Radiated Pain

Nancy and I were munching on some popcorn the other night when she said, "OW!" She felt around in her mouth and looked in the mirror to see if she chipped a tooth but couldn't really tell. It wasn't until the next morning when she tried to eat that she realized something was really wrong.

At the dentist she showed him which tooth hurt. He tapped it, scraped it and blew cold air on it. Nothing. She said, "I know it hurt earlier. It had to be that one... or maybe this one." When she tapped the second tooth, it moved and she winced.

The problem with nerve pain is it can radiate. The pain spreads out into areas not really damaged. You can't tell where the real wounding is.

This can be true with emotional wounding as well. It's why we come home, after a bad day at work, yell at our wife and kick the dog. They aren't the ones who made us mad, it's just our anger didn't have an outlet at the office.

It can be why we make decisions that are self destructive. Why the cycle of abuse continues. It's why a spouse would return to the abuser.

From the outside it's bewildering. Why would an normally intelligent person, be so out of control of certain areas of his or her life? It's because the source of the pain has been buried so deeply, walled off so completely no one is ever going to get close enough to exposed it.

People wonder how Christ can love everyone. How can grace be available even to the wicked? I think part of it may be in his ability to see past the radiation and into the source of their pain. He sees the hurt and longs to heal us.

Healing is there if we allow Christ, sometimes through the help of others, to poke around and find the exposed nerve. Like a visit to the dentist, it can be painful. But, in the end, it stops the radiation hurting us and the people we love. 

Good Church?

"Why do you like your church?" It's a a pretty common question in Christian circles.

You get all kinds of answers like, "The preaching is awesome. I love the worship. The children's program is amazing."

Those are all good answers. Messages that provoke change, worship that leads us to the cross, our kids being challenged and encouraged are all healthy things.

I freely admit I've had problems with Church, so I'm not sure I'm the most objective observer. But something in those answers feels wrong. It's like we're saying, "The people who serve me, do their jobs well." Those answers free me of responsibility.

I wonder what it would be like to hear, "The people there show me who Jesus is."

I think what we miss is:, people will put up with poor preaching and sorry music if they know everyone in the building loves them.

I can leave Sunday morning inspired, uplifted... and unchanged. But if you love me enough to challenge, counsel, care for and confront me, it's hard to stay the same. If you take the time to hear my story and love me enough to enter into it, that has the potential to change everything.

This doesn't free church leadership of working hard to shepherd well. All it means is, if we do our job, theirs is a lot easier.

Into the Fire

My friend Tara sent me this video. I think it bothered her and she wanted to be sure I was bothered too. It worked.

I don't know this guy. I don't know his program or what happened before the exchange in the video. He seems to be sincere. He seems to be trying to honestly present the Gospel to folks who need to hear it.

And it makes me sad.

In his quest follow Christ's "command to preach" he misses the point of Christ's message. He traps the young woman with a flawed analogy Christians use all the time: "If someone was in a burning building, wouldn't you tell them to get out?"

Here's the problem... you're assuming the person in the building can walk.

Burning buildings are loud, confusing, smoke filled places. People inside get hurt as they stumble around in the chaos. It's why firemen don't stand outside and shout. They go in.

It's easy to shout outside.You risk nothing. You sacrifice nothing. It costs you nothing.

When you go into the fire, when you enter someone's story, it's scary. You don't know what you'll find when you get in there. You don't know how the flames have scorched them or what has trapped them or if they'll need to be carried for a while. All you know is you love them enough to risk getting burned.

There is no doubt Christ told people the truth. But first he walked with them. Touched them. Healed them. Fed them. He sat with them in the fire. Then he led them out of the house and to the cross. 

Poppin Tags

Nancy loves Goodwill. Well, it doesn't have to be Goodwill. It could be Salvation Army, Arc a yard sale, whatever.

She loves them so much I wrote a song about it long before Macklemore and Ryan Lewis sang Thrift Shop (um... the PG version being sung by Pentatonix here). Heck, she invented “poppin’ tags.”

When we were traveling, she found out Goodwill in Ohio was having a 50% off sale. She went online, found every Goodwill on our rout and we stopped at them … all of them.

Thrifting is Nancy's spiritual gift.

She has taken countless folks all over Colorado Springs finding them great stuff for next to nothing. She doesn't need to buy, she’s just happy someone is getting a deal. 

So many of us don’t believe we have anything to offer. We minimize our gifting or don’t believe we have any gifts at all. We don’t understand that if we think creatively, there are things we love to do that would bless other people.

We've been wired different ways and our unique abilities and interests can have an impact on the people around us. Nancy does it through thrifting and I think it makes God happy. 

Rhythms

You can always spot frequent flyers. We’re the ones who look bored in airports. We chat casually about Hong Kong, Beijing and Delhi like a farmer chats about yield, without a bit of pretentiousness, usually.

We have a rhythm as we travel. We need the right bag and seat assignment, like a toddler needs his bunny and Sheldon needs his spot. We pack a certain way, check in at a certain time and have rituals for time zone adjustment.

What’s really interesting is when two frequent flyers travel together for the first time. With one playing the Samba and the other Rockabilly, it can take some time for their rhythms to get in sync. Or worse, a frequent flyer with a novice, who can’t even find the downbeat.

The church is a place filled with people who have their own rhythm. Culture, family, history, gifting and personality all play a part in how we beat our drum. Our needs, perceptions, what's important to us, how we react to change and conflict are all different and lead to all kinds of problems.

Only when we sync our rhythm with God's can we achieve the unity Christ talks about in John. 

The problem is, God's rhythm feels unnatural too.  Our history tells us not to trust. Love always comes with strings.  Culturally, forgiveness, grace and self-sacrifice are counter intuitive. They don't lead to happiness and fulfillment. I have to look out for myself.

Somehow, in the great diversity of humanity, we can find unity. It's there for us. Somehow, in the cacophony of billions of people playing their own tune, a melody can be heard. It's sweet and it's haunting, it's lovely and it's calling to us. We can sense it. Because somewhere deep in side, we know in his rhythms there is rest. 

Ebola

The mission community is small. There are thousands of Christian missionaries around the world, but if you stay with it long enough, you start running into friends of friends all over the place.

So I wasn't surprised when some close friends started posting prayer requests for Nancy Writebol, an SIM missionary and one of two in Liberia just diagnosed with Ebola. My friends know her, love her and, obviously, are deeply concerned.

As I think about Nancy, I worry for my friends living in West Africa, one of them also working with Ebola patients.

Christians get a lot of bad press. And we should. So often we try to impose our agenda, values and politics on our communities. Often we do it without integrity or wisdom and completely devoid of love and grace.

At the same time, there are thousands of Nancy Writebols in the world. They are people who run to tragedy to comfort and care for victims. They staff hospitals, dig wells, negotiate peace, bring justice, provide jobs, educate and liberate.

Family, safety, comfort and affluence are sacrificed for a humble commitment to service. As I look at the world map on my wall, I can see their faces all over the place, some of them in the most violent and oppressive places on earth.

So often we miss the point. Nancy Writebol hasn't. But as we tell her story, we should make sure it challenges ours. 

Humanity

In the airport today, my passport slipped out of its cover and fell to the floor. Thankfully, a thoughtful young woman called to me to let me know I dropped it.

As I picked it up and turned to thank her and her husband, the looks on their faces really struck me. They were concerned for me and relieved I had heard them. They knew the implications of a lost passport and you could tell they were grateful I recovered it.

I wasn't surprised to see, they were Muslim.

They were dressed in traditional local attire, complete with head covering. I was dressed in traditional American tourist, complete with shorts and flip-flops.

That wasn't important to them. There was a guy who needed help and they helped him. That was it.

There's a lot of chaos in the world , much of it revolving around religion. The news is a cacophony of violence. Still, most of us just want peace.

Yes, there are evil men and those who allow themselves to be used by them. And, sadly, sometimes evil has to be met with violence. I think if we dug deeply enough, we'd realize the majority of the conflicts have more to do with power than faith.

Most of us just want to live our lives, work, feed our children, live in a good home and die old, holding someone's hand.

A sweet couple, who happened to be Muslim, demonstrated that today. And we could all learn from their example.