Life In Greencastle

We moved our way through the third chapter of Philippians yesterday, which includes Paul's famous statements about pressing on towards the prize that awaits him in Christ Jesus. It gave us the chance to consider where our own focus has been of late and to remember that as Christians we are called onward towards a "sure and certain hope," a heavenly prize that far outweighs anything we could win, achieve, or secure in this life. We have this hope always set before us, but we are also now entering that time of year where we are encouraged and called to begin the journey towards our new life in Jesus Christ in earnest. It is the season we call Lent: this forty day journey that leads us up to Holy Week. For most of us, Lent is equated with some type of new commitment. We give up chocolate, or - if you prefer - we commit ourselves to do something positive in a new way. We make some gesture to show our devotion to God. In recent years, though, some of these disciplines ha...

This week we will look more closely at Paul's opening words to his friends and co-laborers in Philippi - including looking at his prayer for his brothers and sisters in Christ. The specific verses we will consider are Philippians 1:3-11: "I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless u...

Do I need to know, I wondered - watching the smoke trail away. The more I thought, the more I knew: I did not need to know the news of the day, the uprising and job reports and the progress with the talks with China. Yes, it is a global world, but today I did not care. One of the disciplines I have is to read brief meditations. Yesterday, #2 asked me, Where are you? What time is it? Meditation #2 told me, the answer to the first is "here." the answer to the second is "now." So I let the need to know about the world's struggles and hopes disappear - dissipating like the smoke before my eyes. Later today, I did a chore: cut some wood to keep our home warm. The tracks of deer and rabbit and dogs were all around, but there was no life to speak of, only the calm cool slow motion of winter, the gray sky. Yesterday, I saw three deer up on a ridge. I watched them for awhile, until the trees on the other side moaned their age. I turned away, I looked back, they were gon...

For the second consecutive year, I traveled up US 31 to South Bend, Indiana on a beautiful fall day. I traveled with Curtis Lawrence, and we went for the sole purpose of watching the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team take the field. Now, I must note that it was my childhood dream to attend Notre Dame. Even loftier, it was also my dream - like many young boys growing up in Indiana - to suit up for the Fighting Irish. Surprisingly - even with such hopes - I had never actually visited the campus. For the first thirty years of my life, I never set foot on one of the more storied and celebrated college campus and football meccas in America. That absence was broken, though, when I made that first trip up to South Bend last year. Let me tell you: even after all those years of waiting, the campus and football stadium at Notre Dame lived up to all the out-sized expectations I had. Like most places of prominence, Notre Dame Stadium really cannot be described through words. It is so...

In the last few years, God has continually brought my attention back to Paul's prayer for the Ephesians. I have mentioned this prayer on a few occasions, and there is a good chance that it will come up again in the month of November - especially since we are looking at the "riches of our faith" this month. Here is the prayer: "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power." - Ephesians 1:17-19 Paul's prayer is - in essence - a prayer for healing, for blind eyes to open and see a new reality. Paul's deep hope is that the Ephesians can see with "faith eyes" - seeing w...

"Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." - John 4:14-15 "Have you ever been extremely thirsty? If you have experienced deep thirst, you know how wonderful and refreshing cool water can be. We can live for many days without food but only a short time without water. When the Samaritan woman encountered Jesus at Jacob's well, she was searching for that which would quench her body's thirst for life-giving and life-sustaining water. In the presence of Jesus she recognized a deeper thirst, the thirst for God. And it was to this thirst that Jesus offered water and the promise that her thirst for God could be sat...

In the Gospel of John, Jesus encounters a lame man that leads to one shocking question. The story goes that Jesus encountered this man at a public place in Jerusalem where - apparently - quite a number of blind, lame and paralyzed men and women lay. In modern terms, this place – called Beth-zatha – was something like a safe-house, an ancient form of the modern day Salvation Army . In any case, laying there with the others was a man who had spent thirty-eight years of his life. Thirty-eight years! For almost four complete decades, this man's days began and ended in this public place. To many people in Jerusalem, the man had likely become part of the place - almost blending into the paved stones. This should not surprise us. It still happens in our own day - homeless men or women who begin to blend into the environment. But, for some reason, Jesus noticed the man. More than that, Jesus intentionally went up to this man, and asked him: "Do you want to be made well?"...

Anna and I have decided to not to spray our yard or our driveway for crabgrass or weeds. This decision seemed like one way we could treat God's good creation with kindness. Well, as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished. In this case, the punishment we received for kindly restraining to use Round-up is a wild harvest of weeds - sprawling into the garden and over the yard. But, most of all, the weeds have run rampant into our gravel driveway. When we arrived home from vacation a few weeks ago, it was hard to tell where the driveway was ... or had been. It had been swallowed by that vibrant, healthy earth. This is why for the last several weeks I've been out in the gravel and the weeds after dinner time. Little by little, I've been picking at the stiff strands of crabgrass and pulling the tough weed from the ground. Thankfully I've found that with a little tug the whole comes uprooted - it's dirty roots dangling down from my hand with bits of rock and ston...

"Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It's a way of living in the Presence of God. It is, further, a way of living in awareness of God's presence, even enjoying God's presence. The full contemplative is not just aware of God, but trusts, allows, and delights in God." - From Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr "Those who receive the Lord's blessing are those who, in the course of their lives, are able to pay attention to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the ill, and the imprisoned. It turns out that, unwittingly, they had all along been attending to God in Christ. Prayer, in its implicit form, is the act of attention to realities that are before us. By such acts, we attend, indirectly, to God. Through such acts, God's very self is made known to us, and we are thus more able to pray explicitly." - From Vision and Character by Craig R. Dykstra

"Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known." - Jeremiah 33:3 I have a really great friend who has lived in the Washington, D.C. area for the last eight years now. He's been living and making a life on the outskirts of our nation's capital. A lot of good things have come from his time out in D.C. - the best thing being the gift of a lovely wife to journey with now for the rest of his life. Well, there is competition. My friend and his wife have also now been given the joy of a little girl. There is much in their life to be thankful for, and they are gracious and grateful people. However, in the last few years, a type of discontent arose in my friend and his wife. Having a child made them long for closer ties to family and for a more supportive community. I knew about my friend's discontent. I also knew about his hopes, his longings. We all have such feelings at certain times - a jumble of hopes, fea...

"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." - Romans 15:4 Many of us read the Bible fairly frequently. We do so for many reasons: to gain guidance; to maintain our focus upon God; to keep ourselves and our actions in alignment with God's will for our lives. Today, though, Paul gives us another reason to read and be formed by scripture: it is a source of hope, a stream that nurtures the seeds of faith and love. Whatever God has revealed through the Word was given to us for our instruction. Just as the Law was given to Moses and the Israelites to guide them into a blessed way of living, so all of scripture is given to lead us into a pleasant path. As the psalmist says, those who receive nourishment from the law of the Lord are "like trees planted by streams of living water, which yield their fruit in its season" (Ps. 1:3). The image here i...

I want to share a word from Richard Foster, which is really intended to be an invitation from God ... "God has graciously allowed me to catch a glimpse into his heart, and I want to share with you what I have seen. Today the heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence. "And he is inviting you - and me - to come home, to come home to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created. His arms are stretched out wide to receive us. His heart is enlarged to take us in. "For too long we have been in a far country; a country of noise and hurry and crowds, a country of climb and push and shove, a country of frustration and fear and intimidation. And he welcomes us home: home to serenity and peace and joy, home to friendship and fellowship and openness, ...

"Listen next time. Listen when someone speaks to you." - David Malter to his son, Reuven; The Chosen Do you ever have those seasons when you keep hearing the same message from God over and over again? You know: when you keep hearing a similar message spoken to you, coming to you in a conversation with this friend and then another friend? I have been going through one of those times recently. In the last few weeks, I keep getting these little nudges from God to "listen." It began a week and a half ago when I was down in St. Meinrad, Indiana at a beautiful monastery built by German Catholics, a place dedicated to the practice of listening to God. Nudge #2 came as I reread Henri Nouwen's little gem of wisdom titled The Way of the Heart . He talks about how true prayer (true listening) comes from quieting our minds and hearts, especially through silence. And, again God was calling me to open up my ears and heart this past Sunday. The nudge came as we explored...

Are you looking for some solid devotional resources - a resource to help you in your conversations with God? Well ... I might just have the thing for you, but before I offer a few suggestions let me say this: I have found over the years that my devotional resources have grown considerably. But just because I have ten books on prayer does not mean that I find myself talking to God more frequently or more deeply. Walking with God - to me - is like exercising. I can buy all the fancy gear in the world (like devotional books or prayer books), but it always comes back to the essential task: actually carving out space and then being disciplined in the practice. It is the same with prayer for me. No book can do the important, essential task: sitting still, opening myself to God's Word and allowing myself to be formed to His will. That said, devotional books and prayer books can be tremendously important and useful. After all, you wouldn't run a marathon with no athletic gear....

I am preparing today for the sermon on Sunday. And, as we are exploring the meaning of time together we look this week at the teachings of our Lord - specifically his teaching about worry, money, shelter and food. It is these three things (money, shelter and food) that make us feel that we must maximize our time, to use it well, so that we can have security and provision. But, Jesus - conversely - invites us to remember that using our time wisely is not what leads to our security. This is a major thrust of his Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5 & 6). Dietrich Bonhoeffer comments on Jesus' teachings and adds: "Fellowship with Jesus and obedience to his commandment come first, and all else follows. Worldly cares are not a part of our discipleship, but distinct and subordinate concerns. Before we start taking thought for our life, our food and clothing, our work and families, we must seek the righteousness of Christ ... Again we have here either a crushing burden, which holds o...

"What is the issue that haunts the prophet's soul? It is not a question, but a bitter exclamation: How marvelous is the world that God has created! And how horrible is the world that man has made!" - Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets This past Sunday some of us ventured through the passion of Jesus Christ. We have been studying Mark's Gospel, and we entered those final scenes leading up to Jesus crucifixion and death. We talked a great deal about irony - irony being a dissonance or difference between what should be and what is. In this case, the tragic irony of Jesus' humiliation, crucifixion and death is that the religious leaders who should have been the first to herald him as King where the very ones who initiated his humiliation. There is more. There is irony in the way the religious leaders and powerful soldiers mocked and stripped Jesus - cruelly doing the exact opposite of what Jesus deserves. There is the irony that Jesus - the Way, the Truth and t...

Last night a small group of people - including myself - finished a three month journey together. Our main focus was to help one another become better disciples of Jesus Christ. And, to aid us in our growth we practiced a weekly discipline - some habit or behavior intended to make us more aware of God's activity in our life. And what I want to tell you is that every single person in the group last night shared how life-giving this journey was. What's more: many people came to discover that practicing our faith does not have to be drudgery and deadening. For various reasons (some true, some false), spirituality has been associated with most things negative. It is often characterized as strict, boring, drab, dry, serious and harsh. We tend to think of burlap undergarments, piles of ashes and stale bread. But, in reality true spirituality is the exact opposite of life-killing. True spirituality is life-giving. "Spirituality is not a pious pose. It is not a 'Thou shalt not...