It occurs to me…

This from an On Being Krysta Tippett interview of Mary Karr I listened to recently:

“The problem with being judgmental (says one of the most judgmental people on the planet) is that the very voice you use to criticize everyone else is the exact same voice you use to criticize yourself.”

I don’t know that there’s much to say about that other than to acknowledge it as the truth – though it occurs to me that my self-critical “voice” has a tone that is just a little edgier, a bit more mean-spirited, than the one that criticizes everyone else.  Still, neither is pleasant to hear.

The story of the sick woman in Mark 5:24-34 has long intrigued me, if for no other reason because Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers put it to music in Touch the Hem of His Garment.  The story is easy to lose as it is only ten verses of a miracle that is buried amongst the unfolding story of a larger miracle (Mark 5:21-43).  Jesus is literally on his way to raise a young girl from the dead when this event occurs.  The woman, destitute because of her ongoing illness, is certain that she will be healed “if I may but touch his clothes.”  She does and she is.

But the interesting part of the story to me is the aftermath.  The woman is part of “a large crowd [that] followed and pressed around” Jesus, yet as the woman touches Jesus’ garment, he recognizes it.  The New International Version notes Jesus “realized that power had gone out from him” whereas in the King James version it talks of “virtue” leaving him.  “Power” or “virtue,” the lesson here to me is what Jesus tells the woman – “[Y]our faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Okay, all that to get to a single point.  Jesus doesn’t say “I have healed you” or “God has healed you.”  Instead he credits the woman and her faith with the healing.

This morning I read the Parable of the Sower in Mark 4:1-20.  It is a familiar story.  A farmer goes out to sow his seed.  Some falls along the path, some in the rocky places, some among the thorns.  That seed either never sprouts or sprouts and withers quickly due to its circumstances.  Still, other seed falls on good soil and grows, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.

This is another of Jesus’ tri-faceted parables.  Somewhat like the Prodigal Son where one can focus on the father, the younger son, or the elder son, here one can focus on the sower, the seed, or the plants that sprout from the seed.  Today, I thought about the sower, and how he is batting for average.  Yes, some seed is lost to the path, the rock, and the thorns, but some lands on good soil and multiplies many times over.  Using my limited math skills, at the minimum of the production rate (30 times), so long as the sower gets at least 0.04 on good soil he is coming out ahead.  If he gets 0.25 on good soil (bats .250) he is WAY ahead.

The parable is, of course, ripe with message.  Among those is this — I can focus on what lands on the path, the rocks, or among the thorns and use that as an excuse to bitch and moan, event to quit sowing, or I can focus on the productivity of what lands on the good soil.  It occurs to me what even when not everything, less than most, lands on the good soil, there is still plenty for me to be thankful for.

While these three words may have been put together by Nike’s advertising folks, the sentiment has been around forever.

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  ….  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.:  James 2:14, 17

Or this today from C. S. Lewis: “[T]he dentist who can stop one toothache has deserved better of humanity than all the men who think they have some scheme for producing a perfectly healthy race.”

But then there’s this from Oswald Chambers today: “An active Christian worker too often lives in the shop window.  It is the innermost of the innermost that reveals the power of the life.”

If only Nike would expand on “it” for us!  It occurs to me that life is the search for “it.”

I love these sentences from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“As far as possible, be on good terms with all persons.  Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.”

What jumps out at me when I read this is the “they too have their story.”  [I still think the “dull and ignorant” comment requires the modifier “those you perceive as”.]  The power of the story is always there at the core.  Each of us has a story, a story that is ours and ours alone.  The telling of the story is a gift.  It occurs to me, however that the greater gift is listening, really listening, to the story of another.

There has been a lot of talk this election season about “taking the high road.”  I wonder if/how the coming debate would be different if, at the beginning, this passage was read to both candidates and audience:

“Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  Philippians 1:27

I suspect the entertainment quotient would be lowered, but it might just leave a bit of room to discuss the issues the impact us all.

Since my Kairos weekend in prison I have been thinking a lot about grace and forgiveness.  Go figure!  So today I listened again to Slaid Cleaves’ One Good Year for the first time in a while, and heard it as what it clearly [duh!] is – a song about grace, forgiveness, and second chances.

“Just give me one good year.  To get my feet back on the ground.  I’ve been chasing grace, but grace ain’t so easily found.”

But mostly, the song made me think of the guy sitting next to me at the table that weekend in prison who, at age fifteen, was given a life sentence for killing someone.  Having done fifteen years already, he had spent as much of his life in prison as not.  Mostly, I thought of him after Cleaves got to this line:

“When you start giving in, where do the promises all go?  Will your darkest hour write a blank check on your soul?”

It is easy to let these “darkest hours” control, easy to stumble over something in the past, something behind.  The question becomes this:  When I make a mistake will I let that define me, define my future?

Through grace and forgiveness, of course, this need not happen.  But as Cleaves notes, “grace ain’t so easily found,” and even if “easily found,” is not always recognized and accepted.  Clearly, my new friend next to me at the table was working on the grace he had found.  He had acknowledged his sin and was trying to do something about it.  He was part of the Kairos weekend.  Recently, at her request, he had met with a daughter of his victim and expressed an apology to her as best he could, and she had forgiven him as best as she could.  He was, as Cleaves puts it, “chasing grace.”

On reflection, it occurs to me that Cleaves had come up with a pretty good working definition (or at least explanation) of “grace” and “forgiveness.”  Through grace and forgiveness, God gives us all a chance to keep our dark hours from writing blank checks on our souls.  He paid that debt for us long ago.

Today I came across 1 John 2:2.  Boy, there’s a passage that is chock full of theology!  Speaking of Jesus, John 2:2:

“He is the the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.”  (NIV)

“And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (King James)  [Okay, I had to go look up “propitiate” –  it means “win or regain the favor of (a god, spirit, or person) by doing something that pleases them.”  Well, to the NIV translator it means “atoning sacrifice.”]

I really like the Tyndale translation, which notes that Jesus died to “obtaineth grace for our sins; not for our sins only, but also for the sins of all the world.”  [So, I guess to Tyndale “propitiate” means “obtaining grace.”]

There it is.  No matter all the efforts to claim some type of exclusivity as to Jesus and His atonement, Jesus died “for the sins of the whole world.”  He did for my sins, yes, but also for the sins of others – yes, even that guy!

The lessons today from C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers both speak to a similar issue.  Lewis writes of being “collaborators in creation” and Chambers of getting into “God’s stride.”

Chambers writes: “We fix on the individual aspects of things; we have the viion – ‘This is what God wants me to do;’ but we have not got into God’s stride.”

Lewis writes: “When we act from ourselves alone – that is, from God in ourselves – we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation….”

Both collaborating and getting into the stride of another require work on my part, and more importantly, some level of surrender.  Surrender is not a popular word, but it sure comes up a lot in the spiritual context.  Hmm!

Oswald Chambers issues a warning today – “Beware of becoming wise and prudent.”  He notes:

“All God’s revelations are sealed until they are opened to us by obedience.  You will never get them open by philosophy or thinking.  Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes in.  Let God’s truth work in you by soaking in it, not by worrying into it….  One reads tomes on the work of the Holy Spirit, when only five minutes of drastic obedience would make things as clear as a sunbeam.:

I want to argue with this, but think (there I go again) I can’t.  In fact, on reflection, I find Chambers’ thoughts to be accurate.  While fretting, worrying, thinking, and philosophizing can help me understand something, they go no farther than that.  Sitting in a dark room, the light can only enter if I get up and open the door, the shade, or flip the light switch.

But I’ll need to think on this a while.