On the Way to Wonder

^“23 But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions,

 and since I have been longing for many years to visit you,”

(Romans 15:23)

         We continue on in Romans.  I opened to the next verse after a cup of coffee with my son who is visiting after the death of his father and we had been chatting about the mysteriousness of life and faith.  My husband had often said, “Faith can be seen as mystery or management.”  He always opted for mystery and the unseen hand of God in his life.  C.S. Lewis in his last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, had ended with the four children holding hands and flying “higher up and higher in” as a way to talk about life after death.  I like that and it resonated with Romans 15:23, “But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions…”

         Not all deaths resonate with this verse, perhaps, but watching my husband decline inch by inch and be limited to a wheelchair that his frame was not comfortable in and his body could not communicate with my reality, I wonder if there was not a sense that “there is no more place for me to work in these regions,” “higher up and higher in” to the mysterious of our faith.

         Death is not the only barrier that presents this reality.  All transitions embrace the mystery of the unknown future that is in God’s hands and a farewell to the known past – starting school or college, marriage, child birth, a new job or a move to a new location.  Paul was looking forward to his next adventure.  Perhaps today you are facing a transition.  It might only be the transition from yesterday to today and the realization of needing to finish or tie up loose ends from yesterday or tackle a new task for today but I find it comforting to consider life an adventure with embracing the mysteriousness of our God and not a managing the details of our life.  I pray you have great blessing as you embrace you situation knowing God is partnering with you.  Blessings.

         I woke this morning in tears and feeling very weak in the face of the future without my husband who is now deceased.  My son who is visiting grieved with me and went to his playlist and played this Christmas song that Amy Grant sang beautifully and which is sung in the movie “Nativity” by Mary enroute to Bethlehem.  She is pondering the birth of her baby and all the uncertainty of what would be.  I face the unknown future as a widow.  I do not know your challenge but the words after the first verse are my prayer today.  I pray it blesses you too.

•          I have traveled many moonless nights
  
  I am waiting in a silent prayer,  I am frightened by the load I bear,  In a world as cold as stone,   Must I walk this path alone?
  Be with me now,  Be with me now.
  
  Breath of heaven,  Hold me together,  Be forever near me
  Breath of heaven,  Breath of heaven,
• Lighten my darkness,  Pour over me your holiness
  For you are holy,  Breath of heaven.
  
  Do you wonder as you watch my face,  If a wiser one should have had my place,  But I offer all I am,  For the mercy of your plan,  Help me be strong
  Help me be,  Help me.
  
  Breath of heaven,  Hold me together,  Be forever near me
  Breath of heaven,  Breath of heaven,  Lighten my darkness
  Pour over me your holiness,  For you are holy.
  
  Breath of heaven,  Hold me together,  Be forever near me
  Breath of heaven,  Breath of heaven
  Lighten my darkness,  Pour over me your holiness,  For you are holy
  Breath of heaven,  Breath of heaven.
• 
  Breath of heavenWriter/s: Amy Lee Grant, Chris Eaton
  Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Capitol CMG Publishing, Royalty Network
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

“Precious Lord, Take My Hand”

Precious Lord, Take My Hand Lyrics

Credit: YouTube

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home       

         This song came to my heart today.  It was written in 1932 by Thomas A. Dorsey after the death of his wife and child in childbirth.  It is based on a poem she wrote.  It has been sung by famous singers like Mahlai Jackson and was a favorite hymn of Martin Luther King, Jr.  When faced with death we understand weakness, exhaustion, a storm of emotions and the precious comfort of our faith.  You may not be in crisis right now but please listen and enjoy.

¹³ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

         After all of Paul’s heavy thinking about salvation, faith and justification for all people in his book to the Romans, here in chapter 15 he seems to be overflowing with praise and prayer.  In verse 5 he prayed for endurance and encouragement for the Roman church.  Today in verse 15 he is praying for joy and peace that comes with believing.

          As I reflected on the passing of my husband yesterday, I realized that faith in the face of death is quite a different deal than so many ways in which I have thought about faith before.  I can tell a friend that I believe God will work things out for good and the other often responds with a tale of God’s faithfulness of how God helped that person through tough times.  I am encouraged.  Facing death though we face an unknown that noone has really seen the other side of. Christ is the only one who has come back from the dead to tell us what it is like.  He did not talk about joyful reunions with friends or family that went before.  He did not tell us about a joyful reunion with his Father.  We imagine what death might be like for our loved one but faith in the unknown and unseen takes on new dementions.

         Paul’s prayer for joy and peace in believing took on new meaning.  There is joy knowing that wheelchairs and crumpled bodies are no longer.  My husband is standing straight and able to run.  His body is working even as Jesus’ body was working after the resurrection.  I feel a new kind of peace.

         Blessings as you ponder the reality of resurrection.  May you experience joy and peace in believing.

         Translated from Swahili to English, “leo ni leo” means roughly, “Today is THE day,” the day of anticipation, the day when it is really going to happen whatever the it is, a momentous day.  Yesterday I received a phone call that oxygen was being delivered to my husband’s bedside and I knew he had taken a decline.  I quickly went over.  He had covid and so I had not been able to visit all week.  I was expecting a decline.   Again he was in bed, unresponsive, fighting to breath.  The oxygen made him comfortable and I opened his Bible by his bed.  It was The Message translation.  I read Psalm 23 about walking through the valley of the shadow of death but then turned to Psalm 121, the psalm he called his dating psalm.  Verse 7-8 talks about God guarding his going out (on dates) and coming in.  I read it several times to him.

121 ^1-2 I look up to the mountains;
    does my strength come from mountains?
No, my strength comes from God,
    who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.

^3-4 He won’t let you stumble,
    your Guardian God won’t fall asleep.
Not on your life! Israel’s
    Guardian will never doze or sleep.

^5-6 God’s your Guardian,
    right at your side to protect you—
Shielding you from sunstroke,
    sheltering you from moonstroke.

^7-8 God guards you from every evil,
    he guards your very life.
He guards you when you leave and when you return,
    he guards you now, he guards you always.

         At 4:05 am the phone call came that he had passed from my care into God’s eternal care.  He is no longer in a wheel chair and no longer crumpled over in deformity.  Truly, “Leo ni leo!”  God is guarding him now.

         Last Sunday Jesus confronted the disciples with the question, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  He did not truly understand what that meant but on that mustard seed of faith, Christ promised to build his church.  This week’s text opens with, “From that time on, Jesus began to teach them that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be crucified, die and resurrect.”  We know the history that unfolded but the disciples did not.  The hymn known as “The Summons” or “Will You Come and Follow Me” was written by the Scottish hymnist John L. Bell in 1987.   It is a traditional Scottish melody that asks thirteen question based on Mark 1:16-20.  The initial four stanzas ask the questions and in the fifth stanza the singer responds.  Peter objects in tomorrow’s text when Jesus suggests that following him will lead to suffering.  Let’s listen to the hymn and identify the questions and ponder what we might respond.

         Paul breaks forth in a prayer for his readers asking God to give them endurance and encouragement in chapter 15 of Romans.  Let us remember his context for this letter.  People in Rome came from various cultures and are developing worship together.  Not unlike today.  Some Romans ate pork and some felt it was forbidden.  Today it might be people of different political parties that each has strong views about politics, coming together to worship.  That feels almost impossible.  Where’s the loyalty and unity?

         We lived in Kenya during the political and social chaos that broke out in 1995 as the country went to a multiparty system.  Many churches split and became war zones with people killing each other.  One church near our home became a refugee camp with people living in the churchyard in tents made from cardboard boxes and laundry hung on the fences surrounding the property.  How can we avoid those extremes?  Paul prays for endurance like God who perseveres with us sinners and he prays for encouragement.  The passage reads like this but I added the more modern Message translation afterwards.

^“5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, ⁶ so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15:5-6, NIV)”

^3-6 That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir—not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus!  (Romans 15:3-6, The Message)”

Sharing opinions when we are on opposite sides is hard.  Perhaps having the goal to be able to improve our ability to hear the other’s opinion without interrupting is a good place to start.  Perhaps thinking of a word of encouragement we could give to someone we disagree with is a place to start also.  I like the Message’s image of us being a choir working together.  We are not all sopranos or basses but we can be in the same choir seeking to sing in harmony and unity.  Lord, help us!!!

         Paul presents the discussion of divisions in the church over things like food and Jewish dietary rules that were quite different from Roman customs.  He used words like “weak” and “strong.”  As an act of love, the stronger person is to not hurt the faith of the weaker by honoring the weaker’s diet.  Of course we all consider ourselves on the right side of the coin and the strong person and so the advice to honor the weaker person in the name of love, has in my experience been cloaked in submission language. “If you love you, you would do it my way!”  My will struggles and my ability to trust God are confronted when disagreements arise and especially if I feel I am being manipulated with the love word.  “It’s complicated!” might be how we respond to this discussion today.

         I took a break and went from writing and went to get a glass of water.  On the windowsill was my calendar with poems for days of the year.  I had not turned the pages since August 2!  I turned to today, August 30, and found this poem that was written when we had great conflict in the American church over slavery – an equally divisive topic.

         John Greenleaf Whittier was “known as The Quaker Poet, The Slave Poet and The Fireside Poet” according to the Internet.  He wrote from the time he was a child until the close of his life in 1892 and was considered one of the most influential writers, poets, for a decade in the fight for the abolition of slavery.  He came from a poor family and could only afford to go to school 12 weeks a year.  Wow.  May I share this poem from over a century ago, written in the midst of that conflict. Bless you as it blessed me.

“If there be some weaker one,

Give me strength to help him on;

If a blinder soul there be,

Let me guide him nearer Thee;

Make my mortal dreams come true

With the work I fain would do;

Clothe with life the weak intent,

Let me be the thing I meant;

Let me find in Thy employ,

Peace that dearer is than joy;

Out of self to love be led,

And to heaven acclimated

Until all things sweet and good

Seem my natural habitude.”

 Whittier.

“…for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)”

            Paul finishes chapter 14 of Romans by talking about the divisive issue of kosher foods.  Today we might see that same dividing point as we form friends with Muslim neighbors.  Some foods are considered a delicacy and others are repulsive when we think of eating them. Some foods are considered forbidden by a belief system.  Paul claims that the big problem is not whether a certain food is not good for our health but it is how we consider the food. 

            When we worked in Africa, the people we worked with found brains and intestines to be a delicacy.  For many Western people these foods are not foods normally served.  Paul does not focus on the right or wrong of eating a food but whether our actions draw people to God or chase them away from faith.  Sin is not about a set of rules but our relationship to God and others.  Do our actions grow or destroy relationship?.

            In my generation many foods that once were considered “foreign” have become common accepted and well-liked foods.  For example we might think of “tacos.”  Often we avoid that which is new to us and mistakenly label it as “bad.”  Sit for a minute and jot down how many foreign foods have become common household words.  Thank God for the way our culture has been blessed by the presence of new ideas.  And ask God to help us be discerning between what is different and what is “sin.”