Fisher Pond, Reflections on listening to God's voice and Love

One of my favorite places to hike on Vashon is Fisher Pond.  I like to go alone and I always start on the part of the trail closest to the road.  I start here purposely.  This part of the trail is narrow and has a lot of exposed tree roots.  

These roots mean that I need to watch my feet and where I put them.  It causes me to slow my mind and to concentrate on walking without tripping.  Its not easy to slow my mind.  It is usually going 100 miles an hour.  Its why I write so much. I have to get the thoughts out or my head feels like it will explode.  But when I am walking this part of the trail I have to focus on my feet and my mind slows down.  It is the opening that God so patiently waits for.  I know God is a patient God because He has me as a child and He still manages to get me to listen.  Some people can be still anywhere and hear Jesus, not me.  I can't do it even at night, I can't usually even sleep at night because my mind is racing.  I sometimes can still myself during prayer but not always, so I walk this trail.  

By the time I reach the gazebo area that overlooks the pond I am still and I can even sit there and listen to my breathing and wait on the Lord.  God doesn't always speak to me but I know if He is going to it is only after I slow my mind and sit with myself. 

 

Today God did speak to me.  I had hoped He would as I was seeking clarity and direction.  There is something wonderfully unexpected transpiring in my life and I really needed some stillness.  I am embarking on a new path with a person who I believe is the great love of my life.  The kind of love you only read about in fairy tales.  It has been a bit of a roller coaster for me, why, well because of my mind. All the fears and insecurities we all have when we are falling deeply in love are often magnified ten fold in my over productive brain.  When I fear I have a tendency to run.  I allowed that fear to extinguish the peace. I know that this relationship has been given to me by Jesus and that I should just have absolute peace but I didn't.  She has absolute peace, is steadfast in her love for me and has never wavered from the get go. Not me.  I ran, let doubt creep in and in the process hurt her.  For this I have asked forgiveness and both she and God have been generous with their grace. This woman is a precious gift God has given me.  A second chance at happiness.  There is a depth in our relationship that I had only dreamed of.  A love where God is at the center.  So I came to Fisher Pond today to keep that stillness happening to make sure to seek His voice and guidance.  I'm always glad when I do.

If you have walked this trail all the way around the pond then you know that when you leave the gazebo and head away from the road the path is smooth and wide.  I could easily devolve back into my head and let those engines run but for some reason I don't.  My mind stays still and I am able to listen to birds, feel the breeze, and know that God's presence surrounds me.  

 

Love is good ...God is good...

JUSTICE

This coming Sunday, September 15, will be the 50th anniversary of the tragic 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama. Four young girls (Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley, 14 all lost their lives in this bombing and it took years for those responsible to be brought to justice. Robert Chambliss, whose nickname was “Dynamite Bob”, was arrested and convicted in 1977 but the case sat dormant for another 20 years until the others responsible for carrying out this heinous act were finally arrested, tried and convicted. 

All of this started me thinking about justice. 

Miriam-Webster defines justice as - “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments” 

The Bible has a lot to say about justice, there is verse after verse. Leviticus 19:15 -Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. Deuteronomy 16:20 - Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the LORD your God is giving you. My favorite verse, Micah 6:8 states: He has told you, O mortal, what is good;and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God. 

What I wonder is if justice was truly served in this case? 

It seems to me that it was definitely not swift as we are often told justice can and should be. Those girls, whose lives were cut so short, surely would not think that justice was served and I would guess neither would their families. These men went on to have many more years of life and in fact one other suspect, Hermann Cash died in 1994 without ever being charged. I struggle with the idea of justice and judgment. 

I know that God is the only real judge but there are times when I want justice now.  And in my world, I am both judge and jury. I often must remind myself that God sees the bigger picture or this life and that my sense of what is right and wrong and who deserves what punishment is skewed by my own limited and biased view of the world.  Although I believe in the final redemption of all souls, there is a part of me that so wishes for eternal damnation for those I view as unredeemable. 

Thankfully, God is the final and eternal judge and in the end I trust, that in Him, justice truly is served. 

Knowing and not knowing

As I approached the city of Seattle this morning on my commute in, my work building and some of the other taller buildings’ tops were hidden by the marine layer. I could only see about ¾ of my work building and yet I had certainty that the rest of the building was there. This made me think of faith and how I believe in a God that I have never seen but I have the certainty in my heart that He not only exists but that He loves me.


Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 as “…the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.


After pondering the mystery of the marine mist for a moment more I returned to my book. The next part that I read gave me chills as it perfectly coincided with what I had just been thinking. The chapter is titled knowing and not knowing. The passage that just really hit me was: “Great spirituality is always seeking a balance between opposites, a very subtle but creative balance. As William Johnston once said, ‘Faith is the breakthrough into that deep realm of the soul which accepts parable with humility.’ When you go to one side or the other too much, you find yourself either overly righteous or overly skeptical and cynical. There must be a healthy middle…as we try to hold both the needed light and the necessary darkness”.


It hit me that, more times than not, I get caught up in finding the answers to the BIG questions and thus end up being overly righteous. It is a constant battle for me to just say that I don’t know. To understand and acknowledge that God’s mind is beyond mine and that I am not sure of the WHY. I so count on reason and intelligence to get me through when really the only thing that will truly rescue me is faith.

John Donne said that “Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right. We need them both. 


It is easy for me to admit that I do not have all the answers. What is continually hard for me to accept is that I may never find those answer or that they are beyond my understanding. Thinking is my hobby, the thing I love most to do, and to accept that I cannot think my way through to some resolution, some standpoint, to some substantial answer, that is humbling and often disconcerting. Yet humility is what Jesus was all about. Most times He did not give answers but responded to a question with a parable or another question. He wanted people to wrestle with things and to have faith. Matthew tells us that Jesus said that if we could just have faith in the amount of a mustard seed we could move mountains, that nothing was impossible.


So my Monday finds me at peace in my office. I have already been up to the 40th floor, above the mist, and guess what, that part of the building that I could not see from the street, exists.

Falling in Love with Jesus

I have been thinking about the differences in who I am as a Christian now juxtaposed to who I was in high school and college.  I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was a junior in high school at the Baptist Church I was attending.  I remember the altar call and the song that was playing - “Just as I Am.”  I went forward, knelt and Pastor Gosnell prayed with me.  It was real and I felt it but my relationship with Jesus was a mixture of adoration and fear.  Knowing I was gay and wanting to change that was part of the motivation for my salvation.  I thought if I could just accept Jesus into my heart I would be saved from both eternal damnation and what I thought at the time was a perversion.  I served God out of fear and not so much out of love. 

I accepted Jesus as my Savior again in the spring of 2009 and this time I did it completely out of love.  I fell in love and am continually re-falling in love with Jesus.  The closer I get to God the more I feel the desire to fall down on my face in adoration and praise.  It is not about religion for me - it is not about being a sinner in need of saving.  It is about relationship with a God who loved me so much that He stepped down from His throne to take human form, be tortured and nailed to a cross.  Jesus died for me. 

So I am a very different Christian then I was in my youth.  It is not just about the truth of Jesus for me anymore but the real relationship I have with Him.  It is the day to day of serving and loving a God who never leaves my side. 

 Oh how great is our God.  

Here are the lyrics to a great song that I love.

Give me rules
I will break them
Give me lines
I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe
I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet 
It ought to be

(CHORUS)
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love

Give me words
I'll misuse them
Obligations
I'll misplace them 
'Cause all religion ever made of me
Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love

It's like I'm falling in love, love, love
Deeper and deeper
It was love that made
Me a believer
In more than a name, a faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love
It's like I'm falling, oh
I'm falling in falling
It's like I'm falling

Apathy or Action

I have been thinking a lot lately about my responsibilites as a follower of Jesus.  Is my life one that reflects Christ?  Do my actions match what I profess to belief?  Jesus is pretty clear on what is expected of us.  We know that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, take care of the marginalized, feed the hungry, give to the poor and etc. 

In 1 John 3:17 we are told:  "How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?"  Pretty clear.  This is not just a New Testament command either.  In Proverbs 14:31 it states:  "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him."

If I am honest with myself I am just not living up to what Jesus expects from me.  Sure I tithe to my church and other charities but the words of this great Matthew West song keeps popping into my head.  Here are the lyrics. 

"My Own Little World"

In my own little world it hardly ever rains
I've never gone hungry, always felt safe
I got some money in my pocket, shoes on my feet
In my own little world: population -- me
I try to stay awake during Sunday morning church
I throw a twenty in the plate but I never give 'til it hurts
And I turn off the news when I don't like what I see
It's easy to do when its population -- me
What if there's a bigger picture?
What if I'm missing out?
What if there's a greater purpose?
I could be living right now
Outside my own little world
Stopped till the red light, looked out my window
I saw a cardboard sign said, "Help this homeless widow"
And just above that sign was the face of a human
I thought to myself, "God, what have I been doing?"
So I rolled down the window and I looked her in the eye
Oh, how many times have I just passed her by?
I gave her some money then I drove on through
And my own little world reached population two
Father, break my heart for what breaks Yours
Give me open hands and open doors
Put Your light in my eyes and let me see
That my own little world is not about me
I don't wanna miss what matters
I wanna be reaching out
Show me the greater purpose
So I can start living right now
Outside my own little world, my own little world, my own little world

That is truly what my prayer has been lately - Father, break my heart for what breaks yours.  I sent this line or some version of it to a friend recently and she said that it really hit her hard.  It should hit all of us hard.  I know it does me. 

Then and Now

I have been having trouble sleeping at night for a while now.  Instead of just laying there tossing and turning, I usually get up and read.  

Last night when I was looking on our bookshelf in the bedroom for something to read the other night I came across some of my journals.  I used to keep a daily journal of the events of my life and I love reading back through them on occasion.  I randomly grabbed two of them and started reading.  

The first one was written in the year that I was so sick with Hodgkin’s and believed that death was imminent.  There is a lot of poetry in that one, a lot of talk of wanting it to be over with, of wishing I had the courage to walk out into the woods and shoot myself so that my friends and family would not have to watch me die.  Pretty self-absorbed melodramatic fare.  

The other one was from 1988 to 1989.  I was in my junior and senior year of college and coming to grips with the fact that I was gay, even though I had spent the last few years in and out of reparative therapy, counseling and having been in the prayers of everyone I knew, I was still gay.  I wrote about the death of my mother in August of 1988 and how much guilt I felt by feeling somewhat relieved that I would not have to deal with her mental illness and the effect that it had on me anymore.  I wrote about walking away from God in September of 1989.  I not only stopped believing in Him, I actively cursed and hated Him.  There is a lot of anger in the writings of 1989. 

Yet here I am 24 years later alive and once again a person of deep faith.  All of this I owe to God.  The thing is, although I gave up on Him, walked away, actively cursed His name, He was still there walking beside me, loving me and caring for me.  That is how great God’s love for us is.  I am living in a state of gratitude now for that abiding, constant love.  God loved me back to faith and to life.  How lucky am I!

The past couple of months have seen a time of a deepening of my soul.  I find myself walking further away from self-absorption towards living in the self- less image of Jesus.  Not that it has been easy.  I have spent to much of my life being self-absorbed and egocentric for it to be a smooth transition.  Yet I see God’s work of transformation in me. 

The less I am - the more He is. 

Love abounds.  I feel more love in my life now than I ever have.  I am hopelessly devoted to my family and the close friends I have.  My walk with God is deeper than I can even fully understand and I am experiencing a newness of spirit.  The more I am able to put God and others before me the happier I am.  The less I think about myself the more at peace I feel.  I find that I am smiling a lot these days. 

There is a great song that I find myself singing in my head almost constantly and I want to finish this post by sharing the lyrics of just the chorus with you:

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

God's Timing

God’s timing often surprises me but His message is always just what I need to hear at the time I most need to hear it.

Lately I have been struggling with my relationship with my wife’s best friend. Her friendship with Meghen has been strained the last couple of years and when Meghen finally asked her why, she replied that it was due to me and how, since I have returned to faith, I have changed and she does not like being around me. At first I was defensive, stating that I had not changed. But how could that be true as God’s love is so transformative, I had changed. So I accepted that I had changed but I could not figure out how those obviously good changes could make her not like me. I am used to people not liking me or not wanting to hang out with me but it is generally because I am too intense, too self-absorbed, etc. I have even had people not like me because I am gay.  But I am not sure I have ever had someone not like me based on my following Jesus. 

Over the last few months I have accepted her not liking me. I still had love in my heart for her and I was basically indifferent to the whole situation. But knowing how it is affecting my wife is starting to get to me. Meghen misses their friendship and she is entirely blameless in its demise. Seeing her sense of loss and sadness is starting to make me hate this person. That coupled with the fact that she will not even put her disdain for me aside to come to my wife’s 40th birthday party. I feel my heart hardening towards her and this seed of hate growing. I have felt completely justified in what I feel is a rationale reason to hate this person.

This is where God’s perfect timing comes in.

I have been reading a book about the Apostle Paul but put it aside to start this book on God’s Love - If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace In An Ungracious World. Not sure why, I was enjoying the Paul book but for some reason I decided to throw the other one in my backpack to read on my commute. I am only about half way through the book and it is challenging me. Not that it is presenting a premise that I don’t wholeheartedly agree with but is challenging me to LOVE and to do in my own life the same things I am always encouraging others to do in theirs. 

In the chapter titled - Being Gracious it states: “Most people talk more radically than they live. The challenge is to live more radically than your talk.” I accept and believe in God’s universal grace and I believe and accept that Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves. I know that Jesus was all about loving the unlovable, the marginalized, those that society had discarded. 

In the gospel of Luke we read the story of the lawyer who tests Jesus by asking; “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live” 

(Luke 10:25-28)

This was a simple message but a daunting challenge. Is not the person that I am starting to have feelings of hatred towards my neighbor? I am humbled by the fact that I am struggling with the most basic and yet most important instruction that Jesus gave us. I think loving the Lord your God AND loving your neighbor as yourself are tied together in a way that if you don’t do the latter you are certainly not really doing the first. I think we have to be able to love our fellow man in order to love God with ALL of our heart.

My prayer is that God will soften my heart and continue His work in me to help me to love as He so loves us. And that I might live more radically and truly walk the talk.