spiritual formation

Peace and Trouble

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After drawing a bow on Hebrews, I felt I needed to see Jesus again so I began reading through John looking especially for stories of healing. Nothing seemed to make an impression quite the way I wanted. I paused before the last supper scene a little disheartened. I’ll look again tomorrow, I thought, knowing all the healing sections lay in previous chapters.

I pulled it out a day or so later and began reading again and noticed some key words I usually pass over* that begged for more attention this time. Peace. Trouble.

Peace I give to you; my peace I leave with you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. John 16:33

Peace be with you! John 20:19

Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. John 20:21

Peace be with you! John 20:26

I loved this modern tapestry from the newly renovated Notre Dame. It depicts the hint of the cross found in the story of Abraham and Isaac. For this post, it illustrates the shadowy way we can see Christ in the circumstances of our trouble.

I felt troubled and was looking for the reassurance of God’s power through Christ’s miracles of healing. Instead I came away with something a bit different. The affirmation that the world is indeed full of trouble. The trouble I feel, its real and its expected by my savior. Healing isn’t always his current plan to bring peace. He is the current plan for peace in my troubled world.

Just Him.

It’s not what I was looking for but it is what I need. To know that Jesus is aware of the trouble in the world is deeply comforting. Nothing I bring to Him is a surprise or overwhelming to Him. I may be overwhelmed but He is not.

To know that the trouble is not really from Him, it is from the world, sets my heart facing the right direction… towards the One who has overcome all the trouble I see.

These passages are in the middle of the abiding section of John so the direction to not let my heart be troubled echoes some strong remaining/abiding themes to me. I need to remove the barriers and relax the constriction in my heart that hinders the flow of His love to me.

Most of the time the barrier is that, whatever it is, it is not going the way I want it to and I try to do it myself. To not let my heart be troubled is to resist the lie that God does not care, that I can control things I cannot, that God is not aware, that He is not powerful.

Curiously the final three repetitions of peace be with you are followed by assurances of Jesus’ physical resurrection when He shows His followers His hands and feet. One repetition is a transferal of a purpose and work to His followers.

He says “peace be with you”…look I am indeed really alive. I conquered death! This is the peace!

The trouble of the world is in the waiting for the peace Jesus to spread as far as it can before the final day.

It’s always surprising to me how soaking in God’s word gives what I need. It’s not always what I was looking for but it is always what I need. I wanted a renewed sense of Jesus’ power to heal and I walked away with Him and with the comfort that the trouble of this world is known to Him.

He did something about it.

And He’s still doing something about it.

*pun alert

Stew v. Destiny

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I make some pretty good food sometimes. Last night I made chili on the stove instead of the instant pot because one of my sons observed that the instant pot prevented the sauce from thickening the way it did on the stove. Despite the Texas summer heat, I fired up the gas burner for an hour and made a killer pot of chili. He was right, it was better on the stove.

I could see how a really hungry guy might trade a lot for a bowl of my chili because I have two teenage sons. They can pack it away when they’re hungry and I love that times haven’t changed.

Thousands of years have passed and not much about humans is very different. Hunger drives us today like it has from the time Esau traded his place in the family line for a bowl of his brother’s stew.

When reading this story yet again, it finally sank in a little deeper what it means that Esau despised his heritage, his birthright, his place as the first son in the line of Abraham. I didn’t really get it much until now what his tradeoff really reflected about his character and beliefs.

Esau was first in line from Isaac, the miraculously late coming child to Abraham and Sarah. That family storyline we know was told and retold. We tell stories in our family about surprising events over the table again and again. How many times did he hear how beautiful his grandma was and how she and Abraham left their ancestral home at the direction of an unseen God to go to a land that God promised them.

All the adventures they had along the way laid out at the family meals over the entirety of Esau’s life. Isaac’s birth to Abram and Sarai when all hope was lost for a male heir. Sarai laughing at the visitors and then holding a baby a year later!

The promise and destiny of this strange nomadic family that would have descendants like stars in the sky and grains of sand. The family that the would bless the world. The familial aspirations to greatness laid out before the next in line…Esau. Esau was the one that carried the responsibility to continue the story of the future God showed Abraham. He must have known. There’s no way he couldn’t know what was expected of Him.

Then he got hungry and Jacob offered him a trade…give up the right to the lineage to get this bowl of stew. Give up the inheritance due the firstborn materially and also give up the lineage that would bless the world that God promised. Step away from being the one that God worked His plan through. Step away from your family story given by God that you heard from the moment you could remember…for a bowl of stew.

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What must it take to do that? Maybe Esau just didn’t believe it, thought Abraham was crazy and God doesn’t reach down and interact with humans? Maybe Esau just didn’t want the pressure, he wanted to hunt by himself, be left to himself? He didn’t want to lead and didn’t care about material wealth though later he had plenty.

Whatever the reason, we don’t know from the biblical account. We just know he set his entire family story given by God, lived out for a century by faithful parents and grandparents, aside for an immediate and passing physical desire. Missing the bowl of stew wouldn’t kill him.

He didn’t care enough to say no to his desire for food after a long and taxing day of work.

Hebrews, the book of the Bible that brought me face to face with this story in a deeper way, is all about perseverance and endurance. It’s all about saying no to the immediate desire for comfort and compromised peace to live for the bigger story God is working out right now.

I notice my tendency to despise what God has for me when I dream about retiring. That desire to not have the burden of leadership, the desire really to live for myself creeps up and I think that would be so nice. But it’s an escape from walking by faith in the path laid out for me. It’s a manifestation of my inward belief God isn’t giving me the life of peace I want, peace for myself that isn’t true peace because it’s selfish. It’s just cutting myself off from God.

I’ll say there is nothing wrong with retiring, with laying aside your job. I’m talking about the desire to live just for myself. So many retire from their day job to live for Christ with more hours of their day and energy. That is perseverance and endurance.

I’m talking about the desire I can have at times to bow out of the race because it’s hard. So I get Esau and I also get why it’s so tragic. He never really embraced God’s plan for his family and God’s plan for him so he gave it up in a moment of pressure.

He despised it. So today I reflect a little on that tendency in me to give in when the pressure is great and sell out for a bowl of metaphorical chili. I’m not better than Esau, we all have the temptation.

The answer? Look to Jesus the pioneer and champion of my faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured excruciating pain and shame to win the prize…us with Him. And He understands our pain and invites the needy to come to Him for grace and mercy.

It is compelling and it is enough for today.

Ode to Rich

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Over the past month I’ve taken a dive back into the 90’s with Rich Mullins. Today someone posted about his words from a song that still mean a lot in grief. I’m not the only one resonating with Rich it seems.

It got me thinking, what makes some words sink deeper, hit harder, ring more true?

Rich died relatively young, a car accident. I listened to his song about how he wanted to go out like Elijah and in a way he did. At least it was sudden. I hope he got to see the chariot coming for him on that lonely road. I bet he did. It’s eery to listen to him sing the song not knowing how his life would end.

His songs are the ultimate American road trip songs. We call road trips windshield therapy and Rich is often our therapist as we speed along past the expanses stretching before us. Like a modern psalmist which I guess he is, he brings God to light in nature.

a current photo from a road trip of my feet where I wasn’t listening to Rich but you get the idea…nature

I listened to Rich on the 20 minute commute taking our kids to and from their last school overseas. During that time, we faced the decision to leave the other side of the world for the home we used to have that wasn’t really home anymore. He expressed the truth I needed to hear at that time in his song of the same name, The Other Side of the World. It still brings tears. It is still true.

I walked and thought and the it came to me that my favorite authors and artists seem to be the ones that clearly have been with Jesus. They’ve sat with Him in joy, sorrow, confusion, pain, and truth and came away changed. They don’t seem to have the answers, the pithy sayings. They express much deeper the reality of the present against the reality of the eternal. I walk away at peace with God even if there are no clear resolutions to current aches and struggles I face in this day.

Because whatever I want to be in this life, I most of all want to be one who has the scent of being with Jesus. And I feel most at home with others who seem to get that too.

So, if you’re looking for a throwback 90’s experience or just need someone to express something true through music, take a look at our friend Rich. He sat with Jesus really well in this life.

Wrestling with Rest

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Sabbatical started a month ago and to be honest it was a rough start. My husband went down day one with a shoulder strain that took a few weeks to work out. Thankfully it wasn’t worse but we didn’t know the first week if he was headed for a much more intense recovery process or not.

My first wrestling match was with entitlement to this season of rest. Is my time really my own…ever? Or must it always be surrendered to God?

Going from pretty full, active, and social days to longer stretches of time without set plans takes some adjustment. I found myself mentally searching for helpful things to be and do for people more to chase away insecurity than really serving the Lord.

Before long I faced another wrestling match with identity. How much does my vocation define my identity? Well, more than I want and more than I thought.

When I read about Sabbath rest in the Bible, the activities seem to revolve around worship, community, and cessation of activities related to providing for ourselves in some way. It was a time to trust that God provides now and in the future. Sabbath involved lots of fun things like corporate worship and eating good food ideally prepared ahead of time so that no one was really working hard on it on the day of rest. Sabbath was for everyone, men and women, moms and dads, sons and daughters, grandparents, and also those who served.

Rest and sabbath in the Bible is really fascinating. Let’s just say, there was a lot of prescribed rest and partying happening! It wasn’t just priests or pastors or educators that took Sabbatical. Everyone was entitled, actually commanded to take sabbatical every 7th year. Every 49th year Sabbath flowed into the 50th Year of Jubilee in Israel which was also a sabbatical rest.

Wildflowers sprouting all by themselves on my daily walk

Every 7th year, the people of Israel were to give the land a whole year of rest. Every 50th year was an extra year of rest for the land and a year of wiping the debt slate clean, zeroing out any land transfers or debts people made during years of trouble. Each clan got their land back from whoever they had sold (rented really) their land to if they came under hard times. These years were also years when no planting took place.

Two years in a row there was no planting, just eating what grew on its own, trusting that God would bring something up. Trusting that the previous years plants shed some seeds into the Land and God would make them grow. God also promised on year 6 or 48 to provide such abundant crops to provide for the next year or years of sabbath rest.

Trust in God’s provision, then, began the year before the sabbath year. Would he provide double or triple like promised? I imagine I’d be pretty anxiously watching plants grow that 6th year.

The sad reality is that the people, as far as I can tell, never really trusted God enough individually or corporately to take God at His promise and rest themselves or the land. Their failure to Sabbath once a week, one year every 7th year revealed their heart’s true posture towards God. And I sense in myself the testing that comes with resting too. I am pretty sure I’d go with the crowd too.

The battles with entitlement as if I earned rest rather than receive it as a free gift. The battles with identity as if I define my worth through what I accomplish rather than receive my identity and worth as another gift from God.

Then another battle with the posture of my soul during sabbath. So much of sabbath from what I can tell was about indulgence in God and His gifts of community and creation. There’s no way to repay Him by trying in futility to devote every moment to something directly “godly” like reading my Bible or praying. I am realizing that is kind of the point of sabbath too. To receive and rest and contemplate that I cannot and am not required to do anything to earn my way into God’s good favor outside of being with Him.

Noticing God’s creation with photo credits to my oldest son.

I’m sure my thoughts are not completely formed on sabbath and may never reach completion. Sabbath rest never ended for God’s people no matter how old they got. They never reached a place where God felt they didn’t need it. I imagine it was always startling each 7th day, 49th year, 50th year…to contemplate our very real relationship with our Creator God.

When It Hits Different

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I sit here reading a great book, The Pastor by Eugene Peterson, thinking about posting an artsy shot on Insta recommending it to all who for some reason follow me. I got to wondering, though, if my younger friends would get this book the way I get it now at a different age and time in my life?

Would this book hit me at 25 like it does at 47? I don’t really know… I strongly suspect not.

I remember reading about a missionary in my early 20’s and felt so much internal conflict. It was the first time I’d walked away from a biography of someone so devoted to the Lord but who left me with some serious problems. I wasn’t sure I liked parts of her very much. In my 20’s I didn’t know what to do with that reality.

How could someone live for God so devotedly and not be completely likable? Well, now I grasp it a little more, ahem, personally.

As time passed and I contemplated that biography, it reflected back my own soul in all its light and shadows. Grace began shining through because I am that person, not totally likable, but completely loved by God…it’s ok to not be perfect. And God is not thwarted.

Another time I took a book on God’s love to read on a summer trip. I can’t remember all the details but it struck me deeply. I passed it on to a college student on the trip and it was meh for them. I wonder if reading it now after being pummeled by life if it would hit differently.

And it’s not just spiritually attuned books. Pride and Prejudice, when you identify with Elizabeth, reads differently than Pride and Prejudice when you identify with the mother in the story. Warnings abound!

So Eugene and I over the years are becoming well acquainted. Personally I’m not a huge fan of The Message translation when I read except that I love the purpose of why it was formed. My affinity for Eugene comes through more in his whole-hearted expression of what it means to walk with Jesus in our time, culture, and place with the people God’s put around us.

He works against my… American-ness I guess. That tendency to be productive or achieving in a way that silences the Spirit. Eugene points it out and beckons me to be with God and with others. To just be the child of God in the time I live. To be cautious of being lured by the business of spirituality, the fallacy of thinking I can fix anyone, the arrogant focus on achievement and accumulation that can run me off the road towards what I truly desire.

I still recommend The Pastor, but if it doesn’t hit you right now and you’re on the young side, put it back on the bookshelf to gather dust.

Then, read it again in 20 years and see if it hits different.

Puzzling Pieces

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Some people begin puzzles in the middle but that is wrong. True puzzlers know you begin with the edge pieces. My teammate’s 6 year old daughter believes that is baloney and starts with the middle….

Children are so funny.

My husband gave his mom a puzzle last year for her 80th birthday. One thousand pieces, pretty picture, and a good brand of puzzle. What a nice gift, right?

She called a couple months later and expressed her deep frustration with the puzzle. The wording was hard to read and fuzzy. It’s a world map but an old one so many names are different now. She was on the final push to be done and was very ready to finish. When she completed it, she took a photo, printed it and sent it along with the puzzle and a note, “good luck!!!”

The note contained strong tones of sarcasm.

I began the puzzle last Sunday and I empathize with her frustration! Not only is all she said true but more! The map is in two hemispheres so there are quite a few places it says Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic! Not only that but many pieces have fragments of the words “sea” and “ocean” on a nice, light blue background.

It’s a nightmare, really.

But puzzling this week got me thinking about most all conundrums in life and the life lessons it reveals along the way.

Read the following with an understanding that I am feeling a bit, well, funny.

Puzzling Pieces

With box set prominently on the table, the first thing one must do is flip all the pieces over, picture side up of course.

Let me take a moment and add another terrible thing about this puzzle is that the picture on the box is fuzzy! No one side of the box has the puzzle pictured in its entirety or even very clearly!

And isn’t life just like that, we do not know what it will exactly look like but following even a hazy example takes us far further than going it on our own.

The next step is finding all the edge pieces. Contrary to some opinions, this is the correct way to build a puzzle. Finding all the outside pieces is like defining the edges of the problem, figuring out where the boundaries lie. A problem undefined will remain unsolved. A life with no purpose will not be lived to the full.

After finding the edges, stand back and celebrate this wonderful achievement. Perhaps bring a family member or 5 to admire your work. Celebration is crucial in life. Stepping back and seeing all you have accomplished from time to time prevents us from becoming discouraged. It can also set us back on track if our life is stalled out.

Now that the edges are finished and appropriately admired, then move on to a portion that is distinctive. This will aid in finding useful pieces in a pile of 1000 unorganized fragments, much like reaching for easy to agree upon commonalities to a perplexing problem. Maybe this pertains to life direction. If you find that you clearly enjoy math, double down on math, my sister!

But, by all means, don’t start trying to put together the ocean at this point. I tried, and it was hard. Like with any problem, working in the nebulous blue-ish areas too early is only going to increase confusion and make one want to launch all the hard work across the room. It takes faith to know that as you put things together, even the hardest problems may become easier to piece together.

Questions like “who will I marry?” or “how will I face the troubles that life will throw at me?” come together along the way of living the life we have in the present tense. When it’s time to tackle the ocean, we must trust we will have what we need.

Instead of tackling the depths of the ocean prematurely, look for a thread of commonality, like the equator! I pieced the equator together next and spent a happy hour finding barb-wire type lines. My frustration and despair dissipated.

Like any plumb line, or equator, truth grounds us and helps us lay the foundation for further growth.

But then I faced a frustration, I had all these random ocean pieces with fragments of ocean words in the places where oceans would one day be! Alas, the ocean was still a swirling, chaotic mass of intimidation. So, I boldly lifted all the ocean pieces and put them back in gen pop.

Sniff, sniff.

Sometimes, solving a conundrum means you must backtrack, abandoning one effort and knowing you must redo work in the future that ended up failing the first time. Refer to my earlier word about how the depths of the oceans will begin to take care of themselves as we piece other things together.

After abandoning the depths of the ocean, we began working on continents. We! My oldest son now joined my efforts! He is a great puzzler with just the right amount of dedicated focus to really get stuff done. With his help we really got going.

I must mention I also received wonderful help from other members of my family from the beginning, when their help waned, my son was a great boon to my efforts and mood.

Which is another life lesson that can be gained in puzzling, combining forces has many benefits beyond just finishing faster. We enjoyed celebrating each other’s victories and praising the double tap that must accompany a piece well placed. Going through life or solving complex problems is not done best on one’s own, it is too lonely and discouraging.

Though there is pride to be had in completing a difficult puzzle on one’s own all the way to the last double tap, it is far more enjoyable to share in the experience together.

The time is now ticking, the puzzle must be complete by Tuesday at 6pm when my table needs to seat people instead of cardboard. We are close and we will succeed.

Then we will celebrate and feel the satisfaction of our achievement together…the last double tap must always be in the company of ones mates…

…and then we will sweep it all into the box again.

And so it is that life has a strong thread of futility. Why do a puzzle at all? Why live? Why try? If we’re just going to sweep it back into the box?

The thought that comes to mind is that when we puzzle we push the boundaries of our own creation, our identity, all the beautiful that is designed into us…just like when we put ourselves out there to live the life God intended for us.

It’s worth it and not just because of the here and now, but because what we do here echoes in eternity as well.

Who knew that puzzles could illicit such grand, eternal thoughts?!

What I’m reading now…

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You don’t really know me if you don’t know I love to read.

My nightstand is stacked with both fiction and non-fiction books along with a couple Bibles. I read each night before I go to sleep. Fiction, memoir, or biography occupy my bedtime reads. In the morning, it’s the Bible before phone. I don’t always succeed, but there’s a clear link to peace, joy, and a rested soul when I do. Right now I’m reading the New International Version of the Bible.

This post is for those who have asked me for some book recommendations recently. To see some of my other reads, I invite you to reference this post or this page. Speaking of which, I probably need to look at it soon and see if there are any new additions!

For now, I’ll let you in on what I’ve read recently, or am currently reading, along with a few thoughts…

Forgive by Tim Keller

Recommending a book before you’re finished with it is risky but I feel safe with this one. In our current cultural landscape, this book highlights why Christian forgiveness continues to shock every epoch of history. It is, in my opinion, a must read.

For one who doesn’t follow Jesus, it will explain what Christian forgiveness is, why it is central to the faith, and how it has influenced the world whether or not the link is known to those affected.

For the Christ follower, digging deeper into this central topic will strengthen your faith and help engage the world around you with greater humility and love while not leaving justice as some vague, confusing specter in the corner.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

I read this a good year ago and am about to begin it again in preparation for my book club discussion. What an entertaining read that captures the realities of living as a woman in a man’s world in the 50’s. What sticks with me most about the story is the way the main character elevated the vision of other women to greater purpose in the midst of what can be mundane tasks. Read this before watching the miniseries because that’s just the morally correct way with all good books!

The Maid by Nita Prose

This is a pretty twisty murder mystery told from the perspective of a maid who has a rather limited ability to read people. I really enjoyed engaging the story from her perspective and the way I, as a reader, knew more than the narrator. It did provoke quite a bit of discussion in book club which elevated it to a much chewier bit of fiction than I anticipated!

I recently read the second in the series and it was enjoyable but The Maid was superior.

Trust by Herman Diaz

Here’s another book I am currently reading but still recommending! I bought it at Target and then realized it is a Pulitzer Prize winner. I felt quite elevated to be reading a Pulitzer Prize winning book.

Finance is a subject that is a little fascinating and also obscure to me. The world of markets and finance, booms and crashes, market manipulation and economic depression is at the center of this story. This story has three sections following two fictional financial wizards of the early to mid- 1900’s. The first story is that of an almost heartless financial wunderkind. The second is the self-defense of a second financially successful man told almost as a draft. The third section, where I am currently, is the story of an employee of one of them who comes from a family highly critical of free market economies.

The characters in the book are wrestling in different degrees with the morality of Wall Street finance. How do some know how to maneuver and manipulate and profit? Is it moral? What does one do when one amasses wealth beyond anything imaginable? Is it ok to be skilled at playing the market purely for personal gain?

I’m eager to see how the story progresses and what the implications are for our time.

What are you reading these days? I’m always looking for recommendations!

On the night He was betrayed

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Routine and habit can make me insensitive, lacking in ability to feel or notice. They also make it possible to fill up otherwise wasted moments of my day with meaning and the chance to receive.

  • La Jolla, California July 2023

I don’t know why it stuck out to me so particularly on a Sunday morning a few months ago, “on the night He was betrayed…”, as our church family practiced communion. It is a routine, the first Sunday of the month. A habit, if you believe, you are welcome to participate in this strange, millennia old sacrament begun by Jesus Christ. Your soul can be connected as you physically partake…or it can be disconnected, insensate, dull.

That morning, after decades of ritual and habit, the words hit different, as the youth say these days. On the night He was betrayed. Maybe it is because I am noticing afresh my lack of love at times. Sure I’ve grown over many years in being loved and being a conduit of love. But it is still there, the lack of love.

It is no small comfort that what Jesus’ follower John honed in on as he grew older was love. Love being at the center of all. And not the weak, self-serving, conditional, self-indulgent love of today but the true love of Jesus that sacrifices without thought of what can be paid back or received by Himself.

So maybe that’s why on the night He was betrayed is stuck in my mind and soul these days. Because on the night Jesus gave Himself on our behalf, His whole physical and spiritual self, He was betrayed. Not only that, He knew His followers were going to betray Him. This isn’t an after the fact realization He had–that He would give Himself and then find out His followers failed Him. He knew before and as He sacrificed Himself that it would be a lonely, thankless, necessary, and willing task to give up His life for unworthy people like Peter, John, me…and you.

The whole subject of communion and its meaning is one that fills entire books and shelves and rooms, I’m sure. For me, right now, it is enough to reflect on one aspect of His communion with us, His followers.

That He gave Himself willingly, in love, even as those closest to Him, who saw in person the universe altering gift, betrayed Him.

I often wonder who I would embody in the times Jesus walked the earth. Would I be a moralist Pharisee offended as Jesus blocked my desires to earn my way? Would I be the crowd that was just there for the easy food, after all I love giveaways? Would I be the woman forgiven who walks away completely changed?

It’s worth pondering as I seek to know Jesus and myself more deeply that I may be like Him because the tendency is to think we’d be faithful. We would recognize His deity if He walked the earth in front of us. We would rise above all that moralism and materialism that kept people from Jesus. But would we?

Probably not, because Jesus was betrayed by most everyone on the night He was to give us His greatest gift. How could I think I’d be different?

I would betray, have betrayed, will continue to betray Him in my selfishness and lack of love, but my hope is also in this truth. Because on the night He was betrayed, He still gave Himself.

And the hope is deeper and the love deeper as I realize this truth more deeply.

Scorching Heat

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Days and days with no rain. The grass crunches under our feet and the heat keeps us shut inside until the sun slides towards the horizon. Drought sucks the ponds lower and lower with each passing day as we wait. Wait for rain or cooler temperatures or cloud cover to provide relief from the relentless heat.

And it’s all we can talk about here these days…how hot it is, whether the power grid will break, when it will be over, comparing this summer to the scorcher that was 2011 and sparked unprecedented wild fires.

As much as I don’t want my mood to be governed by the weather, I’m fighting to cultivate contentment in this environment. Not ambivalence or dissociation …but true contentment. The attitude that acknowledges the reality of the struggle while also choosing to receive what I need from God to face it without despair or anxious striving.

The Guadalupe, a serene reminder of cool refreshment.

The physical heat is the most obvious and innocuous part of life to practice cultivating contentment. A baby step, a most basic exercise, in learning to trust God. That is where I find myself learning the lessons afresh. The lesson that ripples out into all the other areas as well.

Can I entrust more than my physical comfort to God? Can I place in His hands the unknown future? The worries that wake me up at night? Will He be enough for my kids in the avenues of life they must trod? What will it take for me to lay down my anxious striving to solve problems on my own, without God?

And the heat continues, reminding me day by day to take this life day by day, entrusting myself and others to God. The crisp, brown grass and scorching seatbelts a tangible clue to my desperate need for the spring of living water.

Today, what is reminding you of your need to rely on God?

Resonance

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My son plays cello. No matter that we owned two violas, he wanted to play cello. Over the summer he took lessons because I wanted him to have something to do while his older siblings scampered around to jobs, hiking trips, and places with friends in cars.

Hearing him practice is a delight.

Once, his teacher moved one lesson online and a weird thing happened. While he was playing a scale, hitting the notes just right, the teacher’s cello all the way across town began picking up the sound waves and resonating a note. Through air, wires, chips, internet lines, then back through chips and wires and air that note traveled and replicate itself in the other cello.

When you think about it, that’s pretty incredible. Sound and music is one of the ways its hard for me to get out from under believing in the existence of God.

That resonance is what got me. One note moved through the air from one object and caused movement in another object.

Today I read about Peter at the last supper and then at that fateful campfire where he denied his friend, his teacher, the One he believed was the savior of his people.

It struck me that Peter didn’t know what was in himself. He was so sure that he would be loyal, that he would never… That all others might but not him.

And then he did the thing.

And Jesus turned and looked directly at Peter in that moment. When Peter met His gaze, he remembered what Jesus said would happen, what Peter so confidently denied could ever happen.

We don’t know anything about that look Jesus gave Peter. In my humanity I see raised eyebrows with I-told-you-so vibes because that’s how it works with me. Those moments when something comes true that I warned a kid about it takes everything in me not to raise my brows and waft off a distinct vibe even while I hold back the actual words.

What’s even more interesting is the interchange a few hours before. Jesus says to Peter three astounding things:

  1. Satan asked to mess with all of the disciples to see what will shake out
  2. I (Jesus) personally prayed for Peter that your faith would not fail
  3. I predict you’ll come back

I mean, tons of questions here for me. Did all the disciples get sifted or just Peter? I assume Jesus said ok? Jesus prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail yet Peter did fail.

And! Jesus seems to know that Peter will fail or why else would Jesus tell Peter that “when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers”?

That kind of blows my circuits when I really think about it. Did one of Jesus’ prayers not get answered with a yes? Of course we know that in the end Peter did betray Jesus but he also turned back and strengthened others.

Did Peter’s response right after this affect what happened? Did Peter’s following confident assertion that he was ready to go with Jesus to prison and death reveal that Peter needed to know more about himself without which he would not be ready to strengthen others?

There’s so much we don’t know but so much to know as well.

For me, I hate that so much of ministering to people involves living out of weakness, failure and suffering. Why does it have to be this way? Why is it that to follow Him, I must see and embrace those aspects of me that feel like nothing but failure?

I believe it relates to resonance. That phenomenon where some chord strikes the chord of another.

Could Peter ever lead the way Jesus displayed to him without a colossal failure followed by repentance and then restoration?

I don’t think so. Peter’s failure led him to an experience of restoration that transformed him into the humble servant Christ taught him to be.

And I don’t believe I or anyone can connect with the soul of another without the experience of being fully known in that moment of failure and then fully accepted and forgiven there too.

Those who are forgiven much love much, right?

And so it is that embracing our weakness is the striking chord that resonates in the souls of others who also seek the truth.