Mother Theresa

~

“Imagine you’re walking through a forest.

Full of tall strong beautiful trees

Resilient against the wind and the rain

Beneath the soil

They are tied together

Intertwined

Beneath the soil

There are millions of roots

Connected

And they are better together

And when I think of these trees

I think of us

And how we try to go through life by ourselves

The times we’ve felt broken

The times we felt left

The times we’ve been hurt by someone else

We proclaim this loud and bold

But unlike the trees

We decide

To go it alone

I marvel at the pain

We can too easily shut out

I marvel at the years

We choose to lose sight

Everyday we see people’s wounds

But we never see past them

We never see through

We pick up our pace

We pick up our stones

We cross the other side of the road

We say there is no more room at our table

We love at a distance

We are only fair weather friends to weather the storms of this life

Because loving people’s imperfections is inconvenient and messy

Yet there’s no line of Scripture where Jesus commands us to seek our ease

No line where He commands that we seek our self

We look at people’s broken behaviours

ignore,

belittle

condemn

judge,

Look for quick cures but we do not see

Every broken behaviour comes from an unmet need

Behind every broken is someone who looks like our saviour

We go it alone

But alone is not what we were created for

Alone is not what the church was created to be

Isn’t it the one who cares for the poor and needy

The little and the least

Whom Christ will say come sit at my table

Come sit with me

When I hear this my immediate thought is

Where can I find a hungry

thirsty

naked

foreign

sick

imprisoned

stranger

Whom I can relieve

But In my attempts to love the needy

I discover my own poverty.

In clothing the naked,

I discover am naked of all virtue

In visiting the prisoner

I realise I am imprisoned by prideful thoughts

In visiting the sick

I learn I am sick with selfish desires.

I am who Jesus is referring to

I am the Least of These

It is not that poor guy on the street corner

Or the lonely girl in the corner,

who are the least of these.

No, it is me.

I am the least of Christ’s brethren.

I may not be poor naked sick or imprisoned in body

But I am poor naked sick and imprisoned in soul

I am starved of loving kindness

parched by lack of forgiveness

Sick with the disease of lust

Naked of compassion

Imprisoned by habits of self-indulgence.

And if I am the least,

If I really know that I am the least

Then the least that I can do

Is not go it alone

The least I can do is share my bread

When I am the one who hungers for righteousness

The least I can do is share my cup

When I am the one thirsting for Life.

The least I can do is share my stuff

When my I am so poor of anything valuable

The least I can do is sit with the lonely

When I am too lonely of the Father’s house

I have no clothes to cover my own sinful nakedness,

I have no medicine to heal my own blindness

I have no key to liberate my imprisoned soul.

Yet

He calls us His temple

Because we are pieces that come together to build and hold up one another

He calls us His body

Because we are all different parts and no purpose or function is like the other

He calls us His vine

Because we are only living when we are connected to one another

In Him

Like the trees

We were made to stand tall here

We were made to be a part of this forest here

Standing firm against all odds

Creation representing creator God

But our own fears of being hurt

Casts a shadow on the reality

That the fissures I see in my neighbour

Are the same fractures that covers me.

Wrapped tight in this fear, we act out against love.

And when we act out against love

We act out against the One Who loves us. “

“God is love.”

1 in 3

3 in 1

A community

Just as love is meaningless without something to love.

So we are meaningless without our brother

When our brother is our life

Just as one God exists as three Persons in one,

So we were created to be wholly ourselves

When we are wholly one with the other

We don’t pray my father

But our father

We are His children

Our husband

We are his bride

Our shepherd

We are His sheep

He is the one who never leaves the one behind

No one is saved alone.

Everyone’s freedom is tangled

Everyone salvation tied up

Roots beneath the soil

So there can be no fences

There can be no hedges

No neat marked out lines

Of what is yours and what is mine

Because where my life ends

Yours can begin

When we need each other to survive

So let’s close the distance between you and me

Trade in our fear for curiosity

Tear down our fences to build bridges

Open our door for those who have no place of their own

Step into each other’s darkness with kindness as a burning lantern

Love others through their brokenness

Because our brokenness makes us more alike than unlike.

The powerless, the wounded and the weak

All those who cannot speak

Come sit beside me and tell me your story

Tell me of the million and one ways a soul can bruise

And I can tell the million and one ways a soul sees the Light.

The Light loves with abandon

His wounded hands love the wounded with no bounds.

Because we were created for one another

We belong to each other

No matter the weather

Like trees in a forest

Stronger

Taller

Together”

~

1 Corinthians 13:13

It’s been an ‘eventful’ few months, when you befriend every type of pain and anguish, it seems like the most radical thing you can do is be hopeful.

But what does hope really mean? We say it almost interchangeably with ‘wish’ or ‘good luck’. Understood correctly, it is not to be confused with a whimsical naivety…hope is anything but fluffy, it’s as solid as an anchor.

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain.”  

Hebrews 6:19 

It is not to be mistaken for escapism and retreat because that would be a direct contradiction to the command, “Take up your cross and follow me.” And it’s never been about indifference.

I’ve been thinking about what hope IS, and have come to the conclusion that it may be simply realising that often times, the new wine is yet to come. Hope is the power of a conviction that the life built on faith will produce its fruits. Hope is the confidence that, despite all darkness and sin, the light of the loving forgiveness of God is upon us to do, with us and for us what we can’t. It’s about redeeming what was lost.

Hope, is to proclaim that we believe in the Resurrection. It is to look at the nails and the cross and see victory and salvation for all mankind.

Hope is the part of the three fold cord (faith, hope, love), that cannot be broken. Because, one of the most important things I have learnt is that, hope is not just nice, it is necessary. When it really feel like you are drowning, hope is the air that keeps us breathing.

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.'”

Romans 4:18

Abraham had a hope beyond hope. Where all human logic and wishful thinking had expired, he remained steadfast.

Without hope we become cynics or we fall into despair…

Cynicism often means assuming the worst about people, their motives and the outcomes of decisions. It’s picking the dark shades out of the palette, to paint the world a shade of negativity. Without hope we are sick and we become unresponsive to the grace of God and the support of our brothers.

The dangerous thing is, it is so easy to justify, because, in truth, humanity is broken, bad things happen, sometimes people have sinful motives, maybe we know ourselves well enough to project that onto others. We can’t assume people will always do good but maybe we just need to give people the opportunity to be. With hearts and minds wide open we will see God’s hand. We see that people are good, though this goodness is nuanced and idiosyncratic, and God is great.

We see a story of redemption throughout the bible. In the book of Isaiah, we meet a Pagan king named Cyrus. Despite the fact he didn’t know God, God still used him to encourage the Jewish people to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple.

It was written about him…

“Open before him the double doors,
So that the gates will not be shut:
‘I will go before you
And make the crooked places straight;
I will break in pieces the gates of bronze
And cut the bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness
And hidden riches of secret places,

I make peace and create calamity;
I, the Lord, do all these things.” 

Isaiah 45:1-3,7

Finally, Let us remind each other to flee from the dark gripping forces of despondency and despair. With a renewed hope, let us walk in the palm of His sovereign hand.

‘” . the force of despondence . . . overwhelms him and oppresses his soul; and this is a taste of hell because it produces a thousand temptations: confusion, irritation, protesting and bewailing one’s lot, wrong thoughts, wandering from place to place, and so on”

(Saint Isaac of Syria, 6th c., Directions on Spiritual Training).

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 15:13

“For in this hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

Romans 8:24-25

Well, He’s dead.

In the end, they took Him and nailed him to a cross, watched Him suffocate under the weight of His own body, and then stabbed Him to make sure He was dead. Then everything seemed to go mad; the Veil of the Temple split down the middle, blasphemously revealing the Holy of Holies. The earth started shaking and the ancient dead burst from their tombs, as though strolling around Jerusalem was the most natural thing in the world after a thousand years of bodily decay. They say that if you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the whole netherworld beginning to creak and shudder; the dead are waking up, and the Devil is screaming.

It all seems a lot of fuss for one dead man. You can see Him there, moving down the path toward His tomb. He’s the bleeding bundle of cloth at the front of the group. The man holding His feet is Nicodemus; one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem. The man holding His shoulders is Joseph of Arimathea. They’re both religious types — they’re even on an important religious council called the Sanhedrin, with sixty-nine other extremely religious men, which would definitely make them two of the seventy-one most religious men in Jerusalem.

That woman behind them, the one who can’t seem to stop crying, is called Mary. She comes from Magdala, and unlike Joseph and Nicodemus, she is not the religious type. We don’t know much about her, but we do know that when she first met her Teacher, her body was home to no less than seven spiritual parasites. They were old, terrible creatures who fed off her misery and desperation. Back then, she had had plentiful stores of both, though we don’t know precisely why. Perhaps she had done terrible things. Perhaps terrible things had been done to her. Perhaps a bit of both. At any rate, she was not what anyone would call a “pillar of respectability,” and it hadn’t helped her Teacher’s reputation to have her hanging around. But He was the one who freed her. All seven of her demonic tormentors had screamed and fled when He came along, and they never came back. Since then, she has followed Him; and she follows even now, when all that’s left to follow is a bleeding corpse.

There are others walking with them, following the blood-soaked bundle that was their Teacher. There are a couple of Mary’s present (but not the famous one), Salome, Joanna and Susanna.

Surprisingly, you are present too.

You’re part of your own procession, a larger one, invisibly leading Joseph, Nicodemus and their bloody bundle of linen towards the tomb. Your procession is headed by golden crosses on poles and at the very back, just in front of Joseph and Nicodemus, men are carrying icons of Jesus’ burial and crucifixion, being censed by bearded priests wearing golden cloaks. Although there are more people in your procession than in the ancient one behind you, yours is a good deal less serious. Where Joseph and the Mary’s are burying a brutally murdered Friend, you are attending a religious festival. The atmosphere is solemn enough, what with the icons and the incense and gold crosses on poles, but in your procession people are distracted, occasionally chatting to one another, making quick remarks about Uncle So-and-So’s chanting voice and what they’re going to eat once the service is over. They’re tired because they’ve been in Church for nine hours. Mary, Joseph and Nicodemus are tired because they’ve just spent nine hours watching their Friend asphyxiate and bleed to death.

And so the two processions make their way slowly to a new tomb in a garden; one decked in white and gold, the other wet with tears and blood. You seem to be in two places at once. On the one hand, you’re walking around your local Coptic Church holding a candle, singing “Lord have mercy” in a tune which seems deeply sad and deeply joyful at the same time (which is different, mind you, to being half sad and half joyful). On the other hand, in some mysterious way, you are also walking towards a garden in Jerusalem to put a blood-soaked corpse into a new tomb. Some would say you’re not really in the same place as Joseph and Mary and the bloody bundle; properly speaking, they would insist, you are in a Coptic Church on Good Friday. You might imagine that you’re following a group of first-century Jews to a new tomb outside Jerusalem, but imagining doesn’t make it true. That’s what some people would say. Perhaps they’re right. But those people have probably never been to a Coptic Church on Good Friday, and so we might wonder how they can be so sure.

As you walk around the Church in procession, you notice some of the tired faces around you. A few places ahead of you in the procession is the man who taught you to be a Sunday School teacher. Like Joseph and Nicodemus, he’s the religious type. He’s attended every Holy Week service so far, morning and night, and he knows more about the Church and its history than anyone you’ve ever met. He loves this kind of service. His eyes are always closed during the long hymns, not because he’s sleeping (although no-one would know the difference if he was) but because he’s contemplating the deep nuances of the ancient hymns. He’s also one of the kindest and most self-sacrificing people you’ve ever known. You can only see his back from where you are, but you’re sure that his eyes are closed now too, as often as he can manage it without crashing into anything.

The procession takes you up the back of the church, where a woman called Selena is leaning against a pillar. Selena still comes to Church for the big occasions, but she’s not really the religious type. She has a complicated history, which she doesn’t like to talk about. A combination of things she’s done and things that have been done to her have convinced her that she isn’t pious or holy enough to be a good, church-going Coptic girl. So Selena only comes on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, because the services are crowded and she can slip in the back without really being noticed. She doesn’t understand the long hymns, but she likes the processions. In the processions, Christ comes to her at the back of the Church, meaning she doesn’t need to wade through an ocean of harsh eyes and perfect people to get to Him. The priests and deacons carry Him around the whole Church, and she can even reach out and touch Him, like the bleeding woman in the Gospels. You meet her gaze as you pass her, but she looks away.

Over there in the corner is the kid you kicked out of your Sunday School class last week. You probably shouldn’t have lost your temper, but in your defence, he was being a royally arrogant little punk. He hit another kid hard across the back of the head, and when you yelled at him, he acted like he couldn’t even hear you. But you remember now that he’s Selena’s younger brother, and you don’t really know what his family is like. The one time you visited his house (your Sunday School mentor was with you that day) you noticed that his mother was limping. The father was in the house but he didn’t come out to say hello. In the car on the way back, your mentor said, “Pray for them. Especially for the father.” You didn’t ask for details. You hadn’t been thinking of that when you kicked him out. You should probably talk to him later.

As the procession takes you through the church pews, you see the faces of your friends, your teachers, your relatives, even one of your old crushes. Mostly you don’t acknowledge them; sometimes, you exchange a quick smile or nod. You have seen these faces nearly every week for years; at liturgies and fundraisers and functions, at fantastically failed church plays, at homeless drives and hospital visits, soccer competitions and youth camps. But it strikes you all of sudden, how strange it is to be here with all these people. I mean, in one sense, it’s no surprise that the usual people would turn up to Church on Good Friday, as they have done for years. But in another sense, it all seems like a strange coincidence that these people, with whom you’ve spent so much time doing such boring, normal things, should be present with you at something so important. This is no parish camp or trivia night; you’ve all come here to bury God. That bloody bundle of linen behind you contains the Firstborn over All Creation, the Word of God, the Father’s Wisdom and Power. Now that He is dead, the whole Kingdom of Death is being overthrown; angels are pouring down into Hades to join the coup. You’d expect burying God and the overthrow of Hades to be a unique and monumental occasion; something totally removed the mundane existence you carry out day by day. And yet, there is your old mentor, your punk Sunday School kid, your old crush, your friends, the woman who heads the Sunday School service, the man who runs the bookshop, the lady who makes sandwiches on Sunday mornings.

You reach the end. Joseph and Nicodemus lay down their load and let the women pour a last libation of myrrh and spices on Him. Your parish priest is with them, sprinkling rose petals as red as the blood seeping through the linen. You remember that those hands, sprinkling rose petals, are the hands with which he played volleyball at your last camp. Now, he is using them to anoint the body of God for its burial. You look around at the tired, familiar faces, watching Abouna wrapping the tiny icon in white cloth. No-one is joking now. They are either singing, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal” or saying nothing. And again, you are surprised that you should all be together here, at this place where the whole world turned upside down.

When all is done, Joseph and Nicodemus seal up the tomb, locking their Teacher in Hades to do battle with its dark prince. Abouna kisses the door of the tomb and begins to read Psalms while the ancient mourners go home to weep and ponder the spectacular disaster that had become of all their hopes and dreams. Selena slips quietly out the back. Your old Sunday School mentor stands in the sanctuary, eyes closed and arms folded. When the chanting stops, your class punk is unusually quiet in his corner seat; he is praying that God will teach his parents how to love each other. You realise that you’re glad they were all here with you, to see God die and come to rest in the earth.

It’s only as you leave that you realise who had been walking next to you in the procession. He never said a word, but He had directed your attention as you walked; He had pointed wordlessly to Selena, to your old mentor, to your Sunday School child. And He had looked back at you from inside each of them; from the peace that hung around your old mentor, from Selena’s downcast eyes, especially from your little punk Sunday School kid. When you reached the end of the procession, you watched Him wrapped in linen and sealed behind the black curtains of the sanctuary. But even then, somehow, He hadn’t left your side. He was walking beside you while He was borne behind you in burial clothes; just as He was still in the bosom of His Father even when He went to the depths of Hades. You realise now that it is no coincidence that you were all here together. You have things to do.

And He’s not dead.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 3:2)

After praying several years for a wife, I was married this past summer. Being newly married (almost 6 months now!) I am always eager to learn everything I can to become the best husband I can be. This usually comes in the form of devouring books, listening to different speakers teach on the topic, and learning from older married couples. More recently though, I have found value in marriage retreats.

My wife, Veronia, and I just returned from our first marriage retreat last weekend. To be honest, I was expecting something entirely different than what it ended up being. It was far from a romantic weekend away, but I wouldn’t trade what I learned for anything. In the same way the retreat was not what I imagined, the lessons I learned weren’t earth shatteringly profound either. However, it has been my experience that many times the ordinary can be extraordinary if you let it; many times the simplest truths are the ones that are the most insightful if you are willing to spend the time to look closely enough. After all, Jesus spoke in simple stories.

Throughout all of the talks there was a recurring theme: choosing how to respond to your spouse. We all think and act in different ways and this will inevitably cause tension when two people share their lives together. When communicating with your spouse, whether generally or when there’s a disagreement, you only have three options: turning away from, turning against, or turning towards your spouse.

Turning Away

This is when you don’t want to deal with the issue. It has surfaced a couple of times but every time it does you just want to avoid it so that there’s peace, or at least a counterfeit form of it. You choose not to confront the problem, and repress your emotions instead. You are tired of the disagreements and the bickering so you keep quiet on the topic and try to move on.

Turning away from your spouse is dangerous because of the two negative responses, this one seems permissible. It seems ok. At least I’m keeping the peace, you think. At least we don’t have to fight.

Sure you’re not fighting externally, but the internal struggle within yourself is fierce. Bitterness builds up. Unkind words left unspoken are thought against the other instead… until you turn against your spouse.

Turning Against

We all can picture the scene in our heads. It involves shouting and possibly actions done in anger: slamming doors, throwing things, and even physical abuse. It doesn’t always manifest in a fit of rage though; it can be sarcastic comments that wound the other deeply or disrespectful criticisms uttered to make a spouse feel small.

Turning against your spouse usually happens after a prolonged period of turning away and letting the poison of unforgiveness linger. When one person turns against the other it’s not long before the other feels the need to defend themselves, until they too succumb to attacking the person they vowed to love.

When we turn against one another we forget how our weaknesses are complemented by our spouses strengths. We wound the other and our relationship. If left on this path, two people who were initially committed to the other will feel that there’s nothing left but to leave the relationship they had a hand in destroying.

Turning Towards

This, of course, is the desired response. We need to learn to respond to our spouse by turning towards them.

Instead of neglecting the problem out of fear, you face it with courage.

Instead of talking in a harsh way wanting to be heard, you speak tenderly with love wanting to hear what’s on the other person’s heart.

This doesn’t have to involve words. The language of touch is a powerful tool. A hand placed tenderly on a knee or a gentle touch on the back can sometimes do things that many words can’t. A small gift thoughtfully placed or a small act of kindness for the other can also communicate a loving message without using words.

Turning towards the other is the hardest of the three choices because it requires humility and selflessness. You have to think of the other person’s needs and desires before your own. You have to be willing to sacrifice for the good of the other. You have to really push yourself to serve the other. It is not easy.

Thankfully, we have our entire lives together to practice and get it right.

These concepts are especially true of marriage as it is the most intimate relationship we will experience with another person, but it’s true of all our relationships: with our children, parents, siblings, friends, and even the beggar on the street.

What will you decide to do? Turn away, against, or towards?

(photo courtesy of Gable Denims)

The “Lord is between you and me forever.”
Samuel 20:23

The day you came beside me to sleep on the floor was Tuesday, July 21st. That was the day my summer burst at the seams. You let me in on the secret of friendship;

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

That night you didn’t see me with your eyes but you saw me with your heart.

To be friends with someone is to see courage where everyone else may see weakness. To be a friend is to see someone who is trying where everyone may see someone who should be better.

It is kind, soft words in a world where they run on short supply and where all you hear are the voices in your head that insist you should not be this way, that you are not good enough, and that the only solution is to keep trying harder, to never allow your weakness to show. But that night on the floor as I cried, you saw me as beautiful still, like the tears were water for a row of lilies to bloom. And you held on to hope for me as I felt my fingers loosen their grip and slip.

We need each other, vulnerable and exposed.

We need floor moments like these in friendship. To hold a mirror with one hand that reveals all the frailties and shortcomings, but to also hold out the other hand ready to go on this journey of healing with you all the way to the Father’s house; no matter how crooked or narrow the Calvary road becomes, all the way to the foot of the Cross – our God at His most vulnerable.

Friendship allows us to see our darkness and the darkness of others as a pathway to know the Father – not a barrier to his love. Perhaps He is not threatened by our darkness, so we no longer need to with each other. Perhaps our bleeding out with those who have earned the right to hear it is the best thing for our hearts – because then we can be filled with new Eucharistic blood.

That night you were a mirror to the parts of myself I spent so long trying to run from and pretend like they weren’t there because I thought they were too much to look at.

There is something to be said when someone is willing to make sense of all you are, your internal wars, your run-down castles, your expanding galaxies and your untamed, untrodden paths. What more do we want than to be seen, to be understood in a continuum where we did not want to understand or see ourselves for fear of what we would uncover? Yet, I tried to push you away, to shut you out with walls of silence and tears, with sitting away from you on the floor. And yet, that night you did not leave, but you chose to stay when there was nothing I could offer you. You chose to fight for a ravaged heart, so you lay on the floor beside me and told me words like streams to my desert soul:

That you love this broken girl.

There is something to be said of the marks people can make on another soul, the fingerprints they leave from where hands ran along the jagged edges.

To be a friend is a lifetime of savouring every sharp point, every rough texture as lost treasure. A lifetime of leaving marks that tell stories of staying together. Staying in summers and in winters too, even when they’ve been too cold. Staying when the birds have sung and the plants have been in bloom and when the garden has run wild with weeds and tall yellow grass. The garden of a soul is not yours alone, it belongs to a man’s friends. For it takes more than a pair of hands to pull out overgrown weeds and plant a row of sunflowers in the space where deep roots of lies spread. And when there is a storm, there is no fear to let the waters rise as you stand in the rain; in time the seeds friendship’s sown will grow.

The secret of friendship sounds a lot like a fight song at times…

We sing…

As we lie on the cold hardened floor of our lives, wrapped in the thick of darkness’ untidy death grip, I will not let you go. I will choose to see you with my heart and not just my eyes. I will choose to hear your words and your tears, and I will not be afraid to walk down into the garden you call wreckage. I will choose to write lovely all across your back until the lies no longer compare. I will ensure that you remember that “you are dark” always comes with the clause that “you are lovely”. I will bring to your remembrance that even the darkness will not be dark to you (psalm 139:12). I will choose to enter into your sorrow and suffering rather than demand that you deny yourself and enter into my joy. I will choose to fight to understand your every complexity, that I may grow to know and serve you well. And for every moment your heart screams ugly, I will choose to echo the truth right back in, beauty.

Because precious sister, love is a choice, and I will choose to love you, the way Jonathan loved David, the way he loved him as his own soul. I will choose to feast on the precious gift of friendship, where our souls may collide that together we may enter into His rest.

To be seen by you is frightful indeed. To strip off my layers, let you see me raw, let you see me whole frightens me to the core. Yet with your gentleness, all my fears halt to a lie, and I realise that you know me. To be known is to be loved, and you love me so well.

We are pursuers of each other, pursuing to know the depth and height of each other’s heart. I promise to know you. I promise not to laugh at you when you are naked and like Genesis 2:25, we will stand together, naked souls, unashamed. And I will not let my words become a hollow noise, but I will entangle this promise in the actions of my daily life.

Just when I think I have tasted the best of this feast, I realise, joyfully, there is so much more to learn. More knitting, more weaving of souls.

“The resurrection is coming.”

And with those words you fearlessly revelled and embraced my brokenness as the means to victory and wiped away any shame with hands that held me close. The same shame that I used to push you away from coming any closer because I did not believe you deserved to see this mess, you deserved better from a friend and you did not deserve to carry this sadness. Yet you called it an honour. You spoke life, love, truth and beauty into the deafening echo of brokenness.

Because of you, my true friend, I am not a victim of brokenness but rather experiencing redemption through brokenness. On the floor the fear made me want hide away from it. And on that same floor you made the broken beautiful with these words:

Do not be afraid or weakened by your darkness.

To be a friend is to let someone love you the way you would want to love them. To accept you will hurt them and they will be hurt by you whilst never forgetting the commitment you made to sacrifice anything to heal each other.

I will never forget that night on the floor when you came down beside me and met me at my lowest. When you were a picture of how hope does not disappoint because of the love that God has poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. You poured out your love in the broken girl. The girl whose every dry bone screamed “you’re not good enough as you are. You need to be perfect. Don’t give up…otherwise you won’t be perfect.” In your embrace, the dry bones cried “Live!” and the broken girl had a place to let go and belong.

As St. Ambrose says, a place to “know, O beautiful soul, that you are the image of God. Know that you are the glory of God. Know, then, O mortal, your greatness, and be vigilant”. In your arms I found a place of safety. A place other than perfection’s hostage image of all the ways I will never be enough – other than shame’s iron hold and ten-tonne shield. A place other than isolation’s secrecy and muffled silence, until I could see something other than every flaw and imperfection.

We all need help and perspective in learning how to love the broken girl within each one of us. We all need friends to see and celebrate our truest self – the broken girl who is actually more whole than she ever thought because she chose to endure, to be resilient and grow.

When I could not come out of hiding you came to find me. This is the feast of friendship. A halfway home ’till kingdom come. Till we shall feast anew and fully in the blessed kingdom of God.

“What I know about living
is the pain is never just ours.
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,
when I can see what I couldn’t see before
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin
don’t try to put me back in.
Just say, “Here we are” together at the window
aching for it to all get better
but knowing there is a chance
our hearts may have only just skinned their knees,
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming

let me say right now for the record,
I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance,
even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You, you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.

Raising your bite against the bitter dark,
your bright longing,
your brilliant fists of loss.
Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that is plenty
my god that is enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs
whispering over and over and over,
“Live. Live. Live.”

Andrea Gibson

Co-written with Makrina.

He replied:

“If you see a humble man with a pure heart, that would be greater than all the visions; because through that vision, you would see the invisible God. Do not ask for a better vision.”

If seeing just one godly man can have such a profound impact on a person, then how glorious would it be to see three godly men living in unbroken communion and mutually offering their lives to Him?

Reading through 1 Samuel, I was awed to read about three such men reflecting the beauty of the Holy Trinity. They are only mentioned in two verses, and to my knowledge they are not mentioned again in the Bible:

“…three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine. And they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread, which you shall receive from their hands.” 1 Samuel 10:3-4

Who Are They?

The first thing that is said about these men is that they are “going up to God at Bethel.”

What a beautiful verse!

How great would it be to be described by nothing else but how focused you were on pursing God? These men were not described by their relationships, their occupation, or even where they came from (which was very traditional in those times) but they were simply described by their pursuit of God.

Bethel, which means house of God, is significant because it was one of the first places where God met with His chosen people. This is actually the same place Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, having angels ascending and descending on it and having the Lord standing above it. (Genesis 28:12-13)

It almost sounds like these three men are on their way to climb this ladder to ‘go up to’ God.

Living in Communion

I can imagine that these men held one another accountable and encouraged each other in Him as they made this journey up to God together. They were not wise in their own eyes and knew the power of having a companion so as not to travel alone (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

Truly did the Psalmist speak of men such as these:

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is or brothers to dwell together in unity! Psalm 133:1

It also seems as though these men of faith had all things in common. Surely there was one goat and one loaf of bread for each of them rather than one man having three goats and another having three loaves of bread to himself. Each brought what they had and made up for what the other lacked.

Furthermore, they had one spirit as they did anything together; it was never one of them doing an action individually. The following phrase makes this clear: “they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread.” They didn’t live in communion with just themselves, but from their abundance they were able to provide for the for needs of those they came into contact with. They only kept for themselves what they needed.

Thinking about how these men might have greeted those in their path I can only think they were genuine, warm, and heartfelt. They were the type of people to ask you how you were and would actually care to hear your response. They were the type of men that didn’t just say “God bless you” to people without actually being a source of blessing to them (as witnessed by their free gift of bread).

Worshiping in Spirit and Truth

These men were worshiping God the way He intended them to worship Him.

It’s likely that the goats they were taking with them were intended to be sacrificed – one for each of them – as a sin offering:

“or if his sin which he has committed comes to his knowledge, he shall bring as his offering a kid of the goats, a male without blemish. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the goat, and kill it at the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord. It is a sin offering.” (Leviticus 4:23-24)

They were not only worshipping God in their relationship with one another, with their giving of themselves physically and emotionally to others, but they were also giving God glory by living a life of repentance.

These men remind me of Melchizedek in that they also prophetically brought bread and wine to offer to God as a prefigurement of the Eucharist. They also seem to be “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3) but worship God continually.

What beautiful men!

We are all called to be like our Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ.

Along with that though, we are called to live in harmony and communion with one another and to be an icon of the Holy Trinity. It was the unity that these men had that made them special. Their relationship with one another was a reflection of God Himself.

These three men of faith are a beautiful example of perichoresis, which is a term used to describe how the three Persons of the Trinity are One God. Perichoresis is the divine dance of Love where there is a complete and mutual giving and receiving. It involves Persons in harmony having perfect consideration for each other

Lord, give us to reflect Your unspeakable beauty!

“Pure religion and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” Amos 5:24

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

As a church we tend to focus on promising a hope in the life to come, but what about the life we are still living? Jesus didn’t just come to prepare us for our death, but also to teach us how to live. Jesus cared about the hurt and the brokenness in this world. He cared for the widows and orphans. He talked about unjust judges way more than He did about the afterlife. Jesus cared about Justice, in fact Jesus is justice, just like He is love. It is integral to His character.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He wept over Jerusalem because they didn’t know ‘the things that make for peace.’ Ironically, the world’s logic says that we must make peace, but we use violence; but Jesus defeated violence with love and peace. Peacemaking does not mean passivity. It is the act of disarming evil without harming the evil doer. Peacemaking starts with what we can change; ourselves. But it doesn’t end there, being a peacemaker also means interrupting the violence we see around us in out streets and in our worlds.

I see my Facebook flooded with pictures and outraged statuses, and we continue to chat about in our living rooms. But when will we be moved enough to actually move. When will we start becoming instruments of His peace. Because, it’s a heartbreaking fact that in the world Christians have become known more for what they are against, rather than what they are for.

We wait on God to act but God is also waiting on us. We ask God why there is so much suffering in the world but maybe God is asking us the same question.We forget that we have spent our Sunday worshipping a homeless man because we ignore him on a Monday. We are His hands and feet. We ask God to move a mountain, but God has already handed us a shovel. We need to pray and act. The world needs our protests and our prayers. The world will continue to suffer if we continue being either inactive believers or unbelieving activists. We need to pray to be people who hold God’s hand in one and our neighbour’s in the other.

We need to pray intentionally to be arrows that strike specifically, because He promised that ; ‘each man’s work will become evident’ 1 Corinthians 3:13, so let us write His promises on the walls of our hearts and pray that He reveals to us His perfect preplanned work for us. Maybe we can’t build a wall, but when each brings his brick, brick by brick,the wall will be built.

“C.S. Lewis wrote: We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

Who, in the midst of the preoccupation of hell, would have the energy and generosity for the larger battles? What might it mean if we resolved to abandon every petty, small, and unworthy battle this year? What if we resolved to give ourselves fully to larger things that matter, to things of God and his kingdom? In fact, in a world of so much acute suffering, hurt and need, for what purpose have you and I been granted so much?” Gary Haugen

“Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.” Psalm 106:3

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Proverbs 31:8-9

Prayer

God please comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Let us be disturbed to the point where we cannot accept serving at a distance but that we become active about making a difference.