"where are you Christmas ?"...

My own personal Christmas came a little early this year...I got to go to Haiti. Admittedly, for many of you that may not be something on your Christmas list this year...or any year, for that matter. For me, personally, this trip simply could not have come at a better time. It is so easy during this time of the year to be deceived and distracted by the crushing press mounted by retailers and our culture to redefine what is Christmas. It feels like the push to control our minds and wallets begins earlier and last longer every year. It’s 10 days before Christmas and it doesn't feel any different than the week before I left for Haiti. Or the weeks before that. But...in Haiti, it's really different. While December and winter is in full swing back in Kentucky, I’m profusely sweating every day as if it was the middle of summer. It is very difficult for me to believe Christmas is right around the corner when I am having to putting on sunscreen and bugspray to ward off hungry mosquitoes. Certainly, that's very different. However, that's not the difference I am talking about. Everything that prepares us for the Christmas season in the U.S. does not exist anywhere in the Haitian countryside, particularly where I am at. There seems to be little awareness that Christmas is rapidly approaching. No one is decorating their front door with beautiful wreaths, no Christmas lights on houses, no Christmas music in the air, no Christmas parties, no cookie exchange or gingerbread house making, no winter, no eggnog, no wreath making, no fancy present wrapping, no Nutcracker, Christmas Vacation or even worse...no Elf. But that’s okay. I find it refreshing and restorative because there are none of the above. It is very much a blessing to be away from the chaos and commercialization of this holy holiday. Instead of immersing and drowning ourselves in all the events of the season, we have this rare opportunity to focus solely on why and who we are celebrating. Being in Haiti allows that in a profound in your face way. It is the season of Advent. It is the time of expectant waiting. Haitians know this waiting well. While they may not call it Advent and celebrate it formally in their churches and homes, they live it. The season of Advent is completely about waiting and hope. It is not just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of their everyday ever present pain and suffering, although that is certainly a significant part of it. It is more about hope that their existence has meaning and possibility beyond the present and limited experiences, a hope that the limits of their lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be. It is not that we have possibility in ourselves, but that God is a God of new things and so all things are possible. My experience thus far, in Haiti, tells me that those who have suffered greatly and still cling to hope understand far more about God and about life than those who have not. This is where many Haitians that I have met leave me in the dust, so to speak. Maybe that is what hope is about: a way to live, not just to survive, but to live authentically amidst all the problems of life with this amazing resilient faith that continues to see possibility when there is no present evidence of it, just because God is God. That is also the wonder and the mystery and joy of Advent. So, that was my present this year and that's awfully hard to wrap up in a box...

“Evil visited this community today”...

We now interrupt this blog...to bring you this unexpected blog...

I had planned on another subject for this blog today...but things change. Sometimes things change in such a dramatic and unexpected way that we're are momentarily stunned...I call it being knocked out of our tree. No doubt, some obscure reference to where we roost. Sometimes things change in such a horrific and evil way it forever defines who we are. We lose any shred of innocence...any sense of safety...This incomprehensible evil visited a small town in Connecticut, shortly after 9:30 am, on a sunny winter morning leaving carnage and mayhem in its' wake. In an instant...in the blink of an eye...things changed...forever. Not one single mom or dad, when sending their child off to school that morning, imagined or could ever imagine the idea that gunshots would ring out as teachers cowered and struggled to maintain their composure as they protected their children. It's just the absolute worse case scenario for both parent and teacher. No training...no college course...no advanced degree prepares you for this day. Your basic raw instincts take over...your focus become acutely sharp...time stands still. We try to protect those we love...not because it is our job, but because it is in our DNA...it is really in every fiber of our being. It is placed there by God. This is the exact place that we struggle so desperately to understand. Thousands of “hows” and “whys” are resonating all across the world. There are no words that can come close...we strive to make some sense of a day turned so upside down it's surreal. Sometimes there are just no answers...nothing can be spoken that doesn't provoke even more questions. In the season of winter there are many references to darkness and the bleakness of the days. I am sure that it couldn't feel any darker and more bleak and hopeless than it feels for many in light of this heinous act. However, I also know that in the midst of all that darkness and despair... there is light. While it may be exceedingly difficult to see, it is there. In John 8:12, it says, 

“Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, "I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life." 

 And in 1 Peter 2:9, it says, 

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

I have suffered my share, if there is such a thing as a share, of losses and unexplained tragic events and I understand the difficulty to focus on these verses from the Bible. Admittedly, I have never lost a child and simply cannot even imagine the depth of grief I would feel. But, the one thing I do know is that light dispels the darkness and we are called to be that light in the world...especially to others who are in darkness for whatever reason. We are called to be the ones to reach out to those who are suffering...are hurting...are trying to make sense...to struggle to move forward...to heal...and most importantly...to forgive. Endless hours of analysis and investigation and blaming and finger pointing are not helpful and only serve to mire us in a victim mentality. Sometimes very bad things happen that breaks our collective hearts. As much as we struggle to know why, sometimes...many times...we just can't know. There is no understandable explanation no matter how bad we want it. The sovereignty of God is easily accepted when all that matters is our intellectual agreement and understanding. But most often it is very difficult for us to accept, even unfathomable, especially when that practical reality strikes close to home through a difficult, tragic event like so many we have witnessed in recent months. In practically all cases like this, we feel compelled to ask, "Where was God?" I know this question echoed both out loud and silently with many of us. This is probably the tandem question to why. I really like what Father Dwight Longenecker says on his blog, Standing on my Head, 

“Where was God in Sandy Hook? Just where he always is, in the midst of the mess. He’s there suffering with the victims, bearing the horror with us and weeping with those who mourn and raging with those who rage. Do you feel righteous rage at the insanity and senselessness of this evil? So does God. Now you understand what God’s wrath is like. Do you feel helpless sorrow, pity and nameless frustration in the face of such terror? So does God. Now you understand his frustration and anger at humanity’s inhumanity. Do you feel compassion and heartache, and don’t you want to do something for the people who are hurting–do just anything you can? So does God. Now you know how much he longs to come in to our lives and help us and do something for us to heal and reconcile and make things right. Don’t you feel rage and frustration and confusion and fear for the poor sick boy who pulled the trigger? Don’t you ask what made him do such a thing? What turned him into a murderous monster? God is in the middle of all the emotions–in the middle of the mess with us. “ 

Indeed, he is...I pray we find comfort and healing in that...

Haiti redux...

A week from today I will be back in Haiti. This will be my second trip to a place I never imagined I would go the first time. I am going to be visiting some future partners for our Haiti Water Project and check in on some water systems we previously installed. I can't lie...getting ready for this trip has been really stressful. It has been stressful because I got distracted and almost forgot why I am going. I tried to blame this nagging feeling of being comfortable and semi-detached on everything but what it was. I temporarily forgot that I am being given an opportunity to go to a place that needs what I can bring...and it's not necessarily clean water. It's hope...It's the hope we have in Christ... to provide for...to love...to redeem...and to restore us. I feel sad that it's so easy for me to lose sight of that sometimes. It's so easy to be distracted by things that are inconsequential and limited in scope in our lives. We have this interesting thing about going back to places that have done something to us...impacted us...wrecked us in some way. There is this primal pull...this urge that speaks to our soul. I have this theory that we are looking for something we lost...something left behind and in returning we hope to find. Whether joy...peace...innocence...hope or even faith, there is something we seek. My wife says, for her, that place is the ocean...any ocean. Something speaks to her very deeply there and something happens. Of course, we know that “something” is God. There is a transformation and renewal of spirit. For me my place is an unlikely place...a place of profound stereotypes of poverty and where injustices are carved deeply into their national identity and psyches...that place is Haiti. Mother Teresa once said, “When I look into the eyes of the poor I have an eerie feeling that Jesus is staring right back at me.” Jesus himself stated that when we are with the poor we are with him. That certainly is true in Haiti. I both feel and see that played out everywhere I look while there. Honestly, it rattles my cage. It rattles that cage that many of us live in...have put ourselves in. That cage is not only a metaphor for our comfortable minimal risk lives but for our churches. The purpose of a cage is to protect what is outside of it as much as what is inside. We become comfortable and secure knowing there is minimal risk and danger both in our lives and churches. Oswald Chambers wrote,

“Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.”

Clearly, we know God is calling us to “go out”...but we resist. It's just so easy to just slip back into living a vanilla, homogenized, and gluten free life. I feel pretty safe in saying that really isn't what Jesus is calling us to. To really follow Jesus is to live dangerously because it involves really loving people, and often times those that are not like us...sometimes very different. If we truly care and want to be agents of transformation, we must be willing to boldly take the risk of loving others despite the possibility that it will be difficult, frustrating and tiring. I need to be reminded of that sometimes...I need to be reawakened. How does Jesus do that ? He shakes us. How does He shake us ? He calls to come out of the cage...our self-imposed prisons and go to risky places and love and serve those in need. In Matthew 25: 35-40, Jesus said,

 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

To just stand and be present among both the physical brokenness and the brokenness of others lives in Haiti is a reminder of what truly matters. I don't really know about anyone else, but that reminder couldn't have come at a better time for me.

thanks...for the thanks

In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others. ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It's that time of the year when we seem to place special emphasis on giving thanks and enumerating the various things we are thankful for. It's somewhat of a lost art, really. To be really thankful and be satisfied with what we have and live a life of gratitude is a lofty goal. Our culture makes it difficult if not nearly impossible. It becomes a chore for many of us because we have become so self absorbed and cannot waste the extra minutes in our day to let someone know that their ordinary kindness is appreciated and recognized. Thanksgiving, the holiday, has become another commercially crass and mostly meaningless day dedicated to gluttony. The overall feeling is that it's just a day that stands in the way of “black Friday” and ultimately Christmas. However, I really have a quite different take on the whole idea of being thankful and showing gratitude. I am really thinking that Jesus was working very hard to show us how gratitude is this amazing tool that prepares us to receive God's goodness...or blessing. It lays the foundation for our hearts and minds to receive this promised abundance that is already ours. When we give thanks in advance this, in effect, readies us to be able to receive what we desire, a desire that is already fulfilled in the invisible realm. In Psalm 37:4 it says,

 “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” 

It enables within us a faith sufficient enough to make the seemingly impossible things possible. To live in the presence of that fact is to live a life filled with gratitude for even the simplest and seemingly inconsequential things. Dr. Michael E. McCullough, from the University of Miami, says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.” Don't kid yourself...we really want to matter...we want to be significant. Of course, certainly we all know and have been taught that gratitude is very important. It is the universal, across the world, custom of civilized and mannered people to say a simple and basic “thank you” after receiving something. Most of us are grateful when we are blessed in some manner, but that gratitude continues to be a response to getting something. It is still the effect...the afterthought. We wait until we think there is something to be grateful for before expressing our gratitude. In that waiting we are missing some tremendous opportunities to build our faith and that of others by living in a state of gratitude year round. We really need to abandon the mindset of waiting to receive and then give thanks. The surprising paradox is we are constantly receiving and for that I am most thankful...  

throwing stones...

So, I'm no different than many others of us that have watched, yet another, celebrated public figure blow their life up right in front of our eyes. A highly decorated real life action hero...a previously impeccable warrior... has proven once again that we are all fatally flawed. It really got me thinking about fatal flaws both in the context of flawed things...objects... and in our flawed story we are writing with our lives as well. In presumably a brief moment of blindness and indiscretion the beloved and esteemed soldier and adviser to the president went from heralded military hero to fallen tragic hero. In pure literary terms a classic tragedy is getting ready to be written and played out in full detail on the evening news. In the ancient times of Greek tragedies this “fatal flaw” was called a Hamartia, which very simply defined is a heroes' critical error in judgment that results in his fall from an often times lofty perch. While there is much difference of opinion in the actual meaning of the word I think it is safe to say it is a moral failure...it is sin. We all have these failures but when you are a celebrity and live your life in the mainstream of public awareness it become easy for us to point fingers and endlessly analyze. It really seems like there is an abundance of stones being cast here lately. It is easy for us to join in the fray and heave a stone or two as that is our nature. However, Jesus made it pretty clear what our response should be in John 8:7, when He said, 

  “They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" 

So, ok, then...who's throwing stones...now ? You see,this fatal flaw that brings us all down is also known as missing the mark and that simply defined is sin. It is a moral failure of such a magnitude it cannot help but capture our attention. Our culture has created the term “epic fail” to describe these events in peoples lives that we are so hungry to weigh in on even when we have very few, if any, accurate facts. Many of us us have witnessed so many of these epic failings in recent years we barely pause to think about what has been lost or wrecked or to even pray for those affected. We're too busy at the rockpile picking out the stone that will hurt the most. Why? What is our investment here? I think it is an instinctive reaction based on fear. Fear that it could be us...or that it is us. Even those who live seemingly charmed lives are not immune from being a victim of their own undoing. It really can all change in a second with one bad choice. I think of someone like Lance Armstrong, who many “worshiped” as a hero and how awful they must feel now. The more you feel bullet proof and removed from the failings of others the more shocked and devastated you will feel when it happens to you...and it will. The reason it will is that we are all broken and flawed...tragically...fatally...hopelessly. This flaw has but one purpose and that is to destroy you and everything around you. It is geared to take away every single thing that you own and that is important to you. Again, I refer you to Lance Armstrong...I have lost track of what he has lost. Everything he worked for and everything he believed in and us with him is gone. Clearly, it was the wrong thing as he was being deceived by his fatal flaw and in that process deceived us. Maybe that's what scares us just a little bit...how easily we can be deceived by our own subtle sins. These public examples are a huge lesson for us of what happens when we abandon our moral compass and think we know the way and can journey through life without God. Choosing to live life on our own terms without God or holding God at arms length initiates a series of events over time that culminates in ruin and personal disaster. We will never know the personal thoughts and the decision process that actually went on in someones mind prior to making a decision resulting in monumental consequences. However, I do know this...we have all done it. Whether your sin...your fatal flaw...has made it to the news is immaterial. Put away your smugness...your finger pointing...your gloating...your endless fascination with how others are wrecking their lives...I think it's time for us to drop our stones.