When It Feels Like Your Work Doesn't Matter

The day after I return from a conference on integrating work and faith…I call off.

It’s true, I have an early morning appointment; and it’s true, one of my boys has to see the orthodontist that afternoon. Squeezing in a few hours of work around those engagements would take some major gymnastics. But the truth is—I just don’t want to. I just can’t face it.

After three days of listening to how this thing should be done—hearing example after example of people who are doing big things for the Kingdom through their work—I am feeling claustrophobic of my little office, uncertain about where I am.

One of the speakers at this conference—addressing a standing-room-only crowd of mostly college students…and me…and, well, Sam was there too—urged her listeners to not just settle for any old job. Seek jobs that offer the best opportunities for directing your creative talents toward the end of advancing foretastes of the Kingdom of God, she said. Any accountant can do taxes, she said. As Christians we should be joining in Kingdom work through our chosen professions.

I felt the truth in her words and as I looked around at all those fresh faces, I believed that they could change the world. They could go out there and fight for justice and mercy and create beauty for the world and invest endless amounts of energy into making the world a better place. I felt excitement for these young people.

But it felt too late for me.

So I call and say that I can’t come in and those hours that I could squeeze in a bit of work? I spend them curled up on the couch under a fuzzy blanket with Lucy Mae. I am home for the day but I don’t even do one load of laundry.

But what I do do is a lot of talking to God.

I pick up an old conversation-prayer that’s been beat to death about my family of origin and how I’ve gotten such a late start on this Christianity thing and when will I ever catch up and why in the world didn’t someone show up to tell me all these things when I was younger and making important life decisions and now I’m stuck and the decisions I make affect more than just me and I can’t just go off to Uganda or something…

We’ve been through all this before and the Maker of the Heavens must get tired of having this same old talk with a pip-squeak like me, but do you want to know what was impressed upon me in those sweet hours with the fuzzy blanket? Here are a few things that were whispered to my heart:

1. You are exactly where I want you to be. But don’t stop asking. You never know when that might change. And when you ask, you are opening your heart to the Spirit…and I am always making things new. 
2. Your work matters. You carry my image into the lives of the people you touch and when you do that with all your heart, you bring me glory.
3. Sometimes, it’s about planting seeds. Have you planted any lately? I—only I—will make them grow.
4. Don’t get too comfortable. Keep stretching. Keep growing. Be the best person you can be. 
5. Stick close to me. You are never alone. And pray for those world-changers.

The next day that I work I do my job with all my heart. Some people notice. Some don’t.

But there is One-who-looks-upon-the-heart who always sees.

With my sweet friend Jennifer today: 

 And with kd:

The Haggadah: Burning Words

The first time I go to synagogue, I am swept away. I go to hear a speaker, invited by a friend. The speaker is the former ambassador to Morocco and—my friend tells me, in hushed tones—“He’s the first Jewish American ambassador.”

I don’t know if this is true but I want to hear what he has to say about the Middle East. He was born in New York, but grew up in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. He has held various appointments on Middle East Policy. Perhaps he has some words of wisdom for us—for this world.

But his flight is canceled so my friend takes my hand and leads me through those large wooden doors into the temple area. He shows me the Holy Ark, where they keep the torah scrolls. There is all this gold leaf and a panel of lights to honor the dead. My eyes are big but I feel small and he says it’s ok to take some pictures. He answers all my questions patiently, at times grappling for the right words. There is a sort of sweet sadness in his telling and I know he is gathering up all the lost years in his heart—scooping them into mine and trusting me to receive them tenderly. He tells me stories about his mother that kindle my heart and I see how much he misses her.

We take our time, walking through and then outside and around and he tells me about the stained glass, about the property. We meet a fellow who has driven a long way to see the speaker and my friend delivers the news: No speaker tonight. And they banter until they find a mutual acquaintance to settle on and each one smiles wide with new-found fondness for the other.

I kiss him on the cheek goodbye—not really wanting to go because I feel his longing to linger. But we are a practical lot and there’s no speaker tonight.

The first time I drive home from synagogue, I stumble upon an NPR interview with a Jewish man named Nathan Englander. He has written a book of short stories called What We Talk About When We Talk About Ann Frank. And he tells how the title story is based on a game his family used to play. A game called Who Will Hide Me or Righteous Gentile.

…it’s so deeply personal, he says. It’s not a game…I call it a game—it makes it easier to talk about…It’s something we play with dead seriousness in my family and that is…we would wonder who would hide us in the Holocaust…

I can’t even spell “Holocaust” without spell-check and I am horrified and heartbroken for a people all over again. Yet, Nathan Englander talks about how easily he gave up his faith…how easily…and yet, every word he speaks echoes the struggle.

…I spend my childhood in America feeling Jewish and not American. And it's only in Israel — it was those years there — where I got to be an American because everyone's a Jew…

When he was a young man he moved to Israel for a few years and it is in the first week of living there, he says, that he gave up organized religion. The irony is that he has spent the last three years translating a new version of the Haggadah—the story of the Exodus that is read aloud every year at the Passover to commemorate the Jews delivery from slavery.

When asked why he would do such a thing, Englander talks about his love of the text, saying that when one reads the Haggadah you should literally read it and weep. It’s just that beautiful, he says, and he is thankful for being given the opportunity to be faithful to the original Hebrew and Aramaic that he loves. He talks about wrestling with the translation of certain words and how, in the end, it’s the poetry and beauty and intention of the text he tried to be faithful to.

I wanted people to be thinking about what they are saying, he says…people are going to be praying from this…

And then he reads an excerpt from the New American Haggadah and I feel the burning bush—the fire that transforms but does not consume—the fire of holy ground. And I think about what he is reading. I think about the words, just as he intended. And I think about my friend and his synagogue and how a place can become a sacred text…how you can listen to the way your heart reads each nook and cranny…each memory.

And I go right home and order a copy of the New American Haggadah.

Because I need more burning bush in my life.  

 ::

This week's memory verses:

To download the memory card for James 1:17-18.  

James 1:15-16 scripture memory card here.  

James 1:13-14 scripture memory card is here.

For memory cards of the whole book of James visit this post.

with the amazing Jen:

and dear Michelle too:

Playdates with God: The Bright Sadness

Unclenching the fists is a soul-baring release and this first week of Lent has been about the open hand. Last night our small group started a new Easter journey together and we talked about footwashing and how to be a servant and what that really means. Each person shared what this season has meant to them and as I listened to their stories of family and church and traditions, my heart swelled within the walls of me. I knew it meant there was One more with us, and I had to restrain these hands from groping the air around me—reaching out for a touch from the Footwasher.

A week of little deaths, that’s what it’s been and I think I understand why the Orthodox Church calls the season of Lent the Bright Sadness. Celebration and mourning have taken it in turns to stir my deep places and my eyes are opened to the truth that we cannot follow Christ and remain unchanged.

We had another class on preaching this weekend and our teacher kept dropping crumbs—saying things that seemed like common sense—little things—but really…they are everything. Things like, “It’s important for us to live the best lives we can; it’s important for us to live godly lives” and “It’s important to be a regular reader of the Bible—the more familiar with scripture you are, the easier it will be” and “The sermon should always point back to God” and “We have to take time to listen for God.”

We met in the basement of our church, a space used for preschool. As I listened to her wise words I kept getting distracted by blocks of paper with crayola drawings taped together on the wall. “Friendship Quilt” it said at the top, and each block was an individual child’s interpretation of what that meant. I looked around at my classmates—these who have walked this journey with me for going on three years now—and realized I love them. They are my friends. What a beautiful quilt we make.

During Lent I want to burrow away—hide in books and words and prayer. But I know I need these people. It was John Wesley who said,

“Holy solitaries' is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than holy adulterers. The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.”

It can’t be done alone, this transformation. It requires a rubbing up against each other, a shared realization that these are more than words…they are resurrection. Wesley also said that he liked to set himself on fire so others would come to watch him burn.

A flame spreads. Stand close to the fire. Let’s kindle together through this bright sadness.

How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. Grab my button at the bottom of the page and join us:

The Playdates button:

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also: 

Lent: The Sky Speaks Scripture

I watch the clouds

give birth to sky

and this swirling,

shifting mass of mist

and light that grows

 from within

becomes life;

beomes prayer:

make me small—

enough to enter,

a second time, my

mother’s womb. let

Spirit give birth to

spirit.  and then stretch

me out, grow me wider;

give me breath and

eyes.

shared with nancy and the gang.

Listen to it:

Red Sky in the Morning...

The dawn blooms red on Fat Tuesday—the sky unfolding like petals and light spills slow over our world. I stand by the window wringing my hands.

Could it really be time already? Didn’t I just find those reindeer last week—the ones I missed when packing up the Christmas decorations? How can it be Lent already? I sit down on the steps, try to gather up time.

Teddy slips past me and stops by the window—studies the red giving way to pinks and blues.

“Oh, wow,” he says. “Look at that.”

His words make me stare. He never notices these things. But there he is, face pressed to the window.

“Look, mom,” he says, not taking his eyes off the sky. 

I rise and stand beside him—shoulder to shoulder. But it’s not the sky that holds my eyes and this new side of my son only serves to confirm how the time slips through my fingers. 

These liturgical seasons have a way of naming my lack. This is when I long for rich family traditions or a strong youth pastor to invest in my boys. This is when I long to have the tools to open up their heads—open up their hearts—and pour it all in. And I can’t help but to ask, am I doing enough?

And I wonder if they are really getting it—do they really know what it means to be loved by Christ and to follow him? Do I?

A mamma wants so much for her children—she wants to give them everything. But perhaps one of the best gifts she can give is space for their faith to become their own.

I shift my eyes to the horizon and it takes my breath away. And I remember what Amy Sherman said in her workshop at Jubilee this past weekend. She had a slide that was a jumble of words: Joy, Peace, Hope, Wholeness, Reconciliation, Shalom, Justice, Charity, and…and Beauty and so on. Ms. Sherman called these things foretastes of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is in this tired world, she said. And He is pressing these things into our lives. Joining Him in Kingdom work means to make these things a greater reality. Right now.

I think of these things as I look at that slow moving red across the morning sky. And I know this moment is enough. I lean into my boy who is now taller than I.

“Yeah,” I say. “Just look at that.”

  

With my sweet friend Jennifer today: 

 And with kd:

Live Radical...Pick the Flowers

“It’s really a radical thing in today’s world,” he says. “Every day we are inundated with tons of information and we can become desensitized in our relationship with Jesus.”

We are in a classroom just off the rotunda in this hotel in Pittsburgh—a rag-tag bunch—coffee cups cradled just under our chins. His hair is all standing up in the back but something in his voice…in his eyes…speaks calm.

We’ve come to read scripture together. It’s a workshop on Lectio Divina and it’s the only one held at 8:00 A.M. While most of the conference attendees sleep in or laugh over coffee in the hotel café, we pull inward…quiet our thoughts.

“Lectio Divina,” he says. “It means sacred reading. We are not deconstructing or analyzing. We are enjoying the beauty of the words for themselves…”

He gives us a handout and we take it in turns to read through the description he has put together from this book. When we get to the last step, he says it again.

“This is a deeply counter cultural activity we are engaging in today,” he says.

He tells us a story about a friend who is in medical school.

“As an exercise to deepen compassion, one of his professors made the students go to an art museum and stand in front of a painting for an hour. They had to study it…notice all the details they could. For an hour.”

He smiles at me. I smile back—thinking how it would be to stand in front of this painting…let its colors and story and light draw me in, become part of the compassion in my soul. Let its beauty become part of the framework that I live my life through.

We come to the last step on the handout—Contemplatio—and beside the word he has simply typed “Be”.

“Think of having a great meal with a great friend and then sitting in silence after wards…”

I silently re-read the last lines of the description he gives of Contemplatio.

Facilitate your re-entry to your day by using a florilegium, a notebook used by monks to record what God said to them through that day’s passages. In Latin, it means “picking flowers”—preserving the beauty of what God gave you that day.

So that’s what I’ve been doing in my old yellow notebook. I feel a bit of awe inside as I think of words as flowers—as I think of my bouquet.

And when we go through the exercise…I pick a couple more. And as I turn them around and around in the light of my mind, I feel it:

Radical.

And here are a few more flowers I've picked...this week's memory verses. You can download this James scripture memory card here. Last week's scripture memory card is here. You will find a link on this post for a complete set of scripture memory cards of the book of James.

with the amazing Jen:

and dear Michelle too:

Playdates with God: Hunger

I left hungry.

I was up early to finish the book club article, but between checking out of the hotel and Lectio Divina…there isn’t time for breakfast. In Marcus’ workshop, Nancy tries to give me a trail mix bar, but I am thinking about yogurt so I decline. But then there is morning worship and the last two speakers and time to say goodbye comes too soon. I drive out of Pittsburgh at 12:45 p.m. with a hunger that food will not fill.

It’s always this way after the mountain top, this I know, but at Jubilee I worship and learn with over 2000 college students and the energy along those corridors and in those rooms is a living thing. I am reminded what it is to be young and have your entire life before you. It doesn’t make me feel old—it makes me want to live deeper and when I feel a pang of regret—only once—I remember what my spiritual director said just last week about God’s timing always being perfect. After all, I have more life before me too.

So I drive down I-79 with this aching hunger keeping me company and my Lord and I—we feast. All of the little pieces of heaven that were sprinkled down over the weekend flood the space of my minivan and it’s not until four hours later when I pull in my driveway that I remember I am hungry.

And then the fullness of family grips me and wraps me in its warm embrace. And going away is all the sweeter for the coming home.

How this fills. How this fills…

How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. Grab my button at the bottom of the page and join us:

The Playdates button:

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also: