sacred space

Today I had the privilege of taking part in the Southeast Regional New Baptist Covenant Gathering at the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The year before I was born, four girls lost their lives one Sunday morning in this church as they prepared to lead worship for Youth Day. The church had long been the center of Birmingham's African-American community and served as a meeting place for civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth, thus making it a target of the KKK's wrath.

When I approached the church this morning, I was momentarily startled when I noticed a phalanx of police officers outside the building. I couldn't help but think about Bull Connor, fire hoses, and police dogs. Then I overheard someone make a comment about the Secret Service, and I realized that the beefed up security was there in anticipation of Former President Jimmy Carter's arrival to deliver our keynote address.

As I worshipped in that sacred space today with both black and white Baptists, I thought about how far the city of Birmingham has come since that tragic day in September 1963. When Kate Campbell sang the song she had written about the incident, "Bear It Away," I recalled a TV interview I saw last fall with the parents of one of the girls who perished in the bombing. I thought about their grief and the magnitude of the loss for the entire congregation. I thought about the courage it must have taken for parents to bring their children back to that building the following summer when the church was able to open its doors for worship once again. For that congregation, worship was an act of faithfulness to God and an act of defiance against the forces of evil. 

Thanks be to God, we have come a great distance in this nation in the past 45 years in regard to racism. So help us God, we still have a great distance to go.

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity!" Psalm 133:1

leading by example

Last night my bedtime reading was the February 2 issue of Sports Illustrated, where I came across two memorable stories. The first was Kelli Anderson's tribute to Kay Yow, the North Carolina State women's basketball coach who passed away last week after a two-decade long battle with breast cancer. This Hall of Fame coach was known for her competitiveness and compassion, and in the wake of her death former players and fellow coaches recounted the lessons Yow taught them both on and off the court. Former player Gillian Goring's words were particularly striking: "You will go through a lot of stuff in life that will try to pull you down, but you raise up and shake it off. She lived by what she always told us, and I will try to do the same. Don't drown in self-pity. Swish your feet a little, then get out."

Selena Roberts' s "Point After" article on professional golfer Notah Begay was also instructive. Begay has become an advocate for impoverished Native Americans. Roberts observed, "Before Obama made personal accountability more hip, Begay understood the math of circumstance." His nonprofit Notah Begay III Foundation is promoting an economic stimulus package that would provide Indian reservations with increased revenue streams and new infrastructure. Begay observed, "I realize I can't change everything for everybody. But whether you're rich or poor, you have 24 hours in a day. That's your resource. As a athlete, you ask yourself, What do you do with it?"

Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Ephesians 5:15-16 seems to sum up these two stories succinctly: "So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!"

snow day

Yesterday was a snow day for my son (no school) and a snow night for both of us (no church). The fact that the dusting of snow had largely disappeared by lunch time didn't matter - our Wednesday routine had been altered by "inclimate weather." And I was glad. Sometimes we all need a break.

As a teenager, I remember going to sleep with a feeling of anticipation when Tom Siler, the "Weather Wizard," forecast an overnight snow. When I woke up in the morning, I resisted the urge to actually look at the window to see if the world had becoming a winter wonderland and instead flipped on the TV to the Ralph Emery Show to watch the Snowbird report. Would Williamson County be one of the highlighted counties on the map? More often than not, I was disappointed. The snow had not come, the schools were not closed, and I had to get up and get going. But when a long-awaited snow day finally arrived - what a feeling of relief! Faced with a day wide open to possibilities, I immediately went back to sleep, because rest was really what I wanted - and needed - most.

I still find myself craving rest. During the past few years, I have tried to become more conscientious about observing the Sabbath for that very reason. I don't do chores on the Sabbath. I don't work on writing assignments. I try to refrain from looking at my email inbox (though that temptation looms heavily). Instead, I take a nap. I spend time with my family. I breathe deeply. Resisting the urge to work on one day a week leaves me better prepared mentally, physically, and spiritually to work on the other six days. 

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

kindergarten shrine

On a narrow slice of a kitchen wall between two doorways is our kindergarten shrine. The items displayed on the wall include: a life-sized outline of Chaney as a kindergartner, a poster he entered in a Wild West PTA competition, the blue ribbon he won for that poster, a Field Day certificate, the little sheet of paper he wore pinned to his shirt during Field Day with the order of his events, and the blue ribbon he earned at Field Day. 

When I affixed these items to the kitchen wall during the 1996-1997 school year, I did not intend for them to still be there during the 2008-2009 school year, but there they are. I love the outline of my boy the best, since I remember helping Mrs. Huggins with that class project. We spread out sheets of butcher paper on the floor, and the students sprawled out and waited patiently for us to trace their outlines. The initial outlines were of the crime scene variety, but then the kindergartners personalized their outlines by gluing on a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth before using crayons to color their hair and clothing. After their works of art were complete, we taped them up on the wall in the hallway. For months to come, the life-sized likenesses of Tiffany, Brittany, Hojeen, Breanna, Miya, Marcus, Demetric, Danyal, D.J., Jessie, Andrew, LaKeyia, Chris, Robert, Latrevia, Chaney, Drew, Amber, Hayley, and Kristin stood guard at the end of the kindergarten hallway at Norman Binkley Elementary School. And for now, paper Chaney will continue to stand guard in my kitchen.

friendship

As I was going through some old files last week, I discovered a couple of spiral notebooks that I used when Chaney was younger to jot down memorable things he said and did. As I flipped through the pages, I laughed out loud when I read an entry from February 1996, when Chaney was a kindergartner. Apparently we had seen a story on the news about co-joined twins, an account that prompted Chaney to say wistfully, "I wish that were me and Nathan."

Nathan and Chaney were born three weeks apart in 1990 and spent countless hours in the church nursery together. The friendship that was launched in the "baby jails" has endured for 18 years, despite the fact that boys have never gone to school together and were not in the same church for a decade. I am grateful that throughout his life, Chaney has been surrounded by extraordinary friends like Nathan who have pushed him to excel academically and - more importantly - encouraged him to grow spiritually. "As iron sharpens iron, so one friend sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).

an inaugural prayer

No one asked me to pray at the inauguration of Barack Obama today, but if given the opportunity, I might have intoned the words of Ralph Mark Gilbert from 1941: "O Thou eternal God, Thou alone knowest what is in store for us. The distant unknown is dismal and dark; but we feel that the God who watches over His own slumbers not nor sleeps; and the Captain who has never lost a battle will see His children through. God speed the day when righteousness, and justice, and freedom shall spread over all mankind, and when bigotry, hatred, prejudice, pride, injustice, greed, and sin shall perish from the earth. Forgive us all our sins. Bless, we pray Thee, those who mourn for the loss of loved ones, and all who are confined upon their sick beds or in prison cells. Bless the President of these United States in this, his crucial hour, and God bless America. In Jesus' name we ask all this, Amen."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Below is the conclusion of "The Ultimate Doom of Evil," a sermon that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered at Central United Methodist Church on March 20, 1964:

"And so when days become dark and nights become dreary and we go through those moment of the chilly winds of adversity blowing all around us and are forced to stand amid the surging water of life's restless sea, gain consolation from the fact that there is a God in this universe who is able to lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace. This is our faith, and this is our hope, and this is what can keep us going in difficult and frustrating days. 'Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither like the green herb.' 'Trust in the Lord and do good, and He will give thee the desires of thine heart.' And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before our Father's throne, to him be power and authority, majesty and dominion now, henceforth and forevermore, world without end. Amen."

deliver me

Last night at the opening time of worship for our Student Ministry's DNow Weekend, my friend Sara Beth sang the song "Lord, Deliver Me From Me." This convicting song, which Sara Beth wrote, is based on one of Mother Teresa's prayers. Here's the text of the original prayer:

Deliver me, O Jesus,

From the desire of being loved,

From the desire of being extolled,

From the desire of being honored,

From the desire of being praised,

From the desire of being preferred,

From the desire of being consulted,

From the desire of being approved,

From the desire of being popular,

From the fear of being humiliated,

From the fear of being despised,

From the fear of suffering rebukes,

From the fear of being calumniated,

From the fear of being forgotten,

From the fear of being wronged,

From the fear of being ridiculed,

From the fear of being suspected. 

Amen.

faith and politics

In a blog post on Tuesday titled MLK and the Mountain Moving Business, Jim Wallis wrote, "Faith is believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change." 

We live in a society that places a premium on evidence - hence the popularity of shows like CSI. Face the facts, we say. Get real. You can't deny the evidence. But sometimes, God calls us to do just that. Sometimes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, God tells us to wait for a change that seems unimaginable. In response, we cry out to God, just as the apostles did, "Increase our faith" (Luke 17:5).

Believe and watch. Anticipate God's action. "For nothing is impossible with God" (Luke 1:37).

waiting

I've been getting a double dose of Moses lately at church, since my pastor is preaching a sermon series from Exodus on Sunday mornings and our interim student minister is teaching about Moses on Wednesday nights. While reading through the text notes in Exodus in my favorite NIV Study Bible, I was reminded that 40 years passed between the time that Moses fled to the wilderness of Midian after killing the Egyptian and the transformative moment when the Lord spoke to Moses as he inspected the burning bush. Moses was 40 when he fled Egypt and 80 when he returned to carry out his God-given mission to deliver the Hebrew people from bondage. The four decades Moses spent herding stubborn sheep in the wilderness was good practice for the 40 years he would spend shepherding stubborn people in the wilderness. 

As Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sagely observed, the waiting is the hardest part. But I am reminded that times of waiting are not inactive times - rather, they are periods when God is at work in our lives preparing us for the future.

"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope" (Psalm 130:5).

reaping

Because I am a freelance minister (my self-appointed title), I don't tend to get a lot of feedback about what I'm doing, and at times I have felt like I don't have much to show for the time and energy I have expended through the years. I don't really feel discouraged - I just wonder what God has been doing through my life, particularly in my post-seminary days. Will there be lasting fruit? 

But God has been gracious to me in recent days and has given me a few glimpses into the fruit of my labor. In the process of reorganizing my files, I realized just how many Bible studies, commentaries, devotions, and articles I have written in recent years. In particular, I noted the volume of material I had produced exclusively for my church's Student Ministry. At Sunday School and in the Monday afternoon Bible studies that I lead in my home, I have noticed that several seniors still have devotions that I had written for various retreats and camps squirreled away in their Bibles. As we study God's Word together in my home and at church, students ask questions that demonstrate my efforts haven't been in vain: Wasn't this one of our memory verses at camp? Didn't we have a devotion about this passage on the Labor Day Retreat? We've studied this before, haven't we? Remember when I asked you about this passage and you said . . .

"Persevere in the humility of untitled ministry," Dr. Molly Marshall advised. And so I press on.

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9).

Three Cups of Tea

If you haven't read Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time, I urge you to put it on your reading list for 2009. The book, first released in 2006, recounts the circumstances that led climber Greg Mortenson, after a failed attempt to summit K2, to promise the tribal leader of the isolated Pakistani village of Korphe that he would return one day to build a school to educate the impoverished village's children. The climber made good on his promise, and in subsequent years the Central Asian Institute, under Mortenson's leadership, has established 78 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a special emphasis on educating girls. 

David Oliver Relin, the reporter who co-wrote Three Cups of Tea with Mortenson, penned these words in the book's introduction: "So this is a confession: Rather than simply reporting on his progress, I want to see Greg Mortenson succeed. I wish him success because he is fighting the war on terror the way I think it should be conducted. Slamming over the so-called Karakoram 'Highway' in his old Land Cruiser, taking great personal risks to seed the region that gave birth to the Taliban with schools, Mortenson goes to war with the root causes of terror every time he offers a student a chance to receive a balanced education, rather than attend an extremist madrassa."

 

"Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it," the psalmist advised (Psalm 34:14). Mortenson is pursuing peace. May we go and do likewise.

Read the Bible through in 2009

The first time I read the Bible through during the course of a year was in 1981. On New Year's Eve that year I had a babysitting gig at a neighbor's house, and I distinctly remember spending the waning hours of the year hastily reading the entire book of Revelation so that I could make good on my resolution (I had obviously gotten a little bit behind). I also remember that night well because my youth minister had challenged students to fast and pray on December 31, and I couldn't wait until the clock struck midnight so that I could finally consume the chocolate chip cookies I had spied on my neighbor's kitchen counter.

I know I have read through the Bible at least one other time in the intervening years, but I can't recall the year, so that means it's been far too long since I last undertook the challenge. So in 2009 I have resolved to read the Bible through again, and Paul and Chaney have resolved to do the same. I am using one of the Bible reading plans suggested by BibleYear.com. I chose the plan that allows me to read a passage from both the Old and New Testaments each day, while Chaney has chosen to do a chronological reading this year. 

Are you going to read the Bible through in 2009?