Remember Me

I was just minding my own business, driving down the road in a foreign country, taking in everything I could, not wanting to miss one thing. Not one single thing. Sun high above me, not a cloud in the sky, big smiles from everyone. The smells in the air of fires burning and coffee beans roasting, the sounds of the car straining to manuever through tight spaces, past stalls filled with colorful fruit and candies, crowded with people with places to go, ladies with bright scarves. Things were good. We had almost made it…

And there they were.

Feet peeking out of a box

  .

A box.

I remember thinking it looked like a coffin. That’s how small it was.

Being driven down a cramped alley, I would have missed these feet if I had been behind the wheel. It’s nearly four years ago, but the memory is still fresh and brings quick, hot tears.

My son saw these feet too. We exchanged a knowing glance because there were no words, yet we both knew what we saw.

A man, sleeping in a box by the side of a road, small cans and items found, marking his poverty.

And I sit in my house, at my desk, in front of my laptop with socks on my feet, and I’m crying over my own poverty. How could I forget this image, this person who haunted me for so long? How could I assume a life I couldn’t rationalize or even enjoy anymore after seeing what I had seen? It hadn’t taken long to forget something I thought I never would.

Now I’m reading these words from James, “ Now listen you rich people (this would be me)…your wealth has rotted… your gold and silver have corroded… your have hoarded wealth… the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty… you live in luxury and indulgence… you have fattened yourselves…” This cuts me quickly, but not as quickly as it should. I’m much faster to defend myself with excuses such as, “I don’t live extravagantly. I tithe and even give an offering from time to time. I pray for the oppressed. I know others who have much more.”

And herein lays my poverty: my quick attention to myself, to how good I am for at least noticing the feet lying outside the box.

But I came home. Busied myself with life, with trying to create a new normal, and eventually, I forgot.

It’s funny how that happens, forgetting. Things creep in, my time gets away, I’m convinced I have nothing really to offer. And now my heart is cut wide open, and I find myself thankful for those feet.

There is no hiding what God has shown me. There is no forgetting when a scripture many would say refers to non-believers alone, pierces my heart like this. I can’t ignore the words God is speaking to me, “Remember how it was. Remember my heart. Remember Me. Those are my feet.”

I can’t help it. I want things – things that have no use other than to be placed somewhere and looked at, then forgotten and eventually hauled off to a resale shop. Deep shame setting in now… remembering feet.

You might think, “Sister, you’re being too hard on yourself. God meant for you to enjoy life. You share, you stand up for those less fortunate.”

Do I really?

James’ language stings me and my defenses rise because in reality,

I.Have.No.Defense.

It’s true.

I love my stuff.

I love my comfortable life.

I say all too often, “Sorry for your luck. I’ll pray for you.”

The thing is, James is right, and I don’t want to admit it. The truth is I really want comfortable, easy, normal. I want to look at others and think, “How sad. Thank God I’m not you, ” because at the heart of it, I’m most concerned with me.

This letter of James, he’s writing to them, he’s writing to us, it’s hard to take.

But it should be hard not to do something.

Doesn’t James tell us at the beginning that faith without action is fake?

But what can I do? It seems simple; take care of what I have, share and give, live lean, content, and joyful, remembering to enjoy all that God generously gives to me.

So I start again… and maybe you begin as well.

Find out how you can join the efforts our small part of the global church is taking today and get started, giving, sharing, and practicing the discipline of living content lives. Investigate what is happening around you, take notice of others and take notice of what makes you stop and pricks your heart.

Maybe it’s a stranger’s feet.

Then don’t stop. Go ahead and ask questions, find out more and ACT.

Learn how to give all the stuff away, your time away, your talents away and not just the excess, but many times, your best, and don’t stop until only one thing remains – love. Then you’ll have everything.

Be left with what counts, something moth and rust can’t destroy – what is permanent, what lasts.

The Patience to Endure

Patience seems to be one of the things that is in constant need in day-to-day life, but it is not commonly sought out. I know I have become so attuned to having almost anything at my fingertips almost immediately that I need to be reminded daily, even hourly to be patient. We have restaurants that serve our food, sometimes within seconds. We have computers and phones that can provide information at an amazing rate. We have automobiles and planes that take us great distances in hours when those trips used to take days or even weeks. With so many things available so quickly we often don’t see much need for patience in most of the things we do.  We lose track of patience in the rush of life.

The concept of patience has been looming large over our house for some time. Our 5-year-old daughter is really beginning to grasp the concept of time. With this learning process she constantly wants to know when will we be home, when are we going to this or that place, and my favorite, how long until Christmas. No matter how short the length of time we give, it is always too long. The answer is always the same; you need to be patient. But when I start thinking about it her response is not far off from my own in many cases. The food served within minutes at the restaurant takes too long to be brought to the table. The computer is acting slow (forgetting that I used to have to open an encyclopedia or dictionary to learn what I wanted). It is in these humbling instances that I realize I am not so different from my 5-year-old. I need patience just as much as she does. We all do.

It is in James 5:7-11 that we are reminded to be patient waiting on the Lord.  James tells us to consider the patience of the farmer. They wait for the rains in the spring and fall to nourish their crops and wait once more for the harvest to ripen. They wait for something that is outside of their control. They have no other choice but to be patient. This is how we need to be patient in our daily lives but more importantly how we need to patiently wait for Christ’s return. The farmers may be waiting on the spring and fall rains but the crops are slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, growing. This is out of their control also. And so it is with God in our lives. He is constantly shaping and growing us as we learn to be patient.

In the later verses of the section, James relates patience with suffering and endurance. He points to the prophets as well as Job as examples of patiently enduring suffering while waiting on the Lord. We know because Christ suffered that we shall suffer in life. We also know that by enduring through suffering our faith grows. The idea of patiently enduring suffering is beautifully stated in 1 Peter:20-21

“Of course, you get no credit for being patient if you are beaten for doing wrong.

But if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you.

For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you.

He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.” 1 Peter 2:20-21

Patiently enduring anything can be a trial in itself. Patiently enduring suffering can seem like an impossibility. Suffering is one thing that most people will do anything to avoid. People have devoted their entire lives around avoiding suffering and seeking comfort. And yet, patiently enduring suffering for the Lord is something that we are called to do. It is not optional, but we are reassured that it is worth it. This reassurance should bolster our patience and set our eyes and hearts upon Christ.

As we continue to try to teach our daughter about patience and endurance I will always be reminded about my need for patience in everyday life as well as the endurance needed to serve Christ in an honoring way. My hope is that we all grow in patience that is so desperately needed now more than ever.

 

Knowing what we ought to do

 

“Remember, it is a sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.” James. 4:17

Every day, we are bombarded with information. One scroll through our Facebook news feed presents twenty different causes, most of which are worthy ones. The quantity of information about the multitude of injustices can be paralyzing, making a verse like this one in James seem daunting.

But in the midst of the chaos, there is a God who has called us to good works. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago (Eph. 2:10). It may not be any of the tasks you are presented with in social media, but there is something for you.

Do we know?

If you have been around WRCC for any length of time, chances are you’ve heard about The Journey and its subsequent courses, Way of Life and Walking with Others. These courses take us through the quesions: Who is God? Who am I? and What does God want to do through me? As you walk through these courses, you come to understand that Jesus is up to something good around us. He is always working, and we are called to join him in this work. But it can take time to discover the good works God has planned for you; we need to spend time in prayer, study and community to learn about God, ourselves and our calling.

If you are not involved in a community that challenges you to think deeper about these questions, I encourage you to do so. Without a safe place to wrestle with our God-given purpose, we can feel pulled in a multitude of directions and yet accomplish very little.

 

Do we care?

Some of us have discovered the good works God has prepared for us, but we avoid them. The way of Jesus is not one in which we get noticed or praised; most of the tasks we are called to do are done in service of others, and they rarely put us in the limelight. And so we balk at these tasks and choose to instead be on center stage. Here we can say we are about the work of God, and most importantly, people can see that we are about the work of God. But the reality is that we may not be about the work of God. When the disciples were arguing among themselves about who would be the greatest, Jesus responded with these words:

“In this world the kings and great men lord it over their people, yet they are called ‘friends of the people.’  But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant.  Who is more important, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table, of course. But not here! For I am among you as one who serves.” Luke 22:25-26

Among us it will be different. The God who came to serve us asks us to serve others.  We might be called to serve a drug addict, a prison inmate, a special needs adult or a group of toddlers on Sunday morning. We probably won’t get much notice for these things, or if we do, the publicity we get may not be the kind we like. But it is this work that is essential to the Kingdom of God.

Often, we are called to minister from our wounds and failures rather than our successes. After years of infertility, my husband and I finally have a baby girl. She is everything we ever dreamed of. And yet, I still bear the scars of infertility, and I feel most in tune with my purpose when I am walking beside others still trudging through the murky waters of infertility. I felt very alone in my journey, but now the Lord keeps bringing beautiful women into my life who don’t have to be alone in theirs. It is a incredibly healing to walk alongside women who bear my same wounds and scars; he is healing me as he heals them.

***

Today, as you scroll through your social media pages, think about the things God has called you to do. We can’t do it all, and if we try to do it all, we won’t do anything very well. But we can do some things; we can watch and ask and pray for God to make our daily purpose clear to us.

And remember that it is often the things that get us the least amount of notice that mean the most in this upside-down Kingdom. Changing diapers, cooking meals, holding the hand of a friend suffering a loss–it all matters. So go about your day with intentionality and confidence, knowing that Jesus is up to good things and is doing these good things through you.

 

~Rebecca Rich

 

 

 

If the Lord wants…

This week, we look at James 4:13-16.

“Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”  Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil.

When I go to write these postings, I study the verse, I think about the context of how it is meant in the Bible, and then I apply my life’s filter over the verse and make my entry a personal account of how that scripture applies to me.  I do that in the hope that it will, in turn, force you to look at your life…and more importantly, how your life lines up to the scripture.

But, let’s be real, this one is tough.  I try to get closer to God each and every day.  I try to know the heart of God, a little better than I did yesterday, each and every day.  Yet, when it comes to my daily application of the wisdom in the Book of James, I struggle.  I have been involved with my profession since 1997, and since that time I have become fairly proficient at what I do…or at least I’d like to think.  A result of those years of experience is an inflated belief level in my abilities…in other words, I have grown confident.  That confidence is misplaced.  Why?  Because, while experience in my field has helped me, without the blessing of our Lord, I would not be able to accomplish whatever I set out to achieve.

Now, that’s at a micro level, so if we blow it up a bit it becomes even more humbling.  Think bigger than work, think at the level of your life overall.  You, undoubtedly, have something that you want to accomplish at some point in the future.  Whatever that is, you probably have a goal, or a plan of attack, in terms of how you will get from “here” to “there”.  So, when you think about that goal…and what you would do to get there, isn’t a little humbling to think that without the Lord’s blessing upon us, we will not make it.  No matter how hard you work, or what sacrifices you make, if it’s not of the plan of our Lord, then it simply will not happen.  While that may be something you’d rather not hear, it’s the flip side of that message that can give you peace.

No matter how out-there your “something” is that you want to accomplish, it doesn’t matter that you do not have the skills, or abilities, or means, or knowledge…of how to do it.  All that matters is that God is involved.  Looking back over the course of human history in the modern era, you can find many brilliant ideas that would have worked and been successful, but didn’t.  You can also find many things that worked and became very successful, even though it didn’t fit the mold for what a successful product would look like.  It’s really awe-inspiring to think that behind all of it, is the gentle guiding hand of God.

When you think about your life…and your accomplishments to date, the biggest mistake we can make is to think that we’ve done it by yourself.  We need to be very cognizant of where we are, what we have, and how our Lord has blessed us.  We all have different stories, different lots in life, different viewpoints on what success is…but the common denominator through it all, is that our Lord has been behind each and every victory.  Maybe even more eye opening?  He has also been there through each and every loss.  Victory is always easier than loss, but knowing that it is part of God’s plan, even though we may not understand it at the time, can give us a deeper comfort in our losses, and a stronger confidence in our wins.

When I think of a success, I think of someone who thinks they have done it themselves.  When someone says they are blessed, however, they are being unselfish in their gratitude for where they are in life.  While the Bible makes it clear, time and time again, how God feels about living selfishly, it also gives us more than enough reasons to live selflessly.

My journey, wherever I have been, and wherever I am going, has been given to me by our Lord.  It is my prayer that we, no matter how much we think we have contributed to the cause, always remember to give thanks for what we’ve been given.

Thanks for reading…and have a great week.

Eric J. Wasson

God’s got this.

When I was in college I watched a young man I love self-destruct. He didn’t apply himself in school. He grew his hair out and colored it green. He rejected mainstream anything, including Jesus. He questioned authority and became defiant. He got involved with drugs and headlined a punk rock band. He had a whatever-makes-me –happy-even-at-the-expense-of-others attitude and pushed his family away. As a teenager I remember wondering why his mom and dad put up with him. I was critical of their parenting. As a parent now, I can’t imagine how difficult this time was for them.

Exasperated, I would argue with him and write him letters to try to prove the case for Christ. I watched as his dad tried earnestly to connect with him in some way. While others looked on in disbelief, his dad would attend his punk rock gigs like you might a child’s spelling bee. His mom saw past his outward rebellion to his kind heart, while friends and family shook their head, amazed at their apparent lack of furor over his choices. They never dismissed his feelings. They lovingly redirected him to Jesus at every opportunity. They loved him; kept on forgiving him. Seventy times seven. Although they made it clear they didn’t agree with some of his choices, he always knew they loved him. As an agnostic, as a Buddhist, they loved him. As a broke 19 year old following the musical group Phish, they loved him. Through his twenty-something-moving-to-California-to-find-himself they loved him. As a successful entrepreneur in his 30’s they loved him. When he was lost and broken, they loved him. They walked with him, even when he didn’t want them too. They offered mercy and grace even when it was hard and they didn’t feel like it. They loved when they didn’t understand or agree with any of it.

James 4:11-12

Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

That boy’s parents recognized what I didn’t; we all need a Savior. Each of us. When you lose site of your need for a Savior, it’s easy to point out the sin of others. I’m not talking about losing site of God’s goodness or His love. That’s comfortable to think about. I’m talking about recognizing your own stink. Your muck, failings, flaws, your sin. Your bad attitude. Your gossip. Your infidelity. Your coveting the vacation your neighbor has or the new car parked in their drive. Your little white lie. That movie you watched and the feelings you had. Those words that came spilling out of your mouth in anger and frustration. That hate & bitterness you harbor in your heart because that one time that one person did that one thing. That night you set out to drink your issues away. Your sin. We all need a Savior. We, in all of our humanity, did nothing to deserve God’s grace, mercy and acceptance. But he gave it anyway.

Despite ourselves, despite our sin, He loves us. Took the nails for us. Hung on a cross for us. The road to the cross was paved with our sins. Yours and mine. And theirs. Our need for a Savior is universal. His blood covers everyone.

We should absolutely be able to have hard conversations with one another and keep each other accountable but that can only take place in relationship. Living amongst one another. Criticism and accountability in the absence of relationship breeds contempt. It creates an environment for the heart to build a wall to protect itself and with each interaction another brick is added. God meets us right where we are. We need to love others in that same place. Let’s not add any bricks to the walls. Let’s create an environment where the bricks come tumbling down so the Holy Spirit can move.

That boy’s folks realized something else, God did not send us to save. That’s Jesus’ job. Jesus chose to live among the sinners. He could have stayed in heaven and pointed out the errors of our ways. He could have separated himself from us. He could have forced us to believe in Him. Instead, he chose relationship with us. In the midst of our muck. He didn’t force himself upon us, he offered. He showed us a new way of living, of loving. He accepted us and watched His holy spirit change our hearts. As we learn more about Him, as our hearts grow closer to His, our life begins to bear fruit. Our life begins to reflect His.

That is the example He gave us. It’s that example my parent’s gave me. That boy is a man now. A man seeking after God’s plan for his life. It was our parent’s example, that Jesus kind of love, that brought my brother home. It was that place of safety and acceptance that allowed my brother to find his way to Jesus. It wasn’t any argument I had with him. It wasn’t my letters pointing out all he was doing wrong. It wasn’t my cries of frustration with him. It wasn’t the heads shaking or finger pointing. It was the love of Jesus given through my parents and countless sleepless nights in prayer. It was the Holy Spirit. God alone. He alone is the judge. He alone is the Savior. Our instructions are to love. Big, vulnerable, in the muck love. That is where we plant the seeds. God is responsible for the fruit.

~Jen Harris