lent, going more than giving.

IN THE ABSENCE OF ME, I meet You more.  Small diminished pockets of my heart hold the glory of eternity in my forfeit – my giving, my dying and disappearing – when the heaps of spoil pulled close around my heart burn away in the heat of Your unturned love.  We meet on hallowed ground You’ve equaled, not of my giving or sacrifice trite and incomplete.  Even beyond a scandalous love, You bid me come to peace that I could never discover on my own.

Lent is just this – giving in response to God’s ultimate compassion.  This season delivers an invitation to all who might come and die within their hearts to all things crowding thought and affections, all owned things honoring and satisfying only the heart.  In simple words, lent is removing important stuff from our heart so that God’s love has more room to grow deep within us.

So it’s subtraction, but also addition.

What will you give up is but a whisper in comparison to, What will you add?

It is imperative to us both as parents that we teach our daughters the importance of why we do the things we do, not merely do these things because we do these things.  Celebrate traditions laced in meaning and those celebrations give way to life development.  Our daughters ask why and we tell them.  This does two things:  it informs our children about the meaning of what we do and it ensures that we know why it is we do what we do.  Just as stories are lifeless until you read them with meaning having immersed yourself into the emotion of the words, not only the form of them, routine behavior is also meaningless until we subscribe to its meaning and embrace it in heart.

A question constantly asked within my heart is, ‘how can I show my children the way?’  The answer that echoes in return is profound – ‘go the way.’

A single word.

I tend to often think in terms of endings, of movies, of stories, of days and so on.  Maybe I’m a realist or just good at closing doors.  Either way, the ending of something always holds an intrigue in my mind.

As a father, gaining sight of far off when my days dim and time as defined certainty swallows youth once emboldened holds all ability to speak directly to the here and now.  Then meets now in future grace.

If I had one word to leave my daughters, only a single word before my end, what would I say? The word would need to be substantive, something they could feed on and smell of home.  Later in life, if they fumbled a bit, frayed by circumstance or ruined by choice, that word would need to take them back to the start.  We all run headlong in the direction of desire chasing fancy and building much about ourselves in careers and identity.  I could only imagine the same draw will pull on their growing hearts in this world.  With this constantly in mind, of my ending and their continuing, the word needs to deceptively clever - I think, inverted and counter-intuitive.  It needs to turn tables when hedged bets and sure things are quickly faltering so as to save them in times of trouble and endings to soon.

What from my life could be hung on one word?  What could I leave them with that would be bigger than our parting, more than our eyes catching each other one last time and the rush of memories flooding?

Do I have anything now?

I have my faith, but it’s twisty and they may get tangled.  They will need their own decision of faith and love of Christ, not mine to be rooted down with.  Of course, there’s grace, but it can be such a big blanket of a word that they may struggle to understand in youth and miss as an adult.  Yes, there’s love, but it’s ethereal in the way we treat it, often maligning it with selfish emotion.

Then I thought of forgiveness.

The one word to leave them with that could lead them into a future now, reset them in a moment grown too thin, re-architect brokenness from a day already spent and define all other words wrought in misunderstanding.  There in the end, one word left to hang all good memories, all teaching, all mistakes, all failings and all experiences on - forgiveness.  And so now in the spying forward around the corner of years to come, I can dig into the earth of their hearts and drop into it a seed that promises to give life always, even beyond my days.  Forgiveness would always properly weigh words like faith, grace and love, and certainly bend their faces upward to God.

little giving king.

To give is to loosen your heart from itself enough to love unmistakably. Forever a war will wage within my chest.  A native land will always be at stake.  Advances will be made and little won battles will convince me that peace is near and the war won, but I will learn that then, too, I must loosen my grip on my own heart and selfish desire.  The war is no less than my heart able to love freely in response to Christ's love allowed to vanquish all selfishly rooted motive smeared ugly by sin and mired in desire.

You see, to give from a place of charity in my heart as a means of merely being charitable and nice is a short-sighted advance in the war of my heart.  The problem is in my every attempt to be good, in every good try to really care for those close to me.  Sooner or later, most often sooner, my grip around my heart will tighten, my love will flatten, my words grow coarser and I will set alone as king of nothing really, just my little demanding heart. If the victory over our selfish hearts lies in love, then we must be givers rather than takers.  Give more than you demand receipt and you will love expertly - but, the caveat to be crossed is giving and loving without measure.  And that can only happen in our hearts, in our families, marriages and varying relationships, when our hearts have been pierced with a Love forever.  In Christ alone do our hearts both die and live, rightfully find end and beautifully are resurrected.

When I became a father, love swelled uncontrollably within the walls of my heart, pushing the limits of possession and responsibility. I felt for someone I didn't yet know but named. Yet quickly, I discovered how selfish my heart truly was.  My schedule was often disrupted for these beautiful little lives that were just so needy and dependent.  For the first time, I felt the regression of love in my selfish frustration as a parent.  And again, I see selfishness in my choosing to limit love in marriage.  It sounds awful, but it's honest.  I married an amazing woman just a handful of months ago, and again, I'm realizing just how selfish I can be.  There's the ebb and flow I alone allow, the back and forth of giving and taking in the form of love and selfishness.  I am one of five in our family and I fight when they want losing a bit more control of how and when life happens. I. Me. I demand for my way, justifying rudeness and trouncing too hard through beautifully blooming love. All in the quest of satisfying me.

Love is patient, love is kind . . . love is Christ.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

In life as we move in and out of conversations brushing shoulders with others regular to our day and in the intimate circle of family and marriage, the act of giving is holy, set apart from the speed of battling with our hearts, our hands clinching for self-satisfaction.  Let us quiet our efforts, gain victory through Christ and only then, love well.

(image: brianbatista.com)

3 Things NOT to Say to Someone Suffering.

Morning would always arrive too early, and in each minute a thousand days were lived. My feet would shuffle along while the world spun by, a regular blur of normality and happiness alien then. Everyone seemed so okay and days just kept going on. People spoke and I smiled and that was all. Suffering isn't something we're akin to talking about. We hide. Often, we suffer silently due to the shock of loss, of something missing, misaligned and broken. The face of suffering looks like divorce, abuse, abandonment, loss of a career, injury and even death. We feel alone. Many drown in the confusion of just why or how this - whatever 'this' is for them - happened to them.

We who watch life pull apart in those moments have all opportunity to outlast suffering in the lives of those we love - not with our words or enlightened ideas, but with our hope. Hope always blooms in the harshest winds and darkest nights. Just as morning too early arrives overcoming night, hope in a new day owned by our faithful Creator usurps suffering.

Here are three things not to say to someone suffering: Time heals all wounds. (Not true; healing belongs who mourn. Matt 5:4) I know how you feel. (This only serves to diminish the reality of the person's suffering.) Be strong. (Lasting strength begins with our need and dependence on our Savior.)

Rather than offering quick words to those suffering, let us offer lasting Hope and suffer well with them.

"Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good." 1 Peter 4:19

In the moment life breaks.

Something wrong will happen.  Count on it.  There will come a time when life will not add up or line up just as it should, or you anticipate it should.  There in the gap of life as it should be and as it actually ends up being, when your feet feel disorientation in what was expected and what is being experienced, something will be amiss.  Maybe you’re like me and faith will recoil in the surprise of life not adding up.  I remember after my first wife unexpectedly died despite prayers and pleas for death to not win out.  Not only did faith fade into my circumstance, but betrayal and anger seeped into place.

Things were not as they should be.  Often times, life lands just in this way and breaks more than our expectation.  We are broken in moments when reality separates from our expectation or hope. I think it is there when life breaks from our expectation and what we wanted, hoped for or thought doesn’t add up with how things end up being that we discover the greatest transaction aside from God’s love for us.  It is the trading of what we want for what actually is.  Healing while hurting transcends all that can ever possibly be wrong for the acceptance of all things always good for the heart belonging to God.

Those who learn to live well don’t learn to dance in the rain, make lemonade or smile through tears, but feel the bruise, wince and swallow the goodness of life that is rather than wander through thoughts of why things went wrong.

Life will break, friend. and so will you.  Things will not always add up and you will be disappointed.  Pain will threaten your security in life.  You may even feel dislodged by the unfair way life moves unconcerned of your needs, your identity or achievement.  Many a good men have lost it all here in their inability to heal while hurting and see beyond the day burning into the next.  There is always another day for the heart belonging to God for it is He who knows them all, and it is He who knows best the way brokenness.

He was despised and rejected by men;
 a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
 he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs
 and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
 smitten by God, and afflicted.
 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; 
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:3-5, ESV

(*image credit: thewrongsideofthepond.com)