EYES WIDE IN WONDER

He speaks to people who toss and turn at night, worrying over what they have and might lose.  He speaks to people anxious about what they are working hard to accumulate.  He speaks to people who watch markets and investments and who are unsettled by recent headlines.

Jesus tells us not to hoard treasure down here, but let God and God’s way and righteousness and grace and love shared be our treasure.  Then, as we mentioned a week ago, the Carpenter encourages us to open our “eyes wide in wonder and belief.”

I am so badly broken in so many ways, so deficient in so much, and yet God has given me eyes “wide in wonder and belief.”  I see blessings.  I always see blessings even when I whine and grump.  Even when the world breaks our heart I see blessings.

The stars at night.  The morning sun peeking through the trees as I pull into the Y.  The voices of people as the sanctuary fills up.  The feel of cool sheets as we slip into bed.  A conversation with a clerk in a store.  The songs of Allison Krause & Union Station filling my office on this dark, Fall evening.

The friend who sends me texts that make me smile.  (He offered, one tough week, to serve as my body guard!)  The blueberry muffin carried to the table as I talk with a good friend.  The Cheerios falling in the cereal bowl in the morning.

The hand at the end of my arm that now resembles the hand of my Grandpa Owen, who  -with Grandma Owen-  loved me and took me in when I was adrift on a sea of grief.  I came face to face with grace in that house on Leland in Indianapolis.

Ella telling me, “I’m sorry you have to go home, but I am glad you came.”  Livy protecting her Frosty by silently forming a ring around it with her hands, after I have asked, “Livy, can Grandpa help you eat that?”

The boys headed this way through the darkness as the family gathers for Thanksgiving and a wedding.

The touch of the woman who loves me and has put up with me through easy seasons and hard.

The choir singing “You Are Not Alone” as the people grow quiet, leaning forward, taking this message in deep.

Red and white stripped warm up pants.  A bag of kettle corn.  The story of Jesus.  A cry in a stable.  A cross outside the city.  A tomb still because the One put there is back out in the world bringing new life.

The quiet, deep ties that grow between us, you and me, as friendship deepens.  As we settle into the rhythm of a new journey with God.  My transplanted heart finding peace.  The lights coming on outside.

My eyes are open wide in wonder and belief.  Children have a way of seeing like that, don’t they?

When we see the blessings life is different.  Every day full of the light of thanks-giving.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO

One of the games some Jesus followers play is the game of denial.  They pretend that to have faith is to never be discouraged, but we know that isn’t so.  This week I have found myself face-to-face with several people who are going through tough stuff.  They are discouraged to the point of tears.  They are barely able to put into words their weariness or sadness or anger.

I’ve shared with them something that appeared on my electronic “door step” via a daily devotional from Upper Room Daily Reflections.  In one recent devotion author Susan Arthur (devozine) points us towards the novel The Scent of Water by British writer Elizabeth Goudge.  A teenage girl struggles with mental illness and her mother finds her daughter’s struggle terribly embarrassing.  The entire family attempts to hide the girl’s struggle like some awful secret.

One day an older pastor comes to visit.  He looks as out of place at the family tea as the girl feels out of place in the world.  She confides her struggle to the older pastor.  She tells him everything.  She confesses that she worries about totally losing her mind someday.

The pastor listens quietly.  Then, as he is leaving, he promises to pray for her daily.  He says, “There are three necessary prayers, and they have three words each.  They are these: ‘Lord, have mercy.  Thee I adore.  Into Thy hands.’  Not difficult to remember.  If in times of distress you hold onto these, you will do well.”

So I share those three necessary prayers with you.  I find them helpful.  Anne Lamott says there are really only two prayers: “Please, please, please” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

But I have found comfort, strength, in those three necessary prayers: “Lord have mercy.  Thee I adore.  Into Thy hands.”

And I find power, liberation, salvation, healing…whatever word you want to use… when I realize how God holds onto me in Christ even when my grip on God  -and my faith-  falters.

Maybe these three necessary prayers can be something for you to hold onto this week. Or maybe you know someone who is looking for something to hold onto?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

CHECKBOOK POETRY

I’m sitting here trying to decide if I should risk this.  I’m trying to decide if it is wise to tell you about my father-in-law, Ray Chapman. Since it is his birthday this weekend, and since he has always been a rather forgiving soul, I’ll go ahead.

Ray grew up in north central Indiana. After working at Studebaker he went into the grocery business with his best friend. They had a two-aisle grocery store (with a wood floor?) in a St. Joseph County town of 2,500. Over the years they worked hard, provided great service, and ended up with four stores.  He and my mother-in-law (an RN), Marian, raised three girls.

None of the business stuff is important for you to know.  What you need to know is that Ray has always been a giver.  I’ve never seen him more happy than when he could help out someone else.  Life was never just about him and his business and his family, but he always saw a larger picture. 

He volunteered on the fire department.  He worked with others to bring new businesses to the local industrial park.  He helped his local UMC buy land and build a new church.  He helped the local high school band buy uniforms, and when some young guys didn’t have a champion he gave them a break and offered them a job.  He taught them how to work, how to be men, how to be fathers, and when one betrayed him Ray gave him a second chance. 

When the local lake was being overwhelmed by phosphates he worked with others to get a grant to help clean things up.  In retirement he and Marian helped start a new UMC that met in a BBQ restaurant in Ft Myers.  He gave money so that church could buy land and build a sanctuary.   Marian would lead Bible studies and work camps while Ray wrote checks and worked in the kitchen for the spaghetti suppers that raised money for missions.  She taught Sunday School, but he would slip out, after worship, and go to the drugstore where he would read the Chicago Tribune and have coffee.  (He never was much for talking about faith…he has been more of a doer).  When Habit for Humanity would do work in a nearby neighborhood, Ray would be there delivering meals to the workers.  Some mornings his UM pastor would need to talk and he would stop by the store.  Ray was always there to listen.  To encourage.

Ray isn’t a poet.  He isn’t a smooth talker.  But I’ve seen checkbook poetry in the way he has given his money away.

I used to razz Ray about paying me .50 cents an hour in high school as one of the stock boys. I stopped bringing that up after he heard my comment and said, “You were overpaid.”

Long ago, when I was in high school, I would show up at the Chapman’s  and they always had cold pop stacked up in their downstairs fridge.  A month ago he watched me pull a can of “pop” out of the refrigerator at his Koontz Lake home home and he smiled.  “You’re still eating my pizza and drinking my pop,” he said.

He is a giver.  What he and Marian have done with their checkbook is poetry.  It is a great story, and I believe Jesus is smiling.

What story are you telling with your life and money?

Telling the Story,

Mark

MY SCAR MEANS.ORG

OrthoIndy and the Indiana Orthopedic Hospital have billboards around the greater Indianapolis area that feature a picture of someone like you or me, and the caption reads: “My Scar Means.org.”  That caught my eye, and I thought about how often we are embarrassed or ashamed of our scars.  Society’s image of perfection, of beauty is a smooth, un-scarred surface.

The message of the billboard turns this assumption about scars on its head: a scar on the knee means we can walk or run or stand when once we could not.  A scar is a sign that we have experienced healing.  A scar is a sign that once our body was frozen, barely able to move, and now we can move!

If you go to the health provider’s web site you find a picture of a farmer who announces, “My scar means I can farm.”  There is a picture of a mother and daughter, and the caption says, “My scar means we are together.”

If you hang around some churches you might think the Jesus community is only for people who are smooth and perfect and unscarred.  The truth is otherwise!

We are all wounded.  We have all been scared.  Paul says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Not only are we wounded, but many of us have experienced the healing power of God’s truth and love in Jesus.  God has been at work in our lives.  We have scars to show where God has cut out the bitterness, the fear, the intolerance, the indifference, the selfishness…  The New Testament even says God’s truth is like a two-edged sword!

So welcome to this community where we all have scars, and these scars are evidence of our humanness…and the love and power of God!  I invite you to read through the stories below.

Our giving is used by God to work in the lives of people here and around the world.

What is your story?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

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Here are some new stories you have shared with us this week!

Travis and I left all our family and friends when we moved to Bloomington, and until we found The Open Door/FUMC we felt like we were alone, and since we had left our home church were pretty spiritually depleted. Through worship at the Open Door, Jubilee, small groups and meals shared with pastors and fellow members we not only have seen God’s face and God’s love again and again, but also have gained new lifelong friends, surrogate parents and spiritual mentors. Our life is unbelievably full, joyful and blessed because of this community. 

– Ashlee

So many memories of 35 years at FUMC -- working with & serving children, teaching Sunday school,  composing music for a small group of high school students and then conducting them, Bible summer school, Christmas pageant, Children’s bell choir for 23 years. We delight in working with the children; we cry as they leave for college; we rejoice in watching them grow & return with their successes.  We laughed with them when four youth bell ringers accidentally broke a new and expensive couch – we said they saved an elderly person from getting hurt.  Halleluiah!

– Skip and Liz

In 2009 my family and I faced more challenges than we ever had before.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to wake up one morning to find my home filled with locusts!  One day my Aunt Suzy read to me from Isaiah 41:10:  “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Soon afterward I began to see crosses everywhere I looked—in hallways, in the structure of buildings and in shadows.  I felt God’s hand in mine—his presence as clear as seeing a picture on a wall.  Thereafter, blessings in my life started outnumbering all of the challenges.  It was a focus on the blessings that carried me through.  Three years later many things have changed – my husband is back to normal after illness, I have a beautiful grandson, I am a member of a fabulous Sunday School class at FUMC and have joined an independent women’s Bible Study, and I have overcome a fear of public praying. This is a partial writing of my story. Of course it continues as God grants me another day of life! I am blessed. Crosses saved my life!

– Chris