, when I go to her for relationship advice, she asks questions like, “Do you think she was thinking this?” and I have to say, “Mom, for me to even guess at that is counterproductive.” On the other hand, she knows intuitively when something is amiss, when I’m too nonchalant, not excited enough. She likes to say that “It shouldn’t be work in the beginning. It should just be fun. Plenty of time to work at it later on.” So simple and so true. My sweet mom.

My mom is an ace at hospitality. She loves cooking for people. She’s told me that is one of her outlets for creativity.

Birthdays and holidays are always a big deal. For Valentine’s Day, she bought me a leather chair and ottoman at an estate sale. My parents, my older sister, and my nieces came to visit me and brought it.

She’s always thinking about other people. She’s both unselfish and generous, to the degree that I want to protect her so that people don’t take advantage.

I love how fiercely she loves my two sisters and me. I have never doubted that love.

2) My dad.

He used to scrape the ice off our windshields so we could drive straight to school without waiting on the defroster.

My dad and I went to Haiti together, and it was a blessing to see one another in a different context. He got to see me when I feel most alive—traveling and serving. He told me how proud he was to see me work so hard and take charge and keep a sense of humor. We got into an argument—our arguments are more discussions than antagonistic—when I talked about buying some Cuban cigars. He thought that might offend some people in our group. However, that conversation led to another conversation in which we agreed not to doubt one another’s sincerity in faith matters anymore.

 

My dad is a rock. He can be so silly and quirky too. He takes really good care of things. I’ve only ever seen him use one riding lawnmower. He bought it used and has used it over 24 years! He always does what he says he will do. He’s a man of his word. I like making him laugh until he cries. He can be mischievous: he was always pulling April Fool’s pranks.

Despite those gags, I trust him. I remember reading Wild at Heart in high school and thinking, “Gosh, what are my father wounds?” The only thing I could come up with is that I wish he’d taught me to take risks. I’ve had to teach myself, but that doesn’t leave very much room for complaint. A Christlike attribute of his: He has the humility to say, “I’m sorry,” and “I don’t know.” I’ve never lost respect for him for saying either.

 

I get embarrassed at Christmas because my parents are so generous. When we all would go back to school after Christmas and everyone was discussing their presents, I never wanted to say anything because it was always a conversation stopper. I thought our family would seem materialistic.

One time I was listening to my parents go back and forth accusing each other of snoring. I started laughing. They both turned to me and said, “What?” “You both snore!” I said. They always wanted me to come in and kiss them goodnight when I got home. That’s how I knew. 

 

I’m proud of my parents. If you want to make your dad or mom cry, tell them you’re proud of them. Works every time.

courage

Courage.

Whenever I hear the word, I think of orange sherbert with an oily sheen in a metal tin. I think I carried this image away from The Wizard of Oz. The Cowardly Lion joins the journey to the Wizard to ask for some courage.

Boldness. Audacity. Cojones.

Isn’t that a great compliment to give and receive? “He’s gutsy.” We love to share the stories of moments when we shored up against evil or injustice or fear. Standing in the void.

I’ve heard courage described as the rarest, and therefore the most precious, of virtues. That makes sense to me. 

How many people do I know whom I would call courageous? What does that look like?

Courage changes with the person. We all have our own fears. The people whom I most respect are the ones who push into their fears, their wounds, and their insecurities.

Sit down and don’t move until you’ve written down ten of your fears. Or ask yourself what conversations you don’t want to have? Think about that person whom you need to call. Just the thought is enough to make you sick at your stomach.

Ask that girl out. Break up with that boyfriend. Move to a new city. Quit your job. Sing on a stage in front of people. Tell your friends that you love them. Write letters asking for forgiveness. Throw away pictures. Buy a motorcycle. Get your hair chopped off. Get a tattoo. Take guitar lessons. 

I am tired of being paralyzed by fear, hedged in, pushed down to my knees by the odds of failure or embarrassment. 

Courage. I want it. To admit that I was really angry or clinically depressed. To confess that I am in need, that I am lonely, that I am sick of being sick. Buy that trendy hat and wear it ragged. Be ruthless in your authenticity.

Courage is the spirit coming alive within us. Courage to fight despair and cling to hope. Courage to crack and cry out, “God, I cannot do it on my own. Where are you?”

Courage, oh, Father, give myself back to me. Make me fearless. Help me to stand for the right and as I ride the prow of the ship to take the spray in the face. Help me to stand firm in the face of death. Let not my enemies triumph over me. 

Give me courage to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Courage to live with grace and power.

Be the change you want to see

Last September, I was in Destin with my family. What began as a verbal skirmish between my brother-in-law and me after a game of Wii Tennis—competition can bring out the best or worst in men—became a full-scale battle that ended with my telling my family that I thought our style of dealing with conflict was unhealthy, insensitive, and passive aggressive. 

I observed that our family nurtured no open dialogue to accommodate hurt feelings. We swept everything under the rug. Hurt feelings often went unacknowledged and were given a change to grow into resentment and bitterness. Rather than give one another the freedom to express hurt feelings, we found ways to mitigate our own discomfort and wounded one another further by saying, in effect, “You’re being hypersenstive. Get over it. Shouldn’t you have moved past that by now?” 

I’m not saying that I was in the right. Deciding who was right or wrong was missing the point. What I wanted was openness and honesty.

The problem with how I often communicate is that I am so adamant about justifying my point of view that I alienate the very people whom I meant to persuade. I have listened as certain street preachers who in a genuine desire to see people come to know the immeasurable riches of Christ spit out caustic rhetoric that scorched the ears and hearts of passers-by. The pendulum swings, and we wound the very people who wounded us in an effort to convince them that wounding people is wrong. We kill people to save them. Before he became Charlemagne, Karl the Great conquered the Franks, and he gave them two options—baptism or execution. 

I am very close to my parents and two sisters, and I wanted to enjoy even greater depth and sweetness in those relationships by practicing more empathy and better listening. I probably just sounded pissed off.

I went to my room, got down on my knees, and I prayed, “God, give me a word. Give me a ray of light.”

I listened for awhile, and He spoke in that strange way of his that is sometimes the sound of wind in high branches and sometimes the quiet presence of an old friend, but this time was like something overheard from across the room. I almost missed it. He whispered, “Be the change you want to see.”

I need to talk less about what I wish were different and instead kneel before the Father and ask Him to transform me into a sensitive, empathetic son and brother who listens well without scrambling to protect myself.

Be the change you want to see. 

Leo Tolstoy had this epiphany long before I did: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

Gandhi, too: “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”

Do you wish the people in your life did a better job a taking care of you? Do you want to receive more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

Stop focusing on what you cannot change—other people. Start focusing on what you can change by the grace of God—yourself.

Be the change you want to see.

Deepen no darkness

Abba,

Give me strength and courage. Make me an oak and a lion.

Give me the Spirit of Christ, that I may receive wounds without giving them, that I may be a vessel of healing even to my enemies—those who embarrass, humiliate and betray me, those who snatch away my peace, those who erode my confidence, and those who obscure my joy.

Help me to relinquish the expectation that others should meet my expectations. 

Help me to listen well, with one ear to the heart of each person I am with and one to Yours. Help me to keep honest silence. Take my fears into your warm hands so that I can release my brothers and sisters from any obligation to calm my fears. Make my confusion fruitful. Create in me a clean heart, that I may be a safe place for others to air their own confusion, fears, and grievances.

Let me force no confessions, create no dissonance, and deepen no darkness.

Amen.

Imago Dei, Grabbling, Garden Snake

Foxes from the last several days: 

· I talked to a good friend from Nashville on Sunday night. How strange it is to know someone your whole life yet only brush the surface. Each one of us is a mystery. Each one of us is created Imago Dei—in the image of God. I’ve known her my whole life, yet “for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” We surprise each other, we surprise ourselves. Our minds and bodies both make us human. Together they contain the galaxies of our souls. What a simple pleasure to make forays into someone else’s galaxy!

· This friend and I are both writing children’s books. Mine is entitled “Grabbling.” I drew from a story that my grandmother tells about fishing with her hands in Mulberry Creek. When I read the first draft to her, she just laughed and laughed—one of my favorite sounds. Putting the story down on paper and thinking about it brings me great pleasure. Also, the prospect of receiving Rachel’s book in the mail to read for the first time. E-mail, cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter are poor substitutes for receiving a package in the mail.

· I spoke briefly with my friend John tonight. He and I haven’t talked since Christmas. When I think back over a sequence of minute events over the past two weeks that led to our conversation, I remember that I no longer believe in coincidence. We needed to talk, simple as that. Some of my stories and scars may give him hope. Thick trees and cool grass and bright flowers put down roots in the scorched places of our hearts. Ash feeds the soil. Our suffering feeds our own sanctification and can even be a catalyst for healing in other people’s lives.

· A tiny garden snake on the sidewalk in front of the house.

· A pedal falling off my bike and Lindsay coming to pick me up.

· Listening to my friends Aron Wright and Daniel Ellsworth play the WDVX’s Blue Plate Special.

· Eating the last of Justin’s candy cigarettes.

Reconciliation

I once thought of reconciliation the same way I thought of a broken bone healing.

My eighth grade year, I played cornerback, and my job on a sweep was to “scrape the alley” to the right of the tight end, get one step ahead of the blocker, and make the tackle. During practice one day, the running back was trying to block me, and he stepped on my left leg.

Pop!

I found out later that my tibia and fibula had snapped about ten inches above my ankle. Over the next twelve weeks, casts of different sizes, colors, and materials came and went. When the last one finally came off, a knot had formed over the break. “Overcalcification,” the nurse explained. “As the bone knit itself back together, it overcompensated.” She assured me that over time my body would absorb the extra calcium, the knot would disappear, and my leg should be even stronger than before.

I thought that relationships should heal the same way—stronger than before. After both parties come together with broken hearts, take responsibility for the hurts they inflicted, and ask forgiveness of one another, trust fills the rift, and the sweetness, intimacy, and laughter return. Agility and grace return. That relationship no longer walks with a limp.

This depth of wholistic, joy-infused healing certainly does occur in some relationships. I have experienced it. I thought that it was the highest expression of faithfulness and obedience, and thus pursued it with the same fervency that I tried to muster in every aspect of my life. After all, Jesus calls us to be peacemakers. Making peace means becoming a reconciling people. Reconciliation is what we do. I expected all my injured relationships to be stronger than before.

However, what happens when the other person never apologizes? Never admits fault? Denies any wrongdoing and steamrolls one’s vulnerability?

What happens if the person shows no interest in reconciliation and multiplies the offense with more insensitivity and selfishness?

We cannot wait to forgive and move forward into the fullness of life in Christ until the people who hurt us have asked for forgiveness. Sometimes, reconciliation comes with no sweet reunion or tears of relief and gratitude mingled with the other person’s. Sometimes, reconciliation is being cordial, feeling a sincere desire for the other person’s well-being and the relinquishment of our own bitterness and resentment.

Certain relationships never return to us. They walk with a limp out of our lives. God calls us to acknowledge our part in the wounding and breaking and to confess to Him, and if possible, the other person, our sins against that person. He never says, “There’s something wrong with you and your faith if you’re not able to fix every relationship.”

What a relief that He calls me to participate in reconciliation as far as I have the power to do so. He knows I have no power to suck the venom from another person’s heart. 

Praise God for the toppling of impossible standards and the graceful letting go of broken relationships.

I am his child, not his handyman.

ace of spades

Faith is peeling onions, layers beneath layers, questions beneath questions. 

Faith is a palimpsest where the old words are read with the new.  As soon as I formulate questions, lick the seal, and send them to God for a reply, I find myself in another season of waiting. Patience is also called “long suffering.”  Uncertainty condenses on the surface of my faith. The questions we ask make us who we are.

Why did melanoma kill my grandfather?

I want God to explain why cancer reduced this man’s body to grotesque angles under a white sheet. At the visitation, the line to look into the casket stretched across several rooms. Friends came out in droves to pay their respects.  I have never visited his grave since the burial. Why?

My family continues to make comparisons. They call me “Little Roger.” They point out the shape of my face, my lips and my gregariousness. They say people are drawn to me the way they were drawn to him.  Some shoes to fill.

Why take Roger Church, a man who did the things he said he would do? 

He might have helped me understand myself.  Where is he, Jesus?  Lazarus walked out of the tomb two thousand years ago. What has his blinking in the sun to do with me? Where is Roger Church? Paradise or Abraham’s Side? Purgatory or writhing in Hell?

That side of my family gets together less often now. I wish Jesus Christ would breathe my grandfather’s spirit back into his rotten body. People would scream, seeing an old man claw his way up from six feet under. Maybe he would hitch a ride down Thompson Lane to his house on Belmont Avenue. Would I believe in Jesus’ resurrection, his healings and his miracles, if I got a call on my cell phone from my grandfather?  Would I believe if I touched his hands across the old cribbage board we used?  If he handed me the deck of cards we buried with him? I still have the ace of spade I took out of the deck when no one was paying attention.

People tell me, the have told me my whole life, that I should imitate Jesus. Preachers toss abstract concepts and neat formulas out over the audience.  They travel back to Isaiah to fill in the Gospels’ gaps:

For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.¹

I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, but I have questions. 

I need to know what Jesus would whisper in my ear if I were about to attack some pervert who touched my wife or my daughter.

I need to know what Jesus would think of voting, sex, and capitalism. Yes, when Lazarus died, Jesus called him back from death. I believe it. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. He quoted Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”²  He made an immediate and physical impact on people’s lives. He gave people their health. He gave purpose to their souls. He returned their dignity. He restored them to their communities.

Can I raise men from the dead?

Lord, help me with my unbelief. I am a product of my environment. Perhaps no one I have ever known believed anyone in this day and age would be raised from the dead without defibulators or a blood transfusion. My younger sister and her boyfriend discovered one of the maintenance personnel, Zacharias Sbathu, dead in his truck. His family depended on him for their well-being. Our prayers did not raise him from the dead. Is it true? Is prayer powerful? Why didn’t it work? Zacharias worked two jobs for seventy or eighty hours a week to build a life for his family. Where was Jesus to raise this man from the dead?

Jesus wept. Jesus prayed: “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.”³

If I cannot raise people from the dead, what is the faithful response for a man of God when faced with death and violence?

 

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¹ Isaiah 53:2-5 (NASV).

 

² Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2 (NASV).

³ John 11:41-42 (NASV).

Agape

Am I prepared to love her, him, them, knowing that they may never change? 

I have no power to change them. I could try wielding my anger, disappointment, and frustration, but I know dislike similar treatment.

Am I prepared to love without conditions, small print, or strings attached knowing that they have the freedom to ignore and reject my love?

Is my love a gift or a contract?